The fabric of Republican politics in Central and Eastern WA is changing

WALLA WALLA -- Dozens of people attend public meetings in Dayton and write letters to the editor about a proposal to dissolve the Columbia County Rural Library District. 

New and traditional political groups in Walla Walla County work to elect their favorite school board candidates. 

Low voter turnout in Yakima County sinks a proposal to form a new hospital district in the Lower Valley as new groups form to encourage Latino voter participation. 

In Central and Eastern Washington, the fabric of political engagement is changing.

If political parties and local political action committees are the needle, the changes of 2020 might be the thread and changes in participation are the stitches.

Columbia, Walla Walla and Yakima counties claim Republican majorities in a Democratic-led state, which may be a factor in galvanizing political participation in the region, said Yakima County Auditor Charles Ross, a Republican who oversees Yakima’s election process.

“Parties used to be really big and energized and connected to all the businesses, and then it went into a lull and party politics just subsided,” Ross said. “It seems like there's kind of a regeneration coming.”

Since 2020, political organizing in Yakima, Walla Walla and Columbia counties has reenergized, and the impact is visible in local engagement, from Election Day observers to competitive precinct-level races.

2020 as a marker

Largely, 2020 is the marker Eastern Washington politicians and elections officials described as the moment of change for political participation and engagement. The year brought a pandemic, racial justice movement and presidential election wrought with false claims of election fraud.

Donald Trump’s presidency and reelection campaign had a hand in stimulating local politics in Eastern Washington.

“When Donald Trump got involved in politics is where I really noticed just a surge of interest from both sides of the spectrum,” said Ross, with Yakima County Elections. “There are more people participating in wanting to be involved than I've ever noticed before.”

Yakima County had its largest ballot return in 2020, he said. The county saw about 78,000 ballots returned in the presidential general elections in 2008 and 2012, according to ballot return data from the elections office. That grew to 80,912 returned ballots in 2016 and 97,332 in 2020.

Ross attributed the volume of returned ballots to Trump-related engagement. Yakima County also fielded a high figure of 750 people looking to register or vote on general election night in 2016.

“There's some real markers out there that show Trump, himself, as a political figure, has motivated people on both sides of the political spectrum,” Ross said.

Trump carried Columbia, Walla Walla and Yakima counties in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, according to the Secretary of State's Office.

In 2016, he won 53% of the vote in Walla Walla and Yakima counties and 68% of the vote in Columbia County. In 2020, he garnered 52% of the vote in Walla Walla and Yakima counties and 70% of the vote in Columbia County.

Pandemic effects

The pandemic is another key marker for political participation in Eastern Washington, said state Sen. Perry Dozier, a Republican in Walla Walla’s District 16.

Dozier said area conservatives were looking for a way to get involved in opposing state-level restrictions imposed by a Democratic governor and took to political organizing.

People disagreed with state decisions related to schooling, masking and vaccines, he said.

Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, introduced bills to limit Gov. Jay Inslee’s emergency powers and to repeal or reform other legislation while the state government was operating in an all-remote format.

“We didn’t get to see people because they were closed out of campus, but there was a strengthening of people’s awareness of what was happening,” Dozier said.

People testified virtually, an option that offered more flexibility for people traveling to Olympia from Eastern Washington, Dozier said, but people were looking for other ways to get involved, too.

“That’s when these conservative groups formed,” he said. “I could see that being a driving force.”

New on the landscape

Two new conservative groups formed in Walla Walla and Columbia counties in 2021, tying their platforms to 2020 issues such as election security, parental rights in schools and public health measures.

The Common Sense Conservatives in Walla Walla declined an interview for this story, though its steering committee sent some basic information in an email.

“Founded in 2021, CSC has grown rapidly as more and more people discovered that our organization shares similar concerns about the direction of our country, election integrity, health freedom, and the actions of our local school board,” the email said.

The group’s website lists four focus areas: election integrity, education, emergency preparedness and the Walla Walla County Republican Party.

The steering committee said CSC is a casual organization without a formal structure.

A stated goal of the group, per the steering committee and the group's website, is to elect conservatives to office. CSC supports candidates for school boards and county offices, though the group itself makes no political contributions, according to the steering committee.

