2022 Political Roundtable - Oct. 21

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In Washington, D.C., the balance of power in both the House and the Senate is in question as the activated bases in both parties battle over the results of the 2020 election.

Crime, abortion.

Immigration and inflation.

As gas prices soar above $5 a gallon, just as ballots are being mailed out in Olympia.

The question is whether there are enough swing votes to put any Republicans over the top to thin the Democratic majority and the state government trifecta they hold.

That's the discussion next on this political roundtable edition of Northwest.

Now.

The Democratic Campaign Committee has spent more than $40 million targeting competitive races with TV ads about abortion rights.

That's just one of several hot button issues driving these crucial midterm elections.

With the balance of power so delicate in Congress, Washington's U.S. Senate and congressional district races are being carefully watched nationally and heavily funded by both parties inside and outside this state.

So we're watching both local elections that influence the state legislature and congressional elections that influence the national scene.

Ballots are in the hands of voters as of today.

So tonight we've got two members of our Northwest down election team.

Michael, our time is a political science professor at Pacific Lutheran University and long time Olympia and politics reporter Joseph O'Sullivan now reporting for Crosscut.

Also joining us is Seattle University professor of political science, Patrick O'Sullivan who appeared with us in 2019 when the City of Seattle elections were front and center.

Welcome, all of you.

To Northwest now for our annual political roundtable show.

Try to time the show about when ballots drop here in Washington state.

Give people a feel for what the experts are watching out there.

So I have a very open ended question.

And Michael, we'll start with you.

What are you really focusing on?

What are you watching the closest?

Well, one of the things that really concerns me is the questioning of electoral legitimacy.

So people that might not believe that the outcome is, in fact, the outcomes of The New York Times did a report that demonstrated that 370 Republicans throughout the country, the majority of them running for office in this election cycle, doubt doubted the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

So I'm I'm actually afraid of what might happen as a result of the November elections.

Yeah, we got Kari Lake down in Arizona who said that she isn't necessarily going to accept the results of the election if she doesn't win.

Absolutely.

That's a governor.

That's for a governorship in a major state.

Joseph, same question to you.

What are you really keeping an eye on?

I know you're the Olympia reporter, but you have a national perspective as well.

What what do you really care about in this one?

So I think to to Michael's point, right, we have two competitive congressional races here in Washington state.

The eighth District, which has always been pretty swinging.

The third district sort of a toss up this year.

And Democrats in Congress have a five seat majority in the House.

So what happens in Washington could really help determine the balance of power, which also goes back to Michael's question and what happens in 2024 and whether the legitimacy of a presidential election is is called into question.

Since I have you here, do you think down ballot, down ballot, Biden is helping or hurting right now?

I don't know how much of an effect it's having.

Obviously, inflation in the economy are really tops on people's mind.

But I think maybe the drag that might have been with the president in prior times, the the Dobbs apportion rollback as well as the January six and concerns about Trump is probably kind of blunting what would usually be more of a drag.

I keep seeing his approval ratings drop, though, and thinking to myself, this has to flow into races like the third and the eighth, which you bring up, which I think are good ones.

Patrick, same question to you.

What are you really focusing on?

What do you care about?

What are you looking to see in this one?

Well, I think my colleagues here raise some excellent points.

But I think one other thing that we should definitely be paying attention to is, of course, the Senate race.

A lot of us are beginning to see perhaps the rising again of a more conservative tide in the vote with the swings towards the Republican in the generic ballot.

And I think the Senate race is really going to be like a high watermark.

If we if we start seeing that draw close, that's going to tell us across the country that the Republicans are going to have a really good night.

Yeah.

And that's what was really interesting.

It was it was the conventional wisdom.

And you know, what that's worth, you know, is red wave early then Dobbs hit.

No, that's going to blunt it.

That fell right into the Democrats laps.

And now we're starting to see some of that GOP pick up again a little bit in some of the polling around nationally, which is interesting.

So here's another question to all three of you.

We talked about what matters in terms of what you're watching, watching who matters.

You know, we've had times before where it's been the soccer mom or the suburban people and urban versus rural or what are some of the dynamics of the WHO that you're watching, Michael?

