By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Two prominent and talented Jewish candidates are each hoping to be Washington State’s next Attorney General. Deborah Senn and Mark Sidran are both familiar faces for anyone who has been paying attention to Puget Sound politics over the last dozen years.
Sidran was Seattle’s long-time City Attorney; Senn was the state insurance commissioner from 1993 to 2001. In 2000 she lost her bid to run for U.S. Senate to Maria Cantwell.
For the last three election cycles, Democrats have dominated statewide races, making the primary winner the odds-on favorite this year as well. Winning the nomination this September, however, is not a guarantee of success in November. While Democratic incumbent Christine Gregoire, who is pursuing her own race for governor, has held the post for more than a decade, the previous two attorneys general, Ken Eikenberry and Slade Gorton, both Republicans, held the office from1969 to 1993.
Mark Sidran started out as a deputy prosecutor in King County, where he prosecuted felonies from auto theft and domestic violence to homicides. In 1990 he ran successfully for city attorney, a job he held until 2001. Sidran was a popular, if sometimes controversial figure in that post. He organized the first Domestic Violence Unit in the state, using both specially trained prosecutors and victim advocates and an Environmental Protection Unit to crack down on polluters. At the same time, his get-tough approach to “quality-of-life” crimes like sitting on sidewalks and expanding police powers to impound cars have resulted in his being vilified as anti-civil liberties and insensitive to the plight of the poor and homeless (which he responded to with a well-known sense of humor).
“I’m shocked!” he announced with mock-horror during an interview in 2000. Asked about it again recently, he noted that the quality-of-life ordinances were supported in hearings by a number of poor and formerly homeless people, as well as elderly and blind citizens who complained that people sitting on the sidewalks presented them with particularly troublesome obstacles. He also pointed out that they have remained on the books through a succession of overwhelmingly liberal Democratic city administrations.
“I fought for common sense solutions – not just for civility, but for expanding drug, alcohol and mental health treatment to get at the root of why many are on the streets,” he said in a recent speech.
Deborah Senn is currently a partner at Bergman Senn Pageler & Frockt and a principal with Deborah Senn Expert Services, which provides consultation regarding insurance and regulatory issues. She has spent most of her career as a lawyer in private practice. As a student and in her first job out of law school, Senn practiced environmental law with the Environmental Protection Agency in her native Chicago. Following that she focused on utility rate cases – including fighting successfully against major telephone, electricity and gas companies. She has been a member of the Washington State Bar since 1979 and is also licensed to practice in Illinois.
After moving to Alaska, and then Washington “for the mountains” (she calls Chicago “too flat” for her interest in rock climbing) she acted as legal counsel to the Washington State Legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Telecommunications and the House Energy and Utilities Committees in Olympia.
As insurance commissioner, she was the first on the nation to call for regulatory action on behalf of Holocaust victims denied insurance benefits after World War II.
Deborah Senn’s mother, who now lives in the Kline Galland Home, was raised in a Jewish orphanage in Chicago, one of the factors she credits with instilling a commitment to social justice, which she sees as a natural outgrowth of her Jewish heritage. She recalls hearing Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. address her synagogue during the civil rights movement years, adding that when they used “We Shall Overcome” to end a Yom Kippur service, “half the congregation loved it, half was furious.”
Sidran said he has also learned many valuable lessons from his parents.
“My father was the neighborhood pharmacist in Seward Park, which was, in a way, the heart of the Jewish community,” he said. “I learned a lot of important lessons from my dad, which I think, in part, were a reflection of his Jewish heritage, like the importance of caring for people. My dad kept filling prescriptions for people during the ‘Last one leaving, turn out the lights’ Boeing bust of 1970, even when they couldn’t pay for their prescriptions anymore, until he, himself, was forced into bankruptcy.”
In keeping with that example, he said he served on the United Way board in the mid-1990s, was on the board of the American Jewish Committee and is still a board member of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, the largest provider of services to the homeless in Washington State.
Both Senn and Sidran list identity theft as one of their top priorities, following on a commitment that was begun by current Attorney General Gregoire. In 2003, according to the Federal Trade Commission, 4,741 Washingtonians were victims of identity theft, putting Washington in the top 10 states nationally, on a per person basis. With an average loss per individual victim of approximately $4,800 and victims of identity theft spending an average of 30 hours and $500 trying to resolve the problems, both candidates agree it has become a major problem.
Senn’s solutions include adding resources to the consumer protection division, dedicating a specific assistance unit within the AG’s office with a telephone hotline for victims and making assistant attorneys general available when local offices need additional attorneys to prosecute these cases.
“There are almost 500 attorneys in the attorney general’s office and 700 support staff – it’s the largest law firm in the state. Out of those 500, six are in the consumer protection division, and I want to double those resources for consumer protection,” said Sidran. “I want to form a victim’s assistance unit in the Attorney General’s office to help victims of identity theft and consumer fraud deal with what can be a very complex and difficult challenge of paperwork.”
Sidran said he would lend lawyers to local prosecutors’ offices to help them pursue these cases, as well.