From MAGA pastor to J6 prosecutor, what's hot in WA politics

What do a MAGA megachurch pastor and a Jan. 6 prosecutor have in common?

Well neither has any political experience. Yet in a sign of the polarized times, they’ve raised the most campaign cash of any state House candidates in Washington.

Candidate filing for this August’s primary election ended last week, and the two hottest campaigns right out of the gate are by outsiders.

There are 98 races for state representative across Washington, with about 200 total candidates. In an unusual twist, the two money-leaders are also both challenging incumbents in their own parties.

“People want change, that’s what’s in the air,” said Steve Finley, a longtime campaign consultant for Democratic candidates and issues. “You can sense that the public is fed up with waiting around for incumbents to give up their seats and retire.”

What kind of change? These two campaigns both get some of their fuel from you-know-who.

The top-raising legislative candidate in the state is an assistant pastor at a Wenatchee church, Adam James. When he told his congregation at Grace City Church he was going to file as a Republican to go up against the incumbent GOPer - a moderate, Chamber of Commerce-type named Mike Steele - they raised more than $200,000 for him in 24 hours.

The newcomer now sits at $328,000 raised - more than 10 times what the incumbent Steele has brought in.

That’s “an insanely large amount of money to raise for someone who is running against an incumbent of his own party without the support of any of the normal deep pockets of Washington politics,” summed up Paul Queary, a former campaign consultant who writes The Washington Observer. “There’s no union money, no corporate money, and no lobbyist money.”

James is featured on a poster for an upcoming men-only, Christian nationalist event at the Gorge Amphitheatre - one also featuring former Mars Hill Church pastor Mark Driscoll.

“We’re grown men made in God’s image, fitted to fight,” says a section of the website, called Project Mancard.

“We declare that Olympia is God’s, in Jesus’ name,” Grace City’s lead pastor, Josh McPherson, said at James’ candidacy announcement. “We declare that Washington is God’s. Oh, there’s those Christians talking about dominion again. That’s exactly right. Jesus claims victory and power and authority over the political realm.”

So that’s what’s clicking right now over on the right. The other hot campaign is the opposite.

I wrote a while back about the Seattle attorney who prosecuted a few dozen of the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” Capitol rioters. Will Dreher is in private practice now, and his Democratic campaign for the Legislature, in Seattle’s 46th District, has raised the second most of any House candidate in the state.

Dreher raked in $185,000 in about a month, also eclipsing the incumbent in that race, Rep. Gerry Pollet, D-Seattle.

Finley said first-time candidates like Dreher tend to rely on work connections to raise money, because they start out unknown. But “being the guy who went after the J6 rioters” is obviously a campaign jumpstarter in Seattle.

That these two candidacies are the ones to catch fire early says a lot about this political moment. You’re either all-in with Trump’s MAGA movement, or you’re all-out. What’s not so fashionable right now? Good old bipartisan problem-solving.

Finley said the candidate field itself has also polarized. Example: There are a whopping 18 Democratic legislative incumbents who are facing challengers from inside their own party. This includes two of the top-ranking Democrats in Olympia, state Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen of Seattle, and House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon of Burien.

In 2024, only four Democratic incumbents faced fights within the family.”

“It used to be regarded as ‘not nice’ to go after an incumbent in your own party,” Finley said. “Those days are gone.”

So many districts are strongly tilted one way or the other that the traditional dynamic of Republican vs. Democrat is muted. The big fights are inside the parties - D vs. D or R vs. R.

“It screams primary challenges all over the map, and it says that even if Democrats don’t like Donald Trump, they don’t like their own party either,” said CNN’s data analyst Harry Enten, about national polling showing “abysmal ratings for the Democratic Party.

So what does this portend going ahead? One caveat is that money doesn’t equal votes. These hot candidacies may eventually get doused with cold water by the voters.

But early on it’s clear, Finley said, that outsiders are in.

“Look at what happened in your Seattle mayor race last year,” he said. “You had a candidate (Katie Wilson) come out of nowhere against an incumbent and win. That’s the kind of thing that happens when people are upset. That’s the big backdrop here: People are really upset.”

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This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 6:40 AM.