WashingtonIndependents.org

Washington State · 2026 election cycle, as filed

$60.7 million

has been spent on Washington campaigns this cycle so far — the cycle is not over, so this is a floor. Last year, seven in ten races on the ballot had a single candidate on them.

$86.3M

contributed to campaigns

Money given to a candidate or measure committee, which has to report every dollar of it.

$6.5M

spent independently

Spent about candidates by committees that answer to none of them.

2.2×

against 2014

2014 to 2024, contributions only. Independent expenditure filings are not in the record before 2015, so a total-spending comparison against 2014 would measure our coverage rather than the money.

Total reported spending, by cycle

Total reported spending, by cycle, as reported to the PDC
Cycle Spent Against the largest cycle Contributed Outside spending
2014 $105.1M $106M not in the record
2016 $169.5M $165.2M not in the record
2018 $181.3M $180.6M not in the record
2020 $148.8M $147.4M $33.3M
2022 $140.3M $138.7M $32.4M
2024 $244.4M $232.8M $52M
2026 (in progress) $60.7M $86.3M $6.5M

Even cycles only, and the current one is unfinished. Washington votes on state and federal offices in even years and local ones in odd, and the two are not the same quantity — putting them on one axis would show a rise and fall that is only which offices were on the ballot. Where a cycle says outside spending is not in the record, that is our coverage and not a cycle in which nobody spent independently.

Last checked 2026-09-10

Source Public Disclosure Commission C-3 contribution and C-4 expenditure reports; C-6 independent expenditure filings · as of 2026-09-10 · newest filing 2026-09-09 · scale bars share one scale, longest = the largest completed cycle · note the current cycle is unfinished and every figure for it is a floor; outside spending is absent from the record before 2015 · how committee money is tracked

01 · who gave the most

Five givers account for $11.4 million of it, and two have already given more than they gave in the whole of 2024.

Ranked by total given to Washington committees this cycle. A row is one giver at one address, and sums every contributor row the Public Disclosure Commission files under that name there — the same organisation in another city is a separate row, because the filings keep it separate. We publish no total for “each side” — sorting these givers into sides would be our opinion rather than their filing.

Largest contributors to Washington committees this cycle
Contributor Type This cycle 2024 total Committees they gave to Largest single recipient
Rivian Automotive, LLC Business $4.7M no filing 1 Washington Coalition for Consumer Choice and Innovation (sponsored by Rivian, LLC) $4.7M
Airbnb, Inc Political Action Committee $2.2M $27,900 5 Airbnb Helps Our State Thrive (HOST) PAC $2M
filed as other — name withheld Other $1.9M $2M 10 No on 645 $1M
SEIU 775 Ballot Fund Business $1.4M $9.4M 5 No on 645 $1M
Washington Federation of State Employees Union $1.3M $990K 5 No on 645 $1M
Washington Coalition for Responsible Taxes and Spending Political Action Committee $1M no filing 1 Washington Needs to Compete $1M
SEIU Initiative Fund Political Action Committee $750K $935K 2 No on 645 $700K
filed as individual — name withheld Individual $750K $650K 3 Vote Yes Repeal the Income Tax $250K

2 of these rows carry a name we do not publish. An organisation giving money is a public actor doing a public thing, and it is named. A person is not, and giving is not by itself a public act — so an individual is named here only where their own conduct already made them public: they hold or ran for office, they testified to a committee, or they hit the statutory limit for a candidate and gave to ten or more recipients besides. The test runs on the contributor type the PDC filed and on the donor row’s own id, never on a name, so it cannot clear or condemn the wrong person by spelling. It is deliberately strict: a row the PDC typed “Other” is withheld too, because that type covers organisations and people alike and guessing which would be us adding a fact the filing does not carry. The row keeps its rank and its figure — dropping it would quietly understate what the largest givers gave — and the full itemised record is public at the PDC.

Last checked 2026-09-10

Aggregate rows are money, not organisations. The PDC reports sub-threshold giving as a lump labelled “small contributions” or “miscellaneous receipts”. Two of those rank inside the top five this cycle by amount. They are in the totals above and are excluded from this list, because a table of who gave should not contain a bookkeeping category.

