State Attorney General Bob Ferguson to keynote NPI’s 2015 Spring Fundraising Gala

With the first day of April near­ly upon us, and NPI’s 2015 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala not far behind, it’s now time for us to announce who the final speak­er at this year’s gala will be. Pre­vi­ous­ly, we had the plea­sure of reveal­ing that U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Kilmer would be our open­ing speak­er and Kirk­land City Coun­cilmem­ber Shel­ley Klo­ba would be our mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

This after­noon, we are delight­ed to announce that this year’s gala keynote will be deliv­ered by Wash­ing­ton State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son.

Although he has only been on the job as the Ever­green State’s chief legal offi­cer for a cou­ple of years, Bob Fer­gu­son has already estab­lished him­self as a cham­pi­on of open gov­ern­ment, civ­il lib­er­ties, and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. He and Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee have repeat­ed­ly teamed up on a num­ber of impor­tant projects — par­tic­u­lar­ly hold­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment account­able for the cleanup of Hanford.

Pri­or to tak­ing office as Wash­ing­ton’s eigh­teenth attor­ney gen­er­al, Fer­gu­son was a King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber, rep­re­sent­ing the coun­ty’s 1st Dis­trict (north Seat­tle, Shore­line, Lake For­est Park, and points east).

Before that, he was a lawyer at Pre­ston, Gates & Ellis. As his cam­paign biog­ra­phy notes, he was part of the legal team that fought two Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives in court, and suc­ceed­ed in get­ting them struck down as unconstitutional.

Few peo­ple per­son­i­fy the Pacif­ic North­west quite like Bob Fer­gu­son does. He is a fourth-gen­er­a­tion Wash­ing­ton­ian, Husky grad­u­ate (not to men­tion for­mer UW Stu­dent Body Pres­i­dent!), avid moun­tain climber, and two-time win­ner of the Wash­ing­ton State Chess Cham­pi­onship (yes, really!)

Bob is also a com­pelling speak­er. We know from expe­ri­ence: In 2011, he served as the mas­ter of cer­e­monies for NPI’s third Spring Fundrais­ing Gala, and did a tremen­dous job tying the speak­ing pro­gram together.

We are very hap­py to have him back four years lat­er, this time as our keynote speak­er. We’re excit­ed to hear what he has to say, and we hope you are, too.

Our sev­enth gala is going to be absolute­ly won­der­ful. We cor­dial­ly invite you to con­sid­er join­ing us. If you haven’t yet bought your tick­et yet, we urge you to do so now using one of the but­tons below.

A house­hold tick­et admits all the mem­bers of an imme­di­ate fam­i­ly and is a good val­ue if you plan to attend with your spouse or chil­dren. (The gala is a fam­i­ly-friend­ly event, and young peo­ple of all ages are welcome!).

These are our tick­et rates:

• Indi­vid­ual ($70, admits one person)
• House­hold ($100, admits an entire family)
• Liv­ing Light­ly ($25, for stu­dents and activists on lim­it­ed incomes)

Buy a ticket to the gala

Click above to buy a tick­et using a cred­it card.

Here’s what else you can expect at our 2015 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala:

• A full din­ner buf­fet with veg­e­tar­i­an and veg­an choices
• Beer and wine selec­tions from our cash bar
• Oppor­tu­ni­ties to min­gle with fel­low activists and elect­ed leaders
• A chance to win a scrump­tious dessert for your table at our sec­ond annu­al Dessert Dash, orga­nized by our Host Committee
• A fam­i­ly-friend­ly atmosphere

If you’d like to RSVP for the gala on Face­book, you can do so here.

Stu­dents who want to vol­un­teer to help put on the event can get in the door free. If you’re inter­est­ed in vol­un­teer­ing, please get in touch with us.

We hope you’ll help us make our biggest event of the year a suc­cess by buy­ing your tick­et and com­mit­ting to attend.

See you on April 10th!