By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Leslie Klein, Republican candidate for state representative, position two for the 36th District, has no illusions about this fall’s race.
“I won’t be the first Republican the district elects,” Klein said in a recent interview with JTNews.
The 36th District, which includes the neighborhoods in between Belltown and Greenwood, is not exactly a hotbed of Republican politics and the 60-year-old Klein has little hope of unseating his opponent, Mary Lou Dickerson, a writer, educator and former social worker who has held the post for seven terms.
“Mary Lou is an intelligent, compassionate, and qualified person. I would be very surprised were I to win,” Klein said.
So why bother running?
The answer, for Klein, is about giving voters a choice.
“Republicans are the largest unrepresented minority in my district, and I wanted to give them someone they could vote for,” he said.
Klein also said that he was concerned that Washington State politics have become overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats — an imbalance he feels is unhealthy for government at any level.
“I want to counter the one-party rule that we have here in Washington,” he said. “Democrats control the state from top to bottom. There are a few Republicans scattered throughout the state, but for the most part this is a single party system and that’s bad for the democracy. It leads to runaway spending, which is what we have right now.”
Klein cited the state’s budget as his biggest concern and his top priority in the unlikely event that he does make it to Olympia next year.
“In my mind, government has three roles: to keep us safe, to help those who can’t help themselves, and to keep the playing field level,” Klein said. “But there’s a lot of spending in this state that falls outside of those three areas that needs to be looked at critically by someone without a vested interest in those programs.”
When ask what specific steps he would take toward balancing the state’s budget, Klein declined to speculate, saying, “I am a Republican and I don’t waste my energy theorizing about things that aren’t going to happen.”
Klein received 17 percent of the vote in the Aug. 19 primary.
Klein and his wife Janice Kaplan have lived in Ballard since 1992. Prior to that, the couple lived in California, where Klein was in the Air Force.
“For the first part of my career, I was a spy. But not a James Bond spy; the analytical kind.”
Today, Klein teaches adult education classes at both North Seattle Community College and Bellevue Community College. His teaching interests cover a wide array of topics, from understanding property taxes to getting the most bang for your buck on cruise vacations.
Although Klein considers himself culturally Jewish, his spiritual interests are much broader. He is the author of a book, called Spirituality in a Materialistic World, about his person view on the nature of God, the soul, and the moral imperatives connected living a spiritual life.
Klein freely admits that he has no prior political experience, but he feels his intelligence work with the military has prepared him for the demands of serving as a state representative.
“I’ve learned how to deal with bureaucracy, no question,” he said.
This is not Klein’s first run at public office. In 2000, he challenged Dickerson for the same position but said that he became “disgusted by the process and went into political hibernation.”
But after eight years of seeing few, if any Republican candidates in his district, Klein has returned for another try. He said he’s encouraged other local Republicans to do the same and considers it a personal victory to have a Republican running for almost every position available in the 36th District this November.
Klein said that he recently met with Dickerson for coffee and that she expressed support for the notion of a more balanced political field in the 36th District. He also noted that, even if the situation were reversed and it was his party who was in the majority, he would still be concerned about the values of each party receiving equal time and attention.
“If I do get elected, I will only have Democrat advisors so I can keep my pulse on Democratic values,” he said. “Besides, I already know what Republicans think.”