MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
Happy Friday, Washington Democrats!
Happy Holidays!
The Washington Democrats office will be closed for the next two weeks as we celebrate the holidays and new year. May your holiday season be filled with laughter, community, and peace. We will resume our regular pace of communications in 2025.
I was honored to celebrate the season with Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff in Washington, D.C.
Working for Washington
Last week, it was my honor to chair the appointment meetings for legislative vacancies created by Democrats in our legislature assuming higher offices and the retirement of Sen. Karen Keiser. The PCOs of these Legislative Districts nominated three candidates to be considered by their respective County Councils and Commissions for appointment to the state legislature. My congratulations to all of the candidates who were nominated for consideration. And my thanks go out to the Precinct Committee Officers who took part in this vitally important process, enacting the will of their communities.
Washington’s ability to resist the Republican shift during the last election is making waves. This week, I spoke to NPR, McClatchey News, and other outlets about the tactics and strategies we want to export from our Washington to the other Washington. You may have received our white paper “What Went Right (Left?) in Washington” earlier this week. I’ve attached it to the end of this message as well in case you missed it.
We are incredibly proud of the work of all our campaigns, volunteers, and staff who kept Washington state a bastion for progressive (and popular!) policies. I will never stop working to improve the lives and livelihoods of our communities, which is why it is so important that we export our winning culture to every other state. Which brings me to…
DNC Vice Chair
Last week, I officially announced my candidacy for one of the three at-large Vice Chair positions at the Democratic National Committee. I am running for this national position at the same time that I run to be re-elected as your Washington State Democratic Party Chair so that I can bring our winning messaging and tactics to the national level. It would mean the world to me to have your support and endorsements as I seek re-election as your State Party Chair and the office of Vice Chair at the DNC.
You can support my re-election campaign for State Party Chair here and run for DNC Vice Chair here or by clicking the images above.
Celebrate Our Legacy
You are invited to an exciting event we are building in January to celebrate our victories and honor our retiring elected officials, who have done so much to make Washington State an even better, more Democratic place. First and foremost in this group is our terrific Governor Jay Inslee, who is stepping down after three landmark terms and will be joining us as keynote speaker!
Here are the event details:
Wednesday, January 8th
5:30pm
Washington Hall
153 14th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
Suggested Contribution Levels
$50 | $100 | $250 | $500
Democrats in the News
Where do Democrats go from here? Washington’s congressional delegation has some ideas, The Spokesman-Review
Democrats have problems. The next DNC chair is probably not who fixes them, Semafor
What I’m Writing
To: Interested Parties
From: Shasti Conrad, Chair, WA Dems
Re: What Went Right (Left?) in Washington
In a sea of red, Washington Democrats (WA Dems) bucked the national trend. I’m writing this memo because I believe it’s time to stop pointing fingers and talking about what went wrong — and instead look at what went right (left!) and learn from it.
As the rest of the nation saw an average shift of 6% towards Donald Trump, Washington state held the line, functionally stopping any rightward shift among its electorate. We delivered the strongest Democratic performance in all 50 states. In fact, Democrats won every statewide office and, for the fifth straight campaign cycle, Democrats added seats in the state legislature. Looking at every statewide race, Washington actually shifted 0.15% towards the Democratic Party in 2024.
Demographics alone cannot explain our success. Oregon, our sister state across the Columbia River, which shares our Pacific Northwest values and culture (and similar demographics), still experienced a 2-point shift towards the Trump ticket. States like Massachusetts and Vermont, which are whiter and more highly educated than Washington’s electorate, still moved eight and three points (respectively) towards the right.
I also believe my job as Chair of WA Dems is not to keep any of this a secret….in fact, I want more states to follow our lead. So how did we do it? I contribute Democrats’ success in Washington to 5 key factors:
- A professional and year-round team at the state party.
- A field operation focused on turnout and built to win.
- Structural advantages that make it easier to vote.
- A bigger tent delivers a bigger impact.
- Progressive policies are popular.
In the memo that follows, I’ll take you through each of these in more detail.
#1: A professional and year-round team at WaDems
WA Dems is one of the largest and most professionalized state parties in the country. As the first state party to unionize, we have the benefits of long-term, year-round staff who bring institutional knowledge and deep community connections to the table. We liberally share our talents with campaigns, loaning our (professional, full-time) data team to the Coordinated Campaign (the combined field efforts for all statewide and local candidates) each election cycle. This is the same data team that correctly predicted a path to victory for U.S. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in WA Congressional District 3 before anyone else thought it was possible to flip that district in 2022.
As the first South Asian woman to lead a major state party in the USA, I have been focused on building party infrastructure throughout the entire state, including in deep-red areas through rural voter outreach and activating the aunties and uncles of our bustling (and growing!) AANHPI community. I won’t lie, being one of the few state party chairs to earn a full-time salary allows me to devote 100% of my energy to developing my state’s organizing muscles. I was proud to lead the first state party organization to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as our nominee when President Biden suspended his campaign and assisted efforts within the ASDC to do the same.
