Policy Council Recap: A Volatile 2026 Ballot and an Oregon-Sized Hole in the Grid

Bellevue Chamber  |  July 8, 2026

Ballots land in mailboxes next week, and the Eastside's power supply is on a deadline of its own. Our July Policy Council paired a 2026 election preview from Morgan Irwin, the Association of Washington Business (AWB) followed by Puget Sound Energy's (PSE) plan for keeping Bellevue's grid ahead of its growth, delivered by Matt Perry, PSE's manager of local government affairs.

The 2026 ballot takes shape

Irwin walked us through the races that AWB is tracking ahead of the August 4 primary. On the Senate side, Democrats see Senator Drew MacEwen's seat in the 35th District as their best shot at a pickup, while the open seat in the 42nd District around Bellingham is the closest thing to a true toss-up on the map. The House map is busier, with four Republican incumbents in Southwest Washington's 17th and 18th Districts drawing heavy fire, and open seats in play in the 26th and 39th.

This competition is mirrored inside the parties, where veteran Seattle progressives are being outraised by challengers running to their left, and central Washington Republicans face primary opponents running competitively to their right.

"It feels a little bit like DC has come to Washington. People are attacking within their own parties." — Morgan Irwin, Association of Washington Business

For our members, the caucus math matters most: Irwin counts 8 to 12 House Democrats who are workable on business issues, though rarely all on the same issue at once. Voters will also decide in November whether to repeal the state income tax, where Irwin expects the campaign to be split between education funding on one side and tax creeping below the millionaire threshold on the other.

Everyone in Olympia has a jobs package

Governor Ferguson has been committing time towards creating job packages for all of Olympia. He's convened roughly 25 business, tribal, and labor leaders and committed himself to attend every meeting. While House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, Senate Democrats, and House Republicans assemble proposals of their own. 

"Some of these pro-jobs bills are really only pro-jobs for about 22% of workers in Washington state that are operating under a collective bargaining agreement." — Morgan Irwin, Association of Washington Business

The race to power Bellevue by 2030

Perry brought PSE's analysis on the grid capacity study that Bellevue and Redmond spent 18 months building. The good news is that reliability in both cities runs higher than the state average and PSE's own system average. However, electrification, population growth, and a downtown skyline that has fundamentally changed since 2017 are stacking load onto a system designed decades ago.

"In my experience at Puget, it takes about 10 years to build a new substation in any jurisdiction... and we need to really find a way to shorten that timeline." — Matt Perry, Puget Sound Energy

The local buildout sits inside a statewide problem. PSE's 2027 legislative strategy rests on three pillars: affordability, permitting and siting, and resource adequacy. The resource adequacy piece carries the most weight, as Washington has committed to 100% clean electricity, yet it ranks near the bottom nationally in new renewable energy development, a gap that undercuts the state's own timeline.

"We're looking at a hole in our electric grid in 2030, the size of the state of Oregon." — Matt Perry, Puget Sound Energy 

Demand-side tools are buying time. During the recent heat wave, PSE's Flex program saved about 40 megawatts, roughly the output of the largest wind farm in Western Washington, by incentivizing customers to shift their use, and Perry sees battery storage and vehicle-to-grid programs scaling from there. We will stay engaged with PSE and the City of Bellevue as the permitting conversations accelerate this fall, and we expect energy to be a defining issue during the 2027 session.