U.S. Senator

At its core, Washington’s U.S. Senate race this year might be reduced to a person who says he wants to be an agent of change and another who says she’s been working for change for almost a quarter of a century.

Democrat Patty Murray, seeking her fifth term in the Senate, points to work she’s done on a wide variety of issues over the lpast 24 years, including highway projects, education and the budget, and talks about tackling voters’ current concerns about the Zika virus, economic uncertainty and access to mental health care.

She faces Republican Chris Vance, a former legislator and state GOP chairman. He bills himself as a different kind of Republican than the national profile, one who harkens back to fiscally conservative social moderates like Dan Evans and Slade Gorton, the only Republicans to be sent to the U.S. Senate from Washington in the last 64 years. He distinguished himself from the national party in May when he announced he wouldn’t support Donald Trump, and unlike some early Trump critics has not changed course.

In a move calculated to capture independent votes – although arguably conceding four more years of a Democrat in the White House – Vance has contended that re-electing Murray would be giving Hillary Clinton a “rubber stamp” in the Senate.

Murray scoffs at the rubber stamp description but agrees she’s a longtime Clinton friend and ally. Murray said Clinton knows she’ll fight for the state on any issue. And if the senior senator from Washington calls the Oval Office over the next four years, “she’ll take my call.”