Actual Reality Check: New Pierce GOP Website Criticizes Fake Republican Candidate in the 26th
Opinion and Analysis
Jim Henderson is not a Republican.
He’s never been a Republican, despite what he told The Tacoma News Tribune recently.
(TNT, ‘We play to win.’ New Pierce GOP website criticizes Republican candidates in the 26th, July 12, 2024)
As he’s running to represent the 26th Legislative District in the State House, there is one solid reason why the Pierce County Republican Party is accusing him of being a Democrat: He is, and quite provably so.
The Pierce County GOP created a website, www.realjimhenderson.com, about two months ago to expose him. “They don’t believe that I’m a Republican,” Henderson told The News Tribune June 26. Quite true, and despite his protestations it has nothing to do with his being gay: plenty of gay people are Republicans. But Jim is not one of them.
The website is a bid to expose Democrat Jim Henderson as a decoy Republican in the race. “He’s fake” is essentially what the website says, and the positions it states are supportable.
How do we know? We decided to substantiate the website’s claim on our own:
We searched the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) site for Jim Henderson in Tacoma from 2017-2024 (we figured seven years was long enough), and found that as an individual Henderson contributed only to Democrat candidates (save Mark Lindquist for the technically non-partisan prosecutor's office). Please note that Tacoma is where Henderson was registered and lived before deciding to run for office.
The PDC search we used is at this link so you can tinker with the search settings, and a snapshot of results is below:
The TNT quotes Henderson as saying “My clients were not willing to donate to Democrats,” and “... I made those donations so that I could more effectively represent them.”, the implication being that there was no need for him to contribute to Republicans because his clients would contribute to them directly.
The problem with that statement is that all of the contributions above show the Contributor Category as “Individual”. These were Henderson’s personal contributions. When we searched for contributions from his company, Landlord Solutions Inc., we also found contributions but with Contributor Category as “Organization”. (One lonely $250 contribution from his company did go to a Republican in 2019.)
One individual contribution above was made to Bob Ferguson - who is definitely a Democrat and extremely far left. We were told by one of our sources that Henderson’s campaign claimed that this contribution was made to Ferguson in a local race prior to becoming attorney general, but the records above show one that was made in 2020 long after Ferguson became attorney general and showed his true colors. Putting aside that this was again an individual contribution, a lobbyist contributing to legislators makes sense, but to an AG candidate?
Henderson also made at least one direct contribution to the Democratic Party.
Next we looked at contributions for the same years for Jim Henderson in Gig Harbor, where he moved in order to run for office. We used the settings at this link. Starting with himself in MAR-APR 2024, as far as we can tell he has only contributed to Republicans, a complete switch, screenshot below:
A very drastic change, just before he decided to run as a Republican…
Then we looked for support for far-left extremists. We found support for Yasmin Trudeau, who is definitely a Democrat originally appointed by Jay Inslee, and definitely an extremist: she sponsored Senate Bill 5961 taking the Tacoma Measure 1 rent control provisions and making them state wide, and supports banning your use of natural gas to cook and heat your home. From 2014 to 2016 she was an aide to one of the most extreme Washington Democrats, Rep Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).
Here is a Yasmin Trudeau fundraiser ad showing Jim Henderson as a host ( outlined in the list near the bottom right):
The TNT article referenced above claims Henderson said photos on the website show him with friends who are Democrats, whom he met through his former husband, and that it is his husband who is the Democrat. But we note that it is Henderson’s name, not his husband’s, on the flyer. A man’s name is a very personal thing, and when he lends it to the support of a candidate, it’s pretty clear where he stands.
This next photo from the Rainbow Center is to illustrate how tied Jim is to the Democrats. He’s standing right next to Ryan Mello who’s running against Kelly Chambers, and with Twina Nobles and Victoria Woodards who aren’t particularly moderate – and are definitely Democrats:
Again, in the TNT article he claims these are his husband’s friends, not his. But it occurs to us that prior to his campaign he’s spent an awful lot of time with Democrats, and none with Republicans… If there were any proof of his support for Republican candidates or causes prior to his campaign, one would think that he would be talking about that quite a bit.
But Henderson offered no evidence of such support to the TNT in the referenced article, nor do we find any.
He is quoted there as saying “If you want to represent your district well, you need relationships on both sides,”. Well, he’s certainly convinced us that he has plenty of relationships with Democrats, but we’d like to see evidence that he has established relationships with Republicans.
We wouldn’t really count working with State Rep. Michelle Caldier (R-Gig Harbor); based on the TNT article alone she has a personal interest in defeating Young, and doesn’t have a good relationship with her own party. In any case, Henderson shows no support even for her prior to his campaign.
Rep. Caldier was quoted in the Tacoma News Tribune (‘We play to win.’ New Pierce GOP website criticizes Republican candidates in the 26th, July 12, 2024) as saying:
“I think that he (Henderson) is a much better candidate than Jesse Young, and I think that he is the only Republican who can win in the general election,”
“And with the Democrats only one vote away from having a supermajority, I think that
Jim is the only one who has a chance of winning in the general election.”
We don’t at all believe her argument that Henderson would have a better chance of beating Adison Richards than would Jesse Young. Young held that seat from 2014 through 2023 and is the endorsed candidate, while Henderson has no name recognition and doesn’t have a significant campaign structure of which we’re aware.
A good question to ask ourselves might be: If Rep. Caldier and Henderson are truly concerned about keeping the Democrats away from a supermajority, and Henderson is this connected to the Democrats, wouldn’t it have been better for him to have run as a Democrat? If he really is strong enough to win in the general, he would draw votes away from Democrat Richards and possibly end up in the top two with Young.
As it is, his campaign will only draw votes away from the stronger Republican candidate.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire. He has had a BLM sign out in front of his house. He hosted a pizza night for Ryan Mello, and was with him at the Tacoma Arts Live event in 2016; a relationship going back several years at least…
After all of the evidence of associations and beliefs on the left, and no evidence of any support for the right, does Henderson actually expect us to believe he’s always been a Republican?
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