Melanie Morgan (D)

Melanie Morgan has spent her life turning hard-won personal experience into a fight for the communities Olympia too often overlooks. Born in London and raised in international postings before serving in the United States Army, she settled in Pierce County and earned a psychology degree from St. Martin’s University in Lacey. She built a career in housing as a mortgage banker, a safe housing coordinator, and a commissioner on the Pierce County Housing Authority board, having herself experienced homelessness and learned firsthand how narrow the margin between stability and crisis can be. Before winning her House seat in 2018, she served on the Franklin Pierce School Board, where she pressed her colleagues to weigh how every policy would land on families and the wider community.

In the House, Morgan has paired big-picture equity work with concrete wins for working families. She championed Washington’s CROWN Act, banning discrimination based on natural hair, and she led the Legislature in establishing Juneteenth as a state paid holiday. Her signature achievement is the Community Reinvestment Account, a $200 million investment she spearheaded to confront the disproportionate harms of the War on Drugs through homeownership, small-business support, legal services, violence prevention, and reentry programs for the formerly incarcerated. She has advanced tenant protections, including a law letting renters pay move-in fees in installments, fought for equity and diversity in farming and ranching, and even carried the beloved bill, brought to her by fourth-graders in her district, that made the Suciasaurus rex Washington’s official state dinosaur.

What defines Morgan is a conviction that leadership means showing up, listening, and delivering, especially for people who are usually left out of the conversation. A domestic violence and sexual assault advocate and a housing champion since 1997, she treats government not as a distant institution but as a tool for lifting up her neighbors, from students and veterans to renters and small-business owners. She is running for reelection in 2026 on a record of results and a promise to keep building a Washington that is more equitable, more affordable, and more accountable to the communities it serves.

Endorsements include Gov. Bob Ferguson, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, Sen. T’wina Nobles, Rep. Dan Bronoske, and Franklin Pierce Schools Board Director Alex Davis, AFT Washington, the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington, the ILWU, and Washington Conservation Action.