The Washington state Legislature is more diverse than ever

After being elected to the Washington Legislature in 2023, Cortes met around 20 immigrant farm workers from the Yakima Valley. Some of them reminded him of his mother since they wore similar clothes.

Cortes remembered the looks on their faces when he spoke to them in Spanish.

“A lot of them came up to me and started crying. They said it meant a lot to them to have somebody like me in the Legislature because they actually had a representative, somebody that could speak their language, came from the same country they’re from and that was really powerful for me,” Cortes said.

Washington’s Legislature, like that of other states, has been growing more diverse in terms of age, gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. In 2020, the state for the first time had five Black women serving in the House simultaneously.

“We have more members of color in the Legislature now than we have (had) any other time,” said House Chief Clerk Bernard Dean, who has worked in the Legislature for more than two decades.

Washington’s Democratic legislators have caucuses for members of color, LGBTQ+, and Black and Latino lawmakers. The Members of Color Caucus has grown over the years, with 26 members for the 2023-24 year. In the Senate, there were 10 people in the Members of Color Caucus for the same year. Republicans do not have similar groups for their members,  though there are several Republican legislators of color, including Sen. Nikki Torres, R-Pasco, and state Reps. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, and the newly elected Gloria Mendoza of Grandview.

Although the Legislature does not officially track the race or ethnicities of its members, it does track another measure of diversity: how many women there hold office. Since 2018, the number of women in the Washington Legislature has been rising. About 46% of legislators are women (67 out of 147). Forty-seven out of 98 representatives (48%) in the House are women, and Dean estimated that at least 20 are women of color.  The Senate has 20 women of 49 positions, and Secretary of the Senate Sarah Bannister said at least seven are women of color.

Washington is fourth in the nation for having the most women in the Legislature,, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Nationwide, women made up about a third of state legislators (2,451) in 2023, the highest in the nation’s history, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. “I think some of these members would say that these institutions were not developed or designed for them, or with them in mind, and now we have a lot of representation from the public in these institutions, so I think that can only be a benefit,” Dean said.

"Living" experience 

Upon arrival in the U.S., Cortes, who learned English in school, and his family were always scared to access public services since they were undocumented and feared deportation.

As an adult, Cortes worked in the nonprofit sector for almost a decade and later for the city of Everett. He said he worked mostly with youth struggling with homelessness, drug or alcohol abuse and mental health.

Cortes didn’t think to run for an elected position until people around him encouraged him to do so.

“I’ve always said no because what am I going to be doing there? What am I going to be doing at the state Legislature?” Cortes said. “But now that I’m here, I see how incredibly important it is that I give a voice to the immigrant community, to the homeless population and to small businesses.”

He was the primary sponsor of a House bill that now allows lawful permanent residents who are in the U.S. on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to be considered for law enforcement and prosecutor office positions. He said it’s important to have more representation in public safety.

“If they have people that look and speak like the people that they are serving, they will develop more trust in that community,” said Cortes.

Now, he hopes to expand legislative communication availability in Spanish to ensure that Washingtonians who speak that language know what’s going on in Olympia.

Cortes also hopes that people who share his background know they can be elected representatives as well.

“All that living experience is now in Olympia, and that’s something we don’t typically see in an elected position,” said Cortes.

For Rep. Darya Farivar, D-North Seattle, who is the only Middle Eastern and Iranian woman in the Legislature, her age also brings different lived experiences.

Farivar, 30, grew up in the 1990s and 2000s and brought that perspective when she helped pass the assault-weapons ban in her first year in office. “I was able to stand up and talk about my experience as someone who grew up learning about active shooter drills, as someone who survived a school lockdown due to a mass shooting,” she said. “My experience was different than many of my colleagues because this is what I saw growing up.”

She said younger generations are getting politically involved at an early age from learning or experiencing climate change and gun violence.

Farivar said running for elected office didn’t seem to be an option in a family that pushed her to become a doctor or lawyer, until she saw former Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib, who also was a state legislator of Iranian descent in the mid-2010s. Farivar was elected in 2022.

Farivar was the main sponsor for House Bill 1541, or the “Nothing About Us, Without Us” Act that passed earlier this year. The law states that any work group, task force or advisory group formed by the Legislature affecting underrepresented populations must include at least three individuals with direct lived experiences related to the issue. It will also provide educational materials and toolkits for participants. “I get to use my privilege, resources and time to help communities that I think are some of the most marginalized and most underrepresented in our state; it really makes me feel like I live the dream,” Farivar said.

"Not monoliths" 

Rep. April Berg, D-Mill Creek, is a Black woman, born and raised in the South Side of Chicago. She’s also a longtime Pacific Northwest resident and former school board member.  Her district, between Lynnwood and Everett, is about 3% Black.

Early in her 2020 campaign, Berg would hear comments that she “doesn’t really look like the district” or that there was “already another Black person representing them” (John Lovick, D-Mill Creek, who was at the time in the House).

But after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in May 2020, sparking a national racial reckoning on many institutions, constituents stopped questioning Berg’s ability to represent the district based on her race and started focusing on her qualifications, she said.

“I’ve lived here for over 20 years, I raised my family here, I’ve sat on two school boards, I am the most qualified to be in this position regardless of my color and the fact that I don’t look like the majority of folks in my district; that’s OK, because I’m the most qualified to have this position,” Berg said.

Since the 2021 appointment and subsequent election of Rep. Brandy Donaghy, D-Snohomish County,  the 44^th Legislative District has an all-Black delegation.

