KPLU Local News
(2009-08-12)
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SEATTLE, WA
(KPLU) -
He's an insider who claims he represents a new generation of leadership. 47-year-old Dow Constantine is the current president of the King County Council. He's been in local politics for the last 13 years. Still, the West Seattle native promises to push for change if he's elected as the next King County Executive.
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The county faces a budget nightmare. The revenue shortfall has now topped fifty million dollars. Constantine says he knows the job will be especially tough. "But the reason you go into elective office is to solve problems" he says. "And the bigger the problems, the greater the challenges, and in many ways, the greater the motivation to get in there and fix them."
His interest in elected office goes all the way back to his senior year at West Seattle High School (1979-80), where he was president of the student body. A lawyer by trade, he served in both the state house and senate before joining the King County Council seven years ago. But he insists he's not part of the status quo. He has consistently pushed for reforms - at the County for things such as performance measures and whistleblower legislation. He says it hasn't been easy. And he admits he hasn't always been successful.
"The pushback on those issues has been tremendous. There's a lot of institutional resistance to reform. And that has got to - that has got to go."
If elected as executive, Constantine says he would seek more input from the county's employees and the public about how to do more with less in this era of shrinking revenues.
"We have 13-thousand employees in King County, out there driving buses, working the sewage plants, working in the health clinics," he says. "Those folks are indispensible to our ability to figure out how to deliver services better, faster, cheaper."
And he says under his leadership, the county would be more nimble in its response to new ideas. For example, he says the inevitable reductions to metro bus service should be suspensions -
not permanent cuts - so that the county can ramp up again more quickly once the economy starts to recover.
Constantine says he's the most progressive of the candidates running for executive. He's pro-choice, pro-labor and has a record of supporting equal rights for same-sex couples. He says one of his toughest political battles has been fighting the expansion of a gravel mine on Maury Island - a project he says would damage Puget Sound even as we spend billions of public dollars to restore it.
He was born in West Seattle and still lives near his parents, who are retired school teachers. Aside from his years in college, graduate school and law school - all at the University of Washington - Constantine has hardly left his childhood neighborhood. He says living in the community where he grew up and folks know him keeps him honest. "It's good to be able to see the people who knew you back when, to have those touchstones and some fixed points of reference so you can better gauge the changes that are going on around you."
For more information:
Dow Constantine Campaign Website
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