CSC is not registered with the Public Disclosure Commission, the state organization that enforces campaign finance and disclosure laws.

Trump’s impeachment, the House Republicans (including two from Washington) who voted to support the second impeachment, false claims of fraud in the 2020 election, and grievances with COVID-19 mandates also spurred the formation of the Columbia County Conservatives.

The political action committee in Washington’s second least-populous county first registered with the Public Disclosure Commission in 2021. Political action committees are political groups that raise and spend money for election campaigns. 

According to its website, the CCC seeks to elect conservative candidates who support an America First Republican agenda.

“America First'' is a nationalist political slogan and strategy with antisemitic roots that was popularized by Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and later by his political cabinet. 

The CCC did not respond to interview requests for this article, but other language on its site highlights the group's priorities when it comes to pandemic policies, gun rights and schools.

CCC members are also active in the effort to dissolve the Columbia County Rural Library District after attempts to remove books concerning gender, sexual identity and anti-racism from library shelves failed.

Fred White, the chair of the Columbia County Republican Party, said he has no involvement with the CCC but he does see overlap in the membership of his party and that of the CCC.

White said the CCC had a strong following early on of people who wanted to get involved, and the pandemic seemed to be a factor.

“There's a lot of opposition between political parties and the way people view things, and possibly COVID could have had people up in arms about what was going on during that time in 2020,” White said. “I think people now feel like they want to be more involved and don't want to settle for what's going on.”

Drawing out candidates

In Yakima County, the pandemic spurred political engagement in the form of party involvement and campaigns for public office.

That was the case for Yakima County Commissioner LaDon Linde, a Republican who was appointed to a vacant seat on the Board of Yakima County Commissioners in 2020.

Linde was long active in political campaigns in his voting precinct and as a member of the Republican Party central committee, but he didn’t make the decision to seek office himself until 2020, when he saw the effects of the pandemic and related restrictions on housing developments, businesses, schools and churches, he said.

“I really started to have some real concerns that, although COVID was a real issue, some of the things were doing more harm than good,” he said. “That's when I first started thinking about actually becoming involved and looking at running for an office.”

Matt Brown, a Yakima council member and the chair of the Yakima County Republican Party, said he decided to get involved with the party for those same reasons.

“Before 2020 I was just running my business and being a pastor,” Brown said. “Then 2020 hit, and I just felt like, ‘You know what, I can complain, or I can get involved,’ and instead of being a complainer, I'm a guy that wants to get involved and help my community.”

Linde said other people were affected by the pandemic and decided to get involved, wanting to take on the issues they care about, he said.

“I think you're seeing a lot of interest now in school board races that you wouldn't have seen three or four years ago,” as a response to pandemic-related policies in schools, he said. “There’s definitely that aspect, that there are people that are paying attention, that they're getting involved, that they might be passionate about certain issues. But the interesting thing about that is that voting numbers don't seem to be going up.”

A changing party

Brown became active in the Yakima County Republican Party in 2020 and was elected to serve as chairman beginning in 2023.

A change he wanted to bring to the party was a focus on local issues and elections to school boards, city council and county commission. The party also passed an updated platform this year for the first time since 2016, he said.

“Folks are showing up and engaged and we've got people helping local candidates; we've got folks involved,” Brown said. “There's been a lot of people stepping up, and I think it's been really cool to see the community really active in trying to make our community better.”

The field of political organizations that are active in Yakima has changed since 2020.

Conservative organizations Citizen Courage and Yakima Valley Alliance are no longer active, according to Brown.

Brown said an ideological wedge between the traditional Republican Party and the Yakima County Republican Liberty Caucus, comprised of typically more conservative people, is disappearing, though the Liberty Caucus’ involvement is waning, generally.

The Yakima Republican Women’s Club is active, and the party collaborates with that group to host speakers at the monthly luncheon hosted by the club and other events, Brown said.

Elections

Advocates see room for improvement with Latino voter turnout in Yakima Valley

• JASPER KENZO SUNDEEN Yakima Herald-Republic

Latino participation

Yakima County is more than 50% Latino, and a number of nonprofits and advocacy organizations have been involved in voter registration, get-out-the-vote efforts and education. Some initiatives are strictly nonpartisan, while others have focused on specific candidates and platforms.

