SEATTLE — Two years ago, Ted Alway voted for Democrat Kim Schrier in Washington’s 8th Congressional District because he liked her views on health care and the environment. The Wenatchee Valley pear grower was less sure how Schrier would be on another issue important to him: agriculture.
He’s been pleasantly surprised.
As the only Northwest lawmaker on the House Agriculture Committee, Schrier has frequently worked with Republicans, Alway said. That includes helping land federal research dollars for crops like the fruit he’s grown for the past 40 years and trying to improve the visa program for immigrant farmworkers. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she has worked to give people on food stamps extra credit to buy fruit and vegetables, and to help family farms that normally supply restaurants get their produce to food banks instead.
“She’s shown that she can work across the aisle, and she’s delivered for ag,” said Alway, who said he often votes Democratic for president but Republican in local contests. “She’s a moderate.”
Schrier’s Republican challenger for reelection in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, Army veteran Jesse Jensen, doesn’t see it that way.
The former program manager at Amazon and Microsoft has tried to paint Schrier as a far-left, Seattle-style liberal, saying her voting record matches that of the Democratic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and is out of touch with a “purple” district that envelopes both Seattle suburbs and Central Washington farmland.
After an expensive, close 2018 campaign, Schrier, a pediatrician, became the first Democrat to represent the district since it was created in the early 1980s. She is in for a tough re-election fight. Republicans who ran in the primary collectively took 49.2 percent to the Democrats’ 47.6 percent. Schrier’s 43 percent showing was the weakest among the state’s congressional incumbents.
The National Republican Congressional Committee recently upgraded Jensen’s campaign to “contender” status. Jensen said his fundraising has picked up since July, when he reported having raised just $192,000, though he did not provide an updated total.
Schrier, who has reported raising $4.7 million, is banking on much bigger Democratic turnout in November to carry her into a second term.
“I feel very confident in the work I’ve done for this district — I’ve had 58 town halls, and I’ve been partnering with farmers in the parts of my district that are the most red, and I’ve really dived in and worked with all the mayors,” Schrier said in a recent interview. “Now it’s a matter of making sure the 750,000 people who I represent know that.”
Jensen, 37, of Bonney Lake, hasn’t run for office before, but he spent two years as an executive assistant to one of his home-state senators, South Dakota Republican John Thune. On a visit with Thune to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007, Jensen met an Iraq war veteran who lost his legs to an improvised explosive device. A conversation with the vet inspired him to enlist.
The son of a pastor and stay-at-home mother, he spent seven years in the Army, earning the rank of captain and two Bronze Stars during four combat tours in Afghanistan. He has since worked for Microsoft and Amazon.
The suicide of an Army friend in 2019 persuaded him to run for office, he said.
