Conventional wisdom says that house Speaker Frank Chopp, 56 years old and now in his eighth term in Olympia, is simply unbeatable. Over the last decade, the guarded moderate from Seattle's pot-loving, tree-hugging, gay-snuggling 43rd District has never earned less than 84 percent of the vote in any of his reelection campaigns. He has the loyalty of a number of liberal politicians who he helped put into office after taking over as house Speaker in 1998 and engineering the chamber's current Democratic supermajority. And yet his biggest source of power comes from a neat trick he's managed to pull off: representing a hard-left constituency that lives in Fremont, Wallingford, Capitol Hill, Madison Park, and downtown Seattle, while still earning strong support from conservative business interests such as Wal-Mart and the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW).

"Frank Chopp has zero vulnerability in the 43rd," said Jamie Pedersen, the district's other, more recently elected Democratic house member.

That's the party line, anyway.

But not very far beneath this aura of invincibility lies a huge amount of progressive discontent with Chopp's leadership in Olympia, and a feeling that he's more focused on cautiously protecting his supermajority than on putting that power to use in implementing a progressive agenda. At a certain point, all that liberal discontent—boiling over of late because of Chopp's stagnation on labor and social-justice issues—becomes a liability for a man who hails from what is arguably the most progressive district in the state.

And if the tough talk in certain lefty circles is any indication, that point may now have arrived.

Some labor leaders are furious at Chopp for pushing through a budget this year that was all cuts and no tax increases. Other labor leaders are irate about his failure to back a worker privacy bill that would have protected employees from being forced to attend anti-union meetings. Feeling good because of its key role in beating back Tim Eyman's budget-freezing Initiative 1033 earlier this month, organized labor is now gearing up to support challenges next election against incumbent Democrats who don't support its interests—incumbent Democrats like Chopp.

Ben Lawver, political director for the Washington State Labor Council, said there's about $400,000 in labor's new fund for picking off problematic Democrats and that no one has been ruled out as a target. "If there's an incumbent Democrat who doesn't support us, and if there's a viable challenge, then yeah, we'll support it," he said, making clear that Chopp is included in that statement. "We'll be watching everybody closely."

In addition, civil rights advocates—while pleased that Chopp has backed expanding domestic­-partnership rights for gays and lesbians and supported restoring voting rights for felons who've served their time—have been disappointed by Chopp on other matters. The disappointments range from his failure to make progress on three-strikes-you're-out reform to his lack of support for death-­penalty abolition and marijuana decriminalization. "On marijuana, I would think that his district, if any district, would be very progressive," said Shankar Narayan, legislative director for the local chapter of the ACLU.

"I don't think Frank's popular in his own district," said one Democratic legislator, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "He loves to send things to the ballot; his district doesn't. He supported [Eyman's revenue-slashing] Initiative 695 on the house floor; his district didn't. His district was ground zero against the elevated viaduct; he was for elevated. The largest employer in his district is the University of Washington, but he's anti–higher education—the largest proposed cuts in the legislature this year were his cuts to the state's higher-education system, in part the UW."

Representative Brendan Williams, a Democrat from Olympia who has long been an outspoken critic of Chopp, also suggested that the Speaker has abandoned his constituents. "To what degree has he really defended Seattle?" Williams asked.

He then answered his own question by noting that the bill putting Seattle on the hook for any cost overruns from construction of the tunnel under downtown, though introduced by a Democrat from Mercer Island, "was actually Frank's provision that he got her to introduce." And, Williams noted, when Chopp's backers in the state builders' association spent $160,000 in 2008 on billboards across the state saying "Don't Let Seattle Steal This Election"—an implicit call for conservative voters to pick Republican Dino Rossi for governor over Democrat Christine Gregoire—Chopp failed to join the Democratic leadership in condemning the campaign.

"It would take someone extremely courageous to take Frank on," Williams admitted. "His campaign coffers would be filled by Wal-Mart, BIAW, and other corporate entities." But, he added: "I think the disaffection of progressives has been clear."

Chopp, in an e-mailed statement, said he was firmly in step with his district, and he noted that the state labor council had given him a 100-­percent score in four out of the last five years.

"I work hard every day to represent the values of the people of the 43rd District and earn their trust and support," Chopp said. "Progress on issues like providing all Washington children with health-care coverage, protecting the poor and vulnerable, controlling predatory lending, and expanding domestic partnerships are just a few of the things that we have achieved with the support of my constituents. In the time I've been Speaker, over $1 billion has been invested in the Housing Trust Fund, which has included 60 low-­income-housing projects in our district alone."

Progressives have tried to knock off a moderate-leaning incumbent from Seattle before. In 2004, labor unions targeted pro-choice Democrat Helen Sommers in the primary because she failed to halt corporate tax breaks and opposed raising pay for home health-care workers. The challenge fell short; Sommers was easily reelected.

But the new top-two primary system could change the game for Chopp next year, the Democratic legislator who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, because it would allow a Democrat (rather than a Republican) to challenge Chopp in the general election. "It would take a strong candidate who reflected the 43rd District's environmental and higher-education values," the legislator said. But the candidate's message could be simply: "You gotta do something with those majorities."

Labor, for its part, sees the upcoming legislative session in Olympia as an opportunity for Chopp to redeem himself—and also inoculate himself against a potential challenge in 2010 from the left.

"I imagine there will be bills where people can show their support or lack of support for labor," said Lawver, of the labor council.

And if Chopp doesn't?

"For an incumbent who doesn't support us, there will be multiple possibilities," Lawver said.