Washington holds its non-presidential primary on August 6. Washington uses a top-two system. Here is a list of candidates for the statewide executive offices, including Governor. There are 25 candidates on the ballot running for Governor.
To use the list, use the down arrow on the left to switch from the 2024 general election to the 2024 primary election. Obviously there can not yet be a list of the general election candidates. After switching to the 2024 primary, wait about 8 seconds and the full list will be displayed, with no need to make any other entries. The congressional offices are listed first, followed by Governor.
Semi Bird? Dave Upthegrove? Goodspaceguy? They sure have some names on the Washington ballot.
ANY * GEORGE WASHINGTON * [ EX OF VA ] ???
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/politics/vice-president-pick-kamala-harris/index.html
HARRIS PICK A VP HACK
I can’t wait until she’s president. It’s going to be amazing!
Trump is calling for one day voting with paper ballots, proof of citizenship and voter ID. Sounds good to me!
We should just put bunches of ballots on the counter at the welfare offices, liquor stores and nail salons and drop off boxes all over the place. Just let everyone vote as many times as they want and get rid of all the voter registration and limits.
One of the listed candidates for Secretary of State is No Labels. Aren’t they suing in some places to stop anyone from running on their line?
Yes.
Dave Upthegrove is a descendant of Abraham Op den Graeff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_op_den_Graeff) a signer of the first anti-slavery petition in America (1688). Upthegrove was previous in the legislature.
Goodspaceguy is a perennial candidate. “Goodspaceguy” is an added middle name which he uses when he runs for office. If you click on a name on the SOS website it provides a political ad for the candidate. Washington has a voter pamphlet distributed to all residences.
Semi Bird is the Republican-endorsed candidate for governor.
Misipati Semi Bird was raised by a single black Mother, Rosie Bird. His father was black and Samoan. His first name, Misipati, is pronounced “miss-ee-pah-tee. He seems to prefer “Semi Bird” over use of his full name, though when he was a school board member in Richland, news articles used the full name. I think “Semi” rhymes with Timmy and Jimmy.
A famous perennial candidate in Washington was “Mike the Mover” Mike Shanks started a small moving company, and was repeatedly being cited for moving with out a license. Overall, he was cited nearly 90 times. If you applied for a license, it took nearly a year, in which you agreed not to move furniture. But if you hadn’t moved anything (no experience or capability) you would not get the license. And if existing licensees could handle the potential customers, no new licenses would be granted. Shanks changed his name to Mike the Mover, with a middle name of “the”, and ran for office under that name. Even after interstate trucking was deregulated, Washington intrastate trucking was regulated.
In later campaigns it was suggested that he ran in part to advertise his business of Mike The Mover. He had a hobby of Civil War re-enactment, and sometimes would walk downtown Seattle dressed as Robert E Lee. In one election he ran as the candidate of the National Union Party. In his last election in 2016, he ran as Uncle Mover. He had no children, but had nephews who called him “Uncle” rather than “Mike”.
Washington is also home of the OWL Party, whose name stood for “Out With Logic, On With Lunacy” The ease with which the OWL Party got on the ballot led the duplicitous duopoly to double down and crush minor parties. This led to ‘Munro v. Socialist Workers Party’
Interesting.
How does one get from anti-slavery Op den Graeffs to Democrat (the pro slavery party) Upthegroves? 🤔 And does that imply “Graeff” is an old German word for “grove”, or did the name just get incorrectly Anglicized over time? Because I thought “Graeff” was a title of nobility (as seen in “Margrave”), of disputed etymology.
“Goodspaceguy advocates for our orbital space program and against homelessness”
My knee jerk interpretation was that he wants to shoot the homeless out into space, or house them on space stations at great expense. But nothing so radical (or quite so interesting): he is going for the “Spaceship Earth” angle, and running on a two issue-platform of anti-homelessness and pro-space program.
“He had a hobby of Civil War re-enactment, and sometimes would walk downtown Seattle dressed as Robert E Lee.”
Cool, but nowadays that is liable to get your skull caved in – if any of the BLM terrorists is even sufficiently educated to recognize General Lee, that is – then again, in commie Seattle they just cave your skull in for no other reason than being dressed “weird”, these days.
“The ease with which the OWL Party got on the ballot”
Every major city in Washington is overwhelmingly dominated reasonless lunatics who want to think of themselves as being disestablishmentarian while in reality being strongly pro-establishment. As long as the LP and GP are still on the ballot in Washington, they will have at least two Monster Raving Loony Parties to pick from.
The OWL party must of been splitting demon rat votes.
I like the idea of shooting bums out into space. But don’t give them a space station or even a space suit, because that’s wasteful.
@Nuña,
Op den Graeff appears to have morphed into Updegraff (1400, frequency in contemporary American), Updegrove (600), Uptegrove (400), and Upthegrove (300). The Op den Graeff’s in Germantown (now west Philadelphia), Pennsylvania were originally from Kerfeld, which was an exclave of the County of Moers, which was subject to the House of Orange-Nassau, but was acquired by the King of Prussia in 1702. So the Op den Graeff’s may have spoken Dutch, German, or something in between such as Limburgish. I have seen a suggestion that the name means something like “by the stream”, but also that “graeff” is an alternative to “graben”
The Op den Graeff’s may have been cousins of William Penn through his mother, who was the widow of a Dutch sea captain, who had married Penn’s father, Sir William Penn, a British admiral. Charles II had granted Pennsylvania to William Penn, the son, in repayment of debts to the father.
