Republican Reagan Dunn: “I Am 100 Percent Out” And “There Is Very Little Energy Right Now For Candidates”
In case you missed it over Labor Day weekend, Washington State Republicans are downright struggling to field a serious candidate to compete against Rep. Kim Schrier in 2020.
With no real GOP bench to speak of after 2018 and the severe challenge of sharing a ballot with a deeply unpopular President Trump, Republicans are taking a complete pass on next year’s election.
As Reagan Dunn, the King County Council Member and one-time possible GOP candidate in WA-08, put it when asked if he was running for the seat:
“I am 100 percent out.”
Dunn went on to say in regards to declining to run, that Republicans are:
“Still licking their wounds from the midterm beat-downs,” and that “there is very little energy right now for candidates.”
Very little energy and licking their wounds from a midterm beat down, couldn’t have said it better.
Read more about the NRCC and Washington state GOP’s utter failure to field a serious Republican in WA-08, HERE or BELOW.
Jim Brunner // Sep 2, 2019
SEATTLE — By this time two years ago, a pack of Democrats was already competing to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, in an early sign of partisan fervor for the 2018 midterm elections that flipped control of the House of Representatives.
Reichert bowed out of that race, leading to the election of Kim Schrier, an Issaquah pediatrician who became the first Democrat to represent the historically Republican district, defeating former state Sen. Dino Rossi in the most expensive House race in state history.
With the 2020 election season rapidly approaching — and a shot at reclaiming the seat — Republicans have yet to field a formidable challenger against Schrier.
The GOP candidate deficit extends to other marquee 2020 races, evidence of the challenges facing the party in a state where President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity is expected to be a drag down the ballot.
[…]
The state GOP has the longest gubernatorial election losing streak in the nation. Barring a shift in their candidate field — or the national political climate — they are likely in for another rough year, some Republicans acknowledge.
King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn said last week Republicans are “still licking their wounds from the midterm beat-downs,” which saw Democrats take the U.S. House and expand their majorities in the Washington Legislature.
“There is very little energy right now for candidates,” said Dunn, a Republican, adding “that may change.”
Dunn previously considered running for the 8th Congressional District seat held for more than a decade by his mother, the late U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn. But he’s taking a pass. “I am 100 percent out,” he said.
The only candidate who has filed with the Federal Election Commission to challenge Schrier is Keith Swank, a Seattle police captain who lives in Puyallup and ran for U.S. Senate in 2018, getting 2 percent of the vote in the primary. Swank has raised $505 to Schrier’s $1 million.
[…]
As for her reelection bid, Schrier said she’s not sensing enthusiasm among Republicans comparable to what Democrats were feeling two years ago. “There was a real passion and panic about the direction of our country. I don’t think that the Republicans are feeling that same drive,” she said.
[…]
Suburban support for Republicans, which had been declining for years, reached a nadir in 2018, leading to Schrier’s win and to the defeat of the few remaining GOP state legislators representing districts in King County. About one-third of the state’s 4 million voters reside in King County, which has been trending increasingly Democratic for decades.
Stuart Elway, a longtime independent pollster, said he’s seen no signs of that trend reversing itself. In his most recent poll, conducted for the online news site Crosscut, Elway found nearly twice as many voters now identify as Democrats (41 percent) than Republicans (21 percent) — a near-record advantage in the decades he’s tracked those numbers. “This is shaping up as a pretty bad year for Republicans to run with Trump at the head of the ticket,” Elway said.
That helps explain why some better-known Republicans, such as Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier and state House Republican leader J.T. Wilcox, have not taken the leap into major 2020 races.
Republicans now hold just two statewide elected offices, with Secretary of State Kim Wyman and Treasurer Duane Davidson. Democrats have yet to announce a challenger for Wyman, but state Rep. Mike Pellicciotti of Federal Way is running for treasurer, and already has raised $90,000, compared with Davidson’s $17,000.
[…]
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