Washington's 5th congressional district takes up the entire eastern end of the state, from the Canadian border to the Oregon border and right along the Idaho border. The biggest population center is Spokane and most of the votes come from Spokane County, a swing county. The other three counties are Walla Walla, another swing county, Whitman, a blue county and Stevens, a red county.
2018 Republicans-- Matt Shea and Cathy McMorris RodgersBetween Spokane and the Idaho border you'll find the 4th legislative district. It's very rural. There's got to be a town there but I can't find one, although there was a post office of sorts in a town called Drygoon and in 1902 they changed the name from Drygoon to Colbert in honor of a postmaster named Harry Colbert.
One of the funniest moments in the election debate this cycle-- at least for me-- came when Arizona congresswoman, Martha McSally, a garden variety Trump rubber-stamp who had voted to repeal protections for pre-existing conditions several times, was cornered by a reporter asking her to square her consistent record against healthcare with her promise now-- as she runs for U.S. Senate-- to protect people with pre-existing conditions from the greed of insurance companies.
Trumpty Dumpty by Nancy OhanianOn Wednesday Axios posted a fascinating chart about the blue vs red primary surge in swing districts this cycle.
Well we still don't know all the details. Only around 70% of the votes were counted by Thursday morning in Washington's top-two jungle primaries. But in the statewide race-- Maria Cantwell's reelection-- about twice as many Democrats voted as Republicans. That filtered down to the three crucial congressional races as well.
This morning, conservative writer Jennifer Rubin penned an OpEd, Devin Nunes, Trump's Political Stooge, Is At It Again, based on the Maddow report last night. If you missed it, watch the video above. She wrote that "The Post reports on the secretly recorded remarks of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) at a fundraiser for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)":
The first video is the first TV ad for the Chicagoland district (IL-03) by progressive reformer Marie Newman, the Democrat working to unseat Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, one of the most pro-Trump Democrats in Congress. It's pretty self evident what Marie is doing to create a plausible narrative to replace Lipinski. Recent polling shows that if the messaging in the video gets out to voters in the district, Lipinski will be defeated.
Trygve Olson-- sounds like a Norwegian name-- is a national Republican strategist who is from Wisconsin’s 10th senatorial district, the site of the GOP donnybrook Tuesday.
It's ironic that notorious Republican closet case and child molester Mark Foley of Florida helped destroy the GOP House majority in 2006, considering that that majority was built with a lie about another Foley, Democratic Speaker Tom Foley. That Foley was a decent, if conventional, politician from Spokane, Washington. In 1964 Foley had defeated Republican Congressman Walt Horan and ably represented eastern Washington in Congress for 30 years, working his way up the ladder to become Democratic Whip in 1981, Majority Leader in 1987 and then House Speaker in 1989.
Pruitt and McMorris Rodgers, tasked with destroying America's environmentOf Washington's 10 congressional district, there really are only 2 that are safely red-- WA-04 and WA-05. Both go from the Canadian border to the Oregon border and both are large and largely rural. The 4th, represented by Republican sophomore Dan Newhouse, is the center of the state and includes Grand Coulee, Yakima and the Richland/Kennewick metro.