The Op den Graeff’s were Mennonites who may have temporarily practiced Quakerism when they arrived in Pennsylvania. It appears that the early Quakers in Pennsylvania had been backsliders and accepted slavery. The petition was apparently read at Meetings of Friends, though not necessarily debated, before being stuck in a filing cabinet.
Nathan Updegraff was an early Quaker settler in Ohio, just west of Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), and various Updegraff’s were abolitionists and involved in the Underground Railroad.
The Upthegrove branch of the family is concentrated in inland south Florida. They appear to be descended from a Union Captain who settled in the area in 1865. There is an Upthegrove Beach on Lake Okeechobee, and an Upthegrove Elementary in Labelle, Florida which is about halfway between Fort Myers and Lake Okeechobee. Laura Upthegrove was a bank robber in the early 20th Century who appears to have been similar to Bonnie Parker (i.e. Bonnie and Clyde, Little Laura and Big John). The Upthegrove’s have a significant black share (around 1/6 of American Upthegrove’s).
It would be wasteful to even just shoot vagrant bums into space. Police K9s and horses have to be fed. The solution is obvious.
@Jim Riley
Thank you. You are a well of intriguing trivia. Did you know all that off the top of your head, or what source(s) did you consult? Because you provide a lot of juicy details not in my encyclopedia, much less in wikipedia?
@Hairy Ass True Man
Hey now, Goodspaceguy was talking about homeless people, not necessarily about criminals. And I don’t think feeding horses (human) meat is a great idea under any circumstances. It’d likely lead to some type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. Though it seems horses are happy to munch on just about anything they can get their jaws around.
Bums, homeless, vagrants – same difference. And I don’t see any more reason that horses couldn’t eat human than that humans couldn’t eat horse. But, if there is, for sure the police K9 officers could feed on the unhoused humanoids loitering around every urban downtown, especially left coast hellholes like Seattle.
@Nuña,
I had come across Dave Upthegrove in following the Washington legislature, and the name struck me as odd. Perhaps his bio mentioned a connection to Abraham Op den Graeff. The “1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery” (see Wikipedia) is an interesting document, coming 173 years before the Civil War. It apparently was lost in Quaker archives before being discovered in 1844 when the abolition movement was heating up. Op den Graeff was also among the first 13 German/Dutch settlers (heads of households) in Pennsylvania. Op dem Graeff is noted enough to have other sources beyond Wikipedia.
Nathan Updegraff was listed as a descendant with a Wikipedia page. I must have got the derivations of the name from genealogy websites search for frequency of surnames. That showed the “Upthegrove’s” concentrated in Florida. See for example Wikipedia page for Laura Upthegrove.
As Mennonites they may have been isolated somewhat from English settlers until some time later when they became integrated more with the general society and fixed their surname in a more English-speaking form.
Governor
State of Washington
Evelyn
OLAFSON
U. S. Labor Candidate did not submit photograph and statement
for publication.
This is the Washington state voters pamphlet for 1976 when the OWL party first contested the election.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170220202517/https://www2.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/voters'%20pamphlet%201976.pdf
For example the statement of gubernatorial candidate Red Kelly is:
“The importance of this election to the citizens of our fair state cannot be underestimated. The issues are broad, high, wide and
handsome is as handsome does. I have found, however, that the issues are not the issue for once an issue is made of the issues and
the issues are responded to, they no longer are issues but become answers.”
The OWL party was founded in a tavern/jazz club in Tumwater. Under the law at that time, taverns could not be open on primary election day, but there was an exception for parties holding a convention. At that time Washington had a blanket primary. Republicans and Democrats made nominations, but a voter could vote for any candidate in the primary (e.g, vote in the Democratic contest for governor, while voting in the Republican contest for Senator in the primary). Alaska had adopted this same system while it was a Territory.
California adopted a similar system in 1996, which was struck down by the SCOTUS in ‘California Democratic Party v. Jones’, which led in turn to the overturning of the system in Washington. Washington voters responded by adopting the Top 2 Primary, which has led to similar reforms in California and Alaska, and proposed in other States.
In Washington in 1976, candidates for minor parties were nominated at conventions held on the same day as the primary. The voter’s pamphlet shows U.S. Labor (Larouchite), OWL, Socialist Works, Libertarian, and American Independent candidates. As a result of this election, and maybe in particular the OWL party, the law was changed so that minor parties nominated before the primary, and there candidate would then appear on the primary ballot. A minor party nominee had to receive 1% of the total vote to advance to the general election ballot.
This eventual led to ‘Munro v. Socialist Workers’ where the SCOTUS upheld the Washington law. It includes the statement, “[a] State is not required to prove actual voter confusion, ballot overcrowding, or the presence of frivolous candidates as a predicate to imposing reasonable ballot access restrictions.” Courts ever since have relied on this statement to reject challenges to ballot access.
Eventually the blanket primary was overturned, and replaced by the Pick-A-Party Primary. Washington has never had party registration. In a Pick-A-Party primary, voters select a party in secret on the ballot, and then vote for primary nominees. Only the voter knows if he is an R or D. A similar system is used in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Montana, and perhaps other States.
By initiative, the voters approved the Top 2 primary, which is a fully open, party-agnostic primary in which voters choose two candidates to advance to the general election without regard to their political beliefs. While candidates have party labels, these are not expressions of endorsement by political parties, but rather a statement of the candidate’s political party preferences. The Top 2 primary was initially blocked by a district court and 9th Circuit, the SCOTUS in an opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas ruled that the lower courts facial injunction was premature, and that Washington should be given the opportunity to demonstrate that voters would not be confused as to the meaning of the party labels. On remand, the district court ruled that given the explanation on the ballot and other materials the voters would not be confused.