NPI’s Gael Tarleton announces that she will be a candidate for state House in the 36th LD

I have some excit­ing news to share this after­noon: After hav­ing spent sev­er­al days con­tem­plat­ing a cam­paign for state House with fam­i­ly and friends, our Pres­i­dent, Gael Tar­leton, has decid­ed to run for the posi­tion being vacat­ed by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mary Lou Dick­er­son, who recent­ly announced her retire­ment from the Leg­is­la­ture after many years of ser­vice to the peo­ple of Washington.

Along with Reuven Car­lyle and Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Dick­er­son rep­re­sents the 36th LD, one of the most Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­tricts in the state, which is com­prised of sev­er­al Seat­tle neigh­bor­hoods, includ­ing Bal­lard, Phin­ney Ridge, Fre­mont, and Belltown.

Gael is offi­cial­ly announc­ing her can­di­da­cy today, though she has spent the last cou­ple of days rais­ing mon­ey to get it start­ed. She already has $20,000 in cash and com­mit­ments after just forty-eight hours of fundrais­ing. Undoubt­ed­ly that num­ber will be much high­er by the time this week is over.

Her cam­paign has just issued a press release announc­ing her can­di­da­cy. In it, Gael explains that she is run­ning because she thinks the Leg­is­la­ture needs to be doing a bet­ter job of advanc­ing impor­tant pol­i­cy direc­tions like eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, edu­ca­tion, and healthcare.

And like the rest of us here at NPI, Gael is a believ­er in that time­less Hopi say­ing, We are the ones we have been wait­ing for.

“We need to car­ry the accom­plish­ments and lega­cy of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dick­er­son for­ward,” she says. “I have a proven track record of pro­tect­ing and cre­at­ing jobs, fight­ing for women and minor­i­ty-owned busi­ness­es, pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment and cham­pi­oning Washington’s high­er-edu­ca­tion community.”

Gael has pre­vi­ous­ly run for office twice, both times for the same coun­ty-wide posi­tion (Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion­er). In 2007, she defeat­ed incum­bent Bob Edwards to become the third woman ever elect­ed to the Port Com­mis­sion. She sought a sec­ond term just last year and won in a land­slide, with near­ly six­ty per­cent of the vote. A few weeks ago, at the com­mis­sion’s first meet­ing fol­low­ing the new year, her col­leagues tapped her to serve as Port Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent for 2012.

Besides serv­ing as NPI’s Pres­i­dent and as Pres­i­dent of the Port Com­mis­sion, Gael is a mem­ber of the Nation­al Wom­en’s Polit­i­cal Cau­cus and NARAL Pro-Choice Wash­ing­ton. For the past eight years, she has also worked as a strate­gic advi­sor for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Insti­tute for Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Edu­ca­tion and Research. She is a co-founder of the U.W.‘s Cit­i­zen Round­table on Pol­i­tics and Democ­ra­cy, which is try­ing to reignite inter­est in civics.

She holds two degrees from George­town Uni­ver­si­ty: a B.S. from its School of For­eign Ser­vice, and an M.A. in gov­ern­ment and nation­al secu­ri­ty studies.

As long­time read­ers and sup­port­ers know, NPI is not a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee and does not engage in any elec­tion­eer­ing in con­tests for pub­lic office. So as an orga­ni­za­tion, we will have no involve­ment in Gael’s campaign.

How­ev­er, we wish her the best as she under­takes this journey.

Wash­ing­ton is cur­rent­ly grap­pling with some enor­mous struc­tur­al prob­lems that are only going to get worse in the months and years ahead. Per­haps the biggest chal­lenge the Leg­is­la­ture needs to address (but has­n’t) is our bro­ken, regres­sive tax sys­tem, which isn’t bring­ing in enough rev­enue to pay for the essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices Wash­ing­tio­ni­ans want and need.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Leg­is­la­ture itself seems to be bro­ken, which explains why lit­tle to no progress has been made in the years since NPI was found­ed. Before head­way can be made in address­ing our state’s prob­lems, the Leg­is­la­ture as an insti­tu­tion will need to be reformed. For­tu­nate­ly, Gael has some expe­ri­ence in that area, hav­ing helped end Mic Dins­more’s era of cor­rup­tion at the Port of Seattle.

But I’m guess­ing that she will find reform­ing the Leg­is­la­ture to be a much more dif­fi­cult chal­lenge. Gov­ern­ing a state is one of the hard­est jobs there is. But Gael’s real job, if elect­ed, won’t be gov­ern­ing. It will be mak­ing our plan of gov­ern­ment work for us again. Because that’s what is stand­ing in the way of us get­ting the moral bud­gets and eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty we deserve.