Another unique quirk of this campaign cycle was the $6 million infusion from an out-of-state multi-millionaire hedge fund owner to put four statewide initiatives on our ballots. Seeking to roll back our biggest progressive victories from the past decade (instituting a cap and invest system to limit carbon emissions, a capital gains tax funding education, universal long-term care insurance, and a framework aiding the transition away from natural gas for state utilities), Republicans thought they had a great turnout tool. My professional staff worked with our allies to ensure progressives turned out to vote to protect our victories. Ultimately, we were successful. Three of the four conservative initiatives failed spectacularly while the fourth (the transition away from natural gas) passed with a thin margin of victory. That initiative will likely be bogged down in court cases given the ineptitude of those who wrote it.
#2: A field operation focused on turnout and built to win.
WA Dems built our statewide Coordinated Campaign by prioritizing local community experts over flying in organizers from allied groups like the Democratic Governor’s Association and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We appreciated necessary resources and capacity building throughout the 2024 cycle from these groups, but the field operation in Washington state was built entirely by the state party and focused solely on turning out the solid and “lean” Democratic universes. We gave individual campaigns carte blanche to focus on the universe of potentially persuadable voters. Our Statewide August Primary provides an excellent trial run for GOTV of low-participation voters. This gives us extra runway to test messaging, volunteer recruitment, and get out the vote operations.
Our Coordinated Campaign was one of the largest in state history. 30 field staff were hired to organize in every corner of the state. They raised an army of volunteers who ended up making 1.72 million phone calls, knocked 248,000 doors, and 150,000 texts. Compared to swing states, these numbers are unimpressive on their own. Compared to other blue states that also trended far more Republican this cycle, we believe these numbers demonstrate the outsized impact of our field operation and the benefits of running a strong ground game. WA Dems put particular emphasis on relational organizing – hiring campus and constituency organizers focused on activating youth, Hispanic, and Native American communities to turn out for Democratic candidates and campaigns.
#3: Structural advantages that make it easier to vote.
Automatic voter registration.100% vote by mail. Washington has unique characteristics that make it convenient to register, to vote, and to track your ballot. You can follow your ballot’s progress from when you mailed or dropped it in a ballot return box through when it gets counted. These structural changes that make it automatic to register to vote also mean that we are capturing the universe of people who were never and may never vote. So, while more raw votes were cast in 2024 than in 2016 and 2012, the percentage of registered voter turnout was on par with the 2000 election more than two decades ago. Despite that drop off in voter turnout percentage, WA Dems did a better job of turning out our base voters and those who lean Democratic. My data team estimates that we turned out 0.5% more base voters and 3% more “leaners” than the state GOP.
#4: A bigger tent delivers a bigger impact.
I lead a big-tent party that includes both a Progressive Caucus Co-Chair AND a Blue Dog Caucus Co-Chair. Anyone talking about running “authentic” candidates should look no further than Washington state.Candidates in R+5 districts were not echoing Seattle-area talking points. At the same time, our state party welcomed the participation of the “Uncommitted” movement and was one of the first state parties in the nation to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Giving everyone a voice at the table and letting the grassroots of the party make decisions helped build unity and avoid bitter resentments among segments of our base.
Washington state’s strong union membership combined with a thriving environmental movement have supported pro-environment, pro-union candidates up and down the ballot for decades. We work with union leadership and members, environmental organizations, and businesses to organize on behalf of candidates protecting our rights, who strive to make the economy more worker friendly, and who will prioritize our clean air and clean water. The Washington Education Association (a statewide public teacher’s union) helped bring hundreds of teachers out to canvass in swing counties and population centers this cycle – using our messaging and working with the Coordinated Campaign.
#5: Progressive policies are popular.
Our losses in 2024 must not be allowed to make us turn on one another — OR on the policies at the root of our Democrat Party. So last, but definitely not least, I credit our success to the fact that progressive policies ARE popular. When we can show our policies in action and make people’s lives better at the state level, we can win more elections.
What do I mean by this? For starters, Washington state has the highest minimum wage in the country. We also have the best overtime policy, paid family leave, working family tax credits, expanded childcare, a focus on trades, and strong labor unions. Democratic leadership has made Washington one of the best states to open and run a business and one of the best states to be a worker in.
Democratic leadership has also focused on solving problems voters care the most about: climate change, responsible public lands stewardship, gun safety laws, and investments in education. These popular policies have given Democratic candidates credibility with voters that we are focused on the issues they care most about.
Where do we go from here?
Washington state’s combination of professional and full-time party staff, coordinated bridge-building among constituencies with ideological differences, and candidates who can point to policy wins that have a direct beneficial impact on voters’ lives are all ingredients of the secret sauce that led to Washington withstanding the national shift hemorrhaging voters to the GOP.
Despite being a first-time Chair, I led my state party to hold serve while the rest of the country tipped (and sometimes toppled) red. We did it on the backs of our staff, our candidates, and our volunteers. My hope is that the lessons we gleaned from Washington state in 2024 will power our resurgence at the national level. Washington state has forged a blueprint to turn our country blue. But it will take all of us working together to make it possible.
Thanks for all you do,
Chair Shasti Conrad
Washington State Democratic Party
We sincerely thank you for your help and support.
Washington State Democrats PO Box 4027 Seattle, WA 98194 United States