Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) will be 72 when she’s re-elected in November 2022.
This will be her 6th term; she’s been a senator since January 1993. Her GOP opponent will get ±42% of the statewide vote.
Republicans have thrown every big name they have at her. Dino Rossi, who narrowly missed being elected governor in 2004, came closest to beating her, in 2010, at 47%-52%. Three GOP congressmen (Rod Chandler, 1992, 46%-54%; Linda Smith, 1998, 42%-58%; and George Nethercutt, 2004, 43%-55%) ran against her and ate dirt.
By 2016, they’d given up. That year, Chris Vance, a former GOP state party chair, volunteered to be the human sacrifice. He wiped out at 41%-59%.
It’s still early in the 2022 campaign season and hard to know who will subject themselves to the humiliation of defeat this time. So far, only two GOP candidates have filed. I’ve never heard of Bob Hagglund, and, I suspect, neither has anyone else. He appears to be more interested in running for Washington secretary of state.
Tiffany Smiley at least has a campaign website. At this point, the press is treating her as the leading GOP candidate (e.g., see story here); actually, the only GOP candidate, it seems. She has a compelling personal story: She left her first career as a triage nurse after her husband, an Army officer, was blinded by a suicide bomber in Iraq. Today, she’s an “author and motivational speaker” (details here), and styles herself as a “veterans advocate.”
She will lose.
Smiley has never run for public office before, so has no name recognition with voters, but will get enough donations to change that. She’s from Pasco, and she’ll be popular in Eastern Washington, which is Republican farm country. (Her website has a section on farming.) If she’s the GOP nominee, she’ll get ±42% in November; she’s currently polling at 41%. A couple million dollars of campaign ads and months of nonstop stumping should get her another 1%-2%.
I’m sure she’s a very nice person. I won’t vote for her, because she’s into election conspiracy theories and supports restricting the right to vote.
I base this on her statements at her campaign website, where she says, “The 2020 elections raised serious questions about the integrity of our elections.” No, they didn’t; the 2020 presidential election was the most secure in history.
But she insists it “caused millions of Americans to question their confidence in our electoral process.” So what? Millions of people believing Trump’s b.s. doesn’t give them a right to tamper with other people’s votes, any more than it gave the Trump supporters who rallied in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, the right to attack cops, threaten to kill members of Congress, and try to violently overthrow our democratically elected government.
Smiley says, “Instead of thoroughly addressing these concerns, uncovering any irregularities and reassuring voters, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have dismissed their frustrations.” Excuse me: There were recounts, which affirmed the results; and over 90 GOP-backed lawsuits challenging the results on grounds of alleged “irregularities” and “fraud” were thrown out by judges, including some appointed by Trump himself, for lack of evidence.
When you insist something is true, without evidence, you’re a crank. Smiley is a crank, and doesn’t belong in the U.S. Senate.
Her rant against Schumer and Pelosi continues, “Even worse, they have doubled-down by ignoring the problems in our system.” There aren’t “problems” in our system; it works just fine. This is an excuse being used by democracy-hating Republicans to deny Americans the right to vote (against them, because they’re a minority, and don’t have a majority of Americans behind them).
She may know she’s lying, but repeats these lies because it’s what she has to say to get Republican donors and voters behind her, in which case she lacks integrity.
It doesn’t matter. No Republican, not even Saint Peter the Apostle, will get elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican in Washington. In this state, GOP candidates in statewide races get ±42% of the vote, period. A well-known GOP politician posing as a moderate might do a little better. But anyone who runs for the U.S. Senate as a Republican in this state is going to lose.
Smiley surely knows this, which leads me to think she’s really running for something else. This race will give her name familiarity, party connections, and pull in donors and supporters. That could set her up for a winnable race if one of Eastern Washington’s two GOP U.S. Representatives decides to retire.
Meanwhile, I hope she at least tries to run a classy campaign. Not many Republicans do these days.
Photo: Tiffany Smiley and her husband
