As Shift WA readers know, Washington’s 3rd Congressional District is once again one of the nation’s biggest political battlegrounds. Two-term Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is trying to convince voters she’s an independent voice while fending off Republican State Sen. John Braun and progressive Democrat Brent Hennrich.

That balancing act is getting tougher.

Braun has zeroed in on Perez’s biggest vulnerability: the gap between her campaign messaging and her voting record. While Perez talks endlessly about helping working families afford everyday life, she voted against the federal tax relief package that eliminated taxes on tips and overtime pay—real money back in workers’ pockets. She has also been noticeably quiet about Olympia Democrats’ new 9.9% income tax, despite representing thousands of constituents who have watched Democrats pile on tax after tax.

Apparently “affordability” only counts when it fits the campaign brochure.

President Donald Trump has endorsed Braun, calling Perez a “Radical Left Extremist” whose record doesn’t reflect Southwest Washington values. Braun has built his campaign around opposing higher taxes, cutting government overreach, and delivering results for rural communities and working families. Meanwhile, Perez is also taking fire from her own party. Leftist Brent Hennrich argues she isn’t liberal enough because she supported border security funding – an apparent unforgivable sin over in Democrat la-la land.

So, Perez finds herself squeezed from both sides—all the while trying to reassure moderates that she’s independent. In a district that has repeatedly shown it rewards candidates willing to buck party leadership, her actual voting record makes that argument a little harder. Read more at Center Square.

Cascade PBS has published a four-part series on the “reset” of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), the homelessness bureaucracy created by Seattle and King County leaders that has managed to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars while delivering remarkably little in the way of results. To its credit, the series acknowledges some awkward facts: the agency has churned through five CEOs in five years, a forensic audit found roughly $13 million that couldn’t be accounted for, another $45 million in overspending, and basic financial controls that apparently were more of a suggestion than a requirement.

But don’t worry—Cascade PBS is here to explain that none of this should distract you from the agency’s “mixed legacy.”

Rather than asking why taxpayers should keep funding a bureaucracy that has become a case study in government incompetence, the series largely treats the KCRHA’s failures as unfortunate growing pains brought on by COVID and the complexity of homelessness. It also devotes plenty of ink to advocates lamenting the Trump administration’s move away from the failed “Housing First” model toward treatment, recovery, and greater accountability for federal homelessness dollars.

Here’s the part the series tiptoes around: after seven years of soaring spending, endless reorganizations, and promises that this time the experts had finally figured it out, King County’s homelessness crisis remains one of the worst in the country. Even local officials are now stripping the KCRHA of roughly $160 million in contract management because they no longer trust it to do the job. That’s less of a “reset” and more of an admission that the grand experiment didn’t exactly go according to plan.

In Olympia and Seattle, the answer to government failure is usually… another government reorganization. Taxpayers are still waiting for the part where things actually get better. Read more at Cascade PBS.

Covington City Councilmember Kristina Soltys is making a simple argument in her challenge against Democrat Sen. Claudia Kauffman: after years of Democrats tripling the state budget, Washington families are paying more while getting less. The lone Republican in the 47th Legislative District race says voters she’s met while knocking more than 6,500 doors are fed up with rising property taxes, the state’s new income tax, crumbling roads, and an Olympia that seems more interested in funding light rail than fixing highways people actually use. Soltys points to Covington’s 24% drop in crime as proof that supporting police works better than the soft-on-crime policies embraced elsewhere. She’s also calling for property tax relief for seniors, permitting reform to lower housing costs, and an audit of the state’s carbon tax program. Translation: while Democrats keep insisting taxpayers just need to hand over a little more money, Soltys is betting voters have finally figured out that’s not working. Read more at Seattle Red.

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