Berg points out that there is plenty of political diversity in every community.

“Our communities are not monoliths, so it really goes back to that lived experience because that’s what makes the difference,” Berg said. 

She said she gets called the “tax lady” since she talks about taxes and revenue often and how it relates to paying for schools, roads, public safety and more. “Myself and my colleagues included, we represent the folks that we live with, that we love with, that we are doing life with and that is our districts. Some of us are Black, some of us are white, Latinos, and all the things, but at the end of the day, we are our district,” Berg said.

Berg’s 44^th District colleague Lovick, D-Mill Creek, is now in the Senate. He was first elected to the House in 1998 when there were only a handful of members of color.

“I was the only Black member in the House of Representatives, and I will tell you, it was a lonely world,” Lovick said.

Lovick grew up in a deeply segregated Louisiana in the 1960s, “I’m from a poor community in the South. I picked cotton when I was 6, 7, 8 years old up until I turned 18,” he said.

In his first years in the Legislature, he found it difficult to open up to his colleagues about his experiences growing up since they couldn’t relate. Only once the Legislature started to become more diverse was he able to open up about his upbringing.

In the Legislature, Lovick worked with his colleagues to make Juneteenth a federally and state recognized holiday, and  helped create the covenant homeownership account and program to address old laws and practices that prevented people of color from living in certain neighborhoods in the state. He said while the redlining law was changed in 1968, the bill assists first-time homebuyers who were impacted by that law to receive assistance with down payments.

Lovick also sponsored the Senate version of the law enforcement eligibility bill that Cortes sponsored. Lovick wants to change the culture of policing.

“When we get more diversity, we change the culture of the Legislature, we can change the culture of policing where we will get more people who live in a community, train in a community and will go back and work in those communities,” said Lovick.

Another longtime lawmaker of color, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle, said it was important to remember American history after the results of the national election.

Santos has represented the Chinatown-International District, the Central District and Rainier Valley, areas of high diversity, since 1998. Her third-generation Japanese American mother was incarcerated at 9 years old after the World War II executive order forcing West Coast residents of Japanese descent into internment camps.

“It was not that long ago that American birthright citizens, like my mother, were stripped of their constitutional rights and did not receive the protection of the rule of law or any of the three branches of government because of the tyranny of mass opinions,” Santos said.

Rep. Ybarra said he also draws from his own experiences, and echoed Berg’s sentiment that not all communities are monoliths.

Ybarra, who is Mexican American, grew up opposing abortion as a Catholic and fiscally conservative with his spending habits. Ybarra explains that he believes abortion should be allowed if a woman’s life is in danger and in cases of rape or incest, and he believes that it should be up to Washington voters to decide whether abortion is legal in the state.

“I think those are conservative values that lots of Hispanics, especially in Eastern Washington, have,” Ybarra said. He said he wasn’t sure if he was a Republican or a Democrat until he was appointed to his position in 2019.

He said he went down the checklist of what both parties believed in and checked boxes before realizing he leaned more conservative.

Ybarra grew up working in the Yakima Valley fields, picking fruits and weeding beans and sugar beets and other produce in the 1960s. He said before Sen. Nikki Torres came into office, he felt it was hard for him in the Legislature as a conservative Latino. But their numbers are growing. Another conservative Latina, Gloria Mendoza, just won an open seat to be a representative of the 14^th Legislative District.

“I was always called Uncle Tom because I voted with the white people,” Ybarra said. “I live in farm country, my schools in Quincy are 85% Hispanic kids, how do I not know Hispanics? How do I not know farm workers? I’m one of them.”

Ybarra thinks that with more conservative Latinos joining the Legislature, Democrats will see that there are political differences within the community.

“We don’t all think alike, we are like everybody else, you got some Democrats, some Republicans, some conservatives, some liberal, and that’s just the way it is,” Ybarra said.

National stage 

The former State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Sen. Emily Randall, D-Bremerton, was just elected to represent Washington’s 6^th Legislative District.

Randall, who is Chicana, will join U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-District 7, and Marilyn Strickland, D-District 10, increasing the number of women of color in Washington’s congressional delegation.

Randall grew up on the Olympic Peninsula and said growing up with bipartisan parents and representing a legislative district with close elections between Democrats and Republicans has taught her how to build bridges with people on different sides of an issue.

“It’s a balancing act but one that I had to play as a member of leadership from a swing district, an intersecting role that I play as a person with intersecting identities,” Randall said. “Being visibly queer, wearing bright colors, having an asymmetrical haircut, wearing big hoop earrings, being visibly Chicana … are important signals to folks that all of us belong and we get to show up as we are, that we don’t have to fit into a certain kind of mold to be in a position of power.” 

Randall said she wants to build relationships with members from both parties from all parts of the nation but is also committed to resisting attacks on vulnerable communities and people based on their identities.

She said she was disappointed when Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and Indian woman, lost her bid to be president.

“I let myself hope that we would elect the first woman of color president,” she said. “My hope wasn’t that Democrats get elected because I’m a Democrat, but that we won to increase diversity at the very top of the ticket because we would be able to make progress.”

Since the race was called for President-elect Donald J. Trump, Randall said she has received a large volume of calls from young queer people who are afraid about what their future looks like. She said most of their worries are about what other freedoms may be eroded under another Trump administration like marriage equality or trans rights since Roe was overturned.

Still, Randall said she hopes people will try to stay engaged through activism and to tell their stories. She said she’ll bring her experiences in Olympia to Congress and is excited to be part of the growing LGBTQ+ caucus in D.C.