Dan Newhouse won’t seek re-election in 2026, retiring after 12 years representing Central Washington in Congress

WASHINGTON – Rep. Dan Newhouse announced Wednesday that he won’t seek re-election and will retire at the end of 2026, stepping down after a dozen years representing central Washington’s 4th Congressional District in the House.

The Republican lawmaker becomes the 44th House member to announce plans to leave Congress next year, more than any other at this point in the past decade. In a statement, Newhouse said his decision “comes with no reservations or remorse, only gratitude for the tremendous opportunity to have represented my home state in Congress.”

In an interview in his office at the Capitol, the third-generation farmer from Sunnyside didn’t immediately name a preferred candidate to succeed him, but he said he hopes his successor is focused on what’s best for the district and for the nation as a whole.

“We need someone who puts the people they represent first,” Newhouse said. “I’d rather we have someone with that kind of an outlook, rather than someone who’s just in this position to elevate themselves. We see that too often in D.C.”

The departure of the 70-year-old congressman will leave an open seat in Washington state’s most reliably conservative district. In his statement, Newhouse expressed confidence that “there are now qualified and serious people expressing interest in this office” and added, “central Washington will have a strong, capable leader to whom I can pass the torch.”

Three other candidates had filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to enter the race, as of Wednesday: Republican Jerrod Sessler, who lost narrowly to Newhouse in 2024; Democrat John Duresky, an Air Force veteran; and Republican Wesley Meier, a first-time candidate. The filing deadline is May 8, and the top two finishers in the August primary, regardless of party, will meet in the general election in November.

Throughout his career in Congress, Newhouse has been a close ally of farmers and ranchers in the heavily agricultural district, which stretches between the borders of Canada and Oregon and includes Yakima and the Tri-Cities. While a staunch conservative on many issues, he has frequently worked with Democrats, notably on a bipartisan bill to reform immigration laws for farmworkers that twice passed the House, in 2019 and 2021, before dying in the Senate.

Although some retiring Republicans have openly cited the possibility of Democrats winning control of the House in 2026 to explain their decisions, Newhouse said that possibility wasn’t even “an iota of a factor” for him.

“I’m a weird animal when it comes to that, I guess. It feels like my legislative success is not hampered whatsoever when Democrats are in control,” he said in the interview.

“I was raised in the state of Washington, and if we didn’t do things bipartisan, we didn’t get anything done. So that’s kind of the way I’ve always worked, and there’s good people on both sides of the aisle. Some of my best friends are Democrats, and I’m proud to say that.”

That ability to work across the aisle while earning the respect of his fellow Republicans was a hallmark of Newhouse’s first few terms in office, a skillset that serves him well as a member of the relatively low-profile Agriculture Committee and Appropriations Committee, the latter responsible for negotiating bipartisan funding bills each year.

Newhouse’s political career began in 2003, when he was elected to the Washington House of Representatives, running in the same Yakima County district his father, Irving “Irv” Newhouse, had represented from 1965 to 1980. In 2009, then-Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, appointed the younger Newhouse to lead the Washington State Department of Agriculture, where he served until 2013.

A year later, Newhouse was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, narrowly besting fellow Republican Clint Didier, who was aligned with the populist “tea party” movement. He beat Didier again in 2016, by a wider margin, then cruised to victory over Democratic challengers in the next two elections.

After easily winning re-election in 2020, Newhouse’s political career was upended after then-President Donald Trump spent two months insisting he had won a race he lost. After Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to demand the election results be overturned – beating police officers for hours before the president told them, “I love you,” but they had to leave – Newhouse was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the violence.

“I know that I’m going to be in the minority in the Republican conference, and that’s not an easy place to be,” Newhouse said on the House floor at the time. “But in my heart, I have to vote my conscience. I just cannot condone violence, and I think it’s time to take a stand and say, as a country, we have to be better.”

For that fateful vote, many Republicans in the district turned against Newhouse. One of the few local GOP elected officials in Central Washington who stood by him, while disagreeing with his impeachment vote, was Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney, a likely frontrunner in the race to succeed the retiring lawmaker.

In a statement texted to a reporter less than an hour after Newhouse announced his decision to retire, McKinney said she was “humbled by the encouragement I’ve received since Rep. Newhouse’s announcement and look forward to sharing news with you all in the coming days.”

