“Why is this race closer than it ever should have been?” is a clueless question. Perhaps it’s because Senator Murray has been in office far too long, clings to the same tired campaign slogan from 1992, and doesn’t do much of any constituent outreach other than after ballots with her name on them drop. Heck, she’s only done ONE open-to-the-public town hall ever in her thirty years in office, while senators in neighboring Oregon have each done HUNDREDS in the past decade alone. Senator Murray tends to hide behind the comfort of audiences she selects.

Even an unremarkable thirty years in office (Senator Murray’s first victory was remarkable; her tenure hasn’t been) comes with some baggage like giving her then National Security Advisor Pam Norick (hired working from home on Fridays) an ultimatum that she work from the office five days a week after having a second child or face termination. Specifically, “according to Murray, Norick had pushed her luck by having children only two years apart. No other senator, Murray insisted, would give an employee two maternity leaves in under three years.”
——————-
In the past five or so years alone, missteps include:

January 2017 – Voted no on importing inexpensive prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically opposed a budget reconciliation amendment to allow medicine imports.

February 2017 – Declined to attend Seattle Indivisible organized town hall

December 2019 – Did not take a position (and still hasn’t) on the Green New Deal after young protestors marched to her Seattle office

May 2020 – Missed filibuster-breaking vote to increase online privacy. Specifically, an amendment to the FISA reauthorization to prevent law enforcement from collecting search and browsing history information without a warrant.

May 2021 – Missed vote to establish January 6th Commission. Later claimed the events of January 6th are what made her decide to run for a sixth term.

October 2021 – Declined two formal election debates through the WA State Debate Coalition (declined debate scheduled for 10/7, then declined debate scheduled for 10/25 after weeks of ghosting). The Coalition described this behavior as “unprecedented.” Her obstinance happened at the same time Senator Raphael Warnock said “half of being a senator is showing up” when his opponent similarly declined a debate.
——————
If State Party chair Tina Podlodowski were not so dead-set on protecting incumbents, she may have understood the benefits having an open seat race between someone like Pramila Jayapal and Suzan DelBene may have had on increasing both primary and general election turnout (Jayapal is the opposite of Murray when it comes to Town Halls). It’s a shame Podlodowski didn’t challenge Murray’s selfishness in making far more motivated Democrats keep waiting their turn after three decades.

I’ll conclude my rant by mentioning former Defense Secretary Robert Gates writing in his autobiography that in 2008, “at one hearing, one of my staff was walking behind Senator Patty Murray of Washington and noticed that no one had bothered to remove the Boeing letterhead from her talking points.” Apparently “please don’t watch television” is the most rousing statement she can come up with when she isn’t fed talking points from a major donor. I hope this scare makes Murray realize this should be her last term and that her lackadaisical representation – although better than that of an R – has a cost.