Former House Republican who voted with Trump 92% of time to run for Washington governor

Republican former U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert announced Friday that he will run for governor of Washington in 2024. While he centered his candidacy around standing up for the most vulnerable and uniting the state, his previous actions over the course of a long political career do not match his promises for the future.

“I’m Dave Reichert and I’m running for governor to protect the vulnerable, to help small businesses, and keep people safe,” he says in a kickoff video. “I believe government should be open and responsive, not pitting one region against another, one generation against another, one family against another. So buckle up. We’re going to show America there’s another way.”

Reichert, who represented Washington’s 8th Congressional District from 2005 to 2019, has long framed himself as a moderate, but his record shows his ties to the far right. He was a member of the Republican Main Street Coalition, which claims to be the caucus for centrist Republicans, and his campaign site touted “his history of strong, independent leadership.” His ads presented him as working toward “bringing America together.”

While he tried to distance himself from Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, he supported some of the Trump administration’s most extreme policies.

According to the Denver Post, Reichert endorsed Trump’s January 2017 executive order banning people from several majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States, saying: “My first and most important job is protecting families in our region and the American people … We must be absolutely certain we have systems in place capable of thoroughly vetting anyone applying for refugee status on American soil.”

According to FiveThirtyEight, Reichert voted in support of the Trump administration’s agenda 92.5% of the time. Reichert co-sponsored Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which slashed tax rates for the richest Americans and corporations. “Today is truly historic,” he said in a December 2017 press release after the House passed the final legislation. “We passed a tax bill to make our tax code work for the American people.”

The wealthiest 20% of American earners received more than half of the tax savings from the law, according to a July 2019 Forbes analysis, while the bottom 20% got just 3.3% of the benefits. An estimated 10 million American families actually saw a tax increase due to the law’s elimination of deductions and exemptions.

Reichert also co-sponsored a 2018 bill that would have made the individual tax cuts permanent.

Reichert repeatedly voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, and told constituents in February 2017: “When we talk about healthcare in our office, we’re talking about repeal and replace. It’s going to happen.”

He backed legislation to overrule state and local gun safety legislation, including a 2017 bill that would have forced states to allow visitors from other states to carry concealed firearms as long as it is legal for them to do so at home, calling it a vote “to maintain Second Amendment rights.”

In 2014, he backed an amendment to eliminate nearly all gun limits enacted by the City Council in Washington, D.C., and penned a January 2013 Seattle Times op-ed opposing any new assault weapons bans in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, mass school shooting, contrary to the views of his constituents.

Reichert told KING-TV in Seattle on Friday that he opposes reproductive rights, but said he would leave those decisions up to the voters: “I happen to believe that life begins in the womb and at inception. I’m a pro-life person with some exceptions, so those exceptions are rape and incest and the life of the mother, and those have always been consistent with me.”

However, he has repeatedly voted in direct opposition to his constituents’ views. As a member of Congress, Reichert voted in 2013, in 2015, and in 2017 for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have instituted a national ban on abortions as soon as 15 weeks into a pregnancy, based on false claims that a fetus can feel pain that early.

According to a 2006 report by the Seattle Times, Reichert once said: “I think life begins at conception. I think it [abortion] is taking a life. That’s the way I look at it.” The same story also noted his view that pharmacists should be able to opt out of filling prescriptions for emergency contraception if they so choose.

In 2011, he voted for an amendment sponsored by Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence that would have defunded Planned Parenthood and cut all other Title X family planning funding. He voted again to defund Planned Parenthood in 2015.

Reichert reportedly said in 2012 that he was “dead set” against a statewide voter initiative to legalize and regulate cannabis. After citizens in his home state voted in favor of the initiative, Reichert authored a 2014 bill that would have barred Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients from withdrawing funds at cash machines located in stores that sold the drug.

“The fact that some people are using welfare for weed is outrageous,” he said in a press release announcing his Preserving Welfare for Needs Not Weed Act. “Welfare should help the less fortunate get out of poverty and move up the economic ladder, and this bill will ensure welfare isn’t wasted on marijuana – the use of which is likely to only increase poverty and reduce success.”

Izzi Levy, deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association, told the American Independent Foundation:

Dave Reichert retired from Congress years ago because he knew he could no longer run on his extreme and toxic record of voting to repeal access to health care for hundreds of thousands of his constituents, defund Planned Parenthood, and ban abortion rights. Since then, it’s only become clearer to Washington voters that their governor is the last line of defense to protect reproductive freedom. Reichert and his far-right record are wrong for Washington.

Days after leaving office in 2019, Reichert joined the Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs lobbying firm as a vice president.

According to federal disclosure records, he has been a registered lobbyist at the firm on behalf of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a scientific supply company that reportedly has sold DNA testing kits to the Chinese authorities in Tibet and, until 2019, Xinjiang, China.

Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee is not seeking another term. At least one other Republican, Richland School Board member Semi Bird, has also announced his candidacy. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, and state Sen. Mark Mullet have taken steps to run for the Democratic nomination in the blue-leaning state.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.