Discussions about political participation and voting rights for Latino and Indigenous voters in the Yakima Valley are not new. The Yakima Valley's 15th District was a sticking point during statewide redistricting conversations in 2022 and is still under review in court. The city of Yakima and Yakima County both faced voting rights lawsuits in the past decade alleging the election systems disenfranchised Latino voters and made changes as a result.

Bengie Aguilar has been active in Yakima Valley politics for years, from Parent Teacher Associations to Sunnyside’s city council to running for the Legislature as a Democrat. She’s working this year with a team of six candidates in Sunnyside who are running for school board and city council positions.

“(Representation) matters because they understand. Many of our community grew up in the fields. A lot of our community is agricultural,” Aguilar said. “They better understand it, they come from the roots of it.”

She hopes the entire community, Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking, is represented in local government.

Yakima County nonprofit Empowering Latina Leadership and Action (ELLA) also has been involved in the Sunnyside municipal elections. The group is working to get out the vote, provide election trainings and local politics classes for candidates. 

There were a record number of voters with Spanish surnames in Sunnyside’s 2023 primary election, which also had more total registered voters and returned ballots than general elections – which are traditionally more popular – in 2019 and 2021.

In Grandview, a group of incumbent candidates and a group of challengers have posted social media flyers encouraging voter turnout and supporting candidates within their group.

“I know this is rare in a world where most leadership is fragmented and unable to work together to address pressing city problems. We actually appreciate one another, listen to one another, and concur on effective fixes for our city,” said Gloria Mendoza, the city’s incumbent mayor.

Elections

Spanish surname voter turnout varies in Yakima Valley communities

• JASPER KENZO SUNDEEN Yakima Herald-Republic

Working together

In Walla Walla, conservatives are collaborating similarly. Dozier, the state senator for the area and a former county commissioner, said the Republican Party and Common Sense Conservatives were almost competing when CSC formed.

“I believe what happened was when the Common Sense Conservatives came in, it just kind of energized the GOP party, from what I saw, a little bit more, and so we began getting more participation,” Dozier said. “I see great participation with conservative groups, and I see them working together, which is probably the best thing that could ever happen.”

Walla Walla County Republican Party Chair Wendi Kregger said the party has become more energized.

“I think it was just a change in the climate across the United States,” she said. “We’re grateful that people want to get involved in their local community, and it’s encouraging to see.”

Dozier said the groups are attracting candidates and reaching out to voters.

“I can't really speak to what's going on on the Democrat side, but I will say that they are very active,” Dozier said. “I can tell you that from my 2020 election, because I had a really tough election against my opponent.”

Kari Isaacson, chair of the Walla Walla County Democrats, said the party has been in the rebuilding process.

“Especially since the 2016 election, we're seeing a rebound, I am told by long-timers, in interest in the party,” she said, “and we’ve got a great slate of officers.”

She said she understands that CSC members have also become precinct committee officers — individuals elected to represent a political party in a voting precinct — for the Republican Party and emphasized her belief that two parties are better than one.

“We need two functioning parties that — used to — balance each other out and ultimately come to a compromise for the good of all,” she said.

Multipartisan

While the field of political groups in Yakima and Walla Walla counties seem to be consolidating, in Columbia County more groups are forming.

A multipartisan political action committee called Neighbors United for Progress formed in 2022 to counteract the CCC.

“That was the initial formation of our group, and then as time went by, we realized that we could do so much more,” founder and Chair Elise Severe said.

NUP includes Democrats, Republicans and independents who host town halls, community forums and membership meetings. The group filed a complaint in court aiming to block the measure to dissolve the county's library district from appearing on the general election ballot. The court temporarily blocked the measure from appearing on the ballot and just recently made the block permanent.

“We don't tell people in our membership meeting how they need to vote, which I think is a big difference about our PAC,” she said. “We just present facts and information and then allow people a space to ask a bunch of questions.”

