Helen Sommers: An Oral History

pg. 184 Victor Moore
to leave in the ending-fund balance and what’s your
spending level?”
That really wasn’t Helen’s style. She wanted
to talk through each issue in single file and then
decide. But, with this process, she was landing in
a spot that was too low for her caucus. I showed
her where she would be landing, and she rightly
figured that it wasn’t going to work for her caucus.
This was early in the era of Initiative-601 spending
limits and she was significantly under the spending
limit based on her decisions with Tom.
Helen was more fiscally conservative than her
caucus, but she really understood what we had to
do to get the votes from her caucus. At a certain
point, Sen. Loveland and “co-speaker” Chopp
were brought into the conversation to help shape
the Democrats’ strategy. That 1999 budget was
ultimately resolved when Rep. Don Carlson voted
with the Democrats to pass the budget.
In 2000, when we had to do a supplemental
budget, we decided not to do the joint meeting.
The process changed where the House Democrats
and the House Republicans would each write a
budget, and then they’d have a conference, and
do it that way. The way we decided to staff it was,
I’d go in with Helen and work on her proposal for
the Democratic Caucus and Beth Redfield, my
second-in-command, would go in to work on Tom’s
Republican proposal. That way, each caucus had
a chance to lay out their full position.
It was difficult for Helen. She found herself
having to share the ‘chair’ with Tom Huff, and she
also had to answer to Speaker Frank Chopp on a
lot of issues. She had to negotiate with Tom, and
then she had to check in with Frank on a regular
basis – that was hard for her.
In 2000, Tom Huff didn’t seek reelection, so in
the 2001 session, her new co-chair was Rep. Barry
Sehlin. There really was a contrast there from Huff
to Sehlin. Barry was more moderate politically
and much more conciliatory. I think he was much
more of a conversationalist too, whereas Tom was
kind of a ‘black-and-white’ kind of guy. Helen and
Barry worked very well together.
In November, 2001, there was a special election
and a Democrat beat the appointed Republican
giving the Democrats a two-vote majority. Helen
alone held the gavel, and she continued to chair
the Appropriations Committee for the remainder
of her career.
After the tie was broken and she held the gavel,
she felt institutionally that she was chair of the
Appropriations Committee and that she should be
given the reins, at least to the extent that she could
to run her committee. She probably saw that it was
a different model than some of her predecessors
had. Gary Locke probably had a lot more leeway
with Joe King and I’m sure Dan Grimm had a lot
more leeway with Wayne Ehlers. Frank was much
more of a ‘hands-on’ leader, and for Helen it was
a struggle.
As staff director, I would be the person to help
translate to the staff what Helen wanted, so we were
providing her the information she wanted to help
her make decisions. Helen loved detail on issues she
was really interested in. So if it was something like
higher education or early childhood development,
the growth in health care expenditures – something
she was really interested in – she couldn’t get enough
detail. It was hard to figure out what level that we
wanted staff to present the information in committee.
She was really intellectually curious about so
many things. On those issues, she would drill staff
deep into the heart of an issue just because she was
curious. At a certain point, you’d pass beyond where
the detail was helping make a decision. Some times
you may have felt you were just satisfying Helen’s
curiosity about an issue. Well, you should be able
to do that if you’re the Chair.
But, sometimes in committee, they would be
talking about issues that Helen really didn’t have
a lot of interest in. She didn’t want to take the
time to hear much at all. And she wanted to, you
know, cut to the chase. So that was always kind of
a balance. Helen was always pretty direct. When
you were getting too detailed, she would stop you
and say, “This is too detailed; this is of no use to
me.” So, I remember, my challenge was to make
sure staff were doing just the appropriate amount
of work for Helen so we could get a decision, and
not bog it down in too much detail – or having to
come back for more detail.
Helen is a wonderful person and she’s also a
very private person. But you had to take the time
to figure that out. She loved to travel every year,