Jeff has fought for Democratic values since fourth grade, when he co-founded his elementary school’s Earth Club after reading a book for kids on the environment. He became a Democratic Precinct Committee Officer at 18, and worked for the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Jeff moved to Seattle in 2005 and earned a law degree with an emphasis in Poverty and Inequality Law from Seattle University. During his time at Seattle University he received an award for his academic work on our state’s legislative process.
After law school, Jeff worked at Solid Ground representing low-income clients in state public assistance appeals before state administrative law judges. At 28, he himself became the youngest judicial officer in the state of Washington with his appointment as an administrative law judge. In this role, Jeff sees how state laws and budgets affect the most vulnerable people in Washington State on a daily basis.
Jeff is an advocate for people with disabilities. In 2009, he helped the Access to Justice Board write a guide on how to accommodate people with disabilities in legal proceedings. At work, he helped develop a program that provides for appointing an attorney as an accommodation for certain people with disabilities. In 2017, Governor Inslee appointed Jeff to the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Governing Board, where Jeff serves as Board Chair and helped launch the Washington State ABLE Savings Plan. The ABLE Savings plan allows many people with disabilities to save for their everyday needs and prepare for the future without losing their state or federal benefits.
Growing up in an extended family of union members, Jeff learned the value of collective bargaining, family wage jobs, and worker protections from an early age. After his colleagues’ wages had stagnated for years, with the help of the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE), Jeff organized his coworkers to successfully lobby the legislature to extend collective bargaining rights to administrative law judges. He then led a successful card-signing effort, led the bargaining team to achieve salary increases in the first contract, and was unanimously elected as the first President of WFSE Local 562.
Our democracy is fragile and must be defended and strengthened. Jeff served on the King County Citizens’ Elections Oversight Committee, helping ensure that everyone can register, vote, have their vote counted, and have the correct results certified. During Jeff’s time in college in Central Texas he organized a voter registration drive which registered tens of thousands of people to vote, focusing on people of color, low-income neighborhoods, and renters. Jeff was instrumental in the multi-year effort to bring Democracy Vouchers to Seattle, starting with a successful grassroots lobbying effort in 2008 for the legislature to grant cities the authority, through the successful 2015 ballot measure establishing the program.
Understanding that elections have consequences, Jeff has worked to elect Democrats to office and advance Democratic values by serving as Chair of the 36th District Democrats for eight years. During this time, he regularly led caravans of volunteers to eastside swing districts to knock on doors, helping elect Sens. Lisa Wellman and Manka Dhingra to win a Democratic majority in the State Senate, and Congresswoman Kim Schrier to help take back the U.S. House of Representatives.
Jeff lives in the Greenwood area with his spouse, Lucy, whom he married last August. The two share their home with two dogs, Poppy and Cooper, and a cat named Chum.