NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

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.

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One Ping

  1. […] Fol­low­ing last Thursday’s joint meet­ing between the 46th Dis­trict Democ­rats and the King Count…, where Rep­re­sen­ta­tive David Frockt was over­whelm­ing­ly select­ed as the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s top choice to suc­ceed the late Scott White, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil has unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to act on the rec­om­men­da­tion, appoint­ing Frockt to fill the vacancy. […]

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