2026 WA midterm elections results

It looks like it's going to, 57% to 43% for I-638, getting the yes vote. But the third initiative, also failing. Yeah, so right now this is a little bit closer. It's a parent bill of rights, 53% to 47%. So we'll see what happens with this one. But this one was to expand access to student records from public schools, including medical records and academic records. And so this has been a constant back and forth on this issue for a while now. But so far, The no vote is getting the 53% leading the yes. So basically the initiative for this, they were trying to make it easier for parents to get access to student records. It looks like that. Effort is losing at this point. So not very welcome news for Brian Haywood, who is the person behind all of those three initiatives that we were telling you about. And Lauren Donovan is with Brian Haywood right now, or was talking to him earlier. Lauren, what is the vibe there? Because it looks like at least one of the three is going forward, but you've got two of his initiatives that they're not looking good. To be honest with you, Well, we thought we had wrapped up with Brian Haywood for the night, Hannah, but here he is, down to talk to us again after you talked to us media folks for quite a while. You were fired up earlier. Let's talk about what do you feel like your biggest win of the night is in terms of these three ballot initiatives? Clearly, it's the girls' sports. And in some ways, that's probably the most let's-go-Washington thing we did, which is giving voice to people that felt like they'd been bullied by the system, by Olympia. And we had, you know, Annalie and Francis were... It was hard to keep it dry when Frances started crying because it looks like we're gonna win that one. So that to me is the big win. Yeah, we were cameras rolling. We saw you down there with her earlier, definitely getting emotional. Talk to me about the impact that the controversy out of Cam has had and maybe summarize what happened in your point of view for the viewers who are not familiar with this national headline making story. Well, there was two points to it, right? One was a boy who had competed on the Boys team came in 76th on the JV team, decided to switch teams and compete on the girls team, and then suddenly was second place in varsity. And what was really impactful down in Camas, and I don't know that this has really happened anywhere else in the United States, is that 12 girls on his team decided to walk off. They started a race, and then they walked off. And if you watch the camera, they didn't go off celebrating. They weren't like, oh, yeah, we did something really brave. They went off and to the side, and they cried. And To me, that's very moving and it should move people to look at that and go, why are we making 15, 16 year old girls fight this fight? There are other ways to handle the whole transports issue rather than forcing 16 year olds to be caught in the middle of this political firestorm. And earlier you were telling me, Brian, that you think what happened there in Camas had a hand in the outcome tonight. Absolutely, yeah. What's been very interesting is that a lot of the response from people is, well, that's not happening. There's not that many people. OSPI Chris Reichdahl has said, oh, it's only 5 to 10, and then he said it's 10, and then he said, well, it's, you know, whether it's 10, 15, however many, but what we saw in Camas was that one boy impacted 50 girls on this team and impacted another team that didn't go to go to state because he was on that team and impacted any girl that was going to be second, then came in third because he was up on the podium, and then a girl that didn't get to go to state because he was there. The impact on this was actually quite enormous. It's enormous. Everyone got to see it in full display in Camas because he had run on, it wasn't like he didn't have a place. He wasn't like he couldn't compete in sports. He was on the boys team, switched the girls team, and girls had to pay the cost for his vanity project. Now let's talk about parents' bill of rights. It seems like the margin, Hannah and David were just going through the numbers for us here. It seems like the margin is tighter there, 53 to 47, if I heard correctly. All right, how are we feeling about that versus our conversation we had earlier? I'm an incurable optimist, right? So even, but I think that as we look at the numbers, I think it'll tighten. And I think that I'm hoping that we can squeak out a win on that one. We knew going in, it was going to be tight because the ballot language was so confusing. And we know that the no campaign on this just dropped a ton of money in the Seattle area in the last week. They dropped about half a million dollars just to... To try to confuse the issue there was some really actually grotesque ads. They should be shamed of it, right? And despite that, if we're able to pull this off, it affirms that the Washingtonian voters are a lot smarter than the no and the Olympia thinks they are. All right, final thoughts, the repealing of the income tax, the millionaire's tax, call it what you want. How do we feel about it now? Is the returns not what you hoped? Definitely not what we hoped, but as I said earlier, I think this is Bob Ferguson's income tax. It's gonna be Bob Ferguson's economy for the next two years, and every time a company shuts down, lays off employees, and those businesses that don't come here, that's on Bob Ferguson. Okay, here we are, we're getting wrapped up to leave this barn shortly. Brian, what is on the forefront