Con­firm­ing reports that he will not run again in 2012, Wash­ing­ton Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed told reporters and his staff this morn­ing that his next eigh­teen months in office will be his last — though he will remain involved in politics.

“This is a bit­ter­sweet deci­sion for me and my fam­i­ly,” Reed said in a statement.

“I have such love and respect for this office and for the oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton every sin­gle day. I came to Olympia as a young man to answer a call for a new breed of lead­ers, and was hon­ored to work for Gov­er­nor Dan Evans and to be appoint­ed assis­tant sec­re­tary of state by Sec­re­tary Lud Kramer at age 28.  Lat­er, I thor­ough­ly enjoyed being Thurston Coun­ty Audi­tor for 23 years and now have had the dis­tinct plea­sure of being Sec­re­tary of State for three terms, includ­ing pre­sid­ing over the nation’s sec­re­taries of state.”

He added, “In all, it has been quite a ride – forty-five years in pub­lic life, includ­ing thir­ty-five in elec­tive office. It is true, there is ‘a time and a sea­son’ and for Margie and me, it is time to move on at the end of the term.”

In a mes­sage to staff, Reed sum­ma­rized many of the things he has advo­cat­ed for as Sec­re­tary of State — for instance, mov­ing to vote-by-mail elec­tions, ask­ing courts to pre­serve access to the names of peo­ple who have signed bal­lot peti­tions under Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic records act, and, of course, the “Top Two” win­now­ing elec­tion, which we at NPI believes vio­lates polit­i­cal par­ties’ First Amend­ment right to free assem­bly and is there­fore unconstitutional.’

State Sen­a­tor Jim Kas­ta­ma (a Demo­c­rat) and Thurston Coun­ty Audi­tor Kim Wyman (a Repub­li­can) are said to be con­sid­er­ing run­ning for Sec­re­tary of State, and may launch their cam­paigns soon.

Mean­while, in anoth­er sign that the 2011 leg­isla­tive ses­sion has tak­en its toll on Chris Gre­goire’s admin­is­tra­tion, the gov­er­nor’s chief of staff, Jay Man­ning, revealed today that he is leav­ing to pur­sue oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties. His last day will be Fri­day, July 15th.

“There are a num­ber of rea­sons why I have decid­ed to resign,” Man­ning said in an email to col­leagues. “I have a num­ber of inter­est­ing pro­fes­sion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties that I want to pur­sue. There are some real finan­cial pres­sures that I need to attend to. I’m a lit­tle worn out and am not con­fi­dent that I would bring the lev­el of ener­gy and cre­ativ­i­ty that is nec­es­sary to do the Chief of Staff job at the lev­el I believe nec­es­sary to be successful.”

“I am not leav­ing because of the Governor’s deci­sion not to fun for a third term,” he explained. ” To the con­trary, her deci­sion will enable the admin­is­tra­tion to do more – to accom­plish more – in these next 18 months than it could if she were run­ning for a third term. I ful­ly sup­port the Governor’s deci­sion. I am also not leav­ing to run for elec­tive office. I have no plans to run for any­thing in 2012.”

Gre­goire has not announced a replace­ment for Man­ning, but she will need to find a new chief of staff quick­ly, since Man­ning is tak­ing off in mid-July.

Final­ly, it’s been brought to my atten­tion that Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Brad Owen is, in fact, plan­ning to ask vot­ers for anoth­er term in office (I char­ac­ter­ized his plans as unknown in my post yes­ter­day). He has already filed paper­work for his reelec­tion bid with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission.

First elect­ed in 1996, Owen served along­side Gary Locke for both of his two terms and will have served with Chris Gre­goire for both of hers at the end of 2012. How­ev­er, he has a ways to go before he becomes the longest-serv­ing Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor in state his­to­ry. That record is held by John Cher­berg (for whom the Sen­ate office build­ing is named).

Cher­berg served for thir­ty-two years, or eight terms. Albert Roselli­ni was gov­er­nor when he took office; Booth Gard­ner was gov­er­nor when he left office.

Unlike many oth­er states, can­di­dates for gov­er­nor and lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in Wash­ing­ton do not run togeth­er on a tick­et, mean­ing that indi­vid­u­als from dif­fer­ent par­ties can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hold the dif­fer­ent offices.

Con­se­quent­ly, Owen’s prospects are not tied to those of Jay Inslee, the like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dard-bear­er for gov­er­nor. As in past cycles, Owen is cer­tain to have oppo­si­tion in 2012, but very unlike­ly to have any­thing more than token opposition.