Rep. Adam Smith’s crusade against Democrats’ left wing gets attention and flak
Three congressional Democrats from Washington, from left, Suzan DelBene, Adam Smith, and Pramila Jayapal, at a Machinists union event during the 2024 campaign. (Dean Rutz / The Seattle Times)
Last month in Washington D.C., Seattle’s U.S. House representatives, Pramila Jayapal and Adam Smith, sat down for a frank talk.
The subject: Smith’s loud criticisms of the far-left wing of the Democratic Party, which he casts as largely to blame for Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Progressive-led cities like Seattle, Smith argues, are killing Democrats’ brand with fringe rhetoric and well-publicized failures on crime, drugs and homelessness.
And yet, Smith says, he’s seen “a fierce resistance on the left side of the political spectrum to even consider the possibility that they should adjust some of their approaches.”
Smith’s crusade — which has upset some local elected officials and activists — is attracting national attention as Democrats debate why they lost and their best route out of the political wilderness.
After Trump defeated Kamala Harris in November, Smith told The Wall Street Journal “the extreme left is leading us into a ditch.”
In a recent New Yorker profile, Smith blamed his party’s woes on the “new left,” whose policies “have utterly and completely failed.” He singled out King County for funding programs with a leftist bent, including one that describes its work as fighting “cis-hetero patriarchy” and a move toward “getting rid of the criminal justice system.”
Jayapal asked for the sit-down with Smith after reading his New Yorker comments.
“I was not happy about the way he’s characterizing my district,” Jayapal said in an interview. “The thing that has been irritating to me is I feel like he’s gotten a lot of coverage – that view has gotten a lot of coverage.”
Jayapal said the national media has glommed onto criticisms by Smith and others of the left, even though “there is no consensus yet” about what’s to blame for Democrats’ defeat. She’s one of the country’s leading progressive politicians.
“I personally don’t think the reason that we lost the election is because the left used the word ‘Latinx.’,” Jayapal said. “I think it is all about economics.”
Smith said “we had a good conversation” and that Jayapal fairly pointed out centrist Democrats have backed policies, including global trade deals, that led working-class voters to abandon the party.
But he hasn’t stopped punching left. On the contrary, Smith has doubled down on his message in the media and beyond.
During a King County Democrats meeting last month, he rebuked local leaders for questioning his progressive credentials.
“You all are freaked out that I’m interested in changing things,” but blue city problems are turning off Midwestern swing voters, Smith said. “We have to show that we can lead in this country.
Two views
First elected to Congress in 1996, Smith, an attorney and former state legislator, is the longest-serving member of Washington’s U.S. House delegation. He lives in Bellevue and his 9th Congressional District includes a slice of that city, as well as southeast Seattle, Mercer Island and much of South King County.
A former immigrant rights organizer who lives in West Seattle, Jayapal backed Bernie Sanders for president in 2020. From her deep blue 7th District, she has mentored lefty luminaries like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and regularly makes the case for policies like Medicare for All on national TV.
Thrree congressional Democrats from Washington, from left, Suzan DelBene, Adam Smith and Pramila Jayapal, at a Machinists union event during the 2024 campaign. (Dean Rutz / The Seattle Times)
At 59, she and Smith are the same age, both born on the cusp of the Baby Boom transition to Generation X.
And it would be an exaggeration to say Smith is totally at odds with Jayapal and progressives. “I agree with Pramila a hell of a lot more than I disagree with her, he said.
They’re united in condemning Trump and billionaire Elon Musk for slashing the federal workforce. They’re both members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, though Smith also is part of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. Both support progressive economic policies like raising the minimum wage.
Last week, Smith signed onto a Jaypal proposal to repeal a World War II era law that Trump reportedly plans to use to require immigrants to register with the government. They both voted against the Republican budget resolution.
Still, the pair, who between them represent all of Seattle and nearby suburbs, are in some ways emblematic of the argument over where the Democratic Party goes from here.
While inflation and President Joe Biden’s unpopularity shaped the 2024 election, Smith argues the Democratic Party’s brand is “fundamentally broken” and appealing mainly to a cadre of left-wing activists.
“It doesn’t seem to be aimed at the majority of people,” Smith said in a video he posted on social media shortly after the 2024 election. And it doesn’t help that whenever anybody questions this, the typical response is the person questioning it has to be some combination of ignorant, bigoted and racist.”
In a recent interview at Bellevue City Hall, Smith said far-left stances on defunding police, abolishing ICE and “radical identity politics” have stuck to the Democratic Party in the minds of too many voters.
That helps explain why Trump swept all seven swing states in November and won the national popular vote by more than 2 million, Smith says. Democrats, he notes, are no longer even competitive in some formerly contested states like Florida, Ohio and Iowa.
A Gallup Poll in February found 45% of Democrats want the party to become more moderate, compared with 29% who say it should become more liberal.
But Jayapal disagrees that the solution for Democrats is to hew closer to Republicans in a quest to pick up stereotypical swing-state moderates.
“Our biggest group of swing voters are not those independent, white suburban voters. That’s a relatively small number,” she said in an interview at her Seattle district office.
