Maria Cantwell defeats Dr Raul Garcia to win fifth Senate term

Sen. Maria Cantwell won a fifth term in office on Tuesday, setting up the veteran lawmaker to represent Washington state for three decades in the Senate.

After the first batch of results was announced on Tuesday, Cantwell held a comfortable lead of about 60% to 40% over her Republican opponent, Dr Raul Garcia. In a speech at the state Democrats’ election night party in Seattle, Cantwell thanked her supporters and said she was honored to continue representing the values of Washingtonians in the nation’s capital.

“This campaign was about growing the middle class in the United States of America, led by our state that had some of the highest wage growth in the country,” she said. “Now we’re going to go back there and move across the aisle to get more done, to show the rest of the country that we can make progress.”

In a phone call, Garcia thanked his supporters and said he remained optimistic and didn’t intend to concede until more votes were in. More than 2.5 million had been counted as of Tuesday night.

“For me what’s most important is that, no matter what happens tonight, we stay solid on a message of unity,” Garcia said. “If Sen. Cantwell happens to win, I will be her No. 1 supporter and hold her accountable. And if I get to win somehow, then I would expect her to be my No. 1 supporter and hold me accountable. I think that’s the message that we need to move forward with, so we can have Thanksgiving again with family.”

Sticking to a commitment he made during the campaign to stay out of the presidential race, Garcia declined to say whether he voted for former President Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, a third-party candidate or no one at all. But he said that whether Trump or Harris wins, he hopes the victor in that race will also deliver a message of unity.

A native of Indiana, Cantwell moved to Washington in 1983 and was elected to the state House of Representatives three years later, then to a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. After her losing that seat two years after, she became an executive at the tech company RealNetworks before winning her first Senate race in 2000.

In the Senate, Cantwell has led the influential Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation since 2021, giving her a key oversight role in aviation, fisheries and other areas relevant to Washington state.

As chair of that panel, she played a major role in crafting the Biden administration’s signature legislation aimed at upgrading the nation’s infrastructure, creating more manufacturing jobs and speeding the transition to renewable energy sources. If Republicans win the Senate majority, as appeared likely, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas would likely take over as the committee’s leader, with Cantwell remaining its top Democratic member.

In her campaign, Cantwell has pitched herself to voters as a pragmatic Democrat who is willing to work with Republicans to tackle policy challenges. She has made jobs and the economy the central theme of her platform, while also emphasizing the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned nationwide protections for abortion.

Garcia was born in Cuba and moved to the United States with his family as a child, later going to medical school and moving to Yakima in 2007 to work as a doctor. He currently serves as an emergency physician and medical director at Astria Hospital in Toppenish.

He has said his experience as a physician has informed his position on reproductive health care. Unlike most Republicans in Congress, he says abortion should remain legal because restricting the procedure also limits doctors’ ability to provide other important and sometimes live-saving care to women.

Garcia centered his campaign on the crisis of fentanyl and other opioids, arguing for a tough-love approach informed by his own stepson’s experience with addiction and homelessness.

Cantwell has also made tackling the proliferation of fentanyl a major priority, but whereas she supports programs that include a so-called “harm reduction” approach that seeks to prevent overdose deaths while helping drug users get into treatment, Garcia sees that approach as naive and enabling addiction. Instead, he has proposed harsh penalties for drug sellers and mandatory, comprehensive treatment for drug users.

Both candidates were relatively civil throughout the campaign, avoiding personal attacks and even agreeing on several points during their debate in Spokane on Oct. 8.

In that respect, Garcia in particular stood out in an election year that has been defined by many of his fellow Republicans making explosive allegations against their political opponents, mirroring Trump’s claim that Democrats are “the enemy from within” and want to “destroy our country.”

Meanwhile, Garcia’s moderate stance on abortion access limited Cantwell’s ability to associate him with GOP efforts to restrict reproductive health care across the country.

After the Washington State Republican Party sent text messages in Spanish to voters on Friday alleging that Democratic candidates “hate your family” and “hate God,” Garcia called the rhetoric unacceptable and said, “Personal attacks should have no place and should be condemned from either party.”

Cantwell had a clear fundraising advantage in the race, having raised nearly $12.9 million and spent more than $10.1 million as of Oct. 16, while Garcia raised about $742,000 and spent $692,000 in that period.

Those figures indicate how little attention the race received from either party’s campaign apparatus. By comparison, Washington’s 2022 Senate race between Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Tiffany Smiley saw both campaigns raise more than $20 million each.