Last checked 2026-09-10

Source Public Disclosure Commission C-3 contribution and C-4 expenditure reports; C-6 independent expenditure filings · as of 2026-09-10 · rows top 8 shown · key contributor name (normalised) + city + state — the same key the ingest dedupes contributor rows on and the entity graph publishes its contributor nodes under · gathers 4 of these givers file under more than one contributor row at the same address, and each row’s figures gather all of them; the rest are one row · refused 905 contributors this cycle carry no city or state on the filing, so no identity could be formed and they are not ranked here at all — $4.9M between them

02 · where it went

One ballot measure cost 17.2 times the most expensive legislative race.

The highest-spending campaigns of the 2024 cycle, by their own reported expenditures, by kind of race. We publish no total for any class of race — that would be our arithmetic across the class, not a filing.

All races

The highest-spending campaigns of the cycle, of any kind · top 5 of 712 campaigns

  1. No on 2117

    $16.7M

    2117 · registered against · State of Washington

  2. Bob Ferguson

    $14.5M

    Governor · State of Washington

  3. No On 2124

    $13.4M

    2124 · registered against · State of Washington

  4. Let's Go Washington (Sponsored by Brian Heywood)

    $10.3M

    I-2066 · registered for · State of Washington

  5. SEIU 775 BALLOT FUND

    $9.6M

    I-2109, I-2117, and I-2124 · registered against · State of Washington

Source PDC C-4 expenditure reports; C-1 registrations for the class · as of 2026-09-10 · scale bars are drawn against the largest campaign in the selected tab, so compare the printed amounts across tabs and not the bar lengths · key candidate: the PDC's jurisdiction_type on the C-1, with Local split on the filed office title; committee: a ballot reference on the C-1 · excluded 595 political committees registered to no race or measure — parties, caucuses and PACs — spent $103.2M and appear in no tab; they are on the committee directory · note a campaign’s spending is not a measure of its support; it is a measure of what it raised and chose to spend · how committee money is tracked

03 · the money nobody can refuse

$52 million was spent on candidates who had no say in it.

An independent expenditure is money spent for or against a candidate by a committee the candidate does not control. They cannot direct it, and they cannot decline it — if they coordinated with it, it would legally become a contribution, and over the limit, a crime. The largest spenders of the last complete cycle, from their own filings.

Largest independent spenders, 2024 cycle
Committee Filings Outside spending
Evergreen Values – Democratic Governors Association 26 $16.3M
NEW DIRECTION PAC 290 $7.7M
WA Wins Sponsored by The Leadership Council 69 $3.9M
FIX WASHINGTON SPONSORED BY REAGAN FUND 484 $3.0M
SOUTHWEST WA PRIORITIES Sponsored by Kennedy Fund 39 $2.6M

How much of it went to races that were already over: not computed. Half the independent-expenditure rows we hold name the candidate they were about, and that candidate resolves to an office. What they do not name is the certified contest — matching a PDC office to a county-typed race name is a name join across two agencies, which is the join this site refuses. The figure would be a fair measure of what an uncontested office is worth to someone; until the join exists, it is not published.

Last checked 2026-09-10

And that is only the elections. There are 7.1 paid lobbyists in Olympia for every person you get to vote for.

Between elections, employers reported paying $89.3 million in lobbyist compensation in 2025 alone — on their own monthly filings, from 968 registered employers.

147

legislators · the people you elect

1,049

registered lobbyists in 2025 · the people they hear from

Source PDC C-6 independent expenditure and electioneering filings · as of 2026-09-10 · cycle 2024 · filings before 2015 are not in the record · lobbying PDC lobbyist agent registrations and employer monthly L-2 reports, 2025; direct employment only · seats 49 districts × 3 seats — Wash. Const. art. II §§ 2, 6; RCW 44.05.090 · note reported spending is not an estimate of influence, and we do not publish one

04 · what all of it bought you

Then the ballot arrives, and there is nothing to decide.

All 2,974 races on Washington’s 2025 general election ballots, counted from the certified results.

69.8%

of races were decided at the filing deadline, not on election day.

2,077 of 2,974 races had exactly one candidate

86.3%

of park/cemetery/library races had one candidate. Water/sewer district, 84%.

County races were the most contested — and still 34.8% went to a single name. Odd-year generals 2015–2025, pooled.

No candidate at all: not counted here. A seat nobody files for never reaches the certified ballot, so it cannot be counted from election results, and the candidate count in the results table is never zero for a general. Those seats are filled by the sitting board appointing its own next member. We will publish the count when the filing-week record is read; until then it is a distinct finding we do not have, not a stronger version of the one above.