Severe said having a variety of perspectives is beneficial when strategizing on topics like the library dissolution effort, which the group opposes, and fentanyl’s impact in the community, the topic of a recent town hall.

“I think that makes us a really strong group because we may not all immediately agree on a compromise or a path, but we eventually get there,” she said.

Columbia County Commissioner Marty Hall said he’s seen local participation increase since NUP and CCC formed.

Few community members attended commission meetings when Hall was first elected to the Board of Commissioners in 2020, he said. Now, it’s rare to have a meeting without members of the public sitting or listening in.

The same is true of library board meetings at Dayton Memorial Library, where community members have accumulated in the dozens during the past year. About 50 people attend the monthly meetings.

Hall said he’s also seen more signs in yards and more letters to the editor published in the Dayton Chronicle, the community’s weekly paper.

“I think a positive effect that both of the local PACs have had is that it has spurred people to get more involved locally,” Hall said. “It's also created a level of animosity in town, which is very unfortunate.”

Amy Rosenberg, chair of the county’s Democratic Party, recognizes the tension.

“There's not a lot of people who are willing to go out and make phone calls or doorbell for Democratic candidates,” she said. “Right now, it is a very tough climate in Columbia County, and people are a little bit scared.”

She said participation in the Democratic Party is down locally, but participation generally is up. People are disillusioned with both parties, she said, which could be why they’re looking to nontraditional political organizations such as the CCC and NUP instead. Rosenberg is also a member of NUP.

“I think people have political fatigue right now because nationwide and all of the stuff that's happening in Dayton is exhausting,” she said. “I understand why people want to take a step back, but I’m hopeful that things can turn around.”

White, with the county’s Republican Party, said involvement is just time. Most of the party’s members have been active for 20 years or longer, he said.

“It takes a lot of time,” he said. “I think the people that are a part of the membership now want to be a part of something. They feel strong about where they're at, how they want things done and they don't want to see anything die.”

Precinct-level leadership

Precinct committee officer elections offer one lens with which to view party participation.

Precincts are the smallest voting units that make up each county, and precinct committee officers are the organizers elected to be the connection between the precinct and the Republican and Democratic parties.

Walla Walla County Auditor Karen Martin said she has seen more contested precinct committee officer, or PCO, races in recent elections.

Walla Walla County has 67 precincts, each with a Republican and Democratic officer seat. In 2022, seven contested PCO races — six for Republican seats and one for a Democratic seat — appeared on the primary ballot.

“I could definitely say I think we have more contested races, even though there's not very many,” Martin said. “A few years ago, it would have been very seldom that we would have any contested ones on there.”

About two thirds of Republican PCO seats are filled in Walla Walla, as are about half of the Democratic seats. Republican Party chair Kregger and Democratic Party chair Isaacson both said interest in PCO positions has increased in recent years in Walla Walla.

In Yakima County, about 65% of the Republican seats are filled, compared to less than 10% of the Democratic seats. The county has 174 precincts.

“I've seen a changing of the guard here locally, if you will,” auditor Ross said. “There's a lot of new people — a lot of younger people — who are filling (party) positions, and there's been a real surge of interest in precinct committee officer positions, which tells me that people are interested,” Ross said.

In Columbia County, six Democrats and six Republicans hold PCO seats within the county’s 13 precincts, according to elections supervisor Cathy Abel.

White said the Republican Party has appointed people to lead the precincts without an elected PCO — the party can designate captains when a seat is not filled by election. PCO leadership is important for connecting with voters and encouraging participation, he said.

“That's what the precinct officers are in charge of in their little area, to talk to their neighbors and have a face to the party and just try to get people out there to vote,” he said.

Election security

Elections officials in Walla Walla and Yakima counties are also seeing more people participate in the elections process by observing ballot processing.

As claims of voter fraud became more widespread, people wanted to learn about their local election process, said Martin in Walla Walla and Ross in Yakima.

“Over the last several years, there's been strong criticism (alleging) fraudulent voting,” Ross said.

He saw the allegations grow from Trump’s 2020 campaign, he said, but voter fraud is rare. A recent investigation into a Yakima voter accused of voting twice in two elections was the first case Ross had seen in his decade with the office.

