Ten million dollars, hours of television ads, truckloads of mailers and a handful of national news media stories later, Eastern Washington continues to be represented by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
Republicans and political observers said Wednesday, after the dust settled, that the result shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Brown had been the presumptive Democratic candidate for months, even before that primary showing. On paper, she seemed the perfect candidate to run against McMorris Rodgers, a long-serving incumbent with a lengthy legislative record that Brown and her supporters could pick apart, said Cornell Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy at Washington State University.
“I was sort of surprised, but not too surprised. I think Lisa didn’t run the kind of campaign she needed to beat Cathy,” Clayton said of Tuesday’s results. “I think she needed to go after Cathy’s record more.”