Shasti Conrad

Shasti Conrad says she’ll see a lot of Southwest Washington during the next two years.

One of the priorities of the newly minted chair of the state Democratic Party will be to help secure the re-election of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez to Southwest Washington’s congressional seat in 2024.

In fact, Conrad says, Gluesenkamp Perez is a model for how Democrats can win back rural Washington, which has had a Republican tide wash over it in the last decade or so.

“My job, number one, is to make sure we elect Democrats up and down the ballot,” said Conrad who at 38 is the youngest state chair in the party’s history. “I recognize that there are different types of Democrats that are going to be successful in different parts of the state.”

Washington, as Conrad noted, is a microcosm of the national rural-urban divide. Outside the deep blue Puget Sound region — with a few exceptions — the state is a red sea.

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Outside the deep blue Puget Sound region — with a few exceptions — the state is a red sea.

Southwest Washington, which was reliably Democratic until about 15 years ago, has shifted wildly to the right. Most of the Lower Columbia area’s state lawmakers are Republican. Trump-backed right winger Joe Kent nearly got elected to the region’s congressional seat last year, losing to Gluesenkamp Perez by less than a percentage point. “Seattle liberal” is a term of derision in this region.

Democrats must do better reaching out to rural voters, particularly older white men who form the core of Trumpist support, Conrad said in a phone interview.

“There is definitely a generation of white men who have found that Trump’s rhetoric speaks to them. We as a party have to do a better job of making sure we are showing rural voters that we … do care about them and do understand what they are going through and make room in the party for them.”

She noted that the party in this state already is diverse, including a range of elected leaders from U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Seattle liberal, to Gluesenkamp Perez, a Skamania moderate who shocked the U.S. political world by beating Kent in November.

It’s fair to note here, however, that Gluesenkamp Perez received almost no national help from the Democratic Party, and she was drastically underfunded until after the August primary election eliminated Jaime Herrera Beutler, the 12-year Republican incumbent, and changed the balance of the race. (Gluesenkamp Perez ended up raising $3.9 million, slightly more than Kent’s $3.8 million, according to federal election records.)

Conrad, the first woman of color to lead the state Democratic Party, is a dyed-in-the-blue liberal herself. She’s worked in the Obama administration and on the 2016 and 2020 presidential races of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

She’d been party chair in King County since 2018 and was unopposed in January to replace Tina Podlodowski as state party chair. She had the backing of Gov. Jay Inslee, both of Washington’s Democratic U.S. senators and most of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, according to the Seattle Times.

Conrad was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. She was adopted and raised on a farm by a single mother in Newberg, Oregon, where the community was closely knit and featured a lively barter economy. “I learned how people built communities and helped [other] people out.”

Her family was mindful of civics, taking pride in knowing history and voting, and she learned of the importance of politics at a young age.

“We would talk politics at the dinner table. I would argue with my preschool teachers about why they were supporting Ronald Reagan.”

She received a bachelor’s degree from Seattle University and a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University. She has worked on campaigns to combat child labor and trafficking and youth violence. She also has worked in support of immigrant, gender and disability rights.

Conrad said she recognizes the need to separate her personal politics from the needs of the job to support and recruit candidates who can win. She’ll work with 88 local party chapters statewide.

“I have to knit together the entire Democratic Party and make sure there is room for [candidates as diverse as] Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Pramila Jayapal. … I have worked on a number of progressive campaigns. But [my] job is to make sure we find candidates that represent their constituents.”

Gluesenkamp Perez, who co-owns an auto repair shop and who stressed her rural roots and struggles to find health insurance, pulled off an upset because she connected with average voters, Conrad said.

Kent advocated abolishing the FBI, impeaching President Joe Biden, withdrawing military aid to Ukraine and supporting the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Gluesenkamp Perez talked about health care, job training and protecting gun and reproductive rights.

“She was able to channel a message of ‘I am one of you. I am working hard every day to put food on the table, and I am struggling, too,’ ” Conrad said.

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‘I recognize that there are different types of Democrats that are going to be successful in different parts of the state.’

Shasti Conrad, state Democratic Party chair

Looking forward to 2024, Democrats’ campaign strategy aims to contrast their efforts to deliver policies and programs against Republicans’ “hell bent” inclination to fight culture wars, perpetuate election lies, assail individual rights and “sow chaos,” Conrad said.

“That is not what people want, and Marie was ready for that.”

It is widely believed that Gluesenkamp Perez won because because Kent was too extremist for moderate Republicans and independents who have supported Herrera Beutler. Herrera Beutler ran afoul of the party after voting to impeach President Trump after he instigated the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign estimates that 22% of Herrera Beutler’s primary voters defected to the Democratic challenger in the November general election.

Conrad demurred when asked if Republicans lost the congressional seat by nominating Kent and turning out Herrera Beutler. “It’s hard to know how that would have played outed out” had Gluesenkamp Perez faced the longtime incumbent instead of Kent, Conrad said

The race for 2024 already has begun. Gluesenkamp Perez recently told an audience at a Feb. 10 fundraiser in Longview that some Republicans have told her they are glad she beat Kent because they reject his extremism. And Politico reported in February that Republican leadership is divided about continuing to support candidates who lost winnable races — such as Kent.

Nevertheless, Conrad and — I suspect — most other pundits forecast a rematch between Kent and Gluesenkamp Perez in 2024.

“The Republican Party,” Conrad said, “is not interested in course-correcting.”