The party of the rich just taxed the rich in WA. Can that hold?

If you're really rich, and mad that you're going to have to pay the new millionaire's state income tax, it turns out you have your immediate neighbors to blame.

Or maybe even yourself.

Data released by the state Department of Revenue shows that an estimated 82% of the people wealthy enough to pay the new million-dollar-earners' tax live in heavily Democratic legislative districts.

Just 14% live in red districts. Another 4% are projected to be nonresidents. (If you make more than a million here yet don't live here, you still have to pay the tax.)

The figures highlight just how much the Democrats have morphed into the party of the rich - even as they also are the party of "tax the rich."

"Nobody has talked much about this, but this is a massive subsidy to the rest of the state," said Rep. Gerry Pollet, D-Seattle. He represents the 46th legislative district, which has the sixth-most million-dollar-earners in the state.

"We just voted to tax ourselves, to tax our own wealthiest constituents, and then to spread the money around everywhere."

Just 10 of the state's 49 legislative districts contain two-thirds of the million-dollar-earners, the data show. All 10 of these districts touch either Lake Washington, Lake Sammamish or Puget Sound. All 10 are represented exclusively by Democrats.

The tax will charge 9.9% on incomes in excess of $1 million, so the first million is tax free. The state used IRS data to estimate that about 21,000 tax filers earn at this rarefied level, a number expected to rise and fall with the stock market.

State Sen. Vandana Slatter, D-Bellevue, voted for the new income tax, even though her district, the 48th, houses 2,371 million-dollar-earners, more than 10% of the wealthy in the state. Her rich constituents are also by far the richest. The 48th, which includes the "Gold Coast" of Medina and Hunt's Point, is expected to pay a quarter of the total revenue raised by the income tax.

The other wealthiest enclaves are also in the Eastside suburbs - the 41st, with Mercer Island and parts of Bellevue, and the 45th, with Kirkland, parts of Redmond and out to Sammamish. Together, just these three Eastside districts will shoulder an astounding 43% of the tax payments.

That's a ton of wealth and clout in one place. But Slatter told me they didn't choose to throw it around much, at least not on this vote.

"I didn't feel big resistance from them," she said. "I had a number of wealthy people, my constituents, who said to me ‘I'm ok with this, this is fine.' "

Pollet echoed that. His district includes Windermere and other spots along Lake Washington, where it has 788 million-dollar-earners.

The passage of federal tax cuts for the wealthy in 2025, which Trump and the GOP Congress chose to pay for by cutting health care for the poor and ballooning the debt, changed the debate among the local rich, Pollet said.

"What I heard from wealthy people in my district is they didn't ask for this windfall from Trump," Pollet said. "They feel guilty about it. They say 'we didn't want this while they're cutting food stamps.' "

He said the reason Democrats had ample votes to spare for the income tax in both the state House and Senate is because they didn't feel much heat from the state's wealthy about it.

"Wealthy Democrats are already out there donating to education, to health and human services, to the environment," Pollet said. "They want to do this."

Slatter said she got far more pushback about higher business taxes last year than about this personal income tax.

Said state Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, at a Democratic press conference during the legislative session: "The folks up here at this table represent most of the people who are going to wind up paying this tax. We talk to them. Those folks are really uncomfortable with hurting poor people so they can save some extra money on their taxes."

The data, and these comments from legislators if they are accurate, reflect a remarkable shift in party politics.

A Yale University study, titled "Polarization of the Rich: The New Democratic Allegiance of Affluent Americans," found the shift began in the 1990s and rapidly escalated in the Trump era.

"Evidence shows that … the top 33% (by income), top 20%, top 10%, top 5%, and even the top 1% of voters, in addition to stock-owning and high-income occupation voters, have all increased their allegiance to the Democratic Party," the 2024 study found.

It began with the GOP lurch rightward on social issues. More recently it was "the uniqueness of Donald Trump" - his administration's instability and upheaval, which rich people don't like, as well as his anti-trade positions.

But the study also forecast tension. Can you be both the party of the rich and the party of tax the rich? Do the working and middle classes even want to be in the same party as the elites?

"A Democratic Party that wins significant support from affluent Americans may find it more difficult to cohere around an economically redistributive policy agenda," the study concluded.

Yet that's pretty much what Democrats just did here in Washington. They cohered. For now.

About the tax itself, "there wasn't really any tug-of-war within the party," Pollet said. "Two years ago, I don't think many Democrats would have thought we'd be passing an income tax. That's how much the political landscape about inequality has changed."

Up next for the income tax will be a court challenge and probably a statewide vote. It will be very interesting to see what role our state's wealthiest citizens choose to play.

Is their romance with Democrats an enduring one? Or, as the day to actually pay these steep bills draws closer, will it feel more like an affair they've come to regret?

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This story was originally published April 1, 2026 at 6:41 AM.