A Surge in Last-Minute Campaign Contributions

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More than $20 million in contributions have poured into candidate- and ballot-measure campaigns since the primary. Detailed reports on how that money is getting spent are due next Tuesday, and we’ll be digging in. For now, we’ll look at who’s writing big checks. 

The biggest player in the end game looks to be SEIU 775. The powerful long-term care workers union poured another $2.3 million into No On 2124, the campaign against a ballot measure that would weaken the state’s new long-term care insurance program by making the payroll tax that pays for it optional. That campaign also got a $250,000 infusion from SEIU 2015, the analogous union in California. 

California billionaire John Doerr and his wife, Ann, sent matching $500,000 checks to No On 2117, the campaign against an initiative to repeal the Climate Commitment Act. (Maybe a single $1-million check was too gauche?) This is a little rich given that some campaign messaging against I-2117 tries to paint this initiative and others from Let’s Go Washington as the work of a different meddling rich dude from California

The Leadership Council, a PAC controlled by Senate Republicans, moved $600,000 into Washington Wins, signaling that they’re fixing to play hardball in some tight races. (More on that below.)

The AFSCME Working Families Fund, a political arm of the powerful national public employees union, sent $500,000 to Evergreen Values, the PAC that is attacking Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dave Reichert on the abortion issue. Most of that PAC’s money comes from the Democratic Governors Association, which has so far invested nearly $3 million into Evergreen Values. 

Notably absent from the list of big checks is anything for Reichert, either from national Republicans or the state GOP, which gave him the paltry sum of about $18,000 last month. Attorney General Bob Ferguson, meanwhile, has pulled in about $2 million from the Washington State Democratic Party, although some of that was legal money laundering. The deep pockets on the right apparently view Reichert as a bad bet. 

The Kennedy Fund, a PAC controlled by Senate Democrats, put $500,000 into Southwest WA Priorities, which indicates another round of campaigning against Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver, who is locked in a tough fight with White Salmon mayor Marla Keethler for an open Senate seat in the 17th LD.

Paul Queary
Paul Queary
Paul Queary, a veteran AP reporter and editor, is founder of The Washington Observer, an independent newsletter on politics, government and the influence thereof in Washington State.

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