David Frockt likely to be Scott White’s successor as the senator from the 46th LD

The King Coun­ty Democ­rats’ exec­u­tive board (on which I sit) vot­ed last night to adopt and for­ward a list of names to the King Coun­ty Coun­cil to fill the vacan­cy left by Sen­a­tor Scott White, who recent­ly died at the age of forty-one of car­diac arrest due to an enlarged heart, which unfor­tu­nate­ly had gone undiagnosed.

The list includes State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive David Frockt and two Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists… Tony Provine and David Miller. Precinct com­mit­tee offi­cers in the 46th over­whelm­ing­ly select­ed Frockt as their first choice, and what’s more, Provine and Miller have each pledged not to take office if cho­sen, there­by leav­ing the King Coun­ty Coun­cil with lit­tle choice except to appoint David Frockt.

The 46th and the King Coun­ty Democ­rats will soon have to go through the same process all over again to replace Frockt, who will be mov­ing from the House to the Sen­ate. Between ten and fif­teen Demo­c­ra­t­ic offi­cers or dif­fer­ent precinct com­mit­tee offi­cers are said to be inter­est­ed in seek­ing appoint­ment to Frock­t’s seat.

Many of them are already begin­ning to campaign.

The Con­sti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton State requires that leg­isla­tive vacan­cies shall (if the leg­isla­tive dis­trict in ques­tion is con­tained inside one coun­ty) be filled by the coun­cil or board of com­mis­sion­ers from that coun­ty; how­ev­er, the coun­ty’s leg­is­la­tors may only choose from among a list of names sup­plied by the polit­i­cal par­ty of the indi­vid­ual who vacat­ed the office.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the Con­sti­tu­tion says the coun­ty cen­tral com­mit­tee must come up with the list of names.From Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 15:

[T]he per­son appoint­ed to fill the vacan­cy must be from the same leg­isla­tive dis­trict, coun­ty, or coun­ty com­mis­sion­er or coun­cil dis­trict and the same polit­i­cal par­ty as the leg­is­la­tor or par­ti­san coun­ty elec­tive offi­cer whose office has been vacat­ed, and shall be one of three per­sons who shall be nom­i­nat­ed by the coun­ty cen­tral com­mit­tee of that party.

The exec­u­tive board of the King Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cen­tral Com­mit­tee (KCDCC; often short­ened to King Coun­ty Democ­rats) sen­si­bly sought the advice of the 46th LD in nom­i­nat­ing can­di­dates, and then unan­i­mous­ly agreed to act on the 46th’s advice at the end of last night’s spe­cial cau­cus at Olympic View Ele­men­tary in Seat­tle. Now it is the coun­ty coun­cil’s turn to act.

We’ll keep you post­ed on the effort to fill the vacan­cy left by Frock­t’s move from the House to the Sen­ate, once that actu­al­ly happens.