Article by Erik Smith. Published on Monday, May 17, 2010 EST.
Exits Legislature After 28 Years
By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire
OLYMPIA, May 17.—Sen. Ken Jacobsen, the long-serving Democratic senator from Seattle, announced Monday that he’s hanging it up after 28 years in the Legislature.
Jacobsen was facing a tough re-election challenge in this summer’s Democratic primary, from attorney David Frockt, and in an interview he said the upcoming battle entered into the decision. “It puts a tension on the situation,” he said. “But I suffer from high blood pressure, and the whole session was tense. It wasn’t good for my health. It just eats away at your body.”
Jacobsen, 65, represents the district that includes the University of Washington, and has been known all his career as a quiet and thoughtful advocate for higher education. But in recent years he has tangled with the Service Employees International Union, a rising force in Democratic politics, opposing its efforts to organize childcare workers. And all indications were that this year he was in for the fight of his career.
Meanwhile, the state’s budget troubles the last two years have been hard on the state’s colleges and universities, and that hasn’t been much fun for Jacobsen, either.
“I have no regrets,” he said. “I’ve stuck up for higher education all the time I’ve been here. But to be honest, I’ve been disillusioned with the way things have been going for the last couple of years.”
A Parting Thought
As often occurs when legislators serve a long period of time, Jacobsen finds himself thinking about the state Legislature as an institution. So here’s one piece of advice he offers to those who come after him. He says they may want to rethink the initiative and referendum process.
“When the Supreme Court changed the initiative process to allow paid signature gatherers, it mutated a political virus into an influenza,” he said.
It used to be that if lawmakers passed an unpopular measure – like a tax increase – they could be pretty well assured it would remain in place until the public voted them out of office. And that’s the way he says it ought to be – an election is always a referendum.
But now he says it’s too easy for professionally operated initiative campaigns to dispose of what the Legislature does. That means instability for the state. “The tax increases I voted for this year – we don’t know if they’re going to hold up after October.”
And maybe it goes without saying, but Jacobsen is no fan of initiative promoter Tim Eyman. It’s not as if Eyman could get elected, Jacobsen says. That’s why he runs initiatives.
A Cast-Iron Butt
One other thing has made Jacobsen a bit of a legend around the Legislature – a list of real-life “rules” of legislative procedure he concocted more than 20 years ago, together with the late Jim Metcalf, lobbyist for the Washington Association of Counties. It’s been circulating through legislative offices ever since, and let’s just say you won’t find these in the Legislature’s official manual. (The “Jacobsen-Metcalf Laws of Parliamentary Democracy” are published here, separately, for the first time.)
Among them: “He who does not manipulate is manipulated.”
And: “If your bill is in trouble for no discernible reason, big timber is against it. If your bill dies for no discernible reason, Boeing is against it.”
These days, Jacobsen said, he’d probably rewrite that rule. If your bill is in trouble for no reason, BIAW is against it. If your bill dies for no reason, SEIU is against it.
Just goes to show that the real power has moved from big corporations to special interests, Jacobsen said.
And then there’s rule number one: “Democracy requires a cast-iron butt.”
Meaning that if you want to get anything done, you have to stay there to the end.
And with that, the senator of the cast-iron butt gets up and leaves.
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