By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
There is no shortage of Jewish candidates running for office in the Puget Sound area this fall. They sailed through the primary season and are preparing for the Nov. 5 general election.
Three incumbents are looking to repeat their legislative victories and win another term: Shay Schual-Berke in the 33rd District, which covers much of the area between Seattle and Federal Way, and Laura Ruderman, who, two years ago, became the first Democratic representative in some time to win reelection from her Eastside suburban district. Unlike the two women representatives, State Sen. Adam Kline had to face off against Dawn Mason, a state House member, in a September rematch of the Democratic primary four years ago. This time around, Kline won a convincing 60-40 percent victory in the primary, capturing nearly 6,200 of the 10,246 votes reported to date.
Kline has represented the 37th District in the state Senate since 1997, when he was first appointed to his seat. He won election later that year and was reelected to a full term in 1998. His Seattle district encompasses Rainier Valley, Madrona, South and East Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach, Mt. Baker, Leschi, Columbia City, southern Capitol Hill and Skyway.
Having grown up in a small town in upstate New York and gotten his law degree from the University of Maryland in 1972, Kline is a lawyer in solo practice, specializing in personal injury and civil rights law. A classic liberal democrat who does not duck the label, Kline is a cooperating attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. He has been co-chairman of Washington Conservation Voters, a chair of the National Abortion Rights Action League PAC of Washington, and the legislative director for MADD — Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. He and his wife, Laura Gene Middaugh, are members of Temple Beth Am, and he has been a member of the social action committee.
“My own progressiveness comes from my being raised in a Jewish home,” he says. “I am one of the people who believes very strongly in tikkun olam. We can argue about how best to repair the world and we should. We should have these arguments all the time. But that we should repair the world is at base, I think, a religious impulse.”
Kline said he is involved with economic development issues and is concerned this year about the state’s gaping budget deficit and what he sees as inequities in the tax system. In fact, Kline puts quotes around the term tax system, arguing that there is nothing systematic about how the state funds itself.
“The sales tax is not only unfair to the poor and regressive,” Kline said, “it’s also extremely volatile. When people don’t spend there’s no revenue. That’s also true of B and O [business and occupations tax]. Just at the time when we need those revenues most, they disappear.”
The Business and Occupations Tax, he noted, is especially hard on start-up companies, since it taxes gross revenues regardless of whether the company is in the black or not. He believes it is appropriate to limit property taxes but added that the current one percent growth limit means revenues for small cities, and fire and water districts fail to keep up with expenses, even with no new spending.
Shay Schual-Berke, a cardiologist by training, retired from her private medical practice in 1992. Born and raised in New York, Schual-Berke attended Washington University in St. Louis and received her M.D. from New York Medical College. She and her husband moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1979. Before running for the state legislature she served as a member of the Highline School Board.
In campaigning, Schual-Berke has said people have to look beyond the simple, bumper-sticker types of answers. “We can’t do the easy major feel-good win-me-votes solutions. It’s not going to work,” she warned.
A member of Temple B’nai Torah, she has two sons, both of whom have attended religious school. Schual-Berke has said that “being Jewish is in my pores,” stemming from a belief in public service and giving back to the community, as well as a deep belief in the principles of equality of opportunity.
Last session, she was the prime sponsor of the bill that allowed victims of sexual assault access to emergency contraception. She was also the prime sponsor last year of the bill that would have eliminated the super-majority requirement for passage of school bonds and levies. It failed in the House by one vote. As a member of the Community Security Committee, which was formed last term after the tragedy of Sept. 11, she worked to ensure protection from terrorism and from civil rights violations as well.
Laura Ruderman grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, an environment where, she said, “it’s easy to be a Jew.”
“I was always raised with the belief that, to whom much is given, much is expected,” she said. “That’s what I see, more than anything else, is the common denominator in the Jewish community, across the political spectrum and across the faith spectrum — that kind of looking out for what is right and what is fair, whether the issue be property taxes or education or telecommunications or salmon.”
Representing a district that includes Redmond, and having worked at Microsoft before entering politics, Ruderman said she has “become the go-to girl in the Democratic caucus on technology issues.” She added that while her experience gives her credibility, she is able to speak about high-tech concerns in plain English, “not being a lifelong geek.”
Ruderman’s high-tech career began with a temporary job at a graphics company owned by Bill Gates. When most of that company became part of Microsoft, she moved with it and taught herself Web programming. Eventually she worked her way up to being a project manager before leaving in 1998 to devote herself full-time to legislative concerns.
As a legislator, Ruderman lists among her chief accomplishments this past session: providing health insurance for children of low-income workers, defining health care information to include DNA to ensure the privacy of those records, and support of a bill to help prevent students from being harassed or bullied at school. She also noted her involvement with such issues as leading the fight to create Promise Scholarships for students from middle-class families, using family medical leave to care for parents and in-laws as well as spouses and children, and giving consumers means to restore their financial records in cases of identity theft.
