Washington state Sen. Emily Randall (D) is looking for a promotion.
The Majority Whip for the Washington State Senate, and one of the first openly gay women to serve in that body, wants to trade her Puget Sound commute for a spot in the U.S. Congress next January representing Washington’s 6th Congressional District on the Olympic Peninsula. If elected, she’ll be the first LGBTQ+ member from Washington state.
Randall first ran for the state senate seat covering her hometown in 2018, when she defeated her “extreme MAGA” Republican opponent by a mere 102 votes. Since then, she’s worked across the aisle in the statehouse and in her district to find common ground amid the culture wars.
Randall spoke from her district office on “a beautiful morning” in the Pacific Northwest.
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LGBTQ Nation: You chair the Washington Senate’s Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee, and you’re a first-generation college graduate. Explain the logic of forgiving student debt — is it a giveaway to privileged college students like some people claim? And do you have any student debt, and have you had any debt forgiven?
Sen. Emily Randall: I did not have any debt forgiven. I paid it off about ten years after I graduated from college. I got to go to college because of really generous financial aid. In Washington, we’ve done a lot of work around needs-based financial aid; we’ve got the most generous needs-based financial aid program in the country, which is an important priority, making pathways affordable to students.
So many Americans, from new college grads to grandmothers are burdened by student debt. We have to really figure out how we support people getting the training to fill the jobs that we need in our country and in our state, while not hamstringing the economy by burdening people with too much debt.
You’ve worked to improve apprenticeships for high school students. Does every student need to go all the way to 12th grade? There are other educational models around the world that sort kids who want to pursue apprenticeships and those who want to go to college at an earlier age.
There’s lots of different models in different states. In Washington state we have what are called skill centers. We’ve got 30 of them around the state. And there are many high school students that take full-time or half-day classes there so that they can pursue what are usually pre-apprenticeship classes that allow them to graduate high school right into an apprenticeship program or, sometimes, right into full employment at Boeing and other places like that.
You’ve worked with faculty and administrators to establish anti-racism and equity training on public college campuses. And now those kinds of DEI programs are under attack across the country by officials like Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and others. What do you say to DeSantis and his allies when they accuse people like you of blaming white people for all the world’s problems?
Yeah, I don’t think this is about blame so much as it’s about ensuring that every student, every staff member at institutions, or really, at any job gets the chance to feel seen and supported and respected as the person that they are, regardless of their identity. We celebrate our differences, which is what makes our country so rich.
As a Chicana who is also queer, who was a first-generation college student who had a sister with disabilities, I think it matters that we see stories like our own, in books, in our curriculum, and that we see the pathways that we can take into careers and to a strong futures. And historically, I think we can all agree, that that curriculum hasn’t lifted up stories of people of color, LGBTQ folks, or people with disabilities.
Was there an upside to slavery [like the new standards for U.S. history say in Florida]?
No.
You’re the daughter and granddaughter of shipyard union workers on Puget Sound, but you’re also an elected representative in a state that’s a major tech hub where unions aren’t really welcome. Should every workplace be unionized? Or should we trust the tech billionaires — and Starbucks — to be fair about how they treat their workers?
I think we should trust workers to tell us what they need in their workplaces. I don’t think we should mandate that every single person join a union in every industry and every job in every workplace. That’s up to organized labor and the workers at that job site to decide for themselves. That’s why they organize: when they need workplace protections and when their voices are missing from decision-making.
I’ve seen you variously described as queer, as gay, as Latina, Chicana, and Latinx. Where do you come down on what you want to be called and the efficacy or burden of labels?
When I was first coming out, as a young high school student applying for colleges, I was very opposed to box-checking. I was like, “Why is it my responsibility to fit myself into a label that someone else has created?” And what I have learned and experienced as an elected person is that sometimes it is really powerful using the language that is right for us about ourselves so that other people can see leaders being bold, and talking about their identities, and feeling comfortable in our own skin and living As long as people are being respectful, it’s doesn’t hurt my feelings if they use the wrong language. Language is fluid, and we all get to change our minds about how we identify, but just being bold and public and present is the exciting opportunity for me, and I think makes a difference for like young people in the community, especially.