Democrats cannot ignore such voters, Jayapal says. But she argues the party’s bigger problem rests with young people and some Black and Brown voters, who swing “out to the couch” and don’t vote when the party fails to speak to them.
“Instead of constantly trying to be Republican lite, we should stand up for Democratic values and we should unapologetically and full-throatedly fight for the people that we say we are for,” Jayapal said.
She said Washington state can offer an example to the rest of the country. It shifted the least toward Trump in the 2024 election, a fact that Jayapal attributes to progressive accomplishments like adopting the highest minimum wage in the country, and automatically raising it to keep up with inflation.
“Where did that come from? It certainly didn’t come from conservative Democrats,” she said.
Close to home
There’s a personal tinge to Smith’s beef with far-left activists, whom he has accused of “left-wing totalitarianism” for some of their tactics.
Gaza ceasefire activists sprayed “Baby Killer” in red paint on the garage doors of his Bellevue home in 2023, targeting him over his approval of U.S. military support for Israel in its war against Hamas. Smith shut down a town hall meeting last March after a group of pro-Palestinian activists disrupted it, shouting down his comments.
During last month’s King County Democrats meeting, when a local activist accused Smith of lacking compassion for Palestinian and Muslim constituents, he responded with anger.
“It’s completely untrue that I’ve shown no compassion for that, and I resent that,” he said. “I have met with countless Palestinian groups.”
In that same meeting and elsewhere, Smith has recounted his own aggravating experiences of being admonished by progressives.
“I’ve been told that ‘personal responsibility’ is a racist term,” and accused of white privilege when advocating against abolition, Smith said in the meeting, dismissing the idea.
He’s been particularly harsh about some King County programs, including Restorative Community Pathways, a nonprofit organization paid by the county to divert young people facing potential criminal charges away from jails and toward rehabilitation.
He called out the organization in the New Yorker and in other interviews, pointing to its website that de-emphasizes punishment for youth lawbreaking, while talking about fighting “white supremacy, colonialism, cis-hetero-patriarchy, and all other forms of oppression.”
Smith said he’s heard concerns about such programs from South King County mayors and police officials. More broadly, he said the county has hired people and funded organizations who want to abolish police and jails, essentially endorsing that goal.
Metropolitan King Councilmember Reagan Dunn, a Republican, said he appreciates Smith’s “courageous” criticisms.
“All the Democrats are so mad at him. It’s so funny. They bristle whenever you bring up his name,” he said.
Smith says he’s encountered mainly denial and resistance from Democratic King County elected officials he’s spoken with over the last few years. “They’re gaslighting people,” he said in a recent podcast interview.
County’s take
Jasmine Vail, a spokesperson for Restorative Community Pathways, said the group was “disappointed and surprised” by Smith’s comments about its work.
The group subsequently met with Smith’s staff to brief them on its programs to support young people who get into trouble, Vail said.
“Hurt people hurt people,” said Aaron Faletogo, the organization’s referral administrator, describing the nonprofit’s approach as more effective and less expensive than incarceration.
Some Democratic King County leaders also said Smith is painting an unfair picture.
King County Executive Dow Constantine rejected the suggestion that the county’s alternatives to incarceration efforts mean it is determined to get rid of police and courts. “We are not trying to disband the criminal-legal system. We are trying to reform it,” he said.
Metropolitan King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, a Democrat, said she has talked with Smith about some of his concerns.
“There is a definite need for a discussion,” Balducci said, but Smith is “cherry picking” a few bad anecdotes to draw overly sweeping conclusions. “It honestly feels a little DOGE-like,” she said.
In an interview, Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera challenged Smith to work with progressives, despite any “hurt feelings” from prior clashes. “Democracy is a team sport,” Rivera added last week in a letter to Smith about the New Yorker piece, signing it, “a millennial Democrat working three jobs.”
Air it out
Others see wisdom in what both Smith and Jayapal are saying about the Democratic Party.
“I see them each highlight different aspects of what needs to change,” said Metropolitan King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, a progressive Democrat with a history of criticizing juvenile incarceration.
Jayapal’s focus on “structural changes” to help lower income people, rather than on mega donors and corporate interests, is “absolutely right,” while Smith is speaking “another truth,” he said.
“I hear him saying that to win back the middle class we need to focus on day-to-day good governance and quality of life issues,” added Zahilay, who recently won Smith’s endorsement to succeed Constantine as county executive.
A leader at one of the Seattle area’s largest labor unions agreed with that assessment. Democrats have come to represent corporate interests and the status quo too much, like Jayapal notes.
They’ve simultaneously done a bad job connecting social justice issues to people’s pocketbooks, said Joe Mizrahi, secretary-treasurer at UFCW 3000, which represents supermarket workers.
Democrats need to air out these arguments right now, Mizrahi said.
“When you get your ass kicked it seems like the right time to have that conversation,” he said.
Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com: Seattle Times political reporter Jim Brunner covers state, local and regional politics.
Daniel Beekman: 206-464-2164 or dbeekman@seattletimes.com: Seattle Times staff reporter Daniel Beekman covers politics and communities.