A bitter battle is brewing in one of Washington state’s last swing districts

But as swing districts in the state disappear, more moderate candidates who can appeal to both Republican and Democratic voters may eventually be pushed out, said Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University. Donovan, who has studied Washington’s swing districts, likens this area of the southwest to “one of the last white rhinos.”

“We were just a much more competitive two-party state, even going back into the '90s or early 2000s,” he said.