Dan Newhouse defeats fellow Republican Jerrod Sessler in tight race to represent central Washington in the House

WASHINGTON – Rep. Dan Newhouse won re-election in central Washington’s 4th Congressional District on Monday, a victory for moderate Republicans in an election that saw President-elect Donald Trump pull the GOP farther to the right.

With additional votes counted on Monday, Newhouse’s lead over fellow Republican Jerrod Sessler grew slightly, 51.7% to 46.6%, with write-in votes accounting for the remainder. With a difference of about 12,500 votes separating the two candidates, The Spokesman-Review called the race for Newhouse on Monday.

In a statement on Monday, the five-term incumbent congressman thanked his constituents and pledged to protect the Lower Snake River dams, continue funding to clean up the Hanford nuclear site and stand up to the government of China.

“I’m incredibly honored to have the support from the people of Central Washington,” Newhouse said in a statement. “The results from this election show the people want a results-driven leader who understands the unique challenges facing Central Washington.”

Newhouse led in six of the eight counties that make up the 4th District. Grant County and the small part of Adams County that falls in the district, the only two where Sessler had received more votes, had the two lowest rates of returned ballots in Washington, according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office.

The victory ensures Newhouse will remain one of just two House Republicans still in Congress who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol riot in 2021, after the other eight either retired or were defeated in the 2022 election. Sessler, who was endorsed by Trump and many of the president-elect’s political allies, said in a statement that Newhouse had “lied” and relied on outside spending to eke out the narrow victory.

Central Washington voters’ mailboxes were flooded with flyers ahead of the election, some paid for by the campaigns and others by outside groups. Newhouse’s campaign mailers sought to appeal both to moderate and liberal voters with slogans like “people over party” and to conservatives by highlighting Sessler’s support for a national sales tax.

That proposal, known as “FAIRtax,” calls for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and replacing the complex U.S. tax code with a flat tax on purchases, which its proponents say would lower overall taxes. Other anti-Sessler messaging focused on the challenger’s attendance at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021 – Sessler says he never entered the Capitol that day – and his support for pardoning convicted rioters.

National Interest Action, a political action committee that by law isn’t required to disclose its donors, spent more than $1.3 million on anti-Sessler messaging, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the transparency group OpenSecrets. Newhouse’s campaign also had a major cash advantage, raising more than $2.2 million while Sessler personally contributed more than half of the $617,000 his campaign raised.

Sessler didn’t directly answer when asked if he would concede but said he remained “undeterred” by the outcome of the race and signaled his political ambitions would continue. In the statement, Sessler touted the support he has received from Trump and the campaign arm of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, saying he has “a plan to save and turn the state back to sanity.”

“God has called me to this,” he said. “Because of characters like Dan Newhouse, a vacuum for great leadership will continue to exist in the government long into the future. My resolve was concrete in the past. Now it is as tough as steel.”

In the final days of the primary race, Trump hedged his bets by endorsing another Republican, Tiffany Smiley, in addition to Sessler. Smiley finished third in the top-two primary, trailed by multiple Democrats whose party failed to coalesce behind a single candidate in a district no Democrat has won since 1992, when now-Gov. Jay Inslee was elected to represent it for a single term.

Newhouse, a former state lawmaker and director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture whose family has farmed in Sunnyside for generations, has represented the heavily agricultural swath of central Washington for a decade. While he is a staunch conservative by many traditional measures, he has earned a reputation for working across the aisle as a member of the House Appropriations Committee and on bipartisan legislation to reform U.S. immigration laws.

Sessler, a Navy veteran and entrepreneur, spent most of his life in the Seattle suburbs but relocated part time to Prosser after buying land along the Yakima River in 2018, although he didn’t sell his house in Burien until 2021. He challenged Newhouse in the 2022 primary but fell short, finishing fourth in a crowded field of Trump-aligned Republicans.

With several close races yet to be called on Monday, it was unclear which party would control the House majority. But when the new Congress convenes in January, Newhouse will remain a rare Republican who has publicly rebuked his party’s de facto leader without that move spelling an end to his political career.