WA GOP Chairman fears Legislature could warp into the Seattle City Council
Nov 5, 2018, 3:49 PM | Updated: 3:51 pm
(MyNorthwest image)
With the election just hours away, GOP Chairman Caleb Heimlich expects Republicans to turn out in far greater numbers than what was seen during the primary, despite being outspent by Democrats in multiple districts.
“From the left we’re getting outspent two to one, three to one in some of these districts,” Heimlich told KTTH’s Jason Rantz Show. “But at the end of the day, our candidates in the state House and the state Senate and at the congressional level better represent the districts. They represent the values of those communities.”
While historically midterms tend to not favor the party in power in the White House, Heimlich doesn’t see the lower turnout among Republicans in the primaries as an indication of any sort of blue wave.
“Our turnout is significantly better than it was in the primaries. The message coming out of the primary is: Look, we heard from the angry, motivated Democrats, and that’s why some of these results were so tilted in their favor,” he said.
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“But as were tracking partisan turnout relative to the Democrats so far, we’re in much better shape than we were in August, but we’ve got to finish strong. According to our records, about half of Republicans haven’t voted, and so we’ve got 36 hours for those folks to show up and make sure their voices are heard.”
For Heimlich, the state is on a precipice wherein suburban communities risk being controlled by the types of policies and initiatives that regularly come out of the Seattle City Council.
“This state right now is at a razor’s edge and we want to make sure we keep that balance and keep our voices heard in Olympia because otherwise we’re going to drop off the fiscal cliff,” Heimlich said.
“We could be staring down the barrel of a state income tax, and a Legislature that is going to look and act like the Seattle City Council, which is not going to serve our interest well at all.”
Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday mornings from 6-9 a.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.