Baumgartner wins tight race for Eastern WA seat in US House

Joseph O'Sullivan, The Seattle Times on Nov 9, 2026

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U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner has won reelection to Washington’s 5th Congressional District seat, in a race that saw a Democratic challenger get the closest to winning the district in more than 30 years.

With Monday’s vote count, Baumgartner, a Republican from Spokane, led Democrat Carmela Conroy 51.7% to 47.9%.

Earlier vote tallies had the candidates separated by 1%, but the later ballots trended in favor of the incumbent.

First elected to Congress in 2024 after serving as a state senator and then county treasurer, Baumgartner has supported some of President Donald Trump’s priorities, such as tax measures in the Republican “Big Beautiful Bill” to cut taxes on overtime pay and on tips.

He also has broken from the president, saying in June that he opposed the Trump administration’s plan to use the U.S. Postal Service to regulate voting in the states. Baumgartner has voted for a bill to ban stock trades by members of Congress and sponsored another bill seeking to restore Washington’s salmon populations.

“We feel great,” Baumgartner said Monday evening. “We worked really hard for Eastern Washington, even in a year of this unprecedented Democrat tsunami.”

Conroy, a retired foreign service officer and former Spokane County deputy prosecuting attorney, challenged Baumgartner in 2024 for the open seat and lost by about 20 percentage points.

She campaigned this year on reining in federal immigration enforcement and rolling back the president’s tariffs.

“The incumbent and the president made a lot of promises to voters, about bringing prices down from day one, ending forever wars — they promised that they would do nothing to undercut Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security,” Conroy said in September. “And that’s all proved to be completely wrong.”

Her campaign didn’t respond to an inquiry seeking comment Monday.

In his victory, Baumgartner avoided becoming another casualty in the state Republican Party’s deep diminishment in the Trump era.

Since the president was first elected in 2016, the GOP has lost two congressional seats, control of the state Senate and the secretary of state’s office. The state House, meanwhile, has gone from a slender Democratic majority to what may well be a supermajority as the party picked up several House seats this election.

As he returns to Congress, Baumgartner faces a very different two years from his first term, as Democrats return to a sizable House majority, along with control of the Senate.

“I’m hopeful in the remaining days of this Congress that we’ll get permitting reform done and a good defense budget,” he said, adding that he continues to work with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., on a bill to reform college sports.

He cited his work with House Democrats in Olympia from his days as state senator and pointed to his work as a foreign service officer before he entered politics.

“I was successful as a Republican working with majority Democrats in the state Legislature when we did things like create the WSU medical school,” he said, adding: “And I’ll be a skilled diplomat as well working for Eastern Washington in Congress.”

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