Reddish behavior in bluish states

It won’t get the national headlines that Michigan’s right-to-work law got, but another blue state, with relatively high union membership, Washington, has also seen a victory for Republicans, or at least for fiscal conservatism. Early this week two Democratic state senators announced that they would join with Republicans to control the state Senate. State Sen. Rodney Tom, from the affluent suburbs east of Seattle’s Lake Washington, and state Sen. Tim Sheldon, from rural blue collar Mason County west of the state capital of Olympia, announced they would join with 23 Republican colleagues to control the 49-member state Senate. Tom and Sheldon say they are forming a “Majority Coalition Caucus” and invited other Democrats to join and share committee chairmanships; they declined. The Democratic state chairman said the two defectors were “lonely men that feel this need to be important.” Tom was designated majority leader and Sheldon president pro tempore. The new education committee chairman is a supporter of charter schools and school choice; a Republican will head the health care committee charged with responding to Obamacare. This looks like a rebellion against the left liberalism that has generally prevailed in Olympia.