of your mind as you're gonna go to bed tonight, and you're telling me you're not throwing the towel in on several issues just yet, or what's front of mind for you? I think the question of... Why in the world is the Washington state government withholding members dues to pay to a private union, right? The SEIU, the WEA and the WFC, all are private unions, even though they're public employees. The state is acting as an agent for those unions and taking money on their behalf from employees. And I have a question of why is the state involved in this business at all? I should be talking about these other things, but when they dropped last two years ago, the unions collectively dropped about $20 million on us, on our head, and won. And this time they've, I don't know, estimates probably in the $17 million range. Thank you very much. Why is the state giving... We're helping them take money, which they can then turn around and give to state elected officials. And if you can de-wonkify that just slightly for the viewers at home, right? Okay. What does that mean in terms of the returns we saw tonight? Well, tonight on the income tax, they spent 14, the public unions, the SEIU union, the teachers union, they spent $14 million, somewhere in that range. To try to convince people that this was not an income tax that was only going to stay on rich people. And they convinced enough people, it looks like, that said, okay, maybe that's not ever going to come down. Why should the state be helping fund the campaign of the public unions? Who's going to benefit from? That's really the question. Who's going to benefit? The public unions are going to benefit from this income tax. The public union bosses. And I don't think the state should be putting its hand on the lever and funding. Their funding process. Well, it's been a long day. Thank you for your time and your efforts and continuously speaking to us throughout the night. My pleasure. Not sure if I de-wonkified that or not, but I appreciate you asking the question. It all gets a little wonky with all these ballot measures. Well, these are the final thoughts from Brian Haywood here in Redmond tonight. We'll send it back to you guys there in the studio. All right, thank you very much. Let's talk about a closely watched race nationally as well. That's House District 3 race. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, looks like she is Is going to be headed back to Washington again. The vote, 55% to Senator John Braun's 44%. 67% of the vote counted, so it would take a miracle probably for the numbers to close. But she seemed very enthusiastic in her speech. I don't want to teach, not, I would say she is actually claiming victory in the speech that we saw. John Braun is still somewhat hopeful, and he says let's wait till the numbers come in and see what happens. So let's go out to AJ Jannebel. He's with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez's campaign tonight. AJ, when we first came to you at 8 o'clock, the numbers were in Senator Braun's favor, and then they quickly shifted as her county came in, and now it looks like she has a strong lead. I know, David, it kind of goes back and forth. I feel like de-wonkified needs to be added to the jargon. That was such a perfect word. I'm over here like, I love that. But yeah, so we start off right at 8 o'clock, and these numbers come in, and they're going against everything that- Experts and analysts were believing as Braun is leading the original ballot drop and you have Marie Gluesenkamp Perez who's expected to speak sometime during the 8 o'clock hour. So those original numbers showing a very different story than we're now seeing. When Gluesenkamp Perez did finally come out, took the stage, spoke to her supporters here, that was when that shift happened. As you heard- Rather, as you mentioned, it wasn't official, right? She didn't say, I'm the winner, but it was a victory speech. She's very confident. She, in her own words, seems to be moving forward, even though, from my understanding, Braun has not come out and spoken to these results. Nothing official, but these numbers are showing that it does seem that incumbent. Gluesenkamp-Perez will keep her seat, a seat that had so much attention on it because of the implications nationally of the impacts it could have on the House. But now, as we are seeing, the Democrats do control the House with Gluesenkamp-Perez maintaining her seat. This will be the first time in a few years that she is now heading back to a Democratic-controlled House. With both Democrats controlling the House and Senate, it will lead to the questions of How they can move forward, we still have Donald Trump, a Republican, in that position as the president. So that will be an interesting thing as these representatives are making their way back to Washington DC. What will they be able to move forward? Gluesenkamp Perez, speaking on her own politics, even though she is a Democrat, she represents in her own words, the messages, the values, the important things that the communities here in District 3 have. Find important and sometimes that veers away from the traditional democratic values and she speaks to that. She does not want to be seen as a professional politician. She does not want to be seen in some instances, I would say, as a traditional politician. She kind of wears that true hometown voice. As what she wants to be perceived as we got a chance to hear from her as those numbers were coming out and what she feels is most important as it looks like she will be heading back to Washington. That's what you have to