Jeanne Kohl-Welles

By Attorney General Bob Ferguson

Governor Jay Inslee today announced his endorsement of Jeanne Kohl-Welles for King County Council District 4.

“I have worked with Jeanne on issues ranging from expanding childcare to gun safety.  She has consistently shown herself to be a fierce advocate and an extremely effective legislator, and I am proud to support her for reelection,” Inslee said. 

“The actions taken in King County affect the entire state. I trust Councilmember Kohl-Welles to deliver real results on important issues in our state, including supporting working families, making housing more affordable, and defeating climate change.”

Kohl-Welles said she was “thrilled and honored” by the Governor’s endorsement.  Prior to serving on the Council, Kohl-Welles served in the state legislature for 23 years where she was a staunch advocate for workers and working families, K-12 and higher education, transit and environmental protection, equity and social justice, and protecting against child sexual abuse, human trafficking, campus sexual misconduct and discrimination.

By Denis Hayes

The climate crisis is no longer two lines crossing on a graph sometime in the future.  The climate crisis has arrived.   

Here in King County, architects are now designing buildings for the cooling they know will be needed in ten years, and the greater cooling needed in ten years after that. Snowpack is declining, with implications for our water supply and hydropower.  

And, as in the rest of the world, the climate crisis poses a growing threat to human health.  

Jeanne Kohl-Welles has a deep understanding of the connection between the climate crisis and the health of this region.  Moreover, she has a clear understanding of how to move the instruments of government to tackle the enormous challenges ahead. 

I have worked with Jeanne for years, and I know her priorities match mine: advancing sustainability; reducing emissions; increasing access to electric transit, open space, and health care; and keeping toxic chemicals out of Puget Sound.  

Jeanne chairs the King County Board of Health and has already made climate change a priority focus for the Board.  The County’s social safety net will become more strained and we need a Councilmember who will be proactive in addressing climate as the greatest public health challenge of our era. 

Jeanne has proven to be a wonderfully effective legislator, and we need her skills to continue on the County Council. In just one term on the Council, Jeanne increased transit service, sponsored a moratorium on fossil fuel facilities, got funding for affordable Transit-Oriented Development, strengthened the County’s pest management policies to reduce the use of glyphosate, and secured funding to study the impact of wastewater and  storm water and industrial waste on our Southern Resident orcas and their main prey, Chinook salmon.

She also is the lead sponsor on the new “Jump Start” legislation, which will increase by 500-fold the number of electric car charging stations and accelerate the timeline for Metro to achieve a zero-emissions all-electric bus, van and car fleet. The legislation is a main part of a package which she is sponsoring with Councilmembers Rod Dembowski and Claudia Balducci that will also update the requirements of the county’s excellent Strategic Climate Action Plan (SCAP) to (a) require creation of a green jobs strategy; (b) use an environmental justice framework; (c) expand efforts to accelerate reduction of community-wide CHG emissions by expanding partnerships with local governments, NGO stakeholders and the community; and (d) develop a new climate action toolkit.

Any candidate can denounce all incumbents and promise the sun, the moon, and the stars.  But it’s another thing to demonstrate—time and again, in a variety of offices—the creative energy, intellectual drive, and sheer hard work to get things done. 

Please join me,  The Seattle Times and The Stranger in supporting Jeanne.   Endorse her here.

Better yet, donate today.

Most important, cast your vote for Jeanne Kohl-Welles for the King County Council. 

We need her expertise on the County Council.

By: The Stranger Election Control Board

King County Council member Jeanne Kohl-Welles was a solid Democrat during her 20 years in Olympia, and she’s voted the way we’ve wanted since being elected to the county council in 2015. Her opponent, Abigail Doerr, claims we need new energy in this county council seat, too, but the SECB is a little confused by Doerr’s claims. More on that in a moment.

In her first term, Kohl-Welles spearheaded countywide legislation on just cause evictions, proposed a renters commission, launched an affordable childcare task force, and proposed a law requiring the county executive to create a green jobs strategy. She and her council colleague Rod Dembowski have also introduced legislation to speed up the process for converting King County Metro’s buses to a zero-emission, carbon-neutral fleet.

Kohl-Welles has also found creative legislative ways to lower transit costs for the most vulnerable. As someone with a spot on the budget committee (rare for a council member in their first term), this year Kohl-Welles added a proviso that creates an income-based fare, which would “amount to zero fare for a lot of people,” she told the SECB. (Kohl-Welles also cosponsored legislation that restructured Metro’s fare-enforcement practices in ways that basically led to fewer instances of harassment of homeless people.)