Suzan DelBene's Record in Congress Facts, Votes, and the Alternative

Washington's 1st Congressional District ·

Representative Suzan DelBene has served Washington's 1st Congressional District since 2012 more than twelve years. This page provides a fact based, sourced overview of her background, voting record, financial profile, and policy positions, alongside how this campaign's approach differs on each issue.

This is not an attack page. The facts are sourced. Voters can draw their own conclusions. The question this page asks is simple after more than a decade, is Washington's 1st District better off ? And is this the representation its residents deserve?

Background

Party: Democrat
First elected: 2012 special election; reelected every cycle since
Years in office: 12+
Career before Congress: Microsoft executive, Washington State Department of Revenue Director
Current role: Chair, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) the organization responsible for coordinating Democratic strategy to win House elections
Net worth (2026): Estimated at $141.5 million more than double what it was when she was first elected. She currently ranks among the top 15 wealthiest members of Congress.

More than half of all members of Congress are millionaires. Congressional net worth has grown significantly faster than that of the typical American household since at least 2004. This is not an attack on wealth it is a question about representation. Congress no longer looks like the people it is supposed to represent.

Campaign Funding

According to OpenSecrets.org, Representative DelBene's campaign funding comes heavily from technology companies, real estate interests, financial sector donors, and large corporate PACs. Compared to other Democrats in Congress, the volume of corporate money flowing to her campaign is significantly higher.

Many constituents in WA-01 have expressed serious concern about this. When a representative's campaign is funded primarily by corporate PACs, voters have a right to ask whose interests come first when votes are cast.

Kincaid's position: This campaign focuses on small dollar donations from individuals so that priorities remain aligned with working families not with the corporations writing the biggest checks.

DCCC Leadership and the 2024 Election

Representative DelBene serves as Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee the organization directly responsible for developing and coordinating Democratic strategy to win House elections. Under her leadership, Democrats failed to retake the House in 2024. Republicans won control of both chambers and the White House. Donald Trump returned to the presidency.

The question voters in WA-01 should be asking is straightforward. How is her strategy working out for you so far?

The Democratic Party lost voters across the ideological spectrum in 2024 moderates, independents, working class voters, and Latino voters among them. This did not happen without cause. The party's positions on key issues including issues Representative DelBene has actively championed contributed directly to those losses. This campaign exists precisely because the party needs a different direction.

Voting Record: Issue by Issue

The following is a fact based comparison of Representative DelBene's voting record and positions alongside this campaign's approach. All votes are a matter of public congressional record.

1. Women's Sports and Sex-Based Privacy

DelBene's record: Voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act (H.R. 28) on January 14, 2025. The bill passed the House 219–203. It would have prohibited schools receiving federal funding from allowing biological males to compete in female athletic categories. Representative DelBene voted no. She is also a cosponsor of the Transgender Bill of Rights, which explicitly seeks to amend Title IX to prevent the exclusion of biological males from female athletic competition. (House vote record)

Kincaid's position: Support legislation ensuring that women's athletic competitions are limited to biological females. Support clear, respectful legal standards for sex-based privacy in intimate settings including spas, locker rooms, and healthcare facilities. Fairness in women's sports and the right of women to sex-segregated private spaces are non-negotiable.

2. Antisemitism

DelBene's record: Voted against the House resolution censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for statements made following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Has not made a prominent public statement specifically addressing the documented antisemitic harassment of a Jewish student at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle in her own state despite a federal civil rights lawsuit being filed.

Kincaid's position: Antisemitism is racism. It has no place in the Democratic Party or in American public life. Has called for a full federal investigation into the Nathan Hale case and proposes the creation of a permanent White House Office to Combat Antisemitism with a Senate confirmed Director. Silence in the face of antisemitism is not neutrality it is a choice.

3. Housing and Affordability

DelBene's record: Has supported federal housing assistance programs and voted for the Build Back Better package in 2021. Has not introduced major legislation directly targeting home price affordability in Washington State, which consistently ranks among the most expensive housing markets in the country.

Kincaid's position: Federal incentives for affordable housing construction in high cost states, combined with eliminating federal income tax for Americans earning $61,000 or less putting real money back in the hands of working families who are being priced out of this district. ( Much more to come. This section will be updated very soon. Kincaid’s full and game changing housing policy will be released within a 2 weeks. )

4. Tax Policy

DelBene's record: Voted for the Build Back Better Act, which included tax increases on high income earners but did not provide direct income tax relief to middle class families in high cost areas. Has not introduced legislation addressing the tax filing burden on low and middle income Americans.

