WA-08: The Changing Face of a District

Last Friday, watchers of the upcoming WA-08 congressional rematch between Rep. Dave Reichert and netroots favorite Darcy Burner sat up and took notice of an event with enormous implications for the 2008 congressional contest: state Rep. Fred Jarrett's defection from the GOP to the Democratic Party. Though Jarrett's move is likely to have little direct effect on the upcoming race, his defection from the Republicans is the inevitable result of a long-term demographic shift that will soon end the GOP's longtime dominance of the 8th District forever.

First, a geography lesson:

The 8th District of Washington covers a huge expanse of land in the central Puget Sound region, from Lake Washington in the west to the Cascade Range in the east. The vast majority of this land lies within the dense wilderness areas of eastern King and Pierce counties, including Mount Rainier National Park and parts of Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Until trees are given the franchise, this area is unlikely to ever supply a lot of votes. Most of the voting age population lives in the northwestern corner of the district, where you can see the cities of Bellevue, Mercer Island, and Sammamish. Collectively known as the Eastside, this area has long been known for Republican politics; since 1982, when the 8th District was created, it has never sent a Democrat to Congress, and as recently as a decade ago was as reliably blood-red as any region in the state. But no more.

This map from the Seattle Times article linked above illustrates the dramatic shift in the partisan affiliation of Eastside legislators since 1995. Unlike some other states, Washington does not have separate state House and Senate legislative districts: each district is represented by three legislators, two in the state House of Representatives and one in the state Senate. In 1995, every legislator from Seattle's Eastside suburbs was a Republican. Today, in the wake of Rep. Jarrett's party shift, those seats are all occupied by Democrats. All of them.

Why has this happened? In a word: Microsoft. As the Redmond-based software giant has grown by leaps and bounds and attracted other high-tech employers to the region, former white-flight bedroom communities like Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland have transformed into cities in their own right. Downtown Bellevue's skyline now boasts almost as many skyscrapers as Seattle's. These high-tech employers have attracted a mix of residents that is comparatively younger, more diverse, and more well-educated than their forerunners... in short, more Democratic.

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's more representative, if you'll pardon the pun, of the new Eastside than Darcy Burner, a 37-year-old former military brat who in 2006 left a successful career as a group program manager at Microsoft (a fairly rarefied position at the "manager's manager" level of the Microsoft hierarchy) to run for the 8th District congressional seat against King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, a popular figure who wasn't averse to overemphasizing his role in the high-profile Green River Killer case. As many here know, Burner came within a hair's breadth of becoming the first Democrat to ever occupy the 8th District seat last year, which garnered her national recognition and helped clear the field for her upcoming rematch against Reichert--who, this time around, has a two-year record of fealty to George W. Bush to explain away.

Contribute to Darcy Burner and help turn the Eastside blue for good!