“We just don't see voter fraud very often, if ever,” Ross said. “If and when it happens, we take it very seriously.”

He said the elections office engages with people who come in with concerns about election security, showing them the process.

“There were more over the last couple of years than we've ever had before, observers coming in and just wanting to see,” Ross said.

By the end, he said, people would either say, “It wasn’t like I thought it would be,” or “(Fraud) doesn’t happen here, but it happened somewhere else.”

Martin also said the political parties in Walla Walla have been more engaged with observing the elections process since 2020. Ballot processing is open to the public, and political parties can designate official party observers.

“Depending on the climate, we very seldom ever had observers come in,” Martin said. “They would only come in probably during Election Day, watching the tabulators run. Now, parties are coming in and they’re observing pretty much the whole process, which is a good thing.”

Discussions about election security could be driving that, she said. More people are coming to get their questions answered and learn how local elections are run.

“Since the 2020 election, there's been a lot more people interested and wanting to get out,” Martin said. “If they really feel there's things happening that shouldn't be, they've figured out the best way to get involved.”

Columbia County election officials declined an interview for this article. As in other counties across the state, the ballot process is open to the public, and county officials field questions about election security.

Turnout

Voter turnout is the confounding question elections officials are trying to answer, said Ross with Yakima County Elections.

“It feels like people are more energized. We can definitely tell there's more people participating, you know, either coming in asking questions, all these different things, but overall participation rates are declining,” he said.

Yakima County sees its highest turnout rates in presidential years, as shown with the ballot return figures from 2016 and 2020, Ross said, but that’s not the case in mid-term or off-year elections.

The turnout rates in Yakima County are consistently lower than those in other counties, including Walla Walla and Columbia. In the 2021 general election, Yakima County had the lowest turnout in the state at 49.78%.

On the flip side, Columbia County is regularly among the top counties in the state when it comes to turnout. The county has a population of 3,952 and 2,879 registered voters.

“Everywhere, you see this ebb and flow between presidential and then non-presidential elections,” Ross said. “That tells me that when people are interested in and they're motivated, they participate. Then the rest of the time, I just think they're not so concerned, therefore they don't participate."

Low participation sank a proposal to form a new hospital district in the Lower Yakima Valley in the most recent primary. The measure needed a simple majority of 50% plus one favorable vote to pass. It also had to meet a turnout requirement of 2,802 votes, which is 40% of the total number of votes cast in the district during the last general election.

The measure easily surpassed the simple majority, earning 66% support, but it fell 325 votes short of the turnout requirement.

“When people tell me, ‘I feel like my vote doesn't matter,’ I mean I have a slew of examples where your vote does matter,” Ross said.

Walla Walla County and Columbia County also see the highest turnout in presidential years.

“That's when the people want to turn out. They want to vote for president,” said Martin with Walla Walla County Elections. “The off-year elections, these nonpartisan elections, those are generally low in voter turnout.”

Grappling with polarization

Players on all sides are grappling with political polarization, though they see the issue playing out in different ways.

“There's, I would say, a lot of division inside our country right now, on both sides of the aisle,” said Brown, chair of the Yakima County Republican Party. “I'm not saying Republican ideas are always the best ideas, but I’m saying our country was founded on us working together to find a solution.”

The way to get to the solution is to be able to have a conversation with one another, with civility and respect, he said.

White, chair of the Columbia County Republican Party, sees polarization stunting participation and regular government business.

“To make anything work, you have to find common ground within the political parties, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican,” he said. “To get business passed through, or to build and proceed, you have to find ways to agree. At this time, I don’t think we’re there.”

The lack of willingness to work together leads to more drastic outcomes, he said, using the library dissolution effort as an example.

“Nothing got done, and now it's probably gone farther than it should,” he said.

Isaacson, chair of the Walla Walla County Democrats, said it’s important to have two functioning political parties to balance each other out — having one party dominating doesn’t help the community.

“You have to have a robust debate,” she said. “You have to have robust points of view. You have to have people who are really community minded and well-equipped to handle how intricate and complicated current issues are that confront us.”

Herald-Republic reporter Jasper Kenzo Sundeen contributed to this report.