Washington Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee hasn’t said if he’s seeking a fourth term as governor, but with a year to go until the Washington gubernatorial election season starts, he has $1.5 million in his campaign account. No one has ever served longer than three terms in Washington, and the last governor to serve three terms was Republican Gov. Dan Evans in 1972. Washington does not have a term limit for governor.
The 2024 Washington gubernatorial election is Nov. 5, 2024, and the top-two primary is Aug. 6, 2024.
Also eyeing a run for Washington state governor is business executive Republican, Brian Heywood, Rep. Jamie Herrera Butler, and Pierce County executive Bruce Dammeier, Republican, and former state senator.
Herrera Butler, a moderate Republican, lost her primary to harder-right Republican Joe Kent, who then lost in the general election, giving that seat over to the Democrats’ candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
Inslee won in 2020 by more than 60% of the vote, and has not lost any substantial traction with voters in the western side of the state, where the population determines the outcome of elections and where the voters are decidedly Democrat. Inslee also briefly ran for president in 2020, but dropped out before the Democratic convention that August. Before becoming governor, he was in Congress representing Washington’s First Congressional District from 2000 to 2012, and he also was in Congress from 1994 to 1996 for Washington’s Fourth Congressional District. He served in the state House from 1990 to 1993.
Democrats control the Washington state House and Senate, and with Inslee in the Governor’s Office, have a political trifecta. Washington has not had a Republican governor since John Spellman retired 1985. It’s the longest stretch of Democratic leadership of any state in the country. It’s also the third-longest streak of single-party leadership in a governor’s office after South Dakota (Republican) and Utah (Republican).
Inslee just rolled out a gun-control legislation today with Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson, which some analysts believe is a signal he is planning to back Ferguson for governor.
One measures would ban the sale of “military-style assault weapons,: and the second would hold gun manufacturers and dealers responsible for some consequences if they fail to “establish, implement and enforce reasonable controls in the manufacture, sale, distribution and marketing of firearms.” It gives families an avenue to sue gun dealers for damages.
