Sharon Tomiko Santos (D)

Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos learned the work of justice long before she ran for office. Her mother and grandparents were among the Japanese American families forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated during World War II, and she grew up watching elders, organizers, churches, and small business owners rebuild neighborhoods piece by piece. As a student at Franklin High School, she organized youth participation in Seattle’s first Day of Remembrance and led classmates in a caravan from Seattle to Puyallup, retracing the route Japanese American families were forced to travel before mass incarceration in 1942. She carried that commitment to The Evergreen State College and Northeastern University, where she earned a master’s degree in public policy and community-centered public service.

Santos first won election to the House in 1998, becoming the first Japanese American woman elected to a mainland state legislature and, over nearly three decades in office, the longest-serving legislator of color in Washington history. She chairs the House Education Committee and serves on the Finance and Consumer Protection and Business Committee’s. She has built institutions well beyond Olympia, helping found organizations including Hate Free Zone of Washington, OneAmerica, public radio station KUOW, and the Washington Tax Fairness Coalition.

Santos anchors her legislative work in the conviction that Washington must deliver excellence and opportunity to each and every student, and she presses the state to strengthen its educator workforce, close opportunity gaps, and repair long-neglected pieces of basic education funding such as transportation and special education. Her priorities span civil rights, women’s rights, economic and environmental justice, and affordable housing, and she has worked to convert vacant hotels and commercial buildings into homes and to shield longtime residents from displacement in neighborhoods facing rising costs. She frames her current campaign around defending the communities that define the 37th at a moment of federal hostility, arguing that security means more than the absence of violence and that the state must hold firm to its values in how it spends and governs.

Endorsements include Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins, Rep. Chipalo Street, former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, Seattle City Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Debora Juarez, Port of Seattle Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa, the 37th District Democrats, the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, AFSCME Council 28 (WFSE), the ILWU Washington District Council, SPEEA (IFPTE Local 2001), the Washington State Nurses Association, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility Victory Fund, and the Children’s Campaign Fund.