Dunn’s actual views on abortion are a little inscrutable, which I’ll get to in a minute. But politically, the wisdom was that by going over to the anti-Roe v. Wade side, Dunn had made a mistake in a purple district in a blue state.
“I believe Reagan Dunn has just given a gift to the Democratic incumbent Kim Schrier,” said Ursula Reutin, a local radio talk show host at KIRO. “Just a reminder: a majority of voters in Washington are pro-choice. A majority of the country wants Roe v. Wade to be protected in some form.”
All true, and yet: There’s no position more hazardous in our polarized politics than to be caught reaching across the aisle.
I covered Dunn’s race for attorney general 10 years ago. In January 2012, he became one of the early Republicans to back same-sex marriage. That might not seem like a big deal now. But Dunn put himself out there four months before the Democratic president, Barack Obama, backed same-sex marriage. And more than a year before Hillary Clinton did.
What happened next was a preview of how clannish politics would become.
Dunn got shunned by his own party. He was disinvited to some GOP dinners and booed at some party events. At the same time, he got zero credit from Democrats or their voters. In the election he got wiped out in the bluest counties in the state.
His was a case study in how politics increasingly is “not about the facts or any sort of reality, it’s about group identity,” as Washington State University political science professor Cornell Clayton put it to me recently. Social or cultural sorting is what drives elections; policy stands, not so much. The issues are ways to signal which faction you belong to.
You can see this happening with the leaked draft opinion overthrowing Roe v. Wade. It’s not an environment where free thinking is likely to be rewarded.
Dunn’s stance on abortion, which he learned from his late mom, former state Rep. Jennifer Dunn, has not been easy to parse. He takes a libertarian view that government shouldn’t be involved in reproductive decisions. That seemed to make him pro-choice.
But now he’s voted against Roe v. Wade — which is what granted all American women the liberty to make these decisions for themselves. He says he now wants authority returned to the states. That would put 50 different governments, not individual women, in charge.
Dunn’s mom was able to navigate the middle channel on this, but that was a gentler era. “This is not something we can squish on,” one of Dunn’s pro-life GOP challengers, Matt Larkin, urged about abortion at a recent debate. “People are tired of squishes right now. We need steel-spined conservatives standing for something.”
Do we? The district’s voters lean pro-choice. Plus people say they want politicians who grasp complexity and aren’t scorched-earth crusaders.
But Larkin may be depressingly right about the true state of politics today. The issues or their details are bulldozed by strong tribal signaling.
I think Dunn learned his lesson from the last time. It didn’t matter a whit that he turned out to be 100 percent politically right about same-sex marriage. Stick your neck out, your head gets chopped off. And so another one ducks into line.
