A new political organization will launch a 14-month media campaign to promote the Democratic Party in Central Washington.
Rural Americans United campaign will spend $350,000 on ads, including 20,000 radio spots in English and Spanish highlighting traditional Democratic Party values, said Doug White, a Yakima farmer and 2022 congressional candidate who founded the group.
Since its establishment in 1915, the 4th Congressional District has elected only three Democratic representatives to Congress. The last was Jay Inslee, current governor, in 1993.
White, who ran as a Democrat against incumbent Rep. Dan Newhouse in 2022 and lost, said he learned during his campaign that a large percentage of the district’s 783,000 residents had never been exposed to positive Democratic Party messaging.
“On the campaign trail, I learned that 80% of the Central Washington population has never heard a positive Democratic message,” White said in a news release. “Worse yet, younger generations are being constantly bombarded with one-sided far-right rhetoric.”
White said that earlier this month he met an 18-year-old who had decided to attend a Democratic canvassing event in the Tri-Cities. He said the young man told him he’d never been taught anything about the Democratic Party until he took a political science class.
“He said, ‘You know, I should at least check it out,’” White said. “He’s an extraordinary person to have gone that far. The vast majority don’t make that leap. So that’s what we’re up against, is the fact he had to wait until he was a senior in high school to learn that there were Democrats that didn’t have horns and tails.”
Newhouse had 66% of the vote compared to White’s 31% in 2022. White said the amount of money his campaign raised in small individual contributions showed there is the potential for strong Democratic Party support within the 4th District. White’s campaign raised $183,564 in small individual contributions, or contributions under $200, while Newhouse raised $79,294. In total, Newhouse raised $2.1 million during his 2022 campaign compared to White’s $772,005, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
White said the media campaign will not focus on promoting individual Democratic candidates. Instead, it will seek to educate listeners and watchers on general Democratic beliefs. It will cover public education, health care access, restoring aging infrastructure, job creation, immigration reform, and support for unions and veterans, he said.
Rural Americans United’s goals with the media campaign include doubling the amount of Democratic voters in the area, creating revenue sources for county and legislative Democratic parties and bringing Democratic candidates into local elections, he said. The group aims to increase Democratic votes for the 2024 elections by 11%, Latino voter turnout by 7% and to shift independent voters toward voting blue.
The organization’s most important measure of success, White said, “will be when our help is no longer needed.”
