For Reichert challenger, it's all about the economy

For the third election in a row, U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert faces a well-financed Democrat who worked at Microsoft but has no political experience.

Suzan DelBene believes she'll have better luck than Darcy Burner did against Reichert in 2006 and 2008. DelBene is positioning herself as a seasoned businesswoman who's focused on putting the economy back on track.

She has raised $1.27 million for her campaign, including $500,000 of her own and more than $100,000 in contributions from Microsoft employees, and has won the endorsement of the state Democratic Party and several party leaders.

But if Democrats couldn't defeat Reichert in 2008 during the Obama-led Democratic sweep, can they expect to do better in a year widely anticipated to be more favorable to Republicans?

"In politics, timing is everything — and Suzan DelBene is on the wrong side of timing," said Chris Vance, former state GOP chairman.

The Cook Political Report rates the Eastside's 8th Congressional District as "likely Republican." The Congressional Quarterly's 2010 race-ratings map calls it a "leans Republican" district.

But the National Republican Congressional Committee recently listed Reichert as one of nine Republican congressmen who may be vulnerable this fall. And DelBene was one of 13 candidates chosen in March for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's "Red to Blue" campaign — a program that gives money and organizing assistance to candidates who seem like promising prospects to unseat an incumbent Republican.

DelBene says she can win by questioning whether Reichert has done enough to help upright the country's dismal economy.

"The conventional wisdom is that this is a tough year for Democrats, but the bigger picture is this is a tough year for incumbents," Democratic consultant Christian Sinderman said. "Has Reichert done enough to merit a return trip?"

Early campaign start

DelBene (pronounced "del-BEN-ee") launched her campaign for the 8th District seat more than a year ago. Before that, she served as corporate vice president of mobile communications for Microsoft for three years, resigning in 2007 to begin carving a new niche in the nonprofit sector.

In July 2008, she began working as a consultant for Global Partnerships, a nonprofit with offices in Seattle and Nicaragua that supports microfinance efforts in Latin America.

It was while doing nonprofit work, she said, that she began thinking about how government policies had made it difficult for U.S. small businesses to find credit. Around that time, friends and family with experience in politics encouraged her to run for Reichert's seat.

DelBene says running for office looked, to her, a lot like running a startup business, something she had been involved in before as vice president of marketing and store development for Drugstore.com between 1998 and 1999, and as CEO and president of Nimble Technology, a business-software company, between 2001 and 2003. As a businesswoman, she believed she had the "practical, on-the-ground experience" needed to be a successful politician.

Before she launched her campaign in February 2009, though, DelBene had not been involved in politics at all; she had not cast a vote in seven elections since November 2005. According to King County records, DelBene sat out November elections in 2005 and 2006 — a choice she admits was "a mistake — a mistake of my past, not a mistake of my future."

DelBene emphasizes a personal narrative to match the economy's hard times. Her father lost his job as a pilot for now-defunct Northwest Orient in the 1970s, she said, and her family moved around the country while both her parents tried different careers to make ends meet.

At one point, after DelBene had graduated from Reed College with a degree in biology, her parents moved in with her, she said.

"When your family doesn't have financial security," she said, "all the rest is off the table."

Sinderman, the Democratic consultant, describes her as "more a fiscal moderate, [with] a great deal more business experience" than Burner, and called her "a better candidate for these times."

Not a household name

DelBene is battling a candidate with a record of appealing to independents even when the tide is running Democratic. In 2008, when Obama received 56 percent of the vote in the 8th District, Reichert voters bucked the trend, putting the Republican back in office with a comfortable 53 percent of the vote.

His showing actually improved in King County from the previous election. Reichert beat Burner in King County by a little more than 300 votes in 2006; he bested her by 7,000 votes two years later. And his lock on Pierce County has proved even stronger. In the past election, he took Pierce with 58 percent of the vote.

Like DelBene, Reichert plans to focus on the economy in the upcoming campaign but will spotlight deficit reductions and securing tax relief for small businesses.

DelBene will try to capitalize on a gaffe that Reichert made this month, when he told a gathering of Republican precinct-committee leaders that some of his pro-environment votes were an effort to prevent environmentalists from trying to unseat him. Reichert thought he was speaking in confidence, but a recording of the meeting was leaked to the political website HorsesAss.org.

Reichert has denied that his environmental votes are cynical efforts to get re-elected. But the comments could come back to haunt him, Sinderman said.

University of Washington political-science professor Matt Barreto says national leaders in the Democratic Party should have recruited a well-known Democrat to run against Reichert.

"In all of the 8th District," he said, "they have not been able to convince a higher-profile candidate to run."

Although she's been campaigning since February 2009, DelBene still is no household name, Barreto said. "I don't know anything about this woman — and that's not good for her," he said.

Seven other candidates have filed for the 8th District. Democrats include Tom Cramer, Redmond; Keith Arnold, Auburn; and Boleslaw (John) Orlinski, Bellevue.

Republican candidates are Ernest Huber, Issaquah, and Tim Dillon, Bellevue. Robin Adair of Bellevue is listed as an independent, and Caleb Love Mardini of Bellevue lists no party preference.

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com.

Seattle Times researchers Gene Balk and Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.

Information in this article, originally published (June 28, 2010), was corrected (July 1, 2010). In a previous version of this story, Tim Dillon, a candidate for the 8th Congressional District, was incorrectly identified as Tom Dillon.