Given Inslee's resignation just after the March 6 cutoff for a special election (so the seat will be open until November), I am a bit surprised our contingent of WA state political junkies has not started to chatter about this seat.
An article about the now open district is available
here. The article states that is was about even in the Rossi runs against Murray and Gregoire, but Obama won it by 57.2% of the two party vote, which translates into a Dem PVI of 3.5. Slade Gorton, who is on the commission, and drew the CD with his Dem colleagues to make it a "swing" district allegedly, thinks it is even from a partisan standpoint, but to me a 3.5 number means that it is solidly lean Dem, absent some nuances that only the locals would know about. Koster (R) is running again; he got 49% against Larsen in WA-02, half of which is now in WA-01. In WA, 2010 was a good GOP year, but like much of the Pacific coast, hardly a GOP wave. Koster is branded by the Dems as a Tea Party out of the mainstream type. Is he? Is Koster going to be the only Pub game in town, or will a more moderate Reichart type pop out of the woodwork?
So what do our Washingtonian Atlasians think about all of this, and the odds as to which party will win this CD in November? To me, Koster's odds don't look all that great, maybe 20% as a wild guess. Hopefully the gurus will be able to offer up something more substantive than a wild guess, and just who the players might be.
I might note that there will be a special election simultaneously for the 2 month period until the new Congress comes in around Jan 3, 2013, using the old CD lines, but what is relevant is not that special election (which a Dem will win handily), but the regular election which will be on the same ballot for a two year term. I guess that goes without saying.
CC: bgwah
alcon
meeker
