Reflections on the 2025 election

Left to right: State Sen. Mike Chapman, State Rep. Adam Bernbaum, County Commr. Mark Ozias, County Commr. Mike French.

Clallam Democrats Rising asked four local elected officials to look back on the results of the 2025 election and share their “take-away” lessons for Democrats in Clallam County.

Mark Ozias, Clallam County Commissioner, District 1
My takeaway from the November 2025 election victories for Democrats across the country is primarily that people get excited about, and will come out and vote for, good candidates who speak directly to the "kitchen table" issues that virtually all Americans are facing right now, and who are not afraid to stand up to bullies. I sense that voters’ thirst for a new generation of candidates who are not afraid to champion bold ideas and who are not beholden to entrenched power structures. We need to support candidates who believe in liberty, freedom and the rule of law. We need to understand that the majority of Americans despise Donald Trump and we need to support each other because there are a whole lot of people out there who wish to save democracy in America.

Mike French, Clallam County Commissioner, District 3
When Democrats talk about issues that matter to working-class Americans, we win elections. When we deliver real results on affordability and jobs, the voters respond. This is true historically, and I think it's why we're seeing encouraging results around the country. Shifting our focus back to Clallam County, we need to provide meaningful results on economic development, workforce development, and housing – and we are! Because of the collaborative, non-partisan work of the North Olympic Peninsula Recompete Coalition, we're seeing over $40 million of economic and workforce development funding being deployed over the next five years to create good jobs and connect our residents to good jobs. Because of partnerships that Clallam County fostered with local affordable housing developers, we'll be seeing a 36-unit apartment building coming online in Port Angeles in 2026, with multiple similar developments in the planning pipeline across Clallam County. I think voters want to see action on issues they care about, and they're tired of all the rhetoric. Let's show them results.

Mike Chapman, 24th District State Senator 
My take away from this week’s election is that, throughout the 24th Legislative District, Washington State, and across our country, people will elect Democrats when we focus on affordability, fully funding our public schools, protecting and expanding access to healthcare, and strengthening the social safety net. And, in order to pay for our priorities, we will ask the very wealthy to pay their fair share, like we did in Olympia when the Democrat majority State Senate became the first legislative chamber in the nation to pass a tax on billionaire’s wealth. 

Focusing on middle class issues and asking the very rich to pay more will always be a winning message as we contrast our policies with the evil and destructive Trump executive orders and budget cuts. We need to be proud to stand strong for progressive Democratic values. As one of my Senate colleagues said recently, we need “Democrats to stand strong against Trump and be proud to promote Democratic policies that help the working class!” I couldn’t agree more.

Adam Bernbaum, 24th District State Representative 
Affordability matters most. 

Across the country, voters elected Democratic candidates for positions up and down the ballot. In Virginia and New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill campaigned on affordability as pragmatic moderates. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won a mayoral campaign as a Democratic Socialist who focused relentlessly on affordability. Polling shows that a plurality of Americans say that inflation/pricing are the most important issues facing the country (25%, according to Economist/YouGov). The next most picked option was jobs/economy, with 14%. The respondents who picked these options were bipartisan, closely split between Democrat and Republican. 

National polling provides further evidence. In the Economist/YouGov’s running poll of Trump’s approval on major issues, from January to November 2025, his approval on inflation and pricing fell from about +3% approval to -35% disapproval. The topic with the next highest unfavorables in November was taxes, at -20% disapproval. 

This polling tells a story: Voters are deeply worried about inflation and pricing and believe that Trump is at least partially to blame. Did that perception affect how people voted down-ballot? The evidence suggests it did. In New York, 32% of voters said they voted how they did to oppose Trump. In Virginia and New Jersey, 38 and 40% of Sherrill and Spanberger voters said they voted how they did to oppose Trump. Voters appear to be punishing downballot Republicans because of their connection to Trump and when they think about Trump, their primary opinion on his performance is that they are mostly dissatisfied with pricing and inflation.

​So, what about Washington State? Here I’m going to be a bit more speculative. In April, the Elway Poll found that 51% of respondents in Washington said they were paying more attention to politics and only 8% said they were paying less attention. In Washington State, Deb Krishnadasan and Victoria Hunt won, holding off Republican challengers who withered under attacks tying them to Trump and his agenda. The message “you can’t trust Republicans with Trump at the top,” seems persuasive to voters who are paying more attention to federal politics now than before and who see in state discussions of election policy and gerrymandering a plausible connection between downballot Republican positions and Trump’s anti-democratic tendencies. 

This dynamic seems to be turning out progressive voters and undoing Republican gains with younger, more diverse voters. In Virginia and New Jersey, younger, diverse counties like Hudson, Passaic, and Middlesex that swung sharply to Trump in 2024 swung back to Democrats just as sharply in 2025 (Economist, Nov. 9). 

But this national anti-Trump/affordability narrative, while explaining Democratic wins against Republicans, doesn’t fully capture what happened with Washington’s Democratic races. Here, affordability was a central battleground where a more progressive vision of affordability won the day. In Washington, incumbent Edwin Obras narrowly beat Kevin Schilling in a progressive-on-moderate primary in the 33rd Legislative District (LD). Similarly, incumbent progressive Vandana Slatter beat moderate Amy Walen in an expensive primary fight in the 48th LD. At the time of writing this, incumbent moderate Bruce Harrell appears to have narrowly lost his lead and is on track to lose his reelection bid for Mayor of Seattle to Katie Wilson, a young, progressive challenger. [Ed note: Harrell has now conceded to Wilson.]

What about an anti-establishment hypothesis? The evidence here is ambiguous across races, but generally not persuasive. Obras is the incumbent, but he was appointed, and Schilling had strong name ID in the district and may have felt more like an establishment candidate. Krishnadasan was a first-time candidate, but her opponent has been on the ballot for almost a decade. Hunt, similarly, ran against a candidate who has been on the ballot since 2012, although Hunt had also been a city councilmember in Issaquah prior to her election. I mention this to flag that if there is an anti-establishment streak to voter behavior this year, it’s hard to detect given local dynamics, and it seems to have been washed out by voters ready to return progressive legislators to Olympia. What is still unclear, in my opinion, is whether that reflects higher progressive engagement driven by Trump or an ideological shift to the left.

​But, to return to my original claim, one thing all of these candidates talked about was affordability. Their approaches varied in how they talked about affordability, but each of these candidates made it an important part of their reelection campaign, if not the center of their reelection campaign. We’ll likely learn more as polling begins to eke out over the next couple months before the 2026 midterms, but expect to continue to see campaigns focused on how we can lower costs.