August 6th will be the Washington State Primary, and it will be a big one. We have a US Senator, US Rep, Various members of the State House, Governor, and the entire executive wing of the state government up for grabs. That's a lot.
Making matters more complex, Washington State has a top-two election strategy. That depowers (somewhat) the traditional political parties, in that we have a general scrum of the position, and the top two-vote-getters, regardless of allegiance, go on to the main event in November.
It's not a bad system, but like all systems, it can be gamed. Assume you have two Republican candidates and four Democratic candidates vying for a particular office. Say that Dems and GOPs are split evenly. and each candidate gets an even share of their side. So your four Democrats get 12.5% of the vote, and the two Repubs get 25%. So you can end up with two Republican candidates on the final ballot. This sort of thing has happened in the past, and can happen again.
Also, you the candidate can declare your party own allegiance (referred to as "Preference") as you the candidate sees fit. So we usually have a party-approved candidate and not party-approved candidates flying under the same banner, and occasionally people sailing under false flags. You can also create your own party, so we see a lot of ... creative ... names for parties over the years. There is a lot of potential for shenanigans here, but more of that when we get to the Governor's race.
Two large matters loom over this primary which are not on the ballot. One is a set of cynical initiatives launched by some conservatives to help their main investors (the wealthy) at the expense of everybody else (that would be you). These initiatives are not on the ballot, but will be there in the fall. For the moment, we can put it aside, but the prime reason for these initiatives is to get out the vote on the conservative side, in hopes of it helping more conservative candidates.
The other large matter is the Presidential race. At the time of this writing, the ballot will be most likely Vice President Kamala Harris versus Former President/Convicted Felon Trump. The former is taking over for President Biden due to inner party doubts about his age and health. The latter also has concerns about age and health, and in addition is an anchor around the neck of every Republican candidate, since they can endorse Trump and have people laugh at them every time they say "Law and Order", or they can distance themselves from Trump and have the right-wing chunk of the party turn on them. Or they can be vewy, vewy quiet, which seems to be the course in general. Yet that's going to have an impact of this vote as well.
The Washington State Voter's Guide for King County is here. The Seattle Times has been doing its due diligence here, and has surprisingly swung more liberal/center than normal. The Stranger has grumped its way through the candidates, disappointed that they don't check all their required boxes. The Urbanist, talks about a lot of races I don't cover here, and refuses to recommend any candidate that did not meet with them (which is fair). The Cascade Advocate (a progressive blog) has an article comparing The Stranger and Times lists, and finds that they mostly agree. The Washington State Standard summarizes some of the races here, but does not make specific recommendations. Voting for Judges and the Municipal League sites, previously good places for info, are now shut down and available from GoDaddy.
Since this is a top-two primary system, I will be sometimes mentioning a second-choice as well. The Political Desk tends to lean left, but ultimately I want competent people in office. Elections are not a beauty contest or a two-team game, though there are components of both those things. It's a job interview - yeah, imagine that you have to re-interview for YOUR job every two/four/six years.
Usually, I do a deep dive on these, giving even the minor candidates their time in the spotlight. This time, not so much. I've got a convention looming at the end of the month (GenCon) and don't have much time to savor the races. Some races are pretty obvious, some are going to very interesting. So when you hear the bell, turn over your papers and begin.
More later,
