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Matthew Welde
Matthew Welde (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Washington's 5th Congressional District. He lost in the primary on August 6, 2024.
Welde completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Matthew Welde was born in Leesburg, Virginia. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2007 and a law degree from Southwestern Law School in 2010. His career experience includes working as a domestic violence prosecutor. He has been affiliated with the Washington State Bar.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Washington's 5th Congressional District election, 2024
Washington's 5th Congressional District election, 2024 (August 6 top-two primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House Washington District 5
Michael Baumgartner defeated Carmela Conroy in the general election for U.S. House Washington District 5 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Michael Baumgartner (R) | 60.6 | 240,619 |
 | Carmela Conroy (D)  | 39.3 | 156,074 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 593 | ||
| Total votes: 397,286 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House Washington District 5
The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House Washington District 5 on August 6, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Michael Baumgartner (R) | 27.5 | 55,859 |
| ✔ | | Carmela Conroy (D) | 18.3 | 37,227 |
 | Jacquelin Maycumber (R) | 13.6 | 27,717 | |
 | Bernadine Bank (D) | 11.9 | 24,111 | |
 | Brian Dansel (R) | 10.8 | 21,983 | |
 | Ann Marie Danimus (D) | 5.6 | 11,306 | |
 | Jonathan Bingle (R) | 3.7 | 7,510 | |
 | Rene' Holaday (R) | 3.0 | 6,180 | |
 | Rick Flynn (R) | 2.4 | 4,822 | |
 | Matthew Welde (D) | 2.1 | 4,183 | |
 | Bobbi Bennett-Wolcott (D) | 1.1 | 2,336 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 175 | ||
| Total votes: 203,409 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R)
- John Guenther (R)
- Jody Spurgeon (R)
- Terri Cooper (R)
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Welde in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Matthew Welde completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Welde's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- I have a strong track record of working with people to find common ground as a starting point to create solutions to difficult problems.
- I have spent my career fighting for victims and survivors of domestic violence to reach safety and security and, if elected, will fight just as hard to improve the quality of life for people in the 5th.
- Effective leadership comes from focusing on optimism and on what is possible.
Elected officials should also show humility. Domestic violence is a difficult area of crime to prosecute. Thus, a domestic violence prosecutor will take their lumps at times. When the judge rules against you, or the jury verdict is not guilty, it is tough, but you maintain your professionalism. You keep working. Again, elected officials need to use a similar approach far more often.
One of the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office is to work to find effective solutions to problems. The best approach to fulfill those core responsibilities is to identify the problem and then find some common ground with other elected officials to use as a starting point to create an effective solution.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Welde’s campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Public Safety Matthew believes in the strength of our communities and the importance of making them safer for everyone. Drawing on years of experience in criminal prosecution, he has seen firsthand the devastating impact of crime on families and communities. Matthew advocates for enhanced training for law enforcement in areas including evidence-based investigation techniques and supports policies that foster collaboration between police and the communities they serve.
We must elect leaders who are clear in their commitment to using every lever of power to ensure that Americans can afford to live a high-quality life and raise their families in a manner with opportunities to succeed. In Congress, Matthew will hold that as his north star, and will work to fix stagnant wage growth, income inequality, the growing wealth gap, and the shrinking middle class. We must continue to strengthen the power of workers through their right to collective bargain. We must also work to address inflation by placing more emphasis on improving supply by strengthening supply chains and increasing domestic production and manufacturing.
Matthew stands firmly in support of reproductive rights, advocating for women's autonomy and access to healthcare. He believes in the importance of safeguarding these rights, ensuring that decisions regarding reproductive health are made by women, with the counsel of their doctors, free from undue government interference. When elected to Congress, Matthew will fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions. The Dobbs decision said that regulation of a medical procedure that only women can undergo does not trigger heightened scrutiny. That is backwards. The fact that the regulation of a medical procedure applies only to women is why it should trigger heightened scrutiny. The Dobbs decision is wrongly decided and, as a result, women had their reproductive rights restricted due to being female. Matthew will fight to restore those rights.
Matthew is committed to expanding access to health services and reducing bureaucratic red tape. He opposes the undue burden that employer-based healthcare places on small businesses and advocates for a system that is more accessible, transparent, and efficient for everyone. Matthew also supports programs like Medicare and Medicaid having the ability to collectively bargain prices with drug manufacturers.
Matthew will make sure that America continues to carry the torch as the arsenal of democracy. Our greatest generation once stood up and made tremendous sacrifices the last time we had a dictator start absorbing his neighbors. We are seeing a repeat of that now as Russia continues to invade other countries. Last time around, appeasement and tolerance did not work. This time around, we have an opportunity to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Matthew believes that America should support Ukraine as its people strive to be free and independent and to join the west just like its neighbors like Poland or Romania or the Baltic States. But its freedom and sovereignty are under attack. They need America's help. Matthew believes it is our duty to stand up for freedom and democracy and help them in their struggle because Russia will not stop at Ukraine.
As a career domestic violence prosecutor, Matthew is passionate about ending violence against women. This includes violence against women in Indigenous and Native communities. Indigenous women and girls are murdered at a significantly higher rate than other ethnicities. Indigenous women also suffer from higher rates of physical and sexual violence. Unsolved cases of missing indigenous women and girls are also high. These troubling facts have given rise to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement that Matthew supports. If elected, Matthew will work to address the MMIW crisis just as he currently works to protect victims and survivors of domestic violence.
As we all know, Washington’s 5th Congressional District is home to a large agricultural sector. The largest wheat producing county in the United States is here in our district. Growers in our district also produce a lot of pulses such as peas, chickpeas, lentils, and dried beans. Our growers and processors export much of what they produce to overseas markets such as Southeast Asia, China, India, and Europe. If elected, Matthew will work hard to ensure that our growers have efficient means to transport their products to those markets and fair trade policies that make sure our growers are not at a disadvantage. [2] |
” |
| —Matthew Welde’s campaign website (2024)[3] | ||
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House Washington District 5 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on April 28, 2024
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Welde for Congress, “Priorities,” accessed July 20, 2024
