Washington

The are six Republicans in total in this race. Incumbent Republican Dan Newhouse was first elected in 2014 and previously served as the Washington Director of Agriculture and in the state House of Representatives. He is very conservative, and while Trump was in office he voted with the president 93 percent of the time. While he was one of the few Republicans to support Trump's impeachment in 2021 after the attack on the capitol on January 6th, Newhouse refused to support the $3 trillion relief package passed in response to the coronavirus pandemic and voted against Trump's impeachment in 2020.

Rep. Brad Klippert, who has represented the 8th Legislative District since 2008, is running because Newhouse voted to impeach Trump. Klippert has stood against progress and common sense for years, including voting against age-appropriate sexual health education and threatening the health of students and staff in schools by working against public health orders at the height of the pandemic. He is anti-abortion and opposes gun safety regulations.

Loren Culp will be familiar to many voters as the MAGA Republican who ran unsuccessfully against Gov. Inslee in 2020. The former sole police officer of the town of Republic is now endorsed by Trump in the former president's vendetta against Newhouse for supporting his impeachment. Culp's policy track record is unsurprisingly extreme. He's compared gun reform to the Holocaust and likened the governor's stay-at-home policies to the horrors of Japanese internment during WWII. Culp also wants to build Trump's border wall and to dissolve the Department of Education entirely because he doesn't believe students should learn about sexual health or the history of race in America.

Benancio "Benny" Garcio III is running on an anti-choice platform that tries to whip up fear and divide us on the same election lies peddled to overturn our votes.

Jerrod Sessler is a self-described America-First Conservative Christian whose platform is similar or perhaps worse than many of the other Republican candidates - including moving the country towards Christian nationalism, standing against environmental regulations, and embracing anti-choice policies alongside a refusal to teach students how to protect themselves from pregnancy or learn about respectful consent.

Rounding out the Republican candidates is Corey Gibson, yet another "America-First" candidate who wants to eliminate the Department of Education, as well as impeach Biden, take away our freedom to decide whether and when we grow our families by opposing our right to abortion, and force a vote in Congress to remove any discussion of race from schools and the federal government.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is running for re-election to the office she has held since 2005.

With a 95 percent record of voting with Trump during his presidency, McMorris Rodgers is one of the most damaging lawmakers in Washington. She has voted yes on Trump's border wall, supported his trillion-dollar corporate tax cut, and was the only representative from Washington to vote for Trump's bill to cut $800 billion from Medicaid. She voted against raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and has refused on multiple occasions to hold town halls to answer to her constituents for her votes.

McMorris Rodgers has consistently stood in the way of abortion rights, including attempting to defund Planned Parenthood and its many services to the community. She has a 5 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters for her many attempts to deregulate environmental protections. Voting McMorris Rodgers out of office would be a big step towards progress on the environment, workers' rights, reproductive freedom, and much more.

There are four other candidates running for Congress from the 6th District.

Former education researcher Elizabeth Kreiselmaier is running on an extreme, MAGA Republican platform that prioritizes dismantling the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a global pandemic, defunding Planned Parenthood, and removing equitable access to education by privatizing our schools. She has promoted many far-right conspiracy theories, including those seeking to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election.

Chris Binns is running on a similarly extreme platform based on conspiracy theories and anti-science lies. Todd Bloom is a Navy veteran and CPA running on a somewhat more traditional Republican platform focused on inflation and national security. Tom Triggs filed to run as an Independent but does not appear to be running a robust campaign. His short voters' pamphlet statement focuses on issues important to veterans.

Jayapal faces three challengers this year. Republican Cliff Moon is an oceanographer who states that he's running against "political correctness" and for American freedom. His website is unavailable as of July 13.

Independent Jesse James has no community or elected experience and is running for U.S. Congress on an anti-censorship agenda. He also ran for Seattle City Council against the Democracy Voucher program last year.

Republican Paul Glumaz ran for Seattle City Council on a conservative agenda last year. He is running on similar ideas this year, including attempting to arrest our way out of the housing crisis and homelessness on a national scale, and returning "economic sovereignty" to America.

This race has attracted a slate of Republicans who are all running to win the support of the conservative base in the primary.

Republican King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn is challenging Schrier for the seat his mother once held. Over the last 17 years, Dunn has been a consistent obstacle to progress on the council. This May, Dunn cast the sole “no” vote on a resolution expressing the council's opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade and support for abortion rights. During the height of the pandemic, Dunn voted against hazard pay for essential workers and opposed protections for renters who were on the verge of losing their homes.

Republican Jesse Jensen is running to challenge Rep. Schrier for a second time. He is an Army veteran and works at a national real estate software corporation. Jensen’s divisive campaign priorities include tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, dehumanizing border policies, and inaccurate school curriculums that erase some of us from the history books. Jensen wants to cut the community investments that help keep working families afloat and improve the quality of life for us all.

Also in this race is former Pierce County Deputy Prosecutor Matt Larkin. Like Jensen, Larkin is running on a MAGA Republican platform to erase Washington’s diverse communities from our students’ history books, increase the militarization and reach of police forces into our neighborhoods, and scapegoat those struggling the most in our communities instead of supporting policies that help us meet our basic needs and have the chance to succeed.

At this critical moment for reproductive freedom, our economy, and our country, these extreme Republicans would drag our district backward instead of bringing us together to find common solutions.

This race also attracted a handful of conservative challengers to Smith. Sea Chan is a first-generation Chinese American and Navy veteran running on a relatively moderate platform. While he supports protecting our environment, he also opposes the science-based public health measures enacted during the pandemic.

Republican Doug Basler has tried and failed to unseat Smith in every election since 2014. Basler is a MAGA Republican who opposes reproductive freedom and the public health measures taken to fight the coronavirus. He's now promoting some of the far-right conspiracy theories that seek to deny our kids a comprehensive and accurate education.

David Michael Anderson filed as an Independent but espouses many of the same MAGA Republican lies as Basler and others. Seth Pedersen claims to be a moderate and pledges to oppose more foreign wars but offers few other campaign details.

Strickland has four challengers this year. Keith Swank is a police officer and SWAT member who joined this race on a reactionary, far-right platform to undo the progress Rep. Strickland has made. Swank is stoking fears by promising that our communities will be safer if we just put more people in our overcrowded prisons and send more militarized police forces into our neighborhoods. At the same time, he wants to oppose investments in affordable health care, food and gas, rent, and education that actually make our communities safer in order to favor wealthy corporations. In this campaign, he has criticized the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, parroted MAGA border policy, and defended the fossil fuel industry which continues to prioritize profits above the health of our planet and our families.

Richard Boyce is a perennial candidate running under the "Congress Sucks" party. Unsurprisingly, his platform is extreme and utterly impractical, including suggesting we pause all immigration and eliminate a large number of federal agencies, like the EPA and the Department of Education.

Eric Mahaffy is an IBEW electrician and a first-time Democratic candidate who wants to represent the working class in Congress. Mahaffy has never served in elected office before but counts his past civic engagement and union membership as helpful experiences. If elected, he wants to focus on taking on big corporations and building compromises.

Dan Gordon, an ordained minister and business owner, is the final candidate in this race. Gordon attributes his motivation to run for office to God and Donald Trump. He is running on a far-right platform that is full of divisive language and racist ideologies that scapegoat progressive leaders and immigrants for issues that are really created by conservative policies like dismantling business regulations and corporate greed.