Kincaid's position: The Real Tax Reform and Simplification Act , eliminating federal income tax liability and filing requirements for Americans earning $61,000 or less. Based on IRS data, this covers more than 56 million filers who already pay little or nothing and receive every withheld dollar back as a refund. The filing requirement is a waste of everyone's time and money.

5. Healthcare

DelBene's record: Supports the Affordable Care Act and a public option. Does not support Medicare for All. Has not introduced legislation for a phased or pilot based approach to expanding coverage.

Kincaid's position: The Universal Healthcare Innovation and Pilot Act a real world, data driven pilot program beginning with the acquisition and reopening of Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Taylor Hospital in Pennsylvania. Test it. Measure it. Prove it works before scaling nationally. This is how you actually get to universal coverage not by passing legislation that immediately stalls.

6. Public Safety and Gun Policy

DelBene's record: Has voted for gun safety measures including background check expansions. Has not introduced legislation specifically targeting the theft and resale pipeline that supplies most handguns used in everyday street crime the most common source of illegal firearms in American cities.

Kincaid's position: Secure Storage Laws requiring certified lock boxes and gun safes for all firearms, with mandatory 48 hour theft reporting. From 2017 to 2021, more than 1.07 million firearms were reported stolen averaging 200,000 per year. That is the pipeline feeding street crime, and it is almost entirely preventable.

7. Homelessness

DelBene's record: Has generally supported Housing First approaches and federal homelessness funding. Has not introduced legislation distinguishing between the separate root causes of homelessness addiction, severe mental illness, and economic hardship or proposed cause specific interventions with measurable accountability requirements.

Kincaid's position: The Homeless Recovery and Rehabilitation Act a cause specific, outcome tracked national framework that treats addiction, severe mental illness, and economic hardship as distinct crises requiring distinct solutions. $5 billion per year tied to measurable results. Current policy is failing. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

8. Immigration and H-1B Reform

DelBene's record: Has generally supported existing immigration frameworks and opposed mass deportation. Has not introduced legislation addressing wage suppression through the H-1B visa program or the practice of tech companies filing thousands of H-1B petitions while simultaneously laying off American workers.

Kincaid's position: Reform H-1B to require equal pay for H-1B workers and prohibit companies from filing H-1B petitions during active layoff periods. Build a modern legal guest worker framework modeled on successful international examples. Address the root causes of illegal immigration through investment in automation and structured legal pathways not through mass deportation or willful blindness.

9. Iran and Foreign Policy

DelBene's record: Voted in favor of the House Iran war powers resolution seeking to stop U.S. airstrikes on Iran. May express opposition to the Iranian regime rhetorically, but voted to limit military action against it. Targeted airstrikes are not a declaration of war treating them as such is a false equivalence that ultimately protects one of the most brutal theocracies in the world.

Kincaid's position: Most Americans are unaware of the full scope of crimes against humanity that the Iranian regime has committed against its own people for nearly five decades the executions, the torture, the systematic oppression of women, and the murder of protesters who dare to demand their freedom. This is not a distant or abstract conflict. It is an ongoing human rights catastrophe, and the world has looked away for far too long.

Donald Trump does not appear to have a real plan for Iran. He makes decisions day by day, shifting objectives without a coherent long range strategy. That is not leadership it is improvisation at the expense of the Iranian people and American credibility.

Kincaid supports targeted U.S. and allied airstrikes against legitimate military targets that will degrade the regime's capacity for violence and help create the conditions under which the Iranian people can rise up and fight back. This is not support for a full ground invasion like Iraq or Afghanistan that would be a catastrophic mistake that this campaign firmly opposes. But limited, precision military action against military infrastructure is not a war. It is a tool.

Kincaid does not support attacking bridges, power plants, or civilian infrastructure. That would cause long term hardship for the very people of Iran we are trying to help the innocent men, women, and children who have suffered under this regime and deserve freedom, not more suffering.

The long range goal is genuine regime change achieved through a phased diplomatic and military coalition strategy that creates the conditions under which the Iranian people can free themselves. The Kurdish people deserve cultural and political autonomy as a necessary component of any free Iran framework.

