Waste management, sewage treatment and rural roads are not exciting topics, but those types of unglamorous services are central responsibilities of county government.
Metropolitan King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert keeps a sharp eye on these and other workaday issues. She continues to be the best candidate for District 3.
The sprawling and diverse district covers the county’s northeast quadrant, including cities like Redmond and Issaquah, smaller communities like North Bend, Duvall and Carnation, and unincorporated land.
Lambert isn’t given to flashy photo ops or slick news conferences. Her council web page eschews soaring rhetoric for items like a solid waste feasibility study and a primer on property taxes. Lambert’s joke — that she’s becoming the county’s “landfill queen” — contains an important truth. Constituents can count on her to dig deep into the bread-and-butter issues that keep the county running.
Lambert’s challengers, business owner Sarah Perry and attorney Joe Cohen, argue that the district’s political makeup has changed in the nearly two decades since she first was elected. But the County Council is nonpartisan, as it should be. As her former council colleague and civil rights icon Larry Gossett wrote in his endorsement of her reelection, “Kathy’s effectiveness at working across party and geographic lines has clearly earned her the right to be re-elected.”
Perry, an experienced fundraiser with strong ties in Democratic circles, has raised a sizable war chest. Cohen, a former policy analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice’s office of the inspector general, has a deep understanding of police accountability. But neither can match Lambert’s skills or experience.
Voters should return Lambert for another term.
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