Washington is divided demographically, politically, and economically by the Cascade mountains. The east side, by Idaho, is much more politically conservative, agricultural, and sparesly populated. The west side, dominated by Seattle, is more politically liberal, industrial and white-collar, and more populated. Of Washington's eight members of Congress, six represent western Washington. All but one of the western Washington representatives are Democrats. Both of eastern Washington's reps are Republicans.
The sole Republican to represent part of western Washington is Dave Reichert, in the east suburbs of Seattle including Bellevue and Redmond. He bills himself as a moderate Republican, which is true to some extent: according to the Washington Post, in the current Congress he has voted with the Republican leadership 83.8% of the time (yes, this qualifies him as a "moderate" Republican). His claim to fame, though, is that as Sheriff he caught the Green River Killer (well, his team did, but the executive always claims credit anyway).
In 2006 and 2008, he narrowly beat back a challenge from Darcy Burner, who was featured on DailyKos when her house burned in the night and she escaped wearing a T-shirt that said "End the War". She was wrote several diaries on DailyKos, and the race was was on the target list for Red-to-Blue.
A new challenger has declared that she will run: Suzan DelBene was described in the Seattle publication The Stranger as "Darcy Burner 2.0": she's a woman, she's new to politics, she was a manager at Microsoft. Unlike Burner, though, she was an executive at Microsoft, not just a mid-level manager.
She doesn't guarantee that she'll work with the NetRoots as much as Burner did, but we definitely want to invite her to.
Link to the Stranger article, which I recommend reading: Link
Her campaign website: Link