U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse is strongly anti-abortion. He gets near-perfect scores from the NRA. He wants to build a wall on the southern border and warns that the “Radical Left and mainstream news media” are trying to destroy “our country, our values and our God-given rights.”
He is, by almost any measure, a very conservative Republican politician.
Yet in the most conservative district in Washington — a region covering vast swaths of farmland, reservations and wilderness between the Canadian border and the Columbia River — Newhouse is in the fight of his political life entirely because of one vote where he failed to toe the party line, one act of Republican apostasy.
Newhouse voted to impeach Donald Trump after Trump sat in the White House watching television, while a mob of his supporters, spurred on by his lies about a stolen election, violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress met to tally electoral votes and certify Joe Biden’s victory.
Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump. Newhouse is one of only two remaining in office. Both could be gone after this election.
Newhouse faces Jerrod Sessler, a Republican businessman running with Trump’s endorsement, who says he was inspired to run because of the events of Jan. 6. Sessler was at the Capitol that day but says he didn’t go inside the building.
More than 1,000 people have been convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, with several hundred trials still pending.
Republicans face off in Central Washington
Rep. Dan Newhouse and Jerrod Sessler are battling for a seat in Washington’s 4th Congressional District, the most conservative district in the state.
Source: Washington State Redistricting Commission (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)
“It was a setup,” Sessler said in a phone interview. “They stole the 2020 election. They wanted a reason to prevent President Trump from ever being able to run for office again. Their backup plan was to basically say, look, he caused an insurrection.”
Who is the “they” in this plot?
“DNC, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, but you know, it’s deeper than that, Obamas, Clintons, they’re all involved in this,” Sessler said.
There is no credible evidence the attack on the Capitol was a setup or that there was widespread fraud or wrongdoing in the 2020 election.
Four people who stormed the Capitol died that day — one was shot by police, one had a heart attack, one had a stroke and one overdosed on amphetamines. Five police officers who were defending the Capitol died in the days and weeks following the attack, four by suicide.
Sessler also recently told the Yakima Herald-Republic he doesn’t think Muslims should be in Congress.
“There is no way that a devout Muslim should be in Congress because they can’t take the oath of office,” Sessler said. “Their fundamental belief system is anti-American.”
Muslims can and have taken the oath of office. Three Muslims currently serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“It is nonsensical for people who love and appreciate all that it is to be American to vote for a Muslim,” Sessler later wrote on social media.
The First Amendment to the Constitution forbids Congress from making laws establishing a religion or prohibiting free exercise of religion.
Sessler won the eight-person August primary with 33% of the vote, to just 23% for Newhouse. It’s the second election in a row, and the second election since his impeachment vote, that Newhouse collected only around a quarter of the vote in the primary.
But Newhouse is hoping, like in 2022, enough voters will come around to him once they’re presented with a binary choice. In 2022, he faced a Democrat in the general election after multiple pro-Trump Republicans, including Sessler, split the primary vote.
The other remaining Republican U.S. House member who voted to impeach, Rep. David Valadao, is in a toss-up race with a Democratic challenger in a district representing California’s San Joaquin Valley.
This year, Sessler and Newhouse combined for about 56% of the vote in the primary, meaning a big chunk of the electorate will be choosing one of the two for the first time this year. Both campaigns are competing for the 20% of primary voters who backed Tiffany Smiley, a nurse and former U.S. Senate candidate who entered the race late and also got Trump’s endorsement. Smiley has not endorsed in the race and did not respond to requests for comment.
If Newhouse survives, it likely will be with the help of the 35% or so of the 4th Congressional District’s voters who typically vote Democratic but this year have nowhere else to go.
Cornell Clayton, director of the Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University, said Newhouse is counting on his deep relationship with the agricultural community, as well as Democratic votes, to pull him through.
“I assume most Democrats will vote for Newhouse,” Clayton said.
Sessler said he was “not worried at all” about Democratic voters potentially siding with Newhouse. But his campaign has sought to give attention to Cherissa Boyd, a Democratic candidate mounting a write-in campaign that could siphon votes from Newhouse. Sessler initially touted seven debates but then pulled out of the debates that were ultimately agreed upon because Boyd was not invited to participate.
Newhouse, 69, declined to be interviewed for this story. He canceled an interview less than 10 minutes before it was scheduled and then said he would have no availability for the next two weeks.
Newhouse, a Yakima Valley farmer whose farm grows hops, fruit and alfalfa, first won his congressional seat in 2014, after previous stints in the state Legislature and leading the state Department of Agriculture.
In a district blanketed by fields and orchards, heavily dependent on immigrant workers, Newhouse has long championed bipartisan immigration reforms to overhaul the guest worker program and offer undocumented farmworkers a path to legal residence.
Those efforts are absent from his campaign website, which promises to “defund all sanctuary cities, fully secure our border, build a wall on the southern border, and fix our dangerous immigration system.”
When he voted to impeach, Newhouse said Trump “did not strongly condemn the attack nor did he call in reinforcements when our officers were overwhelmed,” and he “failed to fulfill his oath of office.”
But while he stands by his vote, he’s now ready to give Trump another term in office.
His “plan,” he’s said, is to vote for Trump. “I can’t see myself voting for (Kamala) Harris,” he said earlier this month.
“We got a lot done when he was president,” Newhouse said this summer. “I worked very well with the executive branch. I see that continuing.”
Sessler, 55, grew up and lived most of his life in Burien, before moving to Prosser, in Benton County, in 2019, according to voting records.
He served for four years in the Navy after high school and later drove stock cars on a minor league racing circuit. He owns HomeTask, an online platform that connects homeowners with nearby handymen and other service providers. He’s previously launched several other businesses or franchises, including Hot Feet Fitness, a workout program conducted in hot yoga studios, and Freggies, an organic produce delivery company.
Sessler has written three books, including a memoir on surviving cancer, a workout guide and a diet guide.
Asked whom he admires in Congress, Sessler lists many of the farthest right members of the House of Representatives: Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
In addition to the Trump impeachment vote, Sessler criticized Newhouse for voting in 2022 to protect same-sex marriage, legislation pushed by Democrats in case the Supreme Court reversed its decision legalizing same-sex marriage. He faults Newhouse for voting to fund a new FBI headquarters, and for various votes over the years that have funded the government while adding to the national debt.
“I just wouldn’t go along with any of that,” Sessler said.
Sessler has paid for most of his modestly funded campaign out of his own pocket. He’s self-funded $350,000 of the approximately $550,000 that his campaign has raised.
Newhouse has raised more than $2 million, giving him a substantial financial advantage in the race.
He’s also got the support of two outside groups, the Defending Main Street Super PAC and Clearpath Action Fund, which typically support non-Trump aligned Republicans. The two groups have spent a combined $355,000 supporting Newhouse.
