Sam Reed not running again in 2012?

A few weeks ago, we start­ed hear­ing spec­u­la­tion that incum­bent Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed, who has held the posi­tion for sev­er­al terms, was think­ing about retir­ing and not run­ning again in 2012. We don’t care much for repeat­ing unsub­stan­ti­at­ed rumors, so we did­n’t report it here on The Advo­cate, but today, we got word from mul­ti­ple peo­ple that Reed may pub­licly announce his plans as ear­ly as tomorrow.

Reed’s retire­ment would cre­ate an open seat in a third statewide race next year, which would make 2012 all the more inter­est­ing. (Chris Gre­goire is not seek­ing anoth­er term as gov­er­nor, and Rob McKen­na is vacat­ing the office of attor­ney gen­er­al to run for that job). Sev­er­al Democ­rats are said to be inter­est­ed in run­ning if Reed does­n’t, and they will have to decide quick­ly if they want to move for­ward, should Reed con­firm his retire­ment tomorrow.

Oth­er inde­pen­dent­ly elect­ed mem­bers of Wash­ing­ton’s exec­u­tive branch are plan­ning to ask vot­ers for anoth­er term, includ­ing State Trea­sur­er Jim McIn­tire and Lands Com­mis­sion­er Peter Goldmark.

State Audi­tor Bri­an Son­ntag has made noise about run­ning for gov­er­nor, but it’s already a crowd­ed field, with Rob McKen­na a vir­tu­al lock for the Repub­li­can vote and Jay Inslee a vir­tu­al lock for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote.

To our knowl­edge, Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Randy Dorn has­n’t said whether he intends to run again, and nei­ther has Insur­ance Com­mis­sion­er Mike Krei­dler. Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Brad Owen has­n’t come to a deci­sion either.

Repub­li­cans have con­trolled the posi­tion of Sec­re­tary of State even longer than Democ­rats have con­trolled the gov­er­nor’s man­sion. The last Demo­c­rat to serve as Sec­re­tary of State was Vic Mey­ers; he left office at the end of 1964, mean­ing that the state’s top elec­tions offi­cial has not been a Demo­c­rat in almost half a century.

Nat­u­ral­ly, Democ­rats are anx­ious to end the Repub­li­cans’ streak, just as Repub­li­cans want to end the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s hold on the gov­er­nor­ship. That is part­ly why there’s a lot of inter­est on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side. We’ll see how the race shakes out. It could be very memorable.