She expressed gratitude for Newhouse’s work to promote agriculture and defend the Lower Snake River dams against efforts to breach them, but in a statement that serves to distance herself from the congressman, she said, “Central Washington deserves a pro-Trump conservative to represent us in Congress.”

Punchbowl News reported Wednesday that Washington Rising, a pro-McKinney political action committee, had already raised $1.5 million to support a potential run in case Newhouse chose to retire.

McKinney was Newhouse’s guest at the Capitol when Trump addressed Congress in March. In a statement at the time, she told The Spokesman-Review she had stood with the president “from day one” and was “honored to have the opportunity to witness history and hear President Trump’s plan to Make America Great Again.”

Washington’s nonpartisan, top-two primary system creates unusual dynamics in the deep-red 4th Congressional District, where Democrats in recent years have received only about one-third of votes. Doug White, a Democrat who finished second to Newhouse in 2022 and later founded a group dedicated to making inroads for Democrats in rural areas, said Wednesday that the 4th “remains a difficult district for Democrats.”

“Its size favors party line voting, Republican fundraising advantages remain significant, and local political infrastructure overwhelmingly benefits GOP candidates,” White wrote in an email. “Without substantial resources and coordinated support, structural barriers persist regardless of the open seat.”

After his impeachment vote, Newhouse twice survived challenges from Trump-endorsed Republicans – former Republic Police Chief Loren Culp in an eight-man race in 2022 and two Trump-backed candidates in 2024, Sessler and TV commentator Tiffany Smiley.

The incumbent’s absence from the 2026 contest may make Trump’s endorsement less salient, although both McKinney and Sessler are clearly aligning themselves with the president. In a statement Wednesday, Sessler said he’s running a third time “with President Trump’s endorsement, strong support from the Washington State Republicans, and backing from members of the House Freedom Caucus.”

Jim Walsh, chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, said in a statement Wednesday that the state GOP “has traditionally not endorsed candidates before the August state primary,” but he didn’t rule out making an earlier endorsement, saying the party’s state committee will decide if and when to endorse a candidate in the race.

Reacting to Newhouse’s decision to retire, Walsh said, “His focus in the ‘other Washington’ has always been on supporting this Washington’s farmers, ranchers, and agricultural communities. In turn, those communities have always respected and supported him.”

Several Democratic members of Washington’s congressional delegation praised Newhouse in social media posts reacting to his announcement.

Rep. Kim Schrier, a moderate who represents a district that spans the Cascades from Wenatchee to the Seattle suburbs, called it “an honor and a privilege” to serve with Newhouse and said she is “proud of all the ways we’ve worked together for the benefit of our districts and state.”

“Dan has always brought a principled commitment to public service,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, who leads House Democrats’ campaign arm and represents a district northeast of Seattle. “I’m grateful to call him a colleague and friend all these years.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a progressive who represents most of Seattle, hailed Newhouse’s leadership on immigration reform, which she credited for providing “a roadmap to citizenship for farmworkers.” Newhouse was also one of fewer than 10 Republicans who voted in both 2019 and 2021 for the American Dream and Promise Act, a broader immigration reform bill that offered legal status to so-called “dreamers” who were brought into the United States illegally as children, as well as immigrants with various forms of temporary legal status.

“I also thank him for the courage he exhibited as one of only 10 House Republicans who stood up for our democracy and the rule of law in this country by voting to impeach Donald Trump after the January 6th attack,” Jayapal said.

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition who represents southwest Washington, said Newhouse “has served the people of central Washington with conviction and a real dedication to bipartisanship that’s increasingly rare in Congress.”

Reflecting on his work on immigration policy, which Congress hasn’t substantially reformed since 1986, Newhouse lamented that members of both parties often seem to prefer to campaign on problems – such as the country’s broken immigration and health care systems – rather than solving them.

“That’s a very disheartening thing to see, because we should fix things,” he said. “If you get credit for it, if I get credit for it – that shouldn’t matter. That’s maybe a little bit of a naive outlook, but it’s unfortunate that’s the way it is – that we won’t fix things because we don’t want the other party to get credit for it.”