Yeah.

So I I'm looking at the turnout in the last presidential election, actually.

So it was about 67% voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election.

I'm looking to see, you know, whether there's that typical drop off from presidential to midterm elections.

So typically that would be somewhere around like 16% or so.

I'm curious whether there will be enough enthusiasm during this midterm election cycle for that to maybe be a little less.

And if it is, that's going to have an impact on the outcome.

Who's got the enthusiasm edge, though?

I mean, abortion is really motivated.

The Democrats inflation in the economy is really motivating the base to some degree on the on the Republican side.

Joseph, what do you see as being pivotal?

I mean, where is the enthusiasm lie right now?

It really depends on where you live, right?

If you're in the Puget Sound, you're probably more fired up about abortion and and for President Trump.

You know, if you're in conservative areas, you're probably thinking more about economy and inflation and and the reason that sort of it's sort of obvious.

But, you know, we have a state legislature pretty gerrymandered.

There's very few swing districts left.

I mean, even no matter what happens in a lot of these races, it's not going to fundamentally alter the alter the course of them.

And in terms of balance of power in Olympia as well to correct its paranoia.

Yeah.

A recent Elway poll and Patrick you can talk about this and we can all kick this around to shows that and we just looked at this in this previous round of answers that were really the population is so divided, we're almost having two different elections.

There are very few crossover which used to be in some ways wedge issues.

You could try to drive independents one way or the other, but there are very few really crossover issues anymore.

You've got one side whose base is highly motivated for, you know, abortion rights, one side whose base is highly motivated to stop election fraud and to believe.

Q And on is that new?

Have we been here before in history, or how do you how do you look at that?

How do you view it?

Well, I think campaigns are always sort of competitive storytelling, competition, where you're trying to get the voters to be thinking about a particular story or a particular set of issues when they go to mark their ballot.

And and I think this election just makes it clear that both parties have a fairly compelling story for people that want to hear it.

And because of that, I do think that we are going to we're going to want to pay attention to two groups in particular are going to want to pay attention to college educated men.

And we're going to want to pay attention to working class women.

Working class women.

Abortion is as much an economic issue as inflation.

So there is going to be a question of which issue they're feeling.

The more pressure on for college educated men, you're going to have a similar sort of poll where, you know, there are the suburban dads and suburban folk that are looking maybe to buy a boat, but inflation's eating into their income, but they're not entirely comfortable with some of the candidates that they're seeing on the right.

I like all of you to address this, too.

And that's the discussion about an independent or swing voter with polarization so, so powerful now.

You know, the old game was was to primary to the far left or to the far right, get through the primaries and then swing to the middle and try to capture that general electorate and take the office.

I really don't see that as being a viable strategy going forward.

I It doesn't feel like there are any independents or moderates left.

Joseph, what's your take on that?

Is there a swing voter out there in this kind of an environment?

You know, I wouldn't be too fast to completely dismiss it.

I mean, Washington State, we historically we don't have party registration.

We've we've had crossover to elect moderate Republicans in for a long time.

It's sort of dying out now to your point.

But it still may be a factor in certain elections in some of the key elections that we're talking about.

And off to my head, I'm thinking the state secretary of state, which is a moderate Democrat and nonpartisan independent, a Republican write in candidate.

Anything could potentially happen there based off a few votes.

Likewise, Southwest Washington's third congressional district.

You have a America First.

Trump endorsed Republican candidate Joe Kent, running against a rural Democrat, Mary Cruz and Camp Perez, who's running as a pragmatist.

And 22% of the voters in that election in the primary supported Jamie Herrera Butler, who was edged out because she voted to impeach Trump last year.

So what do those 22% of voters do?

Right.

It's a very small slice of voters might wind up making this way in some of these at least two of the most important races this year.

Michael, what are your thoughts about the independent or the swing voter these days?

Yeah, I think most independents we know is they typically lean Republican or Democrat.

But in really close elections, it can matter how those sort of truly independent folks land.

And so The New York Times Siena College poll that was just released had some interesting data on this.

So in September among independent women, Democrats were ahead on the generic ballot by about 14 percentage points.

