OLYMPIA — Bob Ferguson could face Bob Ferguson and Bob Ferguson in the August primary.
That’s Bob Ferguson, the state attorney general; Bob Ferguson, a retired state employee in Yakima; and Bob Ferguson, a military veteran in Graham.
All three are running for Washington governor.
Conservative activist Glen Morgan recruited two people who share a name with the Democratic front-runner for governor to also seek the state’s highest office. They officially filed to run Friday, at the close of Washington’s candidate filing week.
“If I had started a little bit earlier, I would have been able to have six Bob Fergusons,” Morgan said. “I contacted about 12. I just ran out of time.”
Morgan, who answered calls Friday to the numbers listed for the two campaigns, declined to provide The Seattle Times with the contact information for either of the two Bob Fergusons who filed.
This year, the governor’s seat is open for the first time since 2012. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who has led the state for more than a decade, is not running for a fourth term. Attorney General Ferguson has amassed a campaign war chest of nearly $7 million, according to campaign finance reports.
Morgan says he thinks “a lot of people” are upset about the attorney general “trying to pretend that he cares about public safety when he’s done everything to look the other way and avoid solving any of the problems and almost every activity he’s done as the attorney general has actually made it a lot worse.”
“These guys want to clear their name,” Morgan said of the other two Bob Fergusons. All three Bobs are running as Democrats, according to voter filing data.
On Friday, the campaign of Bob Ferguson (the attorney general), tapped former Gov. Christine Gregoire to make a statement on behalf of the campaign.
“There’s only one Bob Ferguson who is qualified to be Governor — one who has a long and distinguished career standing up for Washingtonians,” Gregoire said. “There’s no doubt this last-minute filing by two unknown candidates is an effort to deliberately confuse Washington voters. It’s nothing less than an attack on our democracy. Washington voters are smart and will see through this highly deceiving — and potentially illegal — effort to mislead them.”
State statutes say that it is a felony for a person to file a declaration of candidacy with a “surname similar to one who has already filed for the same office, and whose political reputation is widely known, with intent to confuse and mislead the electors by capitalizing on the public reputation of the candidate who had previously filed.”
Jim Walsh, chair of the state’s Republican Party, said the case of the multiple-Bobs pointed to pitfalls in the state’s open primary system. The top two candidates in the Aug. 6 primary advance to the general election, regardless of party.
“The problem is we have a top-two open jungle primary where people don’t have to be any active or you know, bona fide part of any party to run as whatever they want to run as,” Walsh said.
In total, 30 people filed to run for governor this past week. The deadline for candidates to withdraw is Monday. The filing fee for governor is nearly $2,000.
The secretary of state had not determined how to handle the situation as of Friday night and is still reviewing it. In situations where there are two or more candidates with names that “are so similar as to be confusing to voters,” state administrative rules say that the filing officer — in this case the secretary of state — shall differentiate between candidates by including additional information on the ballot, such as their occupation or their status as an incumbent or challenger.
On Friday, the secretary of state asked all three Bob Ferguson campaigns for information about each of the candidates’ occupations.
