Labor Day weekend is the point in the calendar when average folks start paying attention to this year’s elections. It’s also the point when political junkies start getting serious about next year’s elections.
There was a time when all elections, even the presidential race, stayed relatively quiet until the fall before the voting started. That’s gone by the wayside, as anyone following this summer’s daily Trump-athon can attest. But for down-ticket races, Labor Day plus one is about the earliest you can get anyone other than the big money sources to pay attention.
This week, Republican Chris Vance announced he’ll run against Democrat Patty Murray, who next year will seek her fifth term in the U.S. Senate. The GOP, which in 1992 was dismissive of the young legislator’s prospects of moving from Olympia to Washington, D.C., has discovered nearly a quarter-century later that folks aren’t standing in line to take her on.
In the past, she has dispatched Republican opponents who looked strong, at least on paper. For Reps. Rod Chandler, Linda Smith and George Nethercutt and former gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, the loss wasn’t quite “a one-way ticket to Palookaville,” but it wasn’t a r?sum? builder, either.