Amy Walen is the rare legislator who pairs Democratic priorities with the skill to actually pass them, and she’s built the broad support to show for it. She chairs the House Consumer Protection and Business Committee, and her backers run from former Governor Christine Gregoire and Congressman Adam Smith to mayors and councilmembers across the Eastside.

Her record is concrete. When the Trump administration threatened Washington’s immigrant families, she co-sponsored the Keep Washington Working Act and wrote the law letting Dreamers earn professional licenses here. She wrote HB 1757 to turn empty commercial buildings into housing, took on the predatory collectors who chase families for debt they no longer owe, and has fought for affordable childcare, paid family leave, and tax relief for working families. 

A former Kirkland mayor who ran a company before she got to Olympia, Walen knows how to balance a budget without losing sight of who it’s for. We were glad to back her last cycle, and the case has only gotten stronger. She’s an effective, pragmatic Democrat who delivers, and she’s earned another term in the 48th.

Endorsements include former Governor Christine Gregoire, Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck, Congressman Adam Smith, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility Victory Fund, Moms Demand Action, the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington, FairVote Washington, the Children’s Campaign Fund, Democrats for Diversity & Inclusion, and IUPAT DC5. 

Chipalo Street came up through code, not the party ladder. A Brown-trained computer scientist, he helped launch Azure IoT Edge at Microsoft and earned four patents before turning to public service. He co-founded a program teaching computer science to South Seattle kids who lacked access and ran a small rental business built on partnership with tenants—keeping every one of them housed through the pandemic, even after nearly a third lost work.

In Olympia, he has trained an engineer’s eye on the cost of living and the systems behind it. He sponsored the nation’s most effective battery recycling program and co-sponsored the My Data My Health bill to shield patients’ health data. He voted for Washington’s assault weapons ban, the Missing Middle Housing bill that ended exclusionary zoning near transit, and the largest-ever investment in the state Housing Trust Fund, all while holding a 100 percent labor voting record and steering tens of millions in capital dollars back to 37th District projects.

A former international soccer referee who once struck alongside his union for fair pay, Street brings those same standards to the Capitol. Having lost friends and neighbors to gun violence, he carries a personal urgency for safer communities. Now he’s running for the 37th’s open state Senate seat to keep the work going.

Endorsements include state Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, Attorney General Nick Brown, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, the Washington State Labor Council, SEIU 775, UFCW 3000, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.

David Hackney has represented the 11th District since 2020, and he brought an unusually deep résumé to Olympia. He tried more than 25 felony cases as a federal prosecutor, trained prosecutors and judges in Kosovo, and served with the United Nations in The Hague on a team that convicted a detention-camp commander of crimes against humanity. He later became lead employment attorney for The Nature Conservancy, and he holds a law degree and a master’s in public administration from Harvard.

That background shows up in a record built on results and reaching across the aisle. As Vice Chair of the House Consumer Protection and Business Committee, he has led on consumer bills to modernize pawnbroker lending for low-income borrowers and curb predatory insurance-claim practices, and he authored a state False Claims Act to recover taxpayer dollars lost to fraud. He co-chairs the bipartisan Public Safety Caucus, where he’s worked to protect kids from fentanyl exposure and reform juvenile sentencing around brain-development science, and co-founded the Hydrogen Caucus alongside Republican Rep. Peter Abbarno to grow the state’s clean-energy economy.

Hackney takes the work of making government function seriously, from rooting out fraud to protecting consumers, and he builds the coalitions to get it done. He’s a pragmatic, effective legislator who has earned another term in the 11th.

Endorsements include Governor Bob Ferguson, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, Attorney General Nick Brown, Speaker Laurie Jinkins, former Governor Chris Gregoire, The Seattle Times, the Washington State Labor Council, UFCW 3000, the Washington State Nurses Association, and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility Victory Fund.