Last checked 2026-09-10

See which races were unopposed, county by county →

Source Secretary of State certified general election results · as of 2026-09-10 · n 2,974 races in 10 kinds of office, summing to the whole · note a race is uncontested when exactly one candidate appeared on the ballot; write-in lines and ballot measures are excluded; the by-kind rates pool every odd-year general in the record · how uncontested is defined

05 · what it took to be on that ballot

Here is everything it took to be on that ballot.

Reproduced from the state’s own filing rules, because most people have never seen them written down. This is the complete list.

$0

Filing fee, unpaid seat

The fee is one percent of the annual salary of the office. Most special-district seats pay nothing, so the fee is nothing. RCW 29A.24.091 — one percent of the annual salary of the office

1 form

Declaration of candidacy

Filed online or with the county auditor. It states your name as it will appear, the office, and that you are qualified. RCW 29A.24.031

1 week

The filing window, every May

Filing week is one week in May, set by statute. There is no late filing: miss it and the seat is decided without you. RCW 29A.24.050

0

Signatures, endorsements, prior offices

You must be a registered voter living in the district when you file. That is the entire qualification. RCW 29A.24.075

No signatures. No party. No prior office. For an unpaid seat, no money.

$60.7 million was spent getting into those rooms. Putting your name on the ballot costs nothing.

Source Secretary of State candidate filing guidance; RCW 29A.24 · as of 2026-09-10 · note the fee is one percent of the office’s annual salary, so an unpaid seat has none; the spending figure is the hero’s, restated · the requirements in full

06 · how this was built

None of these figures existed in one place until we assembled them.

Washington discloses all of this. It discloses it across separate agencies and thirty-nine county auditors, in filings that do not reference each other. Here is what it took to make them one archive.

102,740

documents read

Filings, results and web pages from the Public Disclosure Commission, the Secretary of State and the Legislature. Each is linked to where the state publishes it, with the date we read it.

105,543

records resolved

Not rows — entities, in 6 kinds: districts, officials, bills, candidates, committees and lobbying registers. A committee that renamed itself is one record, joined on the identifier the state issues.

45

candidate links rejected

Filings that matched more than one person, or none. Each would have made this archive look denser, and each was a guess.

3,142,826

connections built

Every one carrying the filing that establishes it, and graded: 3,122,774 written on a form, 18,509 joined by us on a key we name, 1,543 that are only the same detail appearing twice and are marked as going no further.

Formats reconciled: not counted. The design counts the file formats the state publishes in. We keep no register of them, and a number without a method behind it is the one kind of figure this page must not print. The importers under importer/ are the record of what was read, and how.

Last checked 2026-08-12

What that buys you: a line from a giver to state law.

Every hop is a separate filing by a separate agency, and none of them mentions the next. This is the path the graph’s catalog allows — each hop named with the document that would establish it.

  1. A giver
  2. CONTRIBUTED TO
  3. A political committee
  4. SUPPORTS
  5. A seat
  6. HELD BY
  7. The person who holds it
  8. SITS ON
  9. A standing committee
  10. RECEIVED
  11. A bill
  12. AMENDS
  13. A section of the RCW

No complete instance of this path exists in the graph yet. The graph export holds no REFERRED_TO or AMENDS edges yet, so the path cannot be walked end to end. Each missing hop is a document type not yet read into an edge — not a relationship that does not exist.

Last checked 2026-09-05

Source Counted from the archive itself at render time; connection census from the pipeline import; graph catalog from wi-graph · as of 2026-08-12 · how the connections work

Who publishes this

Washington Independents is an independent political movement. We want more people on the ballot and fewer offices decided in May. That is a position, and we hold it openly.

It is also why the record pages on this site carry no argument at all. Our positions live at /positions/, the homepage and one research report each carry a single clearly labelled block of advocacy, and everything else — every district, official, bill, measure and committee page — carries none. If you disagree with us entirely, the records here should still be usable to you.

Publisher of record
Listed here when the project’s political committee is registered with the Public Disclosure Commission.
Funding
None to disclose. This site has no donors, grants, sponsors or paid staff as of 2026-09-16. If that changes, it will be recorded here and dated, the same way everything else on this site is.

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