They just released a poll that showed that Republicans now have an advantage in that group about of about 18 percentage points, and that's largely driven by inflation and the economy.

So so we're watching where these folks who maybe they're a small number, but they can really influence the outcome of an election.

We're watching where they're going to fall.

We'll talk a little bit about Seattle specifically.

And in the crime issue, it's kind of interesting that crime, which has always been associated with being a strong Republican issue law and order and whatnot.

However, you're starting to see some Democrats and Democratic candidates starting to talk a little bit about, no, let's not defund the police.

Let's let's do have, you know, reform, but let's do it reasonably.

Let's have bringing safety and security back into the mix.

Is crime a big enough issue, almost uniquely in western Washington because of the problems we've been having to overcome, too, to move that swing voter?

Joseph, do you think do you think that's an issue that can resonate with with moderates in Seattle?

It's hard to say.

You know, people were looking really closely at the crime issue in August during the primary, especially at the state legislature, is because Republicans have been running very hard on this.

You had the pandemic crime rose during the pandemic everywhere.

You also had Democrats do a lot of policing reforms in Olympia in response to the death of George Floyd.

Men were arrested and others at the hands of police.

And, you know, there were some sort of flaws in some of that and disagreements.

Democrats had to go back and rewrite a few bills.

So Republicans really thought they had a winning issue and I guess they didn't perform as well as they hoped in the August primaries.

And whether that filters up to races like Congress or something, I'm just not sure whether those whether Democrats can be pulled.

A little moderate Democrats can be pulled to the middle enough to become a Republican just for crime.

And you see, I mean, moderate Democrats are running.

You know, Kim Schrader wants to put more money into police.

Yeah, she's actually watching that ad this morning.

Yeah.

Mm hmm.

So is is that legitimate, the effort or.

Yeah, the ad.

I don't know their answer.

How do you take that, Patrick, on with swing the swing voters you live and work in Seattle.

Crime even.

You know, everybody had this idea of this shining progressive capital on the hill for the city of Seattle to do things a different way.

But, boy, there are some real issues up there.

Is that enough to to move moderate Democrats, you think?

Well, I think mostly what crime does is it does a good job of refocusing maybe suburban voters on the traditional Seattle versus the rest of Washington kind of debate.

I think when when you're talking about crime, you're sort of dog whistling more generally, the concerns people might have about Seattle, you know, we see certain kinds of violent crimes going up, but a lot of other crime statistics are more flat.

So I think this is more just tapping into the sort of pathos that swing voters, especially, again, in suburban areas where the eighth in particular is going to be decided in this sort of tension that they feel about being left behind.

So it's not necessarily happening in my district, but boy, look what's happening over there, right?

Oh, my gosh.

What are your thoughts about what are your thoughts about that kind of?

I think that's an interesting idea, that there's this displaced concern.

It's not happening in my neighborhood, but my goodness gracious, look at Seattle.

Michael, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, it's playing on fear and as you talk about crime, you know, what what some studies have shown is it really doesn't matter whether crime is increasing or decreasing.

Ads that highlight crime can make people afraid and that can influence the way that they evaluate elections.

I'm a little bit skeptical.

You know, there is some data.

So the Pew Center released data that said 60% of people are going to be thinking about the issue of crime when they're making their decision about who to vote for.

But I really question whether that is is going to, you know, be kind of over whelmed by the number of people thinking about the economy, thinking about inflation, thinking about on the Democratic side, things like jobs or other other issues which have been highlighted more consistently throughout the entirety of the election cycle or be enough to motivate that traditionally Democratic voter in the heart of Seattle to say, you know something, these aren't my values, but boy, this has to stop.

You know, don't really sense that inflation and economy poll well is poll well as well.

But here in western Washington, we're pretty, pretty prosperous.

Joseph, do you see those as being motivating, motivating voters at all or are we too prosperous here in western Washington for it to tick?

Oh, I wouldn't count it out.

I mean, gas prices, you know, we talk about economic indicators.

It's the one thing everybody sort of sees and measures right in their daily life as they go and Seattle's prosperous.

But everybody that has to drive in an hour now each way to commute to a job or something or something like that.

