Dynamic Duo: Washington’s Two Senators

The United Stated celebrates its 250th birthday this year, and Donald Trump will grandly display his lack of taste. We in Washington State have another anniversary: for 25 years, one tenth of the Republic’s history, our Washington has been represented in the “other” Washington by U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, a formidable and long-lasting team.

The two can be seen together, from time to time, advocating for reproductive rights at Planned Parenthood’s digs off Madison Street. Otherwise, they go separate ways but manage to complement each other. It isn’t always so. Oregon’s U.S. Senators, the regal Mark Hatfield and vulnerable Bob Packwood, while of the same party, privately loathed each other.

Patty Murray is the state’s provider, a role once played by another six-term senator — chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the legendary Warren Magnuson. She is, for instance, a big part of the reason we don’t have a light rail system that doesn’t stub off in Tukwila. She’s also architect of the Wild Sky Wilderness in Snohomish County and Hanford Reach National Monument on a non-reservoirized Columbia River in Eastern Washington. She is chief sponsor of pending Wild Olympics legislation.

Washingtonian magazine once attached a label, “no rocket scientist,” to Murray. But the joke is on them. Murray has a knack of spotting common ground, especially on education policy. As well, folks feel comfortable with her. She has ended careers of three Republican House members. The GOP thought it had her on the run in 2022, but Murray copped 57 percent of the vote.

She is also overly protected by nervous handlers. No town meetings, just a couple questions from reporters, always a supporting cast of people who agree with her and lots of advance planning. She was once ambushed by Fox News, appearing to praise Taliban social services. Murray has demolished every tough question this scribe has ever posed to her.

Maria Cantwell inherited Henry Jackson’s role as legislator and serious adult in a divided, feuding Senate. She has a complicated, fascinating relationship with GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The two Senators fought like cats in a bag over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, only to join in pushing to get built badly needed polar icebreakers.

Cantwell sits on a trio of A-list Senate committees, works herself and staff to exhaustion, and masters complex issues. As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, she built bipartisan backing for legislation putting the U.S. back in the business of manufacturing computer chips. As a Senate Finance Committee member, she held out for creation of a federal federal consumer protection agency.

She’s done deals, as with the Great American Outdoors legislation. She inserted permanent authorization and revenue for Land and Water Conservation Fund in a GOP-crafted bill. And she inserted provision barring mining exploration over 311,000 acres of the Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forest. Imperial Metals, the Canadian outfit responsible for a major tailings dam failure in British Columbia, had wanted to explore and drill in our upper Methow Valley.

Cantwell has taken time away from official duties and fundraising to climb Mt. Rainier, the 13,790-foot Grand Teton, and 19,000-foot-plus elevation Kilimanjaro in Africa. She was the first female lawmaker to play in the annual intramural congressional baseball game.

What does the future hold for this powerful pair? A great seniority-driven power should Democrats retake control of the Senate, when they will have major roles repairing the damage Donald Trump has done. Murray will chair Approciations, hold a Democratic leadership position, and serve as president pro tempore of the world’s greatest deliberative body.

Murray is 75, and Cantwell is 67. The pressure builds for aging leaders in Congress to step aside. Looking to 2028, when Murray is up, the partnership may well come to an end. It will then be 28 years, the same length Maggie and Scoop served together.

This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.