Two Republicans are searching for the place within the forty seventh Legislative District, Place 2 — Brian Lott and Ted Cooke. Neither made the case to exchange the incumbent. Democrat Chris Stearns is the unequivocal selection.
Earlier than his election in 2022, Stearns was an lawyer for a nationwide regulation agency specializing in defending the rights of Native People and serving to them acquire entry to well being care and schooling. He additionally served on the Auburn Metropolis Council, the place he helped the South King County metropolis handle points equivalent to homelessness and public security.
Throughout his first time period, Stearns helped safe $1.5 million from the state to rebuild the Auburn Avenue Theater.
Stearns has not been skittish about leaping into the fray of public coverage debate. He supported such points as Initiative 2113, which restored cops’ authority in vehicular pursuits; and Initiative 2111, which prohibited cities, counties and the state from imposing state revenue taxes.
He was considered one of two lawmakers to request a state audit into the Washington State Housing Finance Fee’s Eventual Tenant Possession program. Designed to show low-income renters — a lot of whom are members of Washington’s tribal communities — into householders, this system failed to take action.
He additionally has supported cheap measures to assist guarantee security in gun possession that handed the Legislature over the previous two years.
“We’re probably not making an attempt to remove weapons; what we’re making an attempt to do is simply make our society and our nation safer,” Stearns mentioned.
In terms of social justice, Stearns sponsored a invoice this previous session that might have been a continuation of corrective justice in jail sentencing. In 2023, the Legislature handed House Bill 1324, which ended the observe of accelerating grownup sentences primarily based on an offender’s juvenile document. Stearns mentioned the usage of juvenile information disproportionately affected Indigenous individuals and other people of colour. Stearns’ invoice this 12 months, HB 2065, would have made the regulation retroactive. The invoice, nonetheless, failed to achieve sufficient help.
For his expertise in defending the human rights and civil rights of these in his district and past, and his sound stewardship of the individuals’s belief, Stearns deserves one other time period because the consultant of the forty seventh District, Place 2.