say. The folks at the ports, in our mills, on our farms, in our woods. So many of you pick up the phone when I call before a vote and tell me what it would actually do to your school, your grocery store, our woods. I have profound gratitude for that, because that's how you get good federal policy. You do not get good federal policy if you don't show up with loyalty to your district, With humility. Talking about those hometown values, a different part of Washington for a lot of our viewers. You come all the way down to southwest Washington, and they have different values. And Marie Glusenkamp-Perez says that she wants to represent those folks, and really it doesn't matter for her how that falls politically, because she wants to be the voice for this community. Another thing that she really... Put a lot of attention on is not being funded by these big political powerhouses talking about the difficulties that they would have faced with so much money, she said, being dumped into this campaign and the difficulties of having big politicians dropping in millions and millions of dollars in this race. One thing that she is talking about is wanting to get back to Washington, kind of pull that curtain back. From her own words, she makes it seem like there is a lot of change that she wants to see in the House in Washington DC. She speaks to wanting to bring those traditional values that are so strong. To this district, to the House, and so as we have been saying, she hasn't said officially, but as we've been saying, it does seem that she will have that opportunity as those early numbers are showing. David, Hannah. AJ, thank you so much. So of course, we're talking about John Braun, that was her opponent. And John Braun, for a lot of people in the Republican side of things, they know him very well because he's been a state senator for the past 13 years or so, so he's a well-known person. And it's a district that he has been representing, which was Cowlitz, Lewis, Clark, and Thurston So those counties are also included, some of those counties are included in District 3. So people are familiar with John Braun, and he was going in feeling kind of good about it. Obviously, the number's not shaping up the way he wanted. That's where we're going to go next to Jennifer Dowling, who has been covering the John Braun party out there in Chehalis. Obviously, no longer a party behind you, but what are you hearing tonight, Jennifer? Well, it definitely has quieted down. The supporters have trickled out. We're hearing they're still watching those returns, wondering if Lewis County, along with Cowlitz County and others in the rural areas might. Come in with more support for Braun. So they're keeping an eye on that. Now, Braun told us just about an hour or so ago that it's no secret they've had some pretty good headwinds nationally. And he said, I think it's important, even though we have those national headwinds, we try to maintain a balance here in Washington state and also in Washington, D.C. And he told me that was one of the reasons that he decided to run, because he said the race was important to provide balance to the state and to the country. When I asked him how tight the race He says, we don't really know yet how the turnout is going to be. He expected it to be very tight. He said he's been saying that for over a year. So he's known that this was going to be a tight race going in. And so far, he said that this just reinforces that. It's been very, very close. We've been talking to voters every day, he said. And even today, they were out in Kelso and Chelan's sign waving, talking to voters and constituents and just trying to get out their vote, get out their supporters. So he told us he was. He was feeling cautiously optimistic earlier, and he really wants to just wait till those returns come in before he makes any kind of decision. So I asked him, do you think if we will know? Who wins tonight? He said, this is Washington, so we often don't know in these tight races. He says, I certainly hope so, quote, for all of our peace of mind here, but it would be nice, but there is a reasonable chance it unfolds over the next couple days. So that is why he is waiting to make a decision on whether he concedes or not, even though Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is ahead so far. He said affordability has been a big issue in this race. As you can imagine, it's been a big issue nationally. And this is what he had to say earlier about how that impacted the race. Take a listen. At the national level, I think there's two, maybe three big issues. It's tax policy, taxes that are competitive and predictable and people can plan for. And I think we've made some progress there. It's also energy policy. And we have both some good and some bad in the last couple of years. We had all of the above energy strategies started by the administration. But it really needs to be, you know. Backed up by Congress, and then we have the events in Iran that we need to wrap up in a clear way, hopefully sooner rather than later, because of the impact that's having on fuel prices in particular. And when I asked him about his relationship with Trump, he said he agrees with the administration on some things, disagrees on other things. And that's been his message. He said he's been playing. He says he's told voters where he agrees and disagrees. And he said if he were to be elected to Congress, his job would be to work in the interests of Southwest Washington, not necessarily the administration. He said, again, he does agree with the administration on some things. So that's