Jesse Salomon gets results, and the 32nd can’t afford to lose him. A former King County public defender and seven-year Shoreline City Council member, he’s spent two terms in the Senate writing bills that actually become law, including a gun-safety measure protecting domestic violence survivors that drew support from both parties. As chair of the Senate Local Government Committee, he closed special-interest tax loopholes to make the system fairer, delivered major new money for public schools and special education, protected renters from runaway rent hikes, and cut red tape to build more housing near transit.

This year he faces a primary challenge from his own side of the aisle, with critics criticizing him as too moderate. The record tells a different story: a lawmaker who reads the fine print, weighs every concern, and cares more about fixing the problem than scoring points. He calls himself a “pragmatic progressive,” and Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen and colleagues across the caucus are standing with him.

In a safe-blue district, the real choice is who can actually get things done. That’s Jesse Salomon, and the 32nd would be smart to keep him.

Endorsements include The Seattle Times, Congressman Adam Smith, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility Victory Fund, the Washington State Nurses Association, the Children’s Campaign Fund, the Boeing Machinists (Local 751), UFCW 3000, SEIU Local 925, and the Washington State Building & Construction Trades. 

Kristine Reeves knows firsthand what public investment in people can accomplish, because it rebuilt her own life. Raised in Moses Lake by a single mother who struggled with addiction, she moved in and out of foster care and experienced homelessness as a child, leaning on Head Start, food stamps, and the public educators who saw her potential. She became the first in her family to graduate from college, earning a bachelor’s in political science from Washington State University and a master’s in organizational leadership from Gonzaga. She built a career in public service before ever running for office, advising international students at higher-education institutions, directing regional and veterans’ work for U.S. Senator Patty Murray, and spending more than six years at the Washington Department of Commerce as Director of the Military and Defense Sector, where she secured millions in federal grants and helped hundreds of small defense-sector businesses weather Pentagon downsizing.

Reeves first won her Federal Way seat in 2016, becoming the first African American woman elected to the Washington House in eighteen years, then stepped away in 2019 to run for Congress before reclaiming the 30th District seat in 2022. Now in her third term, she chairs the House Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee, serves on the House Education Committee, and has led the Legislative Black Caucus. Over her tenure, she has helped advance some of the state’s signature policies: the nation’s paid family and medical leave program, the country’s first long-term care benefit to help seniors age at home, the Career Connect apprenticeship initiative linking students to on-the-job training, expanded childcare access for working families, and the state’s early environmental justice work. As chair, she has pushed bipartisan solutions on food security, water and soil health, and rural resilience while carrying her classroom-first focus into education policy.

What ties her record together is a conviction rooted in her own story: that strong schools, economic stability, and a livable environment shouldn’t depend on the circumstances a child is born into. She campaigns on an open door, an open mind, and a proven record of results, and she governs like someone who remembers exactly what it takes to break a cycle of poverty—and refuses to pull the ladder up behind her.

*Endorsements include the Washington State Labor Council, SEIU, UFCW 3000, Teamsters 117, AFSCME, the Washington State Nurses Association, the King County and 30th District Democrats, Hilary Franz, Mike Pellicciotti, Dave Upthegrove, and Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus, and editorial endorsements from The Seattle Times and The Stranger.

*2024 Election Cycle

Lauren Davis has a real knack for solving hard problems. Before she ever held office, she was the citizen co-sponsor behind 2016’s Ricky’s Law, which built the state’s first crisis-treatment system for people with life-threatening addiction. She helped found Forefront Suicide Prevention, worked at the Gates Foundation, and was a Fulbright fellow in Ghana before bringing that expertise to Olympia.

In the legislature she helped launch Washington’s 988 crisis line and created the Recovery Navigator program, steering serious money into behavioral health. This year she passed legislation supporting children and youth behavioral health on a 94-to-0 vote, and after a man died in the Lynnwood jail, she used her local relationships to replace jail beds with a behavioral-health crisis center.