While these are all issues she feels deeply about, she said they are also the issues voters want her to address. “They wouldn’t be the issues I’d be working on if they weren’t of concern to my district,” she said.
Sherry Appleton, a member of Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island, is making her first run for state office as a representative from the 23rd Legislative District, which includes Bainbridge Island, Kelso, Bremerton and other parts of Kitsap County, north of Seattle. She has been married for 21 years. Including her husband’s children and their offspring, she boasts five children, 13 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
“But I’m not that old,” she says with a chuckle. “We have a blended family and I want to make that very clear.”
“I think when you look at what tikkun olam means, you think of making the society better and making everybody’s lives better,” she explains. “I approach everything I do by asking, Is it social justice; is it social injustice? There is an injustice in this world when people work 40 hours a week and are still on welfare.”
Appleton believes passage of Referendum 51 is critical, especially for people in Kitsap County. She is particularly concerned that what she calls “the flexible funding” portion of the tax package be enacted — the one percent sales tax on new and used vehicles and the 30 percent weight tariff on trucks. Without that funding, she says there will be no money to continue operating the four foot ferries that are so important to Kitsap County. Otherwise, she says, “all those commuters will have to put their cars on the road.” She also noted that there is $75 million for para-transit, for the elderly and disabled, which remains a necessity. She says it is not enough funding, but it is better than nothing.
“In the last two years we haven’t seemed to move forward. People are not willing to make tough decisions,” she said, “whether looking at tax reform or whether to making a commitment to our transportation needs down in Olympia without turning it over to the people.”
While this is her first time running for the legislature, she is no stranger to either politics or Olympia. From 1985 to 1993 Appleton was a member of the Poulsbo City Council and has been a commissioner on the Washington State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission since her appointment in 1991 by the first President Bush. Gov. Gary Locke picked her in 1996 to serve on state’s Judicial Conduct Commission. In 2000, she was elected as a freeholder representing the first commissioner district to develop the Kitsap County Charter.
For the last 10 years she has been working in Olympia as a contract lobbyist for nonprofit organizations, including the Coalition for a Jewish Voice. She also has represented various other organizations, ranging from the League of Women Voters to the Amalgamated Transit Workers Legislative Council. During her career, Appleton has served on the board of directors of the Association of Washington Cities, the Northwest Women’s Law Center Legislative Committee, and the Urban Forestry Council. For more information about her experience working with government, visit her Web site, www.sherryappleton.com.
“My background in the Jewish community,” she said, “is through the Coalition for a Jewish Voice: I’ve worked for them for five years.”
Rep. Schual-Berke said, in commenting on Appleton’s campaign, that it would be in the best interest of all Jews in Washington state to support the campaign of this candidate who would be a strong advocate for issues of community concern.
Pam Loginsky has years of experience arguing cases before appeals courts and the Washington Supreme Court. Now she would like to be one of the justices that decides them, instead.
She spent 10 years with the Kitsap County prosecutor’s office. She was selected to form the appellate unit and headed it for almost eight years. During that time she also helped write statutes covering various issues and lobbying for them. In 1999 she became staff attorney for the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, which keeps her in regular contact with attorneys throughout this state, from Asotin to Yakima.
Loginsky grew up in the largely Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., and joined the Navy right out of high school. That immediately put her into the first place where she “felt like a minority.”
“I was the only female enlisted and the only female Jew at boot camp when I was there,” she recalls. During her six-plus years as a hospital corpsman, she was stationed for a time on Whidbey Island and “fell in love with the area while I was there.” After her discharge she moved to the Puget Sound area, where she volunteered with the New Beginnings Project, working with battered women and with the domestic violence project of the Bellevue Police Department. That experience led her to decide to become an attorney and she enrolled in the University of Washington School of Law. Today, Loginsky regularly conducts domestic violence training for police officers, advocates and prosecutors and has worked for new laws to increase victim safety.
She has been a member of Congregation Beth Hatikvah in Bremerton since moving to Kitsap County in 1989. At the time, she said, it was the Jewish Community Center and “did not become a named congregation for many years.” This February, she became president of the congregation, a role she says she has not been able to give as much attention to as she might like because of the time demands of the electoral campaign.
“Thank heavens for all the volunteers and the other board members. I have not been able to participate in High Holiday preparations as [much as] I would have.”
This May, she said, she was called to the Torah along with five other women of her congregation “which I think,” she says, “helped give me the confidence to run for office.”
State Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge’s name will also appear on the November ballot. She ran with no opposition to retain her seat in the primary and garnered over 580,000 votes. Unless a write-in candidate files to oppose her, she would only be prevented from returning to the court if she failed to receive an endorsement from one percent of the voters next month, an extremely unlikely prospect.