→ Read: Kincaid's Full Plan for a Free Iran → Read: Kincaid Condemns Gender Apartheid in Iran — International Women's Day Statement

10. Socialism and Political Extremism

DelBene's record: Has not been a vocal critic of the socialist and far left elements within the Democratic Party that have driven mainstream voters away. As DCCC Chair, she bears institutional responsibility for the 2024 election losses. Losses that were in part driven by voter rejection of positions associated with the party's far left.

Kincaid's position: The Democratic Party must clearly and confidently reject socialism, antisemitism, and political extremism. The party wins by being the party of fairness, common sense, and results not by accommodating fringe ideologies that alienate the voters it needs. This is not a complicated calculation. It is one that the current party leadership has consistently gotten wrong.

11. Taiwan and the One China Policy

The current U.S. position: The United States has long maintained a policy of "strategic ambiguity" on Taiwan formally acknowledging the Chinese position that there is one China and Taiwan is part of it, while providing Taiwan with defensive arms and opposing any forced change of status. This ambiguity has been increasingly strained as China's military posture toward Taiwan has grown more aggressive.

Kincaid's position: Yes, there is only one China. And there is only one Taiwan. Taiwan is an independent nation and it is not part of China.

Every nation on earth that claims to love democracy and freedom should recognize and actively support the independent nation of Taiwan. A free, democratic people should not have to live under the permanent threat of military conquest simply because a powerful authoritarian government refuses to accept reality. The United States must lead the world in making that recognition clear not with strategic ambiguity, but with moral clarity.

12. Ukraine and the Return of Russian Imperialism

The current situation: The Trump administration has taken actions toward Ukraine including suspending military aid, pressuring Ukraine toward negotiations on Russian terms, and publicly criticizing Ukrainian leadership that have been widely condemned by European allies and former U.S. defense officials. Trump and President Biden both moved too slowly and did not do enough to arm and support Ukraine when it mattered most.

Kincaid's position: The actions of the Trump administration toward Ukraine are shameful. Thank God for the European Union and the nations that have stepped up when American leadership faltered.

America spent trillions of dollars and many decades building up defenses against the Soviet Union. When our grandparents were children, they practiced nuclear war drills in school. They understood, at a gut level, what it meant to live under the shadow of Russian expansionism. Too many Americans today have forgotten that history entirely and that amnesia is dangerous.

Russia is not stopping with Ukraine. History is clear on this. An authoritarian power that is permitted to take one nation and face no serious consequences will take another. And another. While we sit back and do nothing while we debate whether it is really our problem Russia rebuilds something that looks increasingly like the Soviet Union, only more dangerous because the world has grown complacent.

Our grandchildren will look back on this moment. They will ask what we did. They will ask whether we learned from history or repeated it. Right now, the answer is not one we should be proud of. This campaign believes America must lead with full support for Ukraine, with unity with our European allies, and with the clarity of purpose that this threat demands. The cost of action now is far less than the cost of inaction later.

The Bottom Line

Representative DelBene has served in Congress for more than twelve years. During that time:

Washington's housing crisis has worsened significantly
Homelessness in Seattle and the broader region has grown into a national crisis
Antisemitism in Washington schools has surged including a documented federal civil rights case in Seattle
Democrats lost control of the House, the Senate, and the White House under her leadership of the DCCC
Female volunteers have continued to be assaulted in the Peace Corps despite over a decade of promised reforms
She voted to halt military action against one of the world's most oppressive regimes the Iranian government while the people of Iran continue to suffer under gender apartheid and brutal repression
America's foreign policy credibility on Taiwan, Ukraine, and Iran has eroded while she has provided no distinctive leadership on any of these fronts
Her personal net worth has more than doubled while serving in office

None of this is a personal attack. These are facts. The question is whether the voters of Washington's 1st District are satisfied with this record and whether they believe twelve more years of the same leadership will produce different results.

This campaign exists because the answer to both of those questions should be no. Washington's 1st District deserves better and this campaign is here to deliver it.

Sources

Detailed Issue Pages

Kincaid is a moderate, common-sense Democrat and official candidate for Congress in Washington's 1st Congressional District. The campaign is focused on practical solutions for public safety, healthcare, economic fairness, and accountable government.

Paid for by Kincaid for Congress.

Kincaid for Congress – Washington’s 1st District

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