- Washington State
- State Senator Andy Hill
Republican Andy Hill is in a hotly contested race against Democratic challenger Matt Isenhower to represent the Kirkland and Sammamish area in the Washington State Senate.
And Hill seems to be worried, according to an audio recording provided to The Stranger. At a fundraiser at the Hyatt hotel in Bellevue on October 18, he apparently described his race as the “tightest” among the close races this year for state senate seats. If the Democrats manage to displace two Republicans, they’ll flip the entire senate to Democratic control, he warned his supporters, and they need to step up their ground game.
The recording was made by progressive political group Fuse Washington, whose communications director, Collin Jergens, says it sent someone to attend the King County Republican Party Liberty Dinner and Auction (tickets were $125 each) that day. The voice on the recording sounds like Hill’s voice and at the beginning of the recording “Senator Andy Hill” is invited to come up and give a speech to the gathering.
At the 6:15-minute mark (listen here), the person introduced as Senator Hill talks about how his canvassers—you can see some of Senator Hill’s canvassers on his campaign’s Facebook page—”do not look like ones the Democrats are sending out.” What does this mean?
“This is what a Democrat said,” the speaker continues. “I won’t answer the door because they look like thugs.”
Here’s a photo of a Democratic canvassing team that fanned out across Hill’s district in early September, a month before Hill’s fundraiser:
- Courtesy Fuse Washington
And here are the remarks as I transcribed them:
Speaker: So what the KCGOP has been doing is building a phenomenal field team to match this. We’ve got a bunch of the field team back here. Where are they? Stand Up!
Audience: (claps)
Speaker: These are the people that go door to door, knocking on doors, advocating for us, trying to figure out if you’re Republican or Democrat, trying to get you to turn in your ballot. Um, reports, they do not look like the ones the Democrats are sending out… This is what a Democrat said, I won’t answer the door because they look like thugs.
Audience: (silence and spotted notes of laughter)
Speaker: Alright. So that’s what we are up against. That’s what we’re raising money for, is to fund this field team.
Hill’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on the Fuse recording.
“Calling communities of color or volunteers thugs, or making any inference to that point, is not appropriate,” said Seattle-King County NAACP Economic Development Chair Sheley Secret.
I asked her whether Hill needs to apologize. “He’s said how he feels about the community residents that he represents—that says enough,” she said. “There’s not an apology that would take that away.”
You can read our endorsement in this race over here. (Spoiler: “Vote for a pro-human state government. Vote Isenhower.”)