Sheldon retiring from Legislature

Tim Sheldon joined the state Legislature during the year Bryan Adams' "I Do It for You" was the No. 1 song, the New York Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" was the top grossing movie.

That year was 1991, and now 31 years later, Sheldon has decided it's time to retire.

"It came along during this term. It's been 32 years in Olympia and before that I had six years as a port commissioner, so it overlapped two years so 32 and four, that's 36 years and I want to do some other things," Sheldon said.

Sheldon was in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1997 before being elected to the Senate in 1998, representing the 35th Legislative District in that role for 25 years.

He said he first became interested in politics in middle school. He grew up in Shelton before his family moved to Everett. He attended South Junior High School and ran for class president, losing to Dennis Erickson, a future NFL coach who was the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks for a period.

"That turned out to be the last election I lost," Sheldon recalled with a laugh.

His family moved to Philadelphia while Sheldon was in high school. Sheldon's brother came home in 1964 when Tim was 17 with tickets as alternate delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. It was the year after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a president Sheldon admired and a big event in his life. He recalled the battle to seat Fannie Lou Hamer as a delegate, an African-American woman and civil rights leader who helped co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

He decided to attend college at the University of Pennsylvania and was a classmate of former president Donald Trump.

"Nobody cared for Donald too much, everybody knew the rich kids at school," Sheldon said.

Sheldon returned to Washington after finishing school. He began his elected office career in 1988 as Port of Hoodsport commissioner, seeing the seat open and that no one had filed to run for the position.

He ran for the House of Representatives in 1990. Incumbent Doug Sayan decided to retire, and Sheldon had been to Olympia to testify and decided to run after talking to his wife.

"We had a 6-year old daughter and she said well, if you come home every night, it will work," Sheldon said. "In 32 years there, I was only in Olympia two nights."

He faced a handful of people in the Democratic primary. He won the primary, but the Democrats didn't support him because he had received money from business interests, he said.

Sheldon not only worked in Olympia, but also won elected positions in Mason County, including Mason County PUD 1 commissioner from 1999 to 2002 and Mason County commissioner from 2005 to 2016.

During his run for county commissioner, he was the first person to win running as an independent in Mason County since the 1890s, hosting the required convention in the Belfair Safeway parking lot. He got enough signatures at the convention to be on the general election ballot, running against Republican nominee and current commissioner Randy Neatherlin and Democratic nominee Constance Ibsen.

"Election night, she (Ibsen) was ahead by 98 votes," Sheldon recalled. "In the next couple days, I went ahead and won."

He said he felt the job should be independent.

Sheldon said those years were difficult because he didn't want to miss a vote. He was able to get a lot done for rural counties while serving in both positions, including allocating money for the Belfair sewer project and helped define what a rural county is - fewer than 70 people per square mile. He has a budget proviso in effect today that allows counties to collect some of the real estate excise tax money to use for infrastructure.

Sheldon started a coalition with the state to improve the sewer in Shelton and extend the line to the Port of Shelton, Washington State Patrol Academy and the prison. He changed the corrections center energy from being one of the biggest polluters with coal to using natural gas and wood for heating needs.

He said some of his biggest accomplishments in the Legislature included a bill about not releasing the names of juveniles in sexual abuse cases, even placing copies of a prominent story in the Shelton-Mason County Journal on the desks of senators after it passed the House.

"I bought 49 Mason County Journals and I put it on the desk of every senator in the Senate and just went down the aisles and they passed the bill and the governor vetoed a portion of it," Sheldon said. "That was a real high-profile bill."

He helped pass a bill to get Mason County another Superior Court judge after only having one for a long time. Sheldon helped pass legislation for workforce training, allowing people laid off from jobs to still receive unemployment while going to school to be retrained.

"Labor was a big supporter of that," Sheldon said. "They had a big signing up in Tacoma. They forgot to invite me to the celebration. I always had that push-pull with the labor community."

For 30 of his 32 years in the Legislature, Sheldon was on the Transportation Committee and said he was proud of numerous accomplishments, including improving the bridge over Purdy Creek and securing Belfair Bypass project money of $66 million, with an additional $12 million in this year's budget. This year's budget also has $35 million to add a turn lane on state Route 3 through Belfair.

While in the Legislature, Sheldon said he considered himself an independent voice, sometimes voting with Republicans on bills and was the deciding vote on some bills.

"When you're the 25th vote, you get a lot of attention," Sheldon said. "Now everybody is the 25th vote if you've got 25, but most members will only vote with their party and I'm not that way."

He said he would often try to get to know new members from both parties by going in early and eating breakfast in the dining room and sit at different tables to get to know people.

"The Democrat party was never backing me, Republicans, they loved it when I didn't vote with the party but I just tried to vote the way I think my district would feel," Sheldon said. "Seven years, I was the deciding vote. Sometimes I was within the Democratic caucus and sometimes I was with the Republicans. Sometimes those were difficult because when you're the deciding vote, you get a lot of attention and sometimes you have to disappoint your friends."

He said bipartisanship is a nice slogan that is rarely ever practiced. Sheldon said he got a lot of heat from Democrats and Republicans for Initiative 872 in 2004, which replaced the open primary with a top-two nonpartisan blanket primary.

"I pushed that really hard and I worked to find people who would vote for it because I felt the top-two primary would improve conflict," Sheldon said. "What it's done has given a lot more people an opportunity to run and get through the primary. The parties fought that in court all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court so I went back to Washington, D.C., for the arguments and I had never been in the court building, it was fascinating."

State Attorney General Rob McKenna argued the case and in 2008, the Supreme Court reversed a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and upheld the initiative.

Mason County has grown in population since Sheldon joined the Legislature. He noted the shellfish industry has grown tremendously, forest production has changed and the price of homes has risen significantly.

His final two sessions were remote due to COVID-19 and he said it was good for accessibility, but it was tough without the face-to-face interaction he was used to.

Some of the people he said he will miss in the Senate are Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle and David Frockt, D-Seattle.

Looking back on his time in the Legislature, Sheldon said he is happy with what he accomplished and the attention he brought to rural counties.

"In the rural area, we are often ignored because one-third of the legislators represent King County," Sheldon said. "That's a big voting block, one-third. Mason is the most rural county there is really because there's (one incorporated city). Down in Wahkiakum County or Stevens County, there's people that would love to have just a little more. (It) would do so much for their health departments or the fire departments, you've got wildfires and all of these other issues so we still are two Washingtons. I wish I could have accomplished more but I think I helped with a couple of the bills I had and attention it brought to it."

Whoever takes Sheldon's place, his advice is to represent the district and get to know people. He is not fully retiring as he will go back to working on the family-owned tree farm since 1941 in Potlatch, selling logs, gravel and oysters.

He plans to keep his seat on the executive board of Energy Northwest, but says he plans to sit on the sidelines during county elections.

Sheldon said he enjoyed the 36 years he served the people of Mason County.

"It's been fabulous, wonderful people," Sheldon said.

Author Bio

Matt Baide, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
Email: [email protected]

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