RITZVILLE, Washington — Tiffany Smiley is wielding Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-WA) slogan against her as she barnstorms east to west across Washington state in a bid to make believers out of skeptical grassroots conservatives and become the first Republican to win a Senate race here in nearly 30 years.
Murray, 72, advanced to the Senate in 1992 running as a “mom in tennis shoes,” facing minimal opposition ever since in a state that has grown more reliably Democratic in the ensuing decades. But in a green and blue touring bus emblazoned with the moniker “There’s a new mom in town,” Smiley is declaring that Murray is out of touch and rallying voters in the red counties of eastern Washington, where she’ll need to run up the score to win.
“I need each and every one of you to win this race,” Smiley said to about 50 supporters who braved 30-degree weather and freezing rain to see the Republican Senate contender in tiny Ritzville, just off Interstate 90. “Sen. Murray is Washington, D.C. That’s who she is. … She’s not the mom in tennis shoes anymore.”
Washington state has periodically been fool’s gold for Republicans, appearing winnable in statewide races, at least in red wave elections, only to vote Democratic in the end, powered by the blue counties in and around Seattle in the west. But recent public opinion polls show a neck-and-neck race. Republican voters in eastern Washington can’t say enough good things about Smiley; they want to believe she can win.
But they have been disappointed before and are noticeably rational about Smiley’s prospects — despite the flood of good polling less than a week before Election Day. Mike Kline, 71, who lives in rural Ritzville, said Murray’s advantage is that she has the “space needle people” in her corner. That’s his term for liberal voters in greater Seattle and a reference to the city’s iconic landmark.
To compensate, Kline said, Smiley needs to max out votes in the eastern counties.
“Eastern Washington is going to be very important to this vote. If we have a positive vote in eastern Washington, then we can push her over the top. If we don’t, then I’m not sure,” he said. Kline emphasized that Republicans in eastern Washington often sit on their hands, assuming their votes won’t be enough to overcome Democrats out west.
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“We haven’t had much change in [a Republican] direction in 30 years,” he said. “There’s a general feeling that we don’t have enough votes to do anything about it. That’s not true.”