You worked your way through college waiting tables, among other jobs. Where do you where do you stand on tips?
Oh, yeah. I think, you know, in Washington state we have minimum wage laws and protections that don’t necessarily factor tips in. I think it’s important that working people have a base pay that they can rely on, that’s dependable. I also think that tipped employees are often some of the hardest-working folks in the industry. I really like seeing some of the innovations, like employers increasing wages and letting their customers know that they’re paying a living wage. There’s a donut shop around the corner that pays $25 an hour, and they let customers know it, so tips or bonuses are on top of that. We know that $12 an hour is really hard to support yourself or your family on in most parts of the country — certainly in my district. We’ve got to be fighting for better wages for everybody.
In 2016, you went to work for Planned Parenthood. What did you learn in that job that has informed your work on abortion access?
I went to work with Planned Parenthood shortly before the 2016 election. I was raising money for the Federation, for the Action Fund, for the political work. And I was really optimistic about the work that we were doing to fight for abortion protections and abortion rights.
And then the 2016 election happened. And we all knew we were going to slide backwards. What I learned in that job is that it is really important that we are bold about our commitment to reproductive freedom because it’s not just left-wing Democrats that care about abortion rights. It’s swing voters in Arizona, and Nevada. It’s Republicans in many communities. It’s folks who understand that our bodily autonomy and our ability to make decisions about our families and our teachers is so important. And that’s been affirmed to me time after time in my elections here in my purple district.
What’s the reasoning behind your support for the right to choose?
I was not a pro-abortion teenager. I had a sister was born with complex disabilities, and so when I was a little girl, growing up in a religious family, I really conflated abortion with people not believing that folks like my sister should have a chance at life. That was the opinion I formed as a seven-year-old before I really knew a lot about the world.
What I know as an adult, and what I learned watching my friends in junior high and high school make decisions about whether or not to carry their pregnancies to term and become teen moms, and what I learned as a volunteer with the Bay Area Doula Project, was that there are so many reasons that people decide to have children or not to have children. And those decisions are up to individuals. They’re up to each of us to decide whether or not we are ready and excited to be a parent and it shouldn’t be the government’s decision or anybody else’s decision about whether someone should carry a baby to term and become a parent.
There’s a church in Union Gap, Washington, near Yakima that I’ve written about a few times that’s affiliated with the wildly anti-LGBTQ+ New Independent Fundamental Baptist movement, or New IFP Church. I don’t know if you’re familiar.
I am not.
In videos online, these folks have called for the execution of gay people, saying, “That’s what fa**ots deserve, is the death penalty!” “Bring back the electric chair!” It’s “a little more painful” than the alternatives. Does the public have any recourse when it comes to these tax-exempt organizations encouraging torture and executions, or are we stuck with their so-called “free speech” in the public square?
There are arguments to be made about political speech on behalf of organizations that are getting tax exemptions. But at the end of the day, what we know is that this is like fringe minority groups who are extremist and peddling hate speech, and we have to look at every opportunity to ensure that they’re not getting undue government benefits in order to make their megaphone bigger.
In 2018, you ran for your seat in Washington’s 26th Senate District against someone you described as a MAGA extremist Republican, and you won by just 102 votes. What knowledge did you gain in that race about the politics of MAGA that you’ll take to Washington if you win in November?
What I learned in that race and again in 2022 and in my time representing my community is that everyday Republican voters in my district do not want extremist politicking. They don’t want elected officials who are just looking for sound bites. They want elected officials who are going to get to work and work with anybody that they need to in order to solve problems.
You know, Republicans and Democrats alike want clean air and clean water, and want to be able to keep the lights on, want their children to have brighter futures than their own, want life to be a little bit easier. And when I knock doors and talk to voters —moderates and Republicans and Democrats — they voted for me because they know that I’m someone who’s just going to get to work.
I grew up with a Republican dad, as I said, in a religious family. I think we have to respect each other and differences of opinions and beliefs and how we solve problems. But we shouldn’t be making ad hominem attacks and just playing politics with people’s lives. We need to remember that we’re public servants at the end of the day.