When you start to talk about suburban King County, Snohomish County, Pierce County, you know, it's probably a little different out there.

And it almost seems like that might be a little bit self-reinforcing, though, with the suburban, urban or rural urban divide that we have going in this state.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Patrick, let's talk a little bit about, you know, this red wave.

We just heard it this earlier where we kind of had a lot of the polling was showing that, gosh, you know, the Republicans are looking strong.

This could be a change.

Now, here comes the decision on abortion.

This is going to really play into the laps.

The Democrats, I guess I guess that's maybe the fundamental question was, was that ruling in some ways a godsend for Democrats?

I definitely think it helped to revitalize Democrats and help to kick up some enthusiasm that was certainly lacking earlier in the year when it looked like the Bidens Biden's agenda was going to more or less fall apart.

Since then, we've we've seen Democrats galvanized by with rights concerns, as well as the democracy concern that was lingering and we've seen some successes legislatively from the Biden administration, which I think helped to take care of some of that lack of enthusiasm concern.

But when we're going into the November election, a lot of people who've been more or less checked out into all of this before are just now beginning to pay attention.

And as they're paying attention, we're seeing gas prices go back up because of the OPEC.

Plus cutbacks.

And I think part of the reason we're seeing this move in most but not all polls towards the Republicans in the generic ballot is because as voters are beginning to focus in and actually think about the vote they're going to cast, they're seeing again, parts of the story that are reinforcing the economic message that Republican candidates want them to be focusing on.

You mentioned this, Patrick, and I'm kind of have been surprised by the polling that I've seen that Joe Biden's approval ratings are down and continuing to go down, which is going to have some down ballot effects, apparently, or or possibly.

Michael, you surprised by that at all, considering the legislative successes?

And is there going to be a down ballot pressure on Democrats in states like Washington because of Joe Biden?

It doesn't feel like it to me, but I keep seeing people talking about it.

Yeah, the numbers are actually a little bit up from the low points in the summer.

So in the summer in July, I think his approval rating was somewhere around 36%.

I think it's in the forties now.

Additionally, there's been at least some some jump in the number of people who are excited about his performance.

So within those who support him, there's been some movement among people who are kind of enthusiastically in support of him in general.

I'd be a little less concerned if I was, you know, Democrats on on Biden's approval rating.

He didn't have that great of coattail coattails in the 2020 presidential election either.

So it seemed like a lot of people were making decisions at the state and local level.

And I think that might be the case in this upcoming midterm cycle as well.

So I don't know that Biden's approval rating is going to be a good indicator of how some of these races down ballot are going to go.

And that's a perfect segue into what I was just going to hit Joseph with, is that how much does that really matter in state and local races when it comes to the balance of power in Olympia?

And is it a factor of the president's approval?

I don't think so.

I think you also have to keep in mind, I mean, when we think about Washington State, I mean, Seattle is like one of the sort of the central nodes of it's sort of the quote unquote resistance against Donald Trump.

Washington state voters, you know, approved abortion in the state at the ballot box back in the seventies.

Amy, you're talking about sort of on the progressive side.

It is distinctly progressive, too.

And I don't think they're going to just lose faith in sort of their worldview just because the president's numbers are down or I won't hold this, hold you to this, there's no money on it.

So I guess that my next question is, is there any pathway whatsoever for Republicans in Washington state considering who they feel the last time for governor and considering what's going on with the party?

Is there any pathway at all or is this just is this election over before it starts?

Well, I would I'd never say that, first of all.

But it is you know, it's more difficult.

We know Republicans have had they've still been able to afford to elect moderates here up until 2020.

But Kim Wyman, the long time secretary of state, she took a job in the Biden administration.

Jamie Herrera Beutler, who lost her primary this year.

You start to look around and you see there's not too many moderates elected up top and there's not many coming up through the pipeline.

Right.

So it just, you know, Chad Chad Menéndez hangs out there.

J.T.

Wilcox hangs out.

There are some of the people that just are kind of top of mind, but are they a dying breed in Olympia?

They have.

I think they've been very effective at trying to get candidates that are a good fit for their districts and to run competitive races everywhere.

And I think they've done that even when they don't win.

