Jay Robert Inslee is an American politician, lawyer, and economist who has served as the 23rd governor of Washington since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995 and again from 1999 to 2012, and was a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He is the longest-serving current governor in the United States.
Jan Drago is an American politician and educator from Seattle who has served on the Seattle City Council and King County Council.
Robert Watson Ferguson is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the 18th attorney general of Washington since 2013. He is the governor-elect of Washington, and is a member of the Democratic Party. In addition, he served as a member of the King County Council from 2004 to 2013 and the council's chair from 2009 to 2013.
Fred Jarrett is a member of the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission. His appointment to the commission, announced in April 2019 by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, noted that he had recently retired as Senior Deputy of the King County Executive, which he joined with the incoming administration of Dow Constantine in 2010. Jarrett was elected in 2008 as a Democratic member of the Washington State Senate, and represented the 41st district from January 2009 to the time he joined Constantine's administration. He announced that he would run for the State Senate in December 2007 after switching his political party affiliation. Prior to that election, he served in the Washington House of Representatives as a Republican for four terms, starting in 2001. His switch in political party affiliation at the time was noted as an example of "[t]he loss of GOP power in the affluent suburbs [that] has been one of the state’s major post-millennial political trends." Earlier in his political career, Jarrett was a member of the Mercer Island City Council, which he joined in 1978, serving as mayor for two terms in the 1980s.
Susan Hutchison is an American television news journalist, educator, and politician. She served as chair of the Washington State Republican Party from 2013 to 2018 and was a candidate for the United States Senate in 2018.
The 2012 Washington gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2012. Candidates in the election were chosen in an August 7, 2012 primary election, under the state's nonpartisan blanket primary system, which allows voters to vote for any candidate running in the race, regardless of party affiliation. The two candidates who received the most votes in the primary election qualified for the general election.
Michael George Goodspaceguy Nelson, known mononymously as Goodspaceguy, is an American perennial candidate from Washington state.
Stanley Irving Lippmann is a disbarred lawyer, anti-vaccination activist and a perennial candidate from the U.S. state of Washington.
The 2016 Washington gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 2016.
William Lee Bryant Jr. is an American businessman and politician from the state of Washington. A Republican, he served on the Seattle Port Commission from 2008 to 2016. In the 2016 Washington gubernatorial election, as one of the top two finishers in the blanket primary, he participated in the general election, losing to incumbent Democrat Jay Inslee.
The Washington Secretary of State election, 2016, was held on November 8, 2016. Incumbent Republican Kim Wyman won reelection over Democratic nominee Tina Podlodowski, the two having received the most votes in an August 2016 primary election.
The 2020 Washington gubernatorial election was held on November 3, 2020. It followed a top-two primary held on August 4. Incumbent Governor Jay Inslee, the Democratic candidate, defeated Loren Culp, the Republican candidate by a wide margin. Inslee, who was eligible to run for a third term due to the lack of gubernatorial term limits, initially launched a campaign for president of the United States in the 2020 election. When he dropped out of that race in August 2019 due to extremely low polling numbers, he announced he would seek a third term as governor. Several other Democratic political figures considered entering the race if Inslee did not run, including Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson; no other major Democratic candidates entered the race. Republican Loren Culp, the police chief of Republic, Washington, placed second in the top-two primary and advanced to the general election alongside Inslee.
A special election was held on November 7, 2017, to fill the vacant seat in the Washington State Senate representing the 45th district. The seat was left vacant after the death of incumbent Andy Hill in October 2016. Dino Rossi, a former candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010 and for governor in 2004 and 2008, was appointed to fill the seat until the election. He announced that he would not run for the seat. The election was then contested between Manka Dhingra of the Democratic Party and Jinyoung Lee Englund of the Republican Party, who advanced as the top two finishers in the August primary. Dhingra won the election by more than ten percent, giving the Democratic caucus a 25–24 majority for the 2018 session.
Joseph-Thanh Nguyen is an American politician who is a member of the Washington State Senate from the 34th district. Nguyen, a second-generation Vietnamese American, was raised with his three siblings in White Center, Washington, by his mother. He was a candidate for King County Executive in 2021 but was defeated by Dow Constantine 56 percent to 44 percent.
The 2020 presidential campaign of Jay Inslee began on March 1, 2019, when Inslee – the incumbent Governor of Washington – announced that he would be running for the Democratic nomination. He had been chair of the Democratic Governors Association for the 2018 election cycle and served as a co-chair of the United States Climate Alliance. He was the first governor to enter the 2020 race.
The 2020 Washington lieutenant gubernatorial election was held on November 3, 2020, to elect the lieutenant governor of Washington concurrently with the 2020 Washington elections. The top-two primary was held on August 4, and Democrats Denny Heck and Marko Liias advanced to the general election, which Heck won.
The 2021 Seattle mayoral election was held on November 2, 2021, to elect the Mayor of Seattle. It was won by former Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell, who defeated then-current President Lorena González; both candidates had advanced from a nonpartisan primary election on August 3.
The 2024 Washington gubernatorial election was held on November 5, 2024. The top-two primary was held on August 6. Incumbent Democratic Governor Jay Inslee was eligible to seek re-election to a fourth term but decided that he would not do so. The Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, defeated the Republican nominee, former Congressman Dave Reichert, who conceded defeat on November 19. Inslee, who previously served in the U.S. House, was first elected governor in 2012 and won re-election in 2016 and 2020. Washington has not had a Republican governor since John Spellman left office in 1985, the longest streak of Democratic leadership of any state in the country and the third-longest streak of one-party leadership after South Dakota and Utah. Ferguson defeated Reichert with 55.51% of the vote in the general election. He also became the first Democrat to win Clallam County since 2000.
The 2022 Washington Secretary of State special election was held on November 8, 2022. Incumbent Kim Wyman, a Republican, resigned from the office on November 19, 2021, to become the senior election security lead for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Biden administration's Department of Homeland Security. Washington governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, announced he would appoint state senator Steve Hobbs as her replacement, the first Democrat to hold the office in more than fifty years.
The 2025 King County Executive election will be held in King County, Washington during the 2025 United States general election. Incumbent County Executive Dow Constantine announced in November 2024 that he would not seek re-election.
