Senator Manka Dhingra’s legislative website now live; official portrait photo unveiled

This week, new­ly elect­ed Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Wood­inville, Duvall) was sworn into office as Wash­ing­ton State’s newest leg­is­la­tor. Now that she is offi­cial­ly a mem­ber of the Leg­is­la­ture, she has been added to the Sen­ate’s offi­cial ros­ter and pro­vi­sioned with her own leg­isla­tive web­site thanks to the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic caucus.

The web­site can be found here; it will be updat­ed as the 2018 ses­sion gets under­way. Note that some con­tent and fea­tures are still not avail­able yet, but you can check out the cov­er­age of Manka’s swear­ing-in, includ­ing this post from NPI’s Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, and admire the Sen­a­tor’s new leg­isla­tive por­trait, a copy of which appears on the right.

The oth­er mem­bers of the dis­tric­t’s del­e­ga­tion (vet­er­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Roger Good­man and Lar­ry Springer) are shown on site’s 45th Dis­trict page along­side new­ly elect­ed Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhingra.

Dhin­gra is also now list­ed on the offi­cial ros­ter of sen­a­tors, which is here. Her com­mit­tee assign­ments are not yet list­ed, but they are Trans­porta­tion, Law & Jus­tice, and Human Ser­vices & Cor­rec­tions. Her leg­isla­tive address will also be added once she moves into her new office, like­ly in the John Cher­berg Building.

As the Sen­ate has not recon­vened as a body since the elec­tion, the for­mal trans­fer of pow­er from the Repub­li­cans to the Democ­rats has not tak­en place. When it does, Democ­rats will assume con­trol of all of the Sen­ate’s com­mit­tees. They have also announced their inten­tion to hire a new Sec­re­tary of the Sen­ate: Brad Hen­drick­son, who will take over from Hunter Good­man once the Sen­ate con­firms him.

Thanks to Dhin­gra’s elec­tion, King Coun­ty’s East­side is now exclu­sive­ly rep­re­sent­ed by Democ­rats in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. The 48th is rep­re­sent­ed by Pat­ty Kud­er­er, the 41st by Lisa Well­man, the 5th by Mark Mul­let, and the 1st by Guy Palum­bo. With the excep­tion of the 5th Dis­trict, Democ­rats also hold all of the region’s seats in the Wash­ing­ton State House.

Democ­rats can add to their House major­i­ty next year by tak­ing the seats held by Repub­li­cans Jay Rodne and Paul Graves. It won’t be easy, but as the par­ty showed this year in the 45th and last year in the 41st, it can win tough leg­isla­tive races despite being out­spent by pow­er­ful mon­eyed interests.