All over the state and throughout the country, from school board elections to gubernatorial races, more and more campaigns are driven not by candidates’ qualifications or issues of particular local concern but by bigger battles of national scope.
In the campaign for Seattle city attorney – a position that would seem as local as you can get – one candidate, Ann Davison, is being attacked for switching to the Republican Party while Donald Trump was president, while the other, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, is getting boosted by the country-wide push to defund the police.
In the race for Seattle mayor, candidate Bruce Harrell is being excoriated in a TV ad supporting his opponent, M. Lorena Gonzalez, because he got a campaign donation (which he returned, by the way) from a real estate mogul who had previously donated money to Trump.
Down in southwest Washington, Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler will face primary election opposition next year, not because she has done a bad job serving her district, but because she voted to impeach Trump.
