Outreach Insights

The following notice appears on ballots in Washington State:

READ: Each candidate for partisan office may state a political party that he or she prefers. A candidate's preference does not imply that the candidate is nominated or endorsed by the party, or that the party approves of or associates with that candidate.

To be sure, I already knew this. When the top two primary system was implemented, a fairly big deal was made of it. But I never really put much thought into what it meant in practice outside of a few odd cases, like Republican candidates stating a preference for GOP Party when the Republican brand was suffering in public opinion.

But as I noted previously, this year, I spent more time reading through the Voters' Pamphlets that the state sends out than I usually do, mainly because I was looking at races that I'm not actually going to be voting in. And I realized something. While one can't assume any sort of formal party affiliation from the preferences that candidates state, one can tell quite a bit about what those people motivated to run for public office think about the priorities of the party, at least as expressed by its voters.

The Washington Republican Party's endorsed candidate for United States Senate has a candidate statement that reads as if it was focus-grouped to within an inch of its life. It's a story of personal perseverance and overcoming hardship while being of service to others; designed to be vaguely inspirational and even more vague on actual policy ideas, waiting until the final paragraph to briefly touch on inflation, homelessness, law enforcement and schools. There wasn't a single word about the Culture Wars or Trumpist priorities.

In contrast, consider this excerpt from the statement of another would-be Republican Senator:

I will fight crime by ensuring judges don't allow dangerous individuals out on bail. I will ensure Prosecutors file on dangerous individuals. I will fund the police, and will stop tent cities in city limits. I will be involved locally.

With education, focus on the basics, bring up test scores, why are poor and minority schools always the worst? We need to look at vouchers, teach sex ed at home, and end [Critical Race Theory].

And this from a person who claimed to be presenting themselves as appealing to Republicans, Democrats and independent voters alike. About the only stereotypically Republican talking point that wasn't touched on was "election integrity." Partisan strategists may refer to voters as having "a broad set of ambiguous anxieties," but this guy was very specifically checking off boxes one by one, no ambiguity in sight. Fear of "crime," distrust of the homeless and attacking public education (at least as practiced in more Liberal areas of the nation) were clearly being appealed to.

Likewise, the Progressive challenger to Senator Murray also gave a candidate statement that was a virtual walkthrough of the issues that were important to the younger and farther Left-leaning section of the Democratic electorate, touching Q-Anon, Russian President Vladimir Putin, lobbyist influence and auditing the defense budget with an eye towards cuts to fund healthcare and other services for the population at large. Again, no endorsement from the state, or even county-level party, but a clear idea of the constituency that they wanted to pursue. How much confidence they had in the idea that this constituency being large enough to propel them to victory (or at least to the general election), I have no idea. But they presented as making a serious appeal to that voting block.

And a fairly large section of the Voters' Pamphlet had similar takes on things. Not being a political analyst of any sort, I don't know what's actually important to people, but it was clear what a number of would-be officeholders thought was important to people. And while some of them may have been out of the loop, the overall picture that was painted of the priorities of various groups of Washington voters was fairly clear.