By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Laura Ruderman has already made a name for herself in the Washington legislature. Now the 33-year-old three-term legislator believes she is ready for statewide office as the presumptive Democratic nominee for Washington Secretary of State.
Ruderman will be facing off against the incumbent, Sam Reed, who was elected four years ago to replace Republican Ralph Munro, who served five terms, beginning in 1980.
In past terms, the Secretary of State had a mostly non-controversial role to play in state politics, and most people believed that not much was at stake. This time around, however, Ruderman said she believes this year’s race will have significant long-lasting implications.
“There may never have been, certainly not in the lifetime of most of your readers, an election for Secretary of State where there was as clear a distinction between the candidates and where there was such an important issue,” she said. “For the first time in many, many, many years, the election of the Secretary of State is going to determine the direction that our election systems go and the integrity of our election systems.”
Ruderman is referring to the adoption of electronic voting machines throughout Washington’s counties – a subject that has already stirred controversy and lawsuits in California, Virginia, Florida and elsewhere around the country.
Ruderman considers herself more than qualified to speak out on the issue. Having worked at Microsoft before entering politics, and coming from a district that includes Redmond, Ruderman described herself in a previous interview as “the go-to girl in the Democratic caucus on technology issues.”
“I strongly believe that if we are going to have electronic voting machines in this state, they ought to produce a paper trail. I am not anti-technology, but technology has its vulnerabilities and it has its limitations.”
If she wins in November, Ruderman will be only the fourth Democrat and the second woman to hold the post since Washington became a state in 1889. But bucking the odds is nothing new for the former Microsoft project manager. In 1998, she was elected as a Democrat in the normally Republican 43rd District, and four years later became the first in state history to be re-elected as a Democrat from the suburban Eastside district, which includes parts of Redmond and communities around Bellevue.
“I was not born in a log cabin,” she told the JTNews recently. In fact, Ruderman grew up on the Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a place where she was surrounded by a vibrant Jewish culture and where, she said, “it’s easy to be a Jew.”
She migrated to Seattle after graduating with a drama degree from Wesleyan College in 1992 for a stage-management internship with the Seattle Repertory Company. Concluding that a theater career was not for her, she went to work for a graphics company owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. She stayed on when the company was folded into Microsoft and taught herself to program Web pages, moving up the ladder to eventually become a program manager for the Redmond software giant.
Then, in 1998, still in her 20s, Ruderman left the private sector to begin her political career. She has always said that her foray into politics was motivated by a sense of service to the community, which she counts as inherent in her Jewish heritage.
While serving as a representative, Ruderman said her main focus has been on education and training, especially for high-tech careers, transportation and growth, and privacy, on the Internet and in personal records. Part of that effort has been working on a bill defining health care information to include DNA, and to keep that information private and in control of the individual.
She has also worked to keep health insurance available to poor children and for using family medical leave to care for parents and inlaws as well as spouses and children. She supported an anti-bullying bill to help prevent students from being harassed at school and led the fight to create Promise Scholarships for students from middle class families.
“I was always raised with the belief that, to whom much is given, much is expected,” she has 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.”
Ruderman said she now counts herself among the members of the one-year-old grassroots Congregation Kol HaNeshemah in West Seattle. A lifelong campaigner on issues of hunger and poverty, she said she sees that commitment as a direct outgrowth of her religious beliefs.
“I really think that the tradition of social justice and social action is certainly what guided me at 17, having my volunteer activity being lobbying Congress on issues of hunger and poverty,” she said. “It really gave me a deep commitment to democracy and a deep commitment to civic engagement,” which, in turn led her to seek a career in politics.
“That principle of not standing on the sidelines and making sure that there is social justice leads to the belief that everybody ought to participate in the system and that once you vote, your vote ought to be counted and ought to be counted correctly. I think that’s part and parcel of the tradition of social justice that one finds in Judaism.”
As for her future beyond the Secretary of State’s office, should she win, Ruderman points out that she is still, relatively speaking, quite young.
“I’m 33,” she noted, “so even if I served for 20 years, I would hope that at 53 I could still go on and continue to go on and have a productive career.”
Do you know a Trendsetter? JT Trendsetters focuses on members of the local Jewish community under 35 that are making a difference in people’s lives. Let us know who you think would be a great candidate. Call us at 206-441-4553 or send an e-mail to editor@jtnews.net.