Democrat asked by party to bow out of WA House race. Now it’s 2 Republicans
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- Doug McKinley filed then withdrew his Democratic candidacy for the 8th LD Senate seat.
- McKinley said party members asked him to drop out.
- It leaves the seat open to 2 Republicans, Nikki Torres and Gabe Galbraith.
A last-minute candidate in the 8th Legislative District Senate race has bowed out, citing pressure from his political party.
Doug McKinley is a Democrat and Tri-City attorney. He’s ran twice for Congress in attempts to oust U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, most recently in the 2020 general election.
He filed paperwork late Friday — less than 30 minutes before the deadline — to run in the open 8th District race.
McKinley would have appeared on the primary ballot as the only Democrat against Republicans Nikki Torres of Pasco and Gabe Galbraith of Kennewick.
Then, on Monday afternoon, he withdrew prior to the withdrawal cutoff so that his name will not appear on the ballot.
“I have been asked to withdraw from the state Senate race for the 8th Legislative District by numerous people with our Democratic Party whom I respect and whose success I wish to advance,” he wrote in a short statement to his personal Facebook page.
“Out of respect for those individuals, our party, and my desire to advance our mutual interests, I have formally withdrawn my candidacy,” he concluded.
When reached Monday, he declined to give more details about his decision.
McKinley is a well-known voice for Tri-City Democrats in an era when the party has lost most of its shimmer in the region. He was involved in the 2023 recall of three Richland School Board members for misdeeds, and is engaged in a similar plot to remove the entire Port of Benton commission.
Late last year, as congressional campaigns began to form in the wake of Newhouse’s retirement, McKinley came out resoundingly in support of West Richland Democrat John Duresky.
Just as turning Central Washington blue has proved to be a Sisyphean task for Democrats in recent decades, so too would flipping the 8th Legislative District.
The legislative district is the Tri-Cities’ most conservative, stretching from west Pasco to the Horse Heaven Hills, and includes most of Kennewick and parts of West Richland.
In the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump carried the 8th district by 24 percentage points over Kamala Harris.
It's currently represented by Reps. April Connors, R-Kennewick, and Stephanie Barnard, R-Pasco, and Sen. Matt Boehnke, R-Kennewick.
Boehnke is leaving his seat at the end of this year to run for Newhouse’s position representing Washington’s 4th Congressional District.
With McKinley out of the picture, the race will be a Republican-on-Republican slugfest.
Torres is the current state senator for the 15th Legislative District, though a federal judge in 2024 approved a redistricting map that drew her out of the district. She moved across town this year to run.
She is the state Senate’s Republican deputy floor leader, and serves as ranking member on the Local Government Committee and assistant ranking member on the operating budget. She was a small business development officer and more recently a strategic partnerships manager at Western Governors University.
Galbraith is the Kennewick School Board president, small business owner and security specialist at the Hanford nuclear site. He served in the U.S. Marines and is a former school substitute.
He won election to the school board in 2021, critical of the school district’s response to the COVID pandemic.
He has said he does not plan to step down from the school board if he’s elected to the Legislature. Galbraith has been critical of Torres’ intentions to move into the 8th Legislative District in order to run, and says his values better align with the conservative district.
McKinley cut his teeth on Tri-City politics more than a decade ago when he ran for the 8th Legislative District.
In 2014, he challenged Sen. Sharon Brown, R-Kennewick, for her seat in the general election for the seat, but lost by a landslide 48 points.
A couple other candidates who intended to run for seats in Benton and Franklin counties also dropped out before Monday’s deadline:
- Mike Gahvarehchee, Democrat, Congressional District 5. That leaves 11 other candidates – 6 Democrats, 4 independents and a candidate with no declared party – challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner. They will face off in the August primary to narrow the field to the overall top two vote-getters.
- Pat Tucker, nonpartisan, Benton PUD Commissioner District 2. That leaves Micah Valentine, vice president of the Kennewick School Board, in a race with Roy C. “Dewey” Holliday. They will face off in the general election in November.
This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 12:01 PM.
