By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
In some ways, it may seem to Tony Zinman that he has been preparing his whole life for next month’s election. Zinman says he has always been politically active, working on a number of other people’s campaigns and devoting himself in other ways to community service. Now he is seeking a seat of his own, as state representative in Washington’s 12th District.
Before attending law school, Zinman earned an undergraduate degree in Political Science at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Even there he was putting his shoe-leather where his mouth was, helping found the campus’s University Democrats organization and volunteering as an employment counselor at a local homeless shelter.
"I went to law school to help people," he has said. "My desire to be in public service is at the center of my faith and in turn led my interest to focus on family and children’s issues during law school."
While living in Seattle from 1992-96, after finishing law school in Southern California, Zinman was a volunteer in the juvenile justice system as a Court-Appointed Special Advocate in child custody disputes and a Sunday School teacher at Temple B’nai Torah. He also worked as a preschool teacher for three years at the Stroum Jewish Community Center.
For the last eight years, Zinman and his family have been living in Wenatchee, where he works as a public defender. He is also the secretary of the local chapter of the Democratic Party. When the time came for signing up this year, he decided that the district needed the kind of representation he is prepared to give them.
"My job is to help people in trouble. I am passionate about my work because I fight for people who are left behind and ignored," his campaign materials say.
"Part of what I do as a public defender is I fight to put families back together," Zinman told JTNews. "I represent children in the juvenile justice system. I fight for families. Children and families are my main focus and my opponent hasn’t been friendly on many of those issues.
"I don’t feel that our community is currently being well represented," Zinman continued. "I felt it was important we had someone who represents the values of the community."
He said his opponent, Rep. Cary Condotta, has made a name for himself in two years in Olympia as harshly conservative and a socially divisive figure who made headlines early in his House career for walking out of the chamber when a Muslim clergyman came to lead the legislature’s opening prayer.
"My opponent is a Republican, but on many issues he votes outside the mainstream of his own party," Zinman charged. This race is a chance for Zinman to put it all together, combining his legal and organizational skills to the job of legislator while championing the causes he feels most deeply – those related to education and health care.
"Because public service has always been important to me, I feel like now I’m ready to take it to another level and represent our community in the legislature," he said.
Without resorting to the words "fiscal conservative," Tony Zinman does reflect the go-slow bias of the community he wants to represent in Olympia, saying that his approach to solving the state’s current budget problems starts with the need "to examine the budget and see if there’s anything we can cut, as long as we don’t cut into any basic services," he said. "I think people need to be healthy and safe."
He does support I-884 "as a solution to the education funding crisis." Zinman said he is not worried that the legislature would use the additional one-cent in sales tax revenues to replace existing sources, since the purpose of the proposed law is to fully fund previously passed initiatives in favor of smaller class sizes in elementary schools and cost-of-living increases in state-supported pay for public school teachers.
Beyond that, he said, he has no magic bullets to propose to fix the tax and revenue problems, but promises to keep an open mind and to not rule out any possibilities.
Zinman and his wife Mari Herreras have been married for 13 years and have one son, Rafael, 3. Herreras is currently the executive director of the North Central Washington Council of Campfire USA.
In his spare time Zinman performs with community theater groups, including the Leavenworth Summer Theater, and the Musical Theater of Wenatchee. Since moving away from the Puget Sound area, he said he participates in a havurah in his home area, made up of about 15 families.
"We meet for holidays and once in a while for Shabbat," said Zinman. "We generally go over to Seattle for the High Holidays."