Our endorsement for King County Council District 2 is Rebecca Saldaña! Her decade of Washington State Senate experience, along with her commitment to coalition building and progressive policies, is ultimately what led us to choose her as the best option for the county council seat.

As far as political track records are concerned, Saldaña has accrued an impressive résumé of policy achievements that would be hard for most to match. Since taking over the 37th District Senate seat in 2017 from Pramila Jayapal after she was elected to the US House of Representatives, Saldaña has continuously delivered on the progressive legacy of her predecessor. Now she seeks to bring her expertise in state-level governance in Olympia to King County.

One of five kids, Saldaña grew up with a Mexican immigrant father who was a farm worker turned Boeing machinist and a Mennonite mother who was a social worker. Her upbringing in Delridge led her as an adult to pursue multicultural feminist and labor studies in college; it is also what ultimately sent her down a path of union organizing with farm workers and others.

Since she was elected a state senator, Saldaña became the chair of the Senate Labor Committee, leading and passing several landmark pieces of progressive legislation, including: paid family medical leave, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, the Strippers’ Bill of Rights, the HEAL Act, and a statewide capital gains tax, to name a few.

As for why Saldaña has now decided to leave her decade-long stint in Olympia to pursue a seat on the King County Council, the reasons are both technical and personal but overall compelling to us. 

“As an organizer, your job is to organize yourself out of a job,” she said in reference to her time in Olympia. 
In her view, there is much more that needs to be done at the county level to urge cities into, as she puts it, “not acting as their own little fiefdoms” so as to address problems together. Citing herself as the only member of the council from a state legislative background, Saldaña hopes to act on the council as a bridge between the policymakers in Olympia and those on the King County Council, getting them to work better together. 

And with District 2 serving the core of the county — from the U-District down to Tukwila — she also hopes to be a progressive champion for the area’s residents.  

Saldaña shared with us how, since overcoming ovarian cancer, she has been uncovering a newfound Queer identity and her difficulties navigating coming out, both as a public official and a parent. During the pandemic, she began using she/they pronouns and describes herself as being on a spectrum of fluidity. One book in particular she mentions reading with her kids, I’m a Wild Seed by Sharon De La Cruz, has inspired her to “decolonize the shit out of my gender and sexuality” — sound off, diva! Having embraced her queerness publicly, Saldaña joined the Washington Senate Democrats’ LGBTQ+ caucus.

In reference to the two anti-LGBTQIA+ ballot measures Washington voters will decide on in November, Saldaña had strong criticisms of the people targeting Queer and Trans youth in our schools, saying that “as gracious as people have been with me [coming out], I wish they could be as gracious with other people.”  

All considered, we have no doubts that Saldaña would be a champion on the King County Council for us as a community and the residents of her district. 

Vote Saldaña.