…one progressive leader told the same Re-Wire conference this past week: “I think there’s been a failure of the Democratic Party to try to govern statewide,” said Kamau Chege, director of [WCA].
He noted there’s a legislative district in Yakima, the 15th, that was drawn up to be split roughly half and half between traditionally D and R voting blocs. But Democrats just got blitzkrieged there anyway.
GOP Senate hopeful Tiffany Smiley beat incumbent U.S. Sen. Patty Murray there by nearly 30 percentage points, even while losing the whole state in a landslide.
“Why do [the Democrats] have these terrible margins in Central and Eastern Washington?” Chege brought up. “You shouldn’t be losing a 50-50, majority Latino district, in Yakima, by 30 points.”
Even in Seattle, Chege noted, some groups of formerly solid Democratic voters seem to be getting restless — such as in the Chinatown International District.
Smiley got just 10% of the Seattle vote, a historic wipeout citywide for a Senate race. But a precinct analysis shows that she did two to three times better than that in the heart of Seattle’s Chinatown International District. The CID’s largest precinct, 37-1825, was one of Smiley’s best in the city, earning her about 30%, behind only the gated community of Broadmoor (where Smiley won 41%).
“I think going ahead you’re going to have to do more to win over these working-class voters, non-college-educated voters,” Chege warned of the Democrats.
Obviously the GOP has the far greater challenge here…
