The state of Washington has earned its reputation as a blue state — President Joe Biden won Washington by 20 points in 2020 — but that doesn’t mean Democrats dominate statewide. There are a few congressional districts where Republicans have won easily in recent years, including Washington’s 3rd District, where the Democratic nominee lost by double digits in the last round of elections.
This year was a very different story. NBC News reported over the weekend:
Democrats flipped a Washington House seat that had been dominated by Republicans since 2011, NBC News projected Saturday, as the legacy of Jan. 6 and the subsequent impeachment of former President Donald Trump cast a powerful shadow over the race.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler was not just another Republican lawmaker early last year. She not only became one of the Impeachment 10 — the group of House Republicans who supported Trump’s impeachment after he incited an insurrectionist riot — Herrera Beutler also spoke to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy about the Jan. 6 attack and heard him say that Trump told him, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election theft than you are.”
Soon after, the former president set out to end her career, hoping to defeat a key Jan. 6 witness. In August, Trump succeeded: Local Republicans rejected the incumbent congresswoman and rallied behind a far more radical alternative named Joe Kent.
That was unwise.
The Associated Press took a closer look months ago at Kent, shining a light on his “connections to right-wing extremists, including a campaign consultant who was a member of the Proud Boys.” The AP quoted Dave Neiwert, an author and journalist who has covered right-wing extremism in the Pacific Northwest for decades, saying, “There’s a through line. Many [Republican] politicians play footsie with it. Kent is just unabashed.”
As part of his GOP campaign, Kent bolstered the criticisms, sitting down for at least one interview with a Nazi sympathizer, and making multiple appearances on Alex Jones’ Infowars network.
After the FBI’s search at Mar-a-Lago, Kent appeared on Steve Bannon’s program and declared, “This just shows everyone what many of us have been saying for a very long time. We’re at war.”
Despite the Republican’s extremism, a FiveThirtyEight forecast showed Kent with a 98% chance of winning the House seat. He nevertheless lost to Democratic business owner Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Chris Vance, a former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, told NBC News that if the party had stuck with Herrera Beutler, the incumbent likely would have “won with 60% of the vote.” That’s probably true. But Trump and his followers had a vendetta to prioritize, and the result is an unexpected Democratic victory. It’s reminiscent of Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, where Team Trump also decided to target Rep. Peter Meijer — another one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last year — leading to a primary defeat for the incumbent. His GOP successor was far too extreme for the area, and a Democrat ended up winning this seat, too. The former president and his allies put Trump’s ego above the party’s interests, and it’s Republicans who are now paying the price.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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