Dave Reichert Announces Retirement, Throwing WA-08 Into The List Of Most Competitive Seats

Probably the single best indicator that a swing district is about the flip is when the incumbent suddenly announces retirement. Yesterday, the Republican incumbent in Washington's most swingy district-- Dave Reichert in WA-08-- announced he's leaving Congress at the end of 2018. The district was always sketchy for him and he's had some close calls but the GOPO was able to redraw a slightly safer seat for him with a PVI of R+1. This year, demographic and other changes saw the PVI slip to EVEN. Obama won the district 51-47% in 2008 and 50-48% in 2012. Last year, even as awful a candidate as Hillary was able to win there, although that was really due more to Trump underperforming Romney than anything she did. In fact, she did worse than Obama had in the district, winning it 47.7% to 44.7%-- two really crappy candidates. Bernie absolutely eviscerated Hillary in the caucuses. These were the Bernie-Hillary scores in the 5 counties (in order of how many votes they provide in WA-08 elections) all of which or part of which make up WA-09:

• King Co.- Bernie- 67.3%, Hillary- 32.6%
• Pierce Co.- Bernie- 73.3%, Hillary- 26.5%
• Chelan Co.- Bernie- 71.7%, Hillary- 28.3%
• Kititas Co.- Bernie- 77.4%, Hillary- 22.6%
• Douglas Co,- Bernie- 73.3%, Hillary- 26.7%

The right kind of Democrat-- so, obviously, not a typical DCCC corporate whore-- will easily replace Reichert, although you can expect the DCCC to move into high gear to find exactly the wrong kind of candidate to run. Both Cook and Sabato moved WA-08 from "likely Republican" to "toss up," although Roll Call claims that the district now tilts blue. Just a few days ago, the Seattle Times had reported that 6 Democrats had already decided to compete for the nomination to challenge Reichert: Kim Schrier, a pediatrician from Sammamish; Jason Rittereiser, a 33 year old attorney and former King County deputy prosecutor originally from Ellensburg and now living in Issaquah; Toby Whitney, an Amazon executive who previously worked in DC for former Seattle progressive icon Jim McDermott; Mona Das, a progressive Indian immigrant who lives in Covington; Tola Marts, an Issaquah City Council member; and Tom Cramer, who primaried conservaDem Adam Smith in a neighboring district in 2012.

Reichert was a mainstream conservative and isn't comfortable with the neo-Nazi direction Trump has been dragging the party. Chances are good that a Trumpist will want to run on the Republican side and I'd bet that there will be more than one Republican candidate. Reichert was one of the 20 Republicans who voted against TrumpCare in the House-- although he took a lot of heat for supporting it in the House Ways and Means Committee before flip-flopping.

Washington is a top 2 jungle primary state and it wouldn't be unprecedented for a gaggle of Democrats to split up the vote so badly that 2 Republicans face off in the general election. Washington Democrats did it recently with a statewide race and, of course, the DCCC is expert at engineering such outcomes in their dogged pursuit of execrable conservative candidates.