Davis builds bipartisan support for her bills and digs into the details of state contracts to make programs actually work. She’s tireless, and she knows this work cold. The 32nd should send her back.

Endorsements include The Seattle Times, The Everett Herald, the Washington Education Association, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, the Children’s Campaign Fund, Planned Parenthood Votes, NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, EMILY’s List, and the 32nd District Democrats.

Osman Salahuddin got to Olympia and went to work. Appointed to the seat in early 2025 and elected that November, he’s the youngest member of the Legislature and the only South Asian in the House. He grew up in Redmond, the son of immigrants. His mom’s a special-ed teacher and his dad runs a small business. He studied neurobiology at UW and worked as a researcher at Fred Hutch and UW Medicine before joining the Redmond City Council. Today he’s pursuing a law degree at UW while serving in the Legislature.

In short order he’s built a real record. He wrote bills to toughen sentencing for rape that results in pregnancy, to put trained clinicians on behavioral-health crisis calls, to let workers use sick leave for immigration hearings, and to give students a real vote on the board that runs the state’s community colleges.

Salahuddin is focused on the cost of housing, access to healthcare, and well-funded schools. We recommended him last cycle, and he’s more than justified that support. For a lawmaker barely two years in, he’s already shown he can move bills that matter, and he’s earned a full term of his own.

Endorsements include Governor Bob Ferguson, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, the Washington State Building & Construction Trades Council, LiUNA Laborers Local 242, the Washington State Nurses Association, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, and One America Votes. 

Steve Bergquist is one of the only working classroom teachers in the Legislature, and he’s used that rare vantage point to become one of Olympia’s most persistent advocates for public education. He chairs the Early Learning and Human Services Committee, and after more than a decade representing the 11th District, he’s built a record of delivering for students and working families instead of just talking about them.

His record is concrete. He fought to increase special education funding, expanded school meal and summer nutrition programs so fewer kids go hungry, and raised the local levy cap to help districts keep essential services running. He championed the Tukwila and Renton Promise programs, which send local graduates to community college for free, and wrote legislation aligning them with the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship to widen access. Enrollment in Tukwila’s program more than tripled in its first year, and he’s now working to build a Kent Promise Program on the same model.

A fourth-generation resident of the district who still teaches history at Renton’s Lindbergh High School, Bergquist ran a small business before he got to Olympia and knows what it takes to make a budget work for real people. He coaches tennis and golf, co-founded a nonprofit to support students outside the classroom, and once raised more than $100,000 to save the district’s golf programs when the funding disappeared. He’s a practical, effective Democrat who keeps students at the center of the state budget, and he’s earned another term in the 11th.

Zach Hall came to Olympia to deliver for the 5th District, and in his first session, he has proven his worth. He grew up in Issaquah, graduating from the local public schools before earning a biology degree and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Washington. He got his start running local campaigns and working as a legislative aide to Rep. Lisa Callan—now his seatmate—then spent six years on the Issaquah City Council, serving as deputy council president and chairing the Eastside Fire & Rescue board, before being appointed to the House in 2025.

In one session, he sponsored and passed two bipartisan bills to lower energy costs. He worked with utilities on HB 2296, a “pay-as-you-save” measure that lets them front the cost of heat pumps and other efficiency upgrades so families repay them gradually on their monthly bills, and passed HB 2575 to cut outdated reporting mandates and save ratepayers money. He protected the funding and timeline to widen State Route 18, put $1 million toward urgent safety fixes along the corridor, and he backed reforms to build housing faster, modernize the power grid, and speed up light rail.

It’s a record of managing growth without losing what makes the district home. He listens first, he takes the budget seriously, and he keeps his focus on what constituents raise most: traffic, housing, and the cost of living. He’s earned a full term.

Endorsements include State Sen. Victoria Hunt, Rep. Lisa Callan, House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, the Washington Education Association, WFSE, Teamsters 117, SEIU, and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.