You live with your wife Alison in Bremerton, Washington, a ferry ride from Seattle across the Puget Sound and just up the road from the shipyard where your father worked. How did you two meet and who proposed to whom?
Oh! We met in college. She was a year ahead of me at Wellesley. And we were together for 18 years before we got married just last August. We don’t really have a proposal story, like nobody got down on one knee or surprised the other with rings. We just talked about the kind of life we wanted to build together and whether we wanted to throw a really fun party (laughing).
What does Allison do for a living or with her time?
Well, after many years of working in consulting and then as a program manager at Microsoft — and she has her MBA — she made a big career pivot in 2022, and now she is an apprentice carpenter.
Oh, wow. Do you have a shop at home?
(Laughing) We have a garage with aspirations to be a shop. Right now she’s working on a University of Washington dorm project, so she spends a lot of time right now building really amazing dorms.
Do you two have any interest in having kids?
Not right now. We’ve got two dogs that keep us pretty busy, and busy jobs.
You have two dogs named Frida and Ricky Martina.
Yes.
What about them reminds you of their namesakes?
(Laughing) Well, you know, we named our dogs after queer Latinx icons. I would love to tell you that Frida’s more creative. I guess Ricky’s a half-husky mix, so he’s definitely the more musical of the two.
You majored in Spanish and Women’s Studies at Wellesley. Hillary Clinton was a star student there, and she was a New York Senator when you attended. Have you had occasion to meet her, and what’s something that you admire about her?
Oh, I’ve met her a few times. She was running for president my senior year of college and came to the campus to have a college event. And then I met her when I was a staff member at Wellesley. She would come for her reunion and had a book signing a few times.
I think what is really exciting about Secretary Clinton is her incredible commitment to lifting up the stories of other women, and learning as much as she can to make the best decisions possible. I think that’s really true of Wellesley people. And when I worked for the college, I learned this even more. They are folks who are really passionate about their particular area, who want to know as much as possible, who are curious and committed. It’s really cool to be a part of that.
In your five years in office, you’ve likely worked with Governor Jay Inslee, who is a devoted climate activist, what’s the single most important thing the world should be doing to address the climate crisis?
Oh, just one thing? Well, I think it’s really important that we look upstream at the biggest carbon emissions and how we can decrease those. In Washington state, we’ve created a market for big polluters industry, and we’ve dedicated a lot of investments to decarbonizing our ferry fleet — the ferries in Washington state that are part of our marine highway — and doing our part to keep Puget Sound and the air and water clean.
If you make it to Congress, you’re going to encounter some outsized personalities. Here are a few questions about some of them.
Who would you rather be seated next to at your first State of the Union address — in a blackout? A defeated Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert or the expelled New York Rep. George Santos?
Oh, oh. I mean, I guess George Santos because I have lots of questions for him (laughing).
Who would you rather spend a Saturday night with singing show tunes at a gay bar in Dupont Circle, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham or South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott?
Oh. I feel like Lindsey Graham carries a mean tune, so Lindsey.
What would be more entertaining? Watching Rhonna McDaniel accidentally walk into a room full of MSNBC anchors or a cockfight?
Oh, I am not supportive of animal violence — definitely not entertaining. So I guess it’s Rhonna McDaniel.
What are the odds Hakeem Jeffries becomes the new Speaker of the House just because the GOP majority whip f*cks up the vote count?
(Laughing) Well, I think right now it looks like they’re dropping like flies and retiring, so we might take it back even before November. I think Hakeem Jeffries has an outsize chance on his own merits of becoming Speaker of the House.
What are you looking forward to most if you win a seat in the U.S. House representing Washington, 6th Congressional District?
Getting to bring the voices of my neighbors with me to make tough decisions and make investments in building a brighter future for all of us. I feel really lucky to get to represent the community where I grew up, where my parents grew up, and to share the experiences of so many of my hard-working neighbors, and I want to work just as hard for them as they work for their communities and their families.
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