The voters’ verdict is in on the Republican candidate dilemma, to speak out against Trump, or weasel about it. In Washington state, “weasel” is winning in a landslide.
Garfield and Columbia counties, tucked between the Snake River and the Oregon state line in southeast Washington, are known for more than wheat farms. They make up the reddest spot in the state.
The counties — all 6,000 people between them — regularly rate as the state’s most Republican. Both have made lists of the reddest counties in the nation, usually based on the presidential vote.
So it was something new under the sweltering sun to Lynn Leaverton, age 75 and still sleeping in the same room he was born in, that Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray was leading the August primary results there.
“Democrats never win out here,” Leaverton told me. “I mean ever.”
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As of Friday evening, with some late-arriving votes still to be counted, Murray was leading Republican challenger Chris Vance by 13 votes in Columbia County and trailing him by just three out of 707 cast in tiny Garfield.
Leaverton is one of the few Democrats around Pomeroy, Garfield County. (“I’m the one wearing tie dye.”) The Republican usually wins by “three or four to one,” he said. So what is going on?
“My Republican friends are talking to the trees this year. They’re at a complete loss what to do,” Leaverton said. “That’s what’s really going on.”
One Republican I reached, who didn’t want to be quoted by name, said people feel a little let down by politics this year. The party’s top candidates are not well known and probably are going to lose. Still, the two red counties rallied to newcomer GOP governor candidate Bill Bryant, delivering 35-percentage-point wins over Democratic incumbent Jay Inslee.
It was only Vance, in the U.S. Senate race, who seriously underperformed. Of the two Republicans at the top of the statewide GOP ticket, Vance lagged Bryant in the two counties by about 25 percentage points.
“That’s probably because of that Trump thing,” the unnamed Republican speculated.
“I guess you don’t cross the team,” Leaverton said.
They’re referring to Vance’s decision in May to rebuke fellow Republican Donald Trump. With Trump imploding, you’d think this might reflect favorably on Vance. But the primary results suggest that so far, it’s been disastrous, alienating him from his party while attracting few other voters.
This is a defining feature of modern politics. Everybody says they want a maverick candidate, a freethinker who tells it like it is. But our political camps ultimately pound them.
Vance had said he would be lying to voters to back a candidate whose positions and temperament he finds “insane.” And it would be disrespectful to voters to duck the issue entirely. Agree or disagree, that’s backbone, right?
Meanwhile, Bryant has shown all the spine of a geoduck. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t support Trump — last winter he said Trump’s proposed Muslim ban made him “unfit to be president.” But now when asked, Bryant refuses to talk about it at all. He’s either pretending, or he’s the last person left in America who has no opinion at all on Donald Trump.
Still, weaseling was the correct political choice by Bryant. The alternative — telling the truth — probably would have been political suicide.
Vance’s campaign slogan is “A Time for Truth.” No, sorry, it’s apparently not that time. It’s a time for tribes.
Leaverton said it’s almost impossible to imagine that Murray or any other Democrat would carry Garfield or Columbia counties in the general election in the fall. No Democrat running for president, U.S. senator or governor has won a general-election vote there since Booth Gardner won Garfield County back in 1988. They are arguably even more red than King County is blue (though a tiny fraction of the size).
“In the end, they’ll all get together and pull the red lever together, as they always do,” Leaverton said.
The trouble for Vance — and probably Bryant in the end — is that so will King County. Only here the lever will be blue.
I don’t know how Republicans ever get out of this partisan box in our state. Honesty and moderation is a valiant try. But it’s out of style.