Sue Lani Madsen: Open seats in the 3rd an opportunity for change

Incumbents have advantages in name recognition and fundraising, challengers virtue signal as outsiders. Two seats in Spokane’s 3rd Legislative District are open and one incumbent has a bye. Democrats are counting on holding the open seats to secure a lock on power in the House and Senate. Republicans hope to return diversity to government in Olympia.

The Position 2 House seat held by incumbent Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane, is uncontested. According to the Council of State Governments, in the November 2022 general election, only 17% of state executive, legislative and judicial races across the country were uncontested. Ormsby got lucky this November, his odds of winning are now 100%.

Ormsby’s former colleague in the House, Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane, was not so lucky. Riccelli left his comfortably safe House seat to run for the open Senate seat left by the retirement of Sen. Andy Billig, D-Spokane. Riccelli has an incumbent’s advantages in fundraising and a memorable name and expected to skate into office.

And then businessman Jim Wilson got his primary ballot and decided democracy isn’t well-served by uncontested elections.

Wilson launched a successful primary write-in campaign for the 3rd District Senate seat, an even rarer occurrence than an incumbent without a challenger.

Insurance professional Tony Kiepe faces attorney and progressive activist Natasha Hill for the wide-open Position 1 seat in the House.

The 3rd is a tiny blue island in Eastern Washington’s red electoral map. Holding the 3rd in Spokane and capturing three open seats in Yakima’s 14th district were key to the Democrats strategy to build a super majority in the Legislature.

Democrats were sure the Yakima Valley would be the start of a blue wave heading east. The August primary results busted that myth.

As regular readers may recall, Sen. Nikki Torres, R-Pasco, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, was gerrymandered out of her Latino majority district after the Los Angeles-based Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund convinced a federal judge this spring that Hispanic voters prefer Democrats. The decision and the new “Democrat majority” district boundaries threw all three seats in the 14th district open for the primary.

Cocky assumptions about party loyalty based on identity turned out to be wrong, and Republicans with real-life entrepreneurial experience beat out Democratic political activists in the 14th by a 3:2 margin in every primary race and are going into November looking strong. Turned out Hispanic voters valued real life experience.

Republicans are hoping assumptions about party loyalty will prove equally wrong in the 3rd. Everyone has lived expertise through education, family, work and travel. The question for voters is what kind of expertise will be most useful in representing voters’ interests when legislators are debating within caucuses and committees.

Making that distinction requires voters to navigate through the Secretary of State’s Voter’s Guide statements and virtue signaling phrases like “common sense” and “lived experience.” The cliches are incumbents in the political world even if the candidates are not. No one has ever run a campaign based on a pledge to exercise foolishness, and presumably none of the candidates has experience in dying.

Democrats typically virtue signal by announcing they will “safeguard threatened reproductive rights,” an easy pledge when abortion law isn’t under threat in the state of Washington. There is no movement attempting to change the law adopted by the voters to make limits on abortion more restrictive than they were under Roe v. Wade, no matter how much dark money ads attempt to convince independent voters otherwise in statewide and legislative races.

Republican virtue requires a promise to “fight to lower taxes” in Olympia. There’s no Republican and few Democrats anywhere in Washington running on a promise to raise taxes. Or at least not saying it out loud.

Kiepe and Hill are both new to the legislative arena, although each has run for office before. Given the recent increases in rates and decreases in options in Washington, voters may well decide sending an insurance professional to the Legislature is a better choice than sending yet another attorney. Kiepe is certainly hoping so.

Riccelli is a semi-incumbent, given that he has a record in the House of Representatives, and claims he is ready to “hit the ground running.” Voters might remember him this year for gutting the bill filed by Rep. Mike Volz, R-Spokane, that would have given people rebuilding after the disastrous 2023 wildfires in Medical Lake and Elk-Chattaroy a simple option to build under the codes in effect at the time of the fire. Incumbency has a downside as well.

The “MythBusters” show demonstrated starting from a full stop was faster than hitting the ground running in 2008, and Wilson had better hope so. He has the hardest path of any of the candidates in the 3rd. With a late August start and little time or money to introduce himself to voters, his voter pamphlet statement is crammed with policy positions plus the typical swipe at “career politicians.”

In all the campaign noise, there is one virtue signaling phrase all the candidates can agree on. They’d all be honored to earn your vote. Time for voters to do their homework.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.