About The 8th CD
Welcome to the 8th Congressional District
Washington State’s 8th Congressional District encompasses the growing, economically vibrant suburbs east of Seattle, a region known for its high tech innovation and pristine natural areas in the shadow of snow-capped Mt. Rainier. The district includes the suburban and rural eastern parts of King and Pierce Counties, including metropolitan areas like Bellevue, an emerging city in its own right with a population well into six figures and an impressive skyline to match. Smaller cites further south in King County such as Renton, Kent and Auburn are among the fastest growing in western Washington. They are inviting and diverse areas of working and middle class families and singles where bread and butter issues like quality education, jobs, transportation and maintaining open spaces and green areas are high on voters' priority list.
Geographically, the district extends from the Microsoft suburbs in the North – Bill Gates lives in the district – south and East across the central Puget Sound. A place where residents expect a high quality of life built on a balance between cultural amenities and outdoor living, the 8th’s mix of urban clusters, affluent suburban enclaves like Mercer Island, and rural regions to the south and East is unique. Darcy lives with her husband and young son in a modest home outside of Carnation, a town of less than 2,000 in the picturesque Snoqualmie Valley.
As the district develops economically, its political landscape is evolving as well. While the district has not elected a Democrat to congress since its creation in 1980, its demographics are changing rapidly. Once considered an impregnable Republican bastion, as the district has grown it has begun electing Democrats to other offices. Voters in the 8th gave their support to Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, and the 10 legislative districts that abide either wholly or partly in the 8th Congressional District (the 2nd, 5th, 11th, 25th, 31st, 33rd, 41st, 45th, 47th, and 48th) have undergone a sea change in recent elections: those districts are now represented by twenty-one Democrats and only 8 Republicans. In 2006, Darcy came out of nowhere to nearly beat Republican incumbent Dave Reichert, a conservative with close ties to President Bush. In this presidential election cycle Reichert is widely considered one of the country’s most vulnerable incumbents.
