Tiffany Smiley, who lost bid for U.S. Senate in 2022, enters race challenging Rep. Dan Newhouse

Tiffany Smiley, the political newcomer who lost a 2022 bid to unseat incumbent Sen. Patty Murray, is challenging incumbent Congressman Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, she announced Monday.

The Pasco resident has been a veterans advocate since 2005 after her husband, Scott Smiley, was blinded in a suicide bombing in Iraq. She refused to sign his U.S. Army discharge papers, left her job as a nurse and cared for him as he became the nation’s first blind active-duty Army officer.

She pointed to that experience in an announcement video published Monday.

“Amongst the chaos and uncertainty, I experienced government dysfunction for the first time,” Smiley said in the video. “Since that day, I have dedicated my life to changing how the government works for veterans and their families from the outside.”

The federal government has only become more dysfunctional in the past 20 years, she argued, saying that political leaders were spending taxpayer money irresponsibly, were negligent on U.S. border security and had failed cost-burdened families and veterans.

Smiley is a last-minute addition to the race, joining Newhouse, who filed for re-election Monday, and former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler, a veteran who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Sessler, who ran unsuccessfully for the seat in 2022, and Newhouse have been campaigning since at least last summer.

Newhouse is the only incumbent Washingtonian Republican in Congress running for re-election this year, and he is likely to face an uphill battle this year after surviving a fierce primary challenge in 2022 with a crowded field that failed to consolidate against him. Trump made ousting Newhouse a priority after the third-generation farmer from Sunnyside voted to impeach the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“(Sessler) is running against a weak and pathetic RINO named Newhouse, who voted to, for no reason, Impeach me,” Trump wrote in his Friday post endorsing Sessler while disparaging Newhouse using the acronym for “Republican in name only.”

Sessler unsuccessfully tried to unseat Newhouse in 2022, when six Trump-aligned Republicans split the vote in the primary election.

Newhouse survived that primary challenge with 25.5% of the vote, ultimately defeating Democrat Doug White in the November general election in the state’s most reliably conservative district.

Though Smiley enters the race with name recognition, her relatively late arrival will give her less time to carve out a lane against the pro-business and -agriculture incumbent and his Trump-backed challenger. Smiley did not initially differentiate her policy proposals, including on the border or in support of veterans, from either Newhouse or Sessler.

Smiley has leaned into some culture war issues, such as recently taking to Twitter to attack trans students being allowed in girls’ bathrooms in schools and to argue that the flame of antisemitism is being fanned by universities and “woke ideology.” On a recent appearance on Fox News, Smiley hedged on whether the National Guard should be brought in to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, but argued that greater law enforcement presence was needed and suggested the Israel-Hamas conflict would not have sparked if Trump was still in office.

The very fact of her candidacy is a break with the former president, however. Trump, who has made ousting Newhouse a top priority, has endorsed Sessler, who also recently received the backing of the Washington State Republican Party.

She may also face criticism from the Trump-wing of the Republican party for her backing of Camas City Councilwoman Leslie Lewallen, a Republican running for Washington’s Third Congressional District, a seat currently held by Democratic freshman Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Far-right Republican Joe Kent, whose loss to Gluesenkamp Perez in 2022 was one of the most unexpected Democratic victories of the year, has been prepping for a rematch ever since and filed for the seat Monday.

Trump endorsed Kent in 2022 but did not back Smiley.

Kent, who alongside Sessler was endorsed by the state GOP at the party convention in Spokane last month, has supported the lie that Trump won the 2020 election and continues to downplay the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by the former president’s supporters. He has repeatedly called those arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 attack “political prisoners.”

Smiley has previously avoided answering pointed questions about whether President Joe Biden was legitimately elected four years ago, but called the events of Jan. 6 “heartbreaking” during a 2022 debate.

“And those who broke the law should be held to the full extent of our judicial system and our law,” she said at the time.

However, Smiley appears to draw the line at voting to impeach Trump for inciting his supporters to rush the Capitol.

“That’s not a vote that represents the voters of the Fourth District,” Smiley told the National Review in an interview published Monday. “Donald Trump is our nominee, and we need Donald Trump’s policies in this country to save this country going forward.

“So given Newhouse’s past history with Trump, I don’t believe that Newhouse is the best person to legislate with a Trump administration.”

Neither Smiley nor her campaign officials responded to a request for comment Monday. In an interview with The Seattle Times, however, she said she had warned Newhouse last week that she planned to run for his seat.

“I said this isn’t about you, Dan, it’s not even about me. It’s about our country and our future,” she told the Times.

In a statement provided to the media, Newhouse campaign manager Robert Bugner responded: “This is no time for Central Washington to give up its clout in Congress or to hand over the keys to the federal budget to someone who couldn’t manage her own campaign’s finances,” an apparent reference to Smiley’s 2022 Senate campaign, which ended $1 million in debt.

Some of that debt was paid for by the Endeavor Political Action Committee, which Smiley launched shortly after losing to Murray by 15 points and pitched to potential donors as a tool to help elect conservatives, The Seattle Times reported last year.

“We have enough big spenders in D.C., we need a fiscal conservative to represent us in Congress, and Dan Newhouse is the only one who’s proven he can do just that,” Bugner wrote.

Despite the debt, Smiley was a powerhouse fundraiser in 2022, raising over $20 million for the campaign. Newhouse has an overwhelming funding advantage in this year’s race for the Fourth Congressional District, having raised $909,000 to Sessler’s $83,000, according to April reports to the Federal Election Commission.

In a Monday text, Sessler expressed confidence that he will represent Central Washington in Congress come next year, despite the significant fundraising deficit.

“I look forward to defeating Dan Newhouse and bringing an America-First Agenda to DC, and no amount of dark money from outside the district is going to change that,” he wrote.