King County Council appoints Rod Dembowski to succeed Bob Ferguson in 1st District

This just in from the King Coun­ty Cour­t­house: Min­utes ago, in a unan­i­mous 8–0 vote, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil chose attor­ney Rod Dem­bows­ki to suc­ceed Bob Fer­gu­son as the next Coun­cilmem­ber from the 1st Dis­trict (North Seat­tle, Shore­line, Lake For­est Park, Wood­inville, Both­ell, Ken­more, Kirkland).

Dem­bows­ki was one of three indi­vid­u­als named by King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine as final­ists for the posi­tion last month, the oth­ers being State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cindy Ryu and Shore­line City Coun­cilmem­ber Will Hall.

Dem­bows­ki, a forty-one year old lawyer at Fos­ter Pep­per, had the back­ing of Fer­gu­son (now our state’s attor­ney gen­er­al), a long list of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers sup­port­ing him, and was the only can­di­date to earn either an endorse­ment or a rec­om­men­da­tion from each of the dis­tric­t’s leg­isla­tive dis­trict (LD) organizations.

As Coun­cilmem­ber Kathy Lam­bert put it in her final remarks pri­or to the appoint­ment vote, Rod “has friends everywhere”.

Dem­bows­ki was not the first choice of Coun­cilmem­bers Lar­ry Gos­sett, Jane Hague, or Lam­bert; how­ev­er, in the inter­est of uni­ty, they all vot­ed in favor of the motion to appoint him on final pas­sage. That made the vote that mat­tered 8–0. (The vote to advance Dem­bowski’s nom­i­na­tion was 5–3; Coun­cilmem­bers Phillips, McDer­mott, Pat­ter­son, Dunn, and von Reich­bauer were the ayes).

Dem­bows­ki was prompt­ly sworn in by the clerk of the King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Anne Noris. After his swear­ing in, the coun­cil adjourned to take a pho­to with its newest mem­ber. That pho­to is expect­ed to be pub­lished short­ly on KingCounty.gov.

King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine issued a state­ment prais­ing Dem­bows­ki and the two oth­er final­ists he named.

“I con­grat­u­late Coun­cilmem­ber Rod Dem­bows­ki on his appoint­ment as the new rep­re­sen­ta­tive of King Coun­ty Coun­cil Dis­trict One,” Con­stan­tine said. “I have known Coun­cilmem­ber Dem­bows­ki for many years and have admired his work as an activist, an attor­ney, and a com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teer. Rod has worked in Coun­ty gov­ern­ment, as an aide to for­mer Exec­u­tive Gary Locke, has prac­ticed as a lawyer for a dozen years, and also brings a long record of pub­lic ser­vice to his new role.”

“I’d like to thank the mem­bers of the thir­teen-mem­ber Cit­i­zens Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee that helped me choose an extra­or­di­nary group of final­ists – Rod, State Rep. Cindy Ryu, and Shore­line City Coun­cilmem­ber Will Hall.”

“I salute the mem­bers of the King Coun­ty Coun­cil for their thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of these nom­i­nees and I thank them for their deci­sive and time­ly action to pro­vide excel­lent rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the peo­ple of the First Coun­cil District.”

We at NPI extend our con­grat­u­la­tions to Rod as well. The King Coun­ty Coun­cil is one of the most impor­tant elect­ed bod­ies in our region; it is the leg­is­la­ture for the state’s largest coun­ty, and its mem­bers often sit on oth­er region­al boards or com­mis­sions. All of the final­ists named by Exec­u­tive Con­stan­tine for the seat vacat­ed by Bob Fer­gu­son were strong progressives.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the appoint­ment could go to only one of the three.

I per­son­al­ly believe the Coun­cil has made a very wise deci­sion. Rod will be a nat­ur­al suc­ces­sor to Bob Fer­gu­son — he brings ener­gy and tal­ent to the job, as well as a deep under­stand­ing of region­al and local issues, as I not­ed to the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer’s Joel Con­nel­ly ear­li­er today.

Rod has made it crys­tal clear he will be run­ning to retain the seat. Cindy Ryu’s cam­paign team has indi­cat­ed she would con­tin­ue to seek the posi­tion if she was not appoint­ed, but since she is a state leg­is­la­tor, she will be unable to raise mon­ey or cam­paign full time until the ses­sion ends. (State law pro­hibits elect­ed lead­ers at the state lev­el from rais­ing mon­ey dur­ing a leg­isla­tive session).

Rod, on the oth­er hand, will be able to keep rais­ing mon­ey and will like­ly see a new influx of dona­tions now that he has been appointed.

The third final­ist, Will Hall, has pre­vi­ous­ly sug­gest­ed he would not be inter­est­ed in chal­leng­ing either of the oth­er final­ists for the job if he did not get the appointment.

UPDATE: Will Hall has not ruled out run­ning against Rod for the seat this August. In a mes­sage sent to his sup­port­ers, he said:

Over the next few days, I will be talk­ing with fam­i­ly, friends, and sup­port­ers to eval­u­ate my options.  It has been an hon­or to serve as an elect­ed coun­cilmem­ber for the City of Shore­line, and it would cer­tain­ly be an hon­or to win a seat on the King Coun­ty Coun­cil.  Either way, I remain com­mit­ted to rep­re­sent­ing my com­mu­ni­ty with my val­ues of trust, respect, and ser­vice.  I will con­tin­ue to work for the health and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our econ­o­my, our envi­ron­ment, and our neighborhoods.

No doubt Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ryu is eval­u­at­ing her options as well. If either of them decide to run, we’ll let you know.