Patty Murray has been in the Senate a long time – not quite as long as the Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy types; but pretty close – and at only 72 this October she’s almost a full decade younger than all five senators who are more senior than she is. Odds are good she’ll be the first woman to be president pro tempore of the Senate, assuming she continues to hold her seat and Democrats come to hold control of the Senate while she’s the most senior member, which would make her third in the presidential line of succession. 

But will she continue to hold her seat? Well, barring retirement in a term at the vernal age of 77, or any unforeseen tragedy, it’d take a lot to push her out of it. Washington is a very safe state for statewide Democrats, as a Republican hasn’t been elected as governor there since the 1980s, nor as senator since the 1990s. Only once in Murray’s four reelects did she not receive a double-digit margin of victory, and that was in the Republican wave of 2010 where she still won by about a 5% margin. So odds are good she’ll secure a sixth term and continue on from there.

This election she faces Republican Tiffany Smiley, a relatively unknown nurse who is running a relatively furorless and traditional campaign. Smiley preaches pro-business, pro-agriculture issues, and at least says she will “not take part in the partisan infighting that has paralyzed our government.” She focuses specifically on veterans issues (her husband was blinded by a suicide bomb while serving in Iraq) and how to improve the VA and reduce veteran homelessness. And while she does discuss “election integrity” she does not outright claim that the election was stolen and even supports making Election Day a federal holiday. This balancing act has helped her score an array of Republican endorsements from characters as diverse as Trump’s former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the moderate Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, firebrand South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, conservative Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Trump-aligned House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.

It’s exactly the kind of candidacy you’d want to show the Republican Party can in fact be competitive when it moderates in bluer states. At least, it’s moderate and pragmatic by 2022 standards. Unfortunately for them, Washington is too blue, and Murray is too big of a name to go down to an unknown and inexperienced first-time candidate. This leaves Republicans in a position to take the wrong message from the loss in November, assuming that if moderation did not work, appealing to the far-right base must be the answer. That appears to be what they’re on a trend towards doing considering Murray’s opponent six years ago got absolutely walloped by her (by almost 20%) and left the GOP in 2017 before eventually joining the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, endorsing Joe Biden for president, and signing onto that big manifesto that called for a conservative “renewal” with a bunch of other anti-Trump Republicans. They’ve nominated a more conservative candidate this time in Smiley, but the bottom line is that Washington is one of the most liberal states in the country and Republicans probably shouldn’t make national conclusions based on their losses in a couple blue states.

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