Helen Sommers: An Oral History

pg. 190 Yona Makowski
fied staff who are non-partisan. They have great
expertise in their particular area of committee
work, and they work for all members regardless
of the member’s political affiliation.
The Caucus staff take a different approach than
OPR staff in job responsibilities. It requires really
trying to understand where the caucus leadership
and where members of the caucus are coming from.
In my case, I was working with Helen, (Chair of
Appropriations) and helping the chair navigate that;
and always trying to look at issues through the eyes
of the Democrats as a group. Of course, we’re state
employees and we’re very careful to not be involved
in the campaign side of things, but it’s our job to
make our members successful. So there’s just a very
different way of looking at things as partisan staff.
I worked really well with Helen in trying to get
other members of our caucus to understand what
was going on in the budget, and being able to communicate
that to other members in the caucus, who
maybe weren’t on the Appropriations Committee.
When, for example, we’d put together a presentation,
Helen would look at you and say “It needs to communicate.”
She wanted the presentation to speak for
itself. She wanted people to understand the issue right
away. So I’d often spend a lot of time working with
Helen to make sure that she knew where proposals
stood – not only in our caucus, but how the House
Republicans; the Senate; and the governor’s office
would view it. I was there to help Helen and the
committee Democrats navigate the political waters.
I was only there for one year of the three-year tie
in the House. I’d say with the tie, it was really very
interesting working then because Helen and Barry
Sehlin were the co-chairs of Appropriations. We
actually spent a lot of time working together with
Helen and Barry and with me and my Republican
Caucus counterpart, Jack Archer. Although on
many issues we viewed a lot of things very differently,
it was actually a very, very good working
relationship which, in retrospect may seem surprising,
but Helen and Barry, and Jack and I worked
very well together.
In 2002, the tie was broken and the Democrats
had a 50-48 majority. It was very interesting to
watch how Helen ran a committee because she had
the greatest respect for her fellow members; but she
also had some expectations from them. She was a
really strong believer in a sense of decorum. When
members were up on the dais, she really expected
them to be paying attention. I know one of her
pet-peeves at the time was that so many members
would bring their lap-tops to committee and were
busy doing e-mail or other things. Helen was running
the committee and she was always focused and
very fascinated by what people had to say. When
she saw too many lap-tops, the message would get
out that you need to pay more attention to what’s
happening in committee.
Sometimes, we often had these meetings where
both Republicans and Democrats would get together
for informal briefings. We’d have a large table set
up where members sit around the table and, in a
more casual setting, be able to discuss issues and
bring in other agency representatives or other staff
to make presentations. I remember one time where
there was a Republican member who was new to the
committee. And in this informal meeting setting,
he was really a lot more boisterous about his views.
I wouldn’t say he necessarily attacked anybody,
but he acted in a way that was a little bit different
and more aggressive than the way everybody else
behaved. Interestingly enough, one of the other
Republicans on the committee immediately went
to him and said, “This is not the way we operate in
House Appropriations.” So that new member went
to Helen and apologized on the floor! After that,
he was just fine. Helen treated people with respect,
and she expected other people to bring that same
respect to the meetings.
People who know Helen best, know that she has
two sides. On the job, Helen had this sort of gruff
exterior to some people. She was always focused
on the job. That was one side of Helen Sommers.
But the other side is this person with a fabulous
sense of humor. You can get her to giggle. She was
incredibly fun, and that was the side of Helen that
a lot of people here in Olympia didn’t see.
When she’s not on the job, she is great fun, and
doesn’t want to talk legislative business.
Right after the first session I’d worked for the
House (2001), Helen invited me to her house in