🗳️ 2024 Local Election Thoughts
The presidential race is still up in the air and I'm not going to dwell on that for the moment. Locally it appears the new 5th District Representative to Congress will be Michael Baumgartner. I didn't vote for him, but I'm not surprised he got nearly 60% of the vote- he's an experienced, and well-known Eastern Washington Republican politician, most recently serving as Spokane County Treasurer. The fact of the matter is that Eastern Washington simply hasn't had Democratic candidates running with the kind of charisma and name recognition that is required to shake the area out of its three-decades-long post-Foley Republican funk. Carmela Conroy was this year's Democratic candidate, and I know nothing about her even though she is a former chair of the Spokane County Democratic Party.
So what kind of local celebrity could make that kind of splash? I think there are some former Gonzaga Basketball players from the early 2000s that could be interesting candidates. For all I know the ones I'm thinking of are all Republicans though. That could also be true of my number-one pick, Astronaut Ann McClain, who is probably still a decade away from retiring anyway given how well her space career is going. But I think the Democratic party has to have a candidate with significant local popularity if they're ever going to win back the 5th District.
Hopefully, Baumgartner will do a good job in the meantime. I've always found him more likable than his predecessor Cathy McMorris-Rodgers and he actually was an advocate for building Spokane's new multi-use stadium downtown which I appreciate.