The Times endorses
The three tenures

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They are all Democrats, but not alike. Dicks, who represents the 6th District, is a protégé of the late Sen. Warren Magnuson, the New Dealer who supported liberal causes and brought home the bacon for public projects. Upon election in 1976, Dicks wrangled a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, and he is still there, the "go-to guy" for public projects that need federal help.

He has fought for spending this page favored, such as the Pentagon purchase of Boeing 767 tankers, and that we opposed, such as light rail. He is an expert in the ways of Washington, D.C., and this state cannot do without him.

McDermott has represented the 7th District for 15 years and may have the seat for life. He is chairman of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and a member of the far-left-leaning Progressive Caucus. He is Congress' only psychiatrist and champions a Canadian-style medical system. He once lived in Africa, and has almost single-handedly fought for African trade preferences and support for AIDS programs there.

McDermott was the only one of the three endorsed here to have voted against the Iraq war resolution of 2002. That year, he traveled to Iraq and opponents dubbed him "Baghdad Jim." He also got in a public argument with Dicks, who predicted that U.S. forces would find significant stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

McDermott was right about the war, though there were times when he overstepped the bounds of prudence. He has uttered strikingly odd statements, such as that the Bush administration could have captured Saddam Hussein earlier if it wanted to.

There have also been times when he could have paid closer attention to his district, taking a lesson from Dicks. But McDermott does reflect his district, which voted only 21 percent for Bush in 2000 and voted almost as much as that for McDermott's challenger from the Green Party.

The 9th District's Smith is co-chairman of the New Democrat Coalition. A financial realist, he argues, unlike the party's left-wingers, that Social Security urgently needs to be reformed. He is a vocal critic of the Bush administration's deficit spending, as all Democrats are this year, but Smith projects the sense that he means it.

Like Dicks, Smith has a military footprint in his district. He is young, smart, pro-trade and pro-military. The 9th was once a swing district, and the Republicans could contest it if Smith moved on for bigger things. Probably not before then.