Jerrod Sessler, 55, wants a seat in Congress. He’s not qualified for the job. And he’ll probably lose.
Sessler is challenging Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), who represents a central Washington district that includes Tri-Cities and the Hanford reservation, which means a lot of scientists, engineers, and level-headed professionals live in the district. It also includes Yakima, which has a significant Hispanic population.
Newhouse (bottom photo), 69, is an agricultural scientist who served 6 years in the state legislature, 4 years as state agriculture director, and has been in Congress for 10 years. He’s an intelligent, level-headed, moderate Republican; but he’s unpopular with MAGA Republicans because he voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Sessler, on the other hand, was one of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists; I’ll get to that below.
Sessler, a Navy veteran and former NASCAR racer, brings no public policy expertise to the table. He doesn’t even live in the district. He’s a longtime resident of Burien, a Seattle neighborhood on the other side of the state, and that’s also where his business is. Wikipedia says (here) Sessler “lived in King County until he ran for public office in 2022, promptly buying a ranch in Yakima. After losing the primary, he moved back to King County. In 2024, he moved back to Yakima to run for office.”
In other words, he’s a commuter candidate, commuting to eastern Washington when he wants to run for office. That’s reason enough for 4th district voters to reject him; he’s not one of them, doesn’t know the district, and can’t represent their interests. Why did he choose this district? Because it’s in the Republican part of the state, and where he lives is solidly Democratic. Also, he probably thinks Newhouse is vulnerable because of his impeachment vote, and in fact he handily outpolled Newhouse in the primary (see results here), but he has miscalculated his odds of defeating Newhouse in the November election.
Before I get into that, I want to explain why Sessler should never be elected to any public office. He’s a white supremacist, an election denier who participated in the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election (photo above), and — worst of all — has falsely claimed the Jan. 6 riot was a “setup” by the FBI acting in cahoots with paid agitators. In other words, he defamed and disparaged our nation’s premiere law enforcement agency, and the law enforcers working for it.
There’s more. According to Wikipedia, which refers to local newspaper reports, when he ran for this seat in 2022 he was in arrears on his Benton County property taxes; and far worse, he threatened to shoot a county code enforcement officer investigation a possible code violation on that property. You don’t want someone who threatens public workers for doing their job in a public office. He’s also a paranoid misogynist (details here).
This district is 2/3rds Republican and 1/3rd Democrat. Because of Washington’s top-two primary system, no Democrat is on the ballot. That means Newhouse will get every Democrat vote, given his record and who Sessler is. Thus, Newhouse only needs a third of the Republican vote to win, and he obviously has Republican support or he wouldn’t have been elected to Congress five times. He’ll get that third and then some.
Dan Newhouse is who the Republican Party needs, if it’s to recover from the mire Trump has led it into. Newhouse embodies traditional Republican Party values, which include respecting the Constitution and rule of law. The GOP can’t win a majority of America’s voters by running candidates like Sessler.
If they want to be a governing party again, they need decent and thoughtful candidates like Newhouse, not shrill agitators like Sessler. But right now, even in Newhouse’s district, good candidates need help from Democratic voters to get elected. That reveals the sad state of today’s Republican Party.
