SEATTLE — Rep. Dan Newhouse won a sixth term Friday, defeating challenger and fellow Republican Jerrod Sessler, in a race that tested the power of President-elect Donald Trump’s endorsement in Central Washington’s 4th Congressional District.

Newhouse leads with 51% of the vote, to 47% for Sessler, a cushion of about 10,500 votes. The Seattle Times called the race for Newhouse on Friday.

Newhouse is one of only two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The other, Rep. David Valadao of California, was also leading in his reelection bid.

Newhouse’s path to victory has strengthened with each batch of votes counted since election night. He led by just under 4,000 votes Tuesday, by just under 5,000 Wednesday and by more than 8,000 Thursday.

There are around 60,000 ballots left to count, according to estimates Friday from the Secretary of State’s Office. To catch up, Sessler would need to capture more than 61% of remaining ballots.

The result has no effect on the balance of power in the U.S. House, as both Newhouse and Sessler are Republicans, but does provide a small victory for the small remaining wing of non-MAGA Republicans.

Sessler anchored his campaign on the events of Jan. 6. He said he was at the Capitol that day but didn’t enter the building. He said the attack on the Capitol was a “setup” meant to distract the public from a stolen 2020 election. There is no evidence the attack on the Capitol was a setup or that there was widespread fraud or wrongdoing in the 2020 election.

Sessler has also said he doesn’t believe Muslims should serve in Congress, an idea contrary to the country’s founding ideals. Article VI of the Constitution explicitly bars any religious test for any public office.

Newhouse also survived in 2022, squeaking through the primary after several far-right challengers, including Sessler, split the pro-Trump vote.

In 2022, Newhouse easily defeated a Democrat in the general election. This year, he likely escaped with the help of Democratic voters (about one-third of the district’s voters typically vote Democratic), who were left to choose between two Republicans.

Newhouse, 69, is a Yakima Valley farmer whose farm grows hops, fruit and alfalfa. He won the first of his five terms in Congress in 2014, after serving in the state Legislature and leading the state Department of Agriculture.

In a district blanketed by fields and orchards, heavily dependent on immigrant workers, Newhouse has long championed bipartisan immigration reforms to overhaul the guest worker program and offer undocumented farmworkers a path to legal residence.

Trump endorsed Sessler soon after he launched his campaign, and reiterated his endorsement in the week before the election, deriding Newhouse as “weak and pathetic.”

Even as Trump triumphed nationally, his endorsement flopped in Washington. Newhouse prevailed and Joe Kent, a Trump favorite, lost in his second quest in Republican-leaning Southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District. Kent was defeated for the second cycle in a row by Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a moderate Democrat who stressed nuts-and-bolts local concerns over the hot-button culture war issues Kent campaigned on.

Sessler, wrote on social media Friday that the race was too close to call and complained that “The lies spread about me feels a lot like the hanging of an innocent man’s character.”

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