been his platform from the start. Again, we're still waiting to see if this blue wave continues here in southwest Washington or if John Braun can pull off a win. But again, he's not conceding tonight. He says he wants to wait till more votes come in. He says, again, this could be a days-long process here in Washington state. Reporting live in Chehalis, Jennifer Dowling, FOX 13 News. All right Jennifer, thank you very much and let's bring our political analysts in right now. Right now. What do you think? Do you think that there is any hope at all for John Brown or do you think that just the Democrats showed up in just so much force that Marie is crushing the vote? These are really strong numbers for Marie Perez here and I think that It's very, very unlikely at this point that we'll see these numbers shift. I will say one thing about Marie, I did her first race back in 2022 when she had one of the biggest upsets of the country, if not the biggest upset. She flipped it. She flipped the seat, right. No Democrat has won Washington three in a federal or statewide race since 2010, except Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. She has built a brand for herself, an identity that's different from the... Identity of the Democratic Party and that I think really played into the success we saw from her tonight. Yeah, clearly there is a magic sauce there that you said, I mean, again in 2022, she flipped that and that was a big upset back then and she continues to keep it, right? This is the third time she has run. Randy, I do want to ask you as a Republican though, right? When you look at this, the blue tsunami as Governor Ferguson called it across the country. Tomorrow, what do Republicans have to do now because it's almost as if the voters are saying we don't like the direction of this country, so you need to change. So do they go into Congress or wherever and they say, okay, we're gonna have to push back on Trump a little bit here? Well, they'll be in the minority in both houses of Congress. And so they will change, they'll have smaller offices. They will no longer be the chairman of their committee, so those things will change. And the unfortunate thing about Donald Trump telling everybody, act like I'm on the ballot, is the Democrats took him seriously, and they turned out, and the Republicans did not. And you have an excellent candidate like John Braun. Who has a very prestigious career in the State Senate and it's hard to get candidates like that to step up in the age of Trump in Washington State. Because since 2016, Republicans have underperformed across the board. And you can lay that at the feet of Trump. And he might blame other people, but it's fairly clear that the rebuke here is of the Of his character, of his policies. And real quick too, I want to segue away from Congress right now. I want to talk about Olympia. I want to talk about what is going on because I think this is very important. So right now, as we know, we have a majority Democrat in Olympia. It's been that way for a long time. It appears as though you guys were talking about a potentially super majority, which means a two-third Democratic control, which is significant, because if they reach that, we're talking about they're able to do a lot of things like constitutional amendments without Republican support or anything like that. They have a quorum without any Republicans showing up. So what does that mean? Is that going to happen? Do you see that happening? It's the Democrats' holy grail, and they're very close to it. And, you know, Sandy mentioned the gerrymander. Earlier, one place where the gerrymander was very successful was in Washington State, when Democrats got a Democrat judge in eastern Washington to redraw the legislative districts in Yakima. And he reached out and redrew, what was it, 22 different districts, and made the Yakima district less Hispanic. Even though the reason for the lawsuit was because Hispanics weren't being represented. And those seats are currently, there's a House seat there that the Democrats might win, which would be their first seat in eastern Washington, other than Spokane, in about 10 years. Thank you very much. The gerrymander also impacted southwest Washington. Democrats could pick up four. Wow. In Southwest Washington against Republican incumbents. And they're also winning in some other areas or leading in some other areas. As we know, there's still a lot of votes to be counted. But right now, they took good advantage of that gerrymander. Sandeep, any thoughts? Well, I don't think it was the primary driver here is gerrymandering or shenanigans by Democrats or anything like that. What's happened here is that the Republican Party has basically collapsed in Western Washington in the era of Trump. As recently as 2017, Republicans still controlled one house of the state legislature. But 2017, of course, is when Trump first came into office. And we have seen the state Republican Party tie itself to Trump in ways that has caused them, at least in western Washington, to start losing areas that were ten years ago red. And we're seeing that process play out election after election. Democrat majorities have been growing. And look, they need seven seats in the House to get to the supermajority. I think they're up in five or six races just tonight. Um, so, you know, at some point, I think Republicans have to kind of look in the mirror and say, why aren't we connecting with the voters here? And maybe we need to kind of rethink how we how we talk to them and where what we stand for. All right. Thanks, guys. We appreciate it.