March Notes from the Chair

The first month of our operations have been very exciting, with President Barack Obama’s Inauguration on January 20th, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act passing in Congress to get our economy back on track, and some other changes closer to home.

Thank you to everyone who stepped up to help us elect our endorsed candidate, Sherril Huff, for King County Director of Elections on February 3rd! The 46th came out strongly for her, with 58.29% of our vote helping her to get a countywide total of 46.33% and over twice the number of votes of any other candidate. This position will be on the ballot again in 2011.

King County Executive Ron Sims was nominated for a HUD post in Washington, DC, and a cascade of changes resulted from that. Because of the Charter Amendment that passed last November making the county positions “non-partisan”, the King County Council is the body with authority to fill the post. Precinct Committee Officers no longer have a direct vote to select candidates, although that does NOT mean that we don’t have or shouldn’t use our voices to express our preference.

As WSDCC Chair Dwight Pelz said in a recent op-ed, we need a strong leader in King County who will provide a vision to help secure our foundations, and we can’t wait until the November elections to find that person. I agree with Dwight that the person selected to lead our county needs to be a Democrat, and I encourage everyone to contact our council members to voice your opinions and let them know that they still represent us.

There have been some internal changes here in our organization that I need to bring to your attention. Elizabeth Willmott stepped down from her position on the Executive Board on the Friday after our last meeting. She can’t say why yet, but I’m sure we won’t be disappointed in her reason.

This opens a vacancy on our executive board, and I have appointed Erica Minshull as our King County Female Rep. The bylaws require that an announcement be made at our next meeting, with an election to be held at the following meeting. If Erica is elected to the position, this will mean that an At-Large position will be elected at our May meeting. Elizabeth still wants to be involved, so she is staying on as our Outreach Committee chair for the time being.

Our March meeting is going to be focused on the issue of Education. It’s enrollment time for the Seattle School District, and we have a lot of people within our district and beyond focused on giving our kids the best education possible. We’ll hear from some of them on March 19th. Hope to see you there!

And finally, Welcome to Padraig Comron Finan, son of Jayron and Danny Finan!! He was born on Saturday, February 28th. Both Baby & Mom are healthy, and we’re looking forward to meeting Padraig someday soon!