Of course, when second place at the end of the day doesn't sort of help your cause.

And I think Republicans also, you know, it's tough in King County.

The King County Party has moved to the right, too.

At the same time that they've lost sort of their local lawmakers and those are people that might rise to higher level if they get in office.

And I don't know how Republicans get around that or last four and a half minutes here.

Want to talk about something I never in my mind that I think I'd be talking about a civil war or something like it in an election program here at these United States in my lifetime.

And yet, you know, here we go.

We're going to do it.

There is a poll from science professor, poli sci professor Robert Pape with the Chicago Project on Violence at the University of Chicago, plus or -3% margin of error.

Error with a U.S. population of of voting adults pegged at about $258 million, it shows that 5% agree that violence is justified to restore Donald Trump to the White House.

That's about 13 million people.

12% are ambivalent about it.

That's 40 million people.

So what that adds up to is about 17% of the population is either pro violence or does it care enough to intervene.

That's 53 million people.

So if 5 million fought it out and 48 million watched from the sidelines, we could end up in a situation where the peaceful transfer of power and assumption we all make isn't necessarily happening.

Michael, how serious is that when you look at polling about this and those folks, by the way, are also driven by the great replacement theory and.

Q And on that, that is their motivating factor.

Is that a threat we have to take seriously or is it something that, oh, it's a great thing for a talk show to discuss, but it will never happen.

The Black Swan event will never happen.

How do we interpret that?

I mean, I think it's it is something to be concerned about, even if you're not concerned about, you know, some sort of civil war, what you could be what you should be concerned about are acts of violence, similar to what we saw on on January domestic terrorism.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that that is that is a real concern.

You mentioned some prominent theories like the great, great replacement theory.

Q And on, you know, election deniers, those things all are kind of mutually reinforcing.

So people that believe one of those things are more likely than to fall into another one of those camps.

And it is really problematic when all of those kind of malicious forces combined together to engage to engage in violence.

I mean, I was looking forward to you taking students in this last election cycle.

It got canceled because of COVID.

But we were going to go to the inauguration and I was really excited to do that because that was always a symbol to me of like, you know, of how you know, enduring, you know, a democracy can be that it this peaceful transfer of power was a testament to to our ability to have difficult political fights, but to resolve those without violence.

And now I don't necessarily think that's the case anymore.

And I think that that is that is really scary and something to be concerned about.

Joseph, in the context of Washington state politics, is this a concern?

Is this an issue or is this just a fantasy that's happening somewhere else?

We've already seen it all.

But I mean, I think that I don't think people think about this.

But Washington first, traditionally home of a lot of people on the far right, from white Christian separatists to neo-Nazis to the more recent sort of iterations of, you know.

Q And on election deniers also have the far left with the anarchists and the socialists and sort of the legacies of the the century old international workers of the world.

You I live and work in Olympia.

We've had scores of of political clashes in the last few years, three political shootings since 2020 elections.

These were sometimes stop the steal events, and then people on the left show up and they start pulling guns and shooting each other.

That has come down a lot of the temperature's come down a little, partly because the January six insurrection, if you remember, there were people that were going to do the same thing.

They were going to get into the state legislative building that week, too, because it was closed for COVID.

So that sort of got called off.

But the same things are happening.

The Oregon State Capitol got broken into, right?

Yeah.

If the temperature keeps rising and that keeps happening, I would be very concerned here locally.

Patrick, last 15 seconds for you.

And I know it's a tight one.

How how prominent of an issue is this peaceful transfer of power concern, a concern of yours?

It's not as much a concern for me as is the erosion of support in democracy more generally among voters, especially younger voters.

Great conversation, guys.

I appreciate you all coming in Northwest now.

Happy to join you.

Thank you.

Days and hours really seem less important.

These days.

The bottom line, what we really need are stable people who understand the value of democracy, who can work across the aisle, who have a vision of an inclusive, entrepreneurial merit based and compassionate America, where we shake hands after elections and keep elevating the best ideas.

Those are high goals, I know, but the minute we stop believing in them, we're going to lose this country.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

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Now that's going to do it for this edition of Northwest Now, until next time.

I'm Tom Larson.

Thanks for watching.