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Whatcom County Council member Ben Elenbaas stood on top of a flatbed hay wagon on a warm late August evening speaking to the assembled crowd about the upcoming governor’s election.
And while the crowd was there to support Republican nominee Dave Reichert, it was Elenbaas who encouraged them to have conversations with a specific group of voters about the November election.
“The reality of our situation is — and it’s the reality in Whatcom County and in the state of Washington — that we need conservatives like myself, like Dave Reichert, [we] need those people in the middle to vote for them and vote for their ideas,” he said.
The moderate voters Elenbaas was referring to may harken back to a bygone day of the state’s political history when Washingtonians were comfortable voting for issues rather than political parties.
“Washington used to be pretty famous for splitting the ticket,” said Stuart Elway, a longtime Washington pollster. “We’d vote for one party for governor and another party for president or U.S. Senate. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”
One has to look back to the early 1990s to see split-ticket voting in action: Washingtonians sent two Republicans to Washington, D.C., while there was a Democratic governor in Olympia.
By 2000, Washington was sending a full slate of Democrats to either D.C. or Olympia.
Moderate voters, however, haven’t disappeared in this recent era of hyperpartisanship. They exist in larger numbers than people may believe and could play a pivotal role in the governor’s race between Reichert and current Attorney General and Democrat Bob Ferguson.
Both candidates are aware of the power these voters possess and are continuing to reach out a hand toward them even if the moderates are still wondering if Reichert or Ferguson represent the values that they hold dear.
Moderate makeup
Elway predicts around 2 million Washingtonians who didn’t vote in the August primary election will turn out for the November general election. That number is based on who turned out for the 2020 presidential election in Washington.
“The mysterious question is always, who are these new 2 million voters?” he said.
Could those 2 million voters be moderates or Independents? It’s tough to know since Washington doesn’t require voters to register with a political party and the Secretary of State’s office doesn’t list political party affiliation under voter demographics.
It’s believable a large portion of those 2 million voters could identify as moderates. A large portion of the American voting population hold views in the middle of the liberal and conservative spectrum, according to a recent study by Anthony Fowler, a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, in the journal American Political Science Review.
Fowler told Cascadia Daily News that moderates tend to play an outsized role in elections because “they are the ones who are in the middle who are willing to switch their vote choices depending on the qualities and the ideologies of the candidates.”
Most moderates, Fowler said, tend to care about bread and butter economic issues, such as the cost of living and wages.
A September Cascade PBS/Elway Poll found that out of 400 registered Washington voters, 21% surveyed listed the economy as a top issue in deciding which gubernatorial candidate to support.
Ferguson and Reichert in their campaigns have reiterated their commitment to fixing the cost of living crisis in Washington.
In a media call the day after the primary election, Ferguson said he had committed to traveling to all of Washington’s 39 counties and was dedicated to getting his campaign off the influential I-5 corridor. He’s also fallen back on his record as Attorney General to appeal to all voters — Democrat, Republican or otherwise.
“Whether it’s standing up for workers’ rights, whether standing up for public safety, whether it’s taking on pharmaceutical companies or the opioid epidemic, we think that message is going to resonate with voters all over Washington state,” he said.
Reichert told CDN after his Lynden rally that the cost of living crisis and issues surrounding public safety have been enough for certain voters to come over to his side.
“I had several people come up to me and say, ‘I’m a Democrat and I’m voting for you,’ and then I’ll ask why and they’ll go ‘because I’m sick and tired of the high crime rate, of being taxed,’” he said.
Can Ferguson and Reichert appeal to the moderates?
The question remains which of the two gubernatorial candidates can appeal to the mysterious 2 million voters as well as the voters who backed other candidates in the primary.
Mark Mullet, a Democratic state senator from Issaquah, labeled himself a moderate Democrat with the hopes of winning votes from those outside the Ferguson camp. He nabbed about 6% of the primary vote.
On the other hand, GOP-party-backed candidate Semi Bird attempted to appeal to the MAGA conservatives in Washington. He received 10% of the vote and even if Reichert could claw these voters over to his more moderate Republican side, it would still put him eight points behind Ferguson based on primary election results.
“You start splitting this up and you get pretty far into the weeds pretty quick because what are the Bird voters going to do and what are the Mullet voters going to do?” Elway said. “There’s a hundred different ways that could all break. Anyway you look at it, it’s a steep climb for Reichert.”
To Chris Vance, a former Republican and former state GOP chair, even if Reichert may be one of the more moderate conservatives to be placed on the ballot in recent time, and even though he may appeal to moderate voters, it may not be enough to win because of the ideology former President Donald Trump has poisoned the Republican party with.
“If the top of the ticket is absolutely toxic and unacceptable, then that trickles down,” he said. “The brand is so destroyed that [it] makes it impossible to elect people farther down. The national image of the Republican Party must change before Republicans can compete here again.”
The same Cascade PBS/Elway poll from September found that after economic issues, 20% of voters identified “ideology” as a top factor in picking a candidate for governor.
Overall for moderate voters, who they pick for governor may come down to choosing the lesser of two evils as the parties have drifted further on the political spectrum, Vance said.
“Moderate voters are looking around saying, ‘What happened? Where are my moderate candidates?’” he said.
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
