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.

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.