NPI's Cascadia Advocate

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

Monday, November 14th, 2011

King County Council unanimously appoints David Frockt to be Scott White’s successor

Seat­tle’s 46th leg­isla­tive dis­trict has a state sen­a­tor again!

Fol­low­ing last Thurs­day’s joint meet­ing between the 46th Dis­trict Democ­rats and the King Coun­ty Democ­rats, 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.

Frockt sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion as state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the coun­ty cour­t­house, and was sub­se­quent­ly sworn in as the 46th’s new state senator.

Frock­t’s res­ig­na­tion from the House means that there is anoth­er vacan­cy to fill. The com­pe­ti­tion for the seat looks like it will be fair­ly intense.

It’s prob­a­ble going into the meet­ing that there could be near­ly half a dozen can­di­dates with enough strength to com­pete for the top spots, as I told The Seat­tle Times ear­li­er today. That means that pre­dict­ing who will be on the next list of three names (let alone at the top of it) is pret­ty much impossible.

More than 10 can­di­dates are expect­ed to com­pete for Frock­t’s seat. A hand­ful of appli­cants are like­ly to land in the top five, said Andrew Vil­leneuve, a vice chair­man for King Coun­ty Democrats.

They are: Sylvester Cann, a for­mer aide to White; Ger­ry Pol­let, who ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly against White in 2008; Sara­jane Siegfriedt, a long­time 46th Dis­trict activist; and Javier Valdez, anoth­er par­ty activist who has been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott.

Democ­rats in the 46th Dis­trict are like­ly to vote on Frock­t’s replace­ment at a Dec. 1 meet­ing. They will for­ward three names to the coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cen­tral Com­mit­tee. Under a process spelled out in the state con­sti­tu­tion, the par­ty com­mit­tee will then for­ward three names to the Coun­ty Council.

Vil­leneuve said the cen­tral com­mit­tee will very like­ly defer to the 46th Dis­tric­t’s three favorites. “It’s their dis­trict, their rep­re­sen­ta­tive,” Vil­leneuve said.

Because Frockt has now been sworn in, he’ll be able to begin his duties as state sen­a­tor in advance of the first day of the spe­cial ses­sion of the state Leg­is­la­ture that is sched­uled to begin on Mon­day, Novem­ber 28th, two weeks from today.

How­ev­er, the 46th will still be miss­ing a mem­ber of its del­e­ga­tion until the posi­tion that Sen­a­tor David Frockt has just vacat­ed is filled. It’s pos­si­ble that could hap­pen as ear­ly as Mon­day, Decem­ber 5th — we will see.

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation


    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

One Ping

  1. […] King Coun­ty Coun­cil unan­i­mous­ly appoints David Frockt to be Scott White’s suc­ces­sor  … NPI … […]

    Ping from Anyone at the UW know who David Frockt is? /  The Ave :: November 23rd, 2011 at 10:05 AM
  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: