EVERETT — Republican Mike Steele hopes to be reelected to his sixth term as state representative in Legislative District 12, Position 2, but two political newcomers are looking to unseat him.

Democrat Maggie Adams and Republican Adam James are challenging Steele for the district, which was redrawn in 2024.

District 12 contains all of Chelan County, along with parts of King and Snohomish counties. Most of southern Snohomish County lies within District 12, including Monroe, Sultan, Gold Bar and Index.

The primary election is Aug. 4. The top two candidates will advance to the November general election.

Maggie Adams

Adams, 47, is a Snoqualmie resident and a professional actor who also works behind the scenes as a costume designer and stagehand. However, she always wanted to be in politics, Adams said in a May 26 interview.

“I remember being 5 years old and watching the Reagan-Mondale debates and, you know, being really fascinated by it,” Adams said in an interview. “When I was in school, I had considered being a legislative attorney. So, I did Model UN at a really competitive program when I was a kid. So, diving into stacks and finding precedent and forming policies and all that.”

Eventually, she redirected toward acting but became the business representative for her local union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a few years ago.

“I was back in the Model UN day,” she said. “You’re going through collective bargaining agreements, you’re making sure things are copacetic with state law and federal law, and working overall to advance our workers’ needs.”

Her top priorities include accessible healthcare, education, protecting water availability and workers’ rights.

People have a right to healthcare, Adams said.

“These are the basic things that our state and our country should be able to guarantee for people,” she said. “Also, the expansion of health services.”

Establishing the idea that people deserve healthcare plays into lowering the cost of living, Adams said.

“How do we appeal to the goodness in people?” she said. “Establish the idea that housing is a right. People have a right to be housed, they have a right to be fed, they have a right to education.”

On education, schools should be fully funded and teachers’ wages should be increased, Adams said.

“The foundation of that is amazing teachers who have the tools that they need to be as amazing as they are, who have safe school environments and who earn wages that are worthy of what a teacher really should make,” she said. “We put our future in the hands of our teachers.”

To protect water availability, Adams said the state needs to prioritize agriculture and residents while moving away from natural gas mining.

“The amount of water used in the mining of natural gas, the water used in industrial mines, outweighs the water that’s used in agriculture and residential,” she said. Fracking natural gas “impedes us moving away from fossil fuels and into renewable energies while also burning through an incredible amount of water.”

Finally, as a union representative, Adams plans to fight on behalf of workers, she said.

“We have a lot of managers in Olympia and not a ton of folks representing the workers who come from that labor background,” Adams said. “District 12 has quite a lot of agriculture — agricultural land.”

Adams’ grandfather, father and uncles were migrant farmers in California, she said. Hearing her grandfather’s experience as a kid “really prioritized workers’ rights” in Adams’ mind.

To help with the state’s budget challenges, Adams is supportive of the “so-called millionaire’s tax,” she said. “We have a very regressive tax system that is unfair to our folks that make the least amount of money. They end up carrying the biggest tax burden.”

Taxes on the highest grossing businesses should also be increased, Adams said.

Changing the tax structure is one way to help with affordability, she said. Also, more investment should be made into affordable housing and regulations should be considered for vacation housing, Adams said.

“With the rise of Airbnb and Furlough and whatnot, there’s a whole lot of single occupancy that’s actually functioning as hotels,” she said.

Mandates for new construction should not only require affordable housing but also disallow Airbnb-style rentals, Adams said.

On public safety, Adams said everybody has a right to a safe environment “free of danger and harassment.”

“I think there are certain folks that require more help in achieving that safe space. I think a lot of that has to be a cultural shift,” she said. “Being a person who identifies as LGBTQ, finding a place and finding my people was something that took me a long time.”

Also, she wants to prioritize community engagement with law enforcement officers, Adams said.

“The more that police are involved in the community, and the more knowledge there is, the more that it’s like a partnership and a friendship,” she said. “The more likely you are to be able to end scenarios that may, in other cases, end badly for a person, and de-escalate in a way that is beneficial for everybody.”

If elected, Maggie wants to champion the voices that are not being heard.

“I think that’s such an important part of leading and legislating — the art of it — is to guide that conversation so that your constituents’ voice is being heard in the best compromise that we possibly can,” she said. “My opinion is my opinion. Having more people’s opinions is how we find a consensus.”

Adams has received $2,345 in campaign contributions as of Monday, state filings show.

Adam James

James, 48, is a pastor from Wenatchee. He decided to run as representative for District 12 because he wants to help change the direction the state has been going for the last 40 years, he said in a May 28 interview.

“The taxation is killing people, the regulations, the affordability issues,” James said. “There’s a lot that needs reform and changing.”

His top priorities include the economy, affordability, education, election reform, protecting families and public safety.

On affordability, he wants to help cut fees and regulations, make it easier to start new businesses and lower the cost of a new home by reducing permitting, James said.

“Then incentivize builders to build houses,” he said. “Homes in that first years, first home, level — $200,000 or less — and try to get some of those home prices in that range where a first-time homebuyer could jump in.”

Also, James said he wants to reduce state spending.

“We need to cut taxes and control spending,” James said. “Honestly, I think we need to DOGE Washington.”

In 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was a temporary federal agency led by Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. Its goal was to reduce regulations and spending.

After cutting dozens of programs and reducing federal employment by 9%, the federal government spent just over $7 trillion in 2025, up from $6.9 trillion in 2024, according to the U.S. Treasury.

To help improve education in the state, James wants to expand school choice, support parents, focus on student outcomes and end what he calls “ideological indoctrination.”

“Not focusing on things, honestly, that have nothing to do with what true academics actually is,” James said. “We need to get back to the basics and the core. Remove a lot of the ideology that’s being thrust upon students in the education system.”

For elections, James supports voter identification and proof of citizenship to vote, he said.

“So that we can give that confidence that every legitimate vote, and only legitimate votes, will be and must be counted,” James said.

Currently, to register to vote in Washington state, applicants must prove they are U.S. citizens and state residents by providing a driver’s license or Social Security number at the time of registration.

James said he will also support the American family in Washington state.

“There’s a moral foundation that we need to uphold and restore,” he said. “These issues aren’t just political. There’s a lot, in terms of the foundation, ethically, of what’s right, what’s wrong, what protects families, children and those kinds of things.”

On public safety, James said he wants to make it easier for law enforcement officers to do their jobs and uphold the law.

“I don’t think we should catch and release. I think we need to be tough on crime,” he said. “For homelessness and addiction issues that often relate to crime issues, we need to address those differently than we are and have been.”

Incentivize good behavior and reprimand bad behavior by upholding the law, James said.

For infrastructure and roads, James said he would prioritize funding to fix the roads we have and look to expand other travel options.

“Opportunities to expand some of the airports to create travel,” he said. “Anything we can do on the state side to support that — expand opportunities for easier travel in and out of places in the district.”

On the environment and climate issues, James looks forward to having more conversations with experts to better understand the situation, he said.

“I need to think more about it, talk to more folks,” James said. “Stewardship is a key word for me. What does it look like to steward our natural resources?”

Fire mitigation would be a focus of his policy, he said.

James is endorsed by the Douglas County and King County Republicans. He is also endorsed by former Republican Speaker of the House Clyde Ballard and former Bellevue City Council member Kevin Wallace.

James has received $336,133 in campaign contributions as of Monday, state filings show.

Mike Steele

Steele, 43, lives in Chelan and is the Lake Chelan Chamber of Commerce director.

Steele was first elected to the District 12 position in 2016, after serving four years on the Chelan City Council, and has been reelected four times.

He keeps running for reelection because of the work on the state’s capital budget, Steele said in a May 22 interview. He has been the ranking member for the House Capital Budget Committee for nine years.

“The capital budget is the only bipartisan, unanimous budget in Washington state,” he said. “We start from the very beginning of session, working together in a bipartisan fashion, to achieve good things for all of Washington.”

His ability to work across the aisle and “put people over politics” is important, he said.

“The reason you do this work is because you believe in helping your communities that you represent,” Steele said. “You believe in building and creating opportunities for the people that live in your district and across Washington.”

Steele’s top priorities include education, creating economic opportunity, “getting government out of the way,” and infrastructure.

Infrastructure in particular is an issue affecting District 12, Steele said. Issues around U.S. 2, Highway 522, Highway 18 and even a portion of I-90 impact central Washington residents every day, he said.

“These roads are real pinch points for the people that live in my district, but also statewide corridors of significance,” Steele said. “They’re not cheap, they’re not easy and they’re certainly nuanced. And so that is going to take time and it takes a lot of effort on the part of the entire delegation.”

For education, Steele wants to help change the teaching model the state currently relies on, he said.

“That kind of factory style, where you just line kids up in rows and, you know, point them toward the front of the classroom and teach at them, that’s a dead sort of art in education. It’s antiquated,” Steele said. “We need to move them toward this sort of hands on learning, peer-to-peer interactions.”

The model would be more competency-based, he said, “but it takes a lot of time; a lot of effort.”

To help create economic opportunities, Steele wants to lower taxes and reduce red tape, especially when it comes to creating small businesses, he said. Also, Steele believes the state has a spending problem, he said.

“Washington does not have a revenue problem,” Steele said. “Let’s take a look at what we’re doing, let’s prioritize the things that we believe most important.”

Steele also hopes to create economic opportunities by expanding affordable healthcare options, he said.

While Steele hopes to get government out of the way of Washington residents, he said he will remain available whenever they have an issue.

“I want to be there for them,” he said. “I want to make sure that I help them through those issues that are trying to navigate.”

On public safety, Steele wants to work on the way officers build relationships with the public, he said.

“We need to figure out how, at an early age, we create relationships with, you know, for our kids with those law enforcement folks,” Steele said. “So they understand that they need to be respected and they’re a resource to help keep us safe.”

Also, he said decriminalization is the wrong move.

“There needs to be personal responsibility for people when they commit crimes,” Steele said. “I’m all for reform. I’m all for making sure people have an ability to reform and come back into society, but we cannot just ignore that crime has been committed and we cannot continue to water down the system.”

When it comes to the environment, Steele takes a farmer’s perspective because of his family’s background, he said.

“My family has been in the orcharding industry for over 100 years,” Steele said. “I believe in clean earth, clean water and clean air because you can’t have a product; you can’t have an agricultural product if you don’t have those things.”

He said the state already has quite comprehensive environmental protections but more work can be done to prevent forest fires.

“One of our biggest contributors to CO2 emissions is obviously forest fires,” Steele said. “I think we have to, as a state, we have to do more to better manage our state lands.”

The number of forest fires in Washington state has increased year over year, resulting in higher greenhouse gas emissions, according to the state Department of Ecology. However, in 2022, 40% of the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions were from transportation, almost 24% from buildings and 18% from electricity production.

Everything else falls within the last 18%, including agriculture, industrial processes and waste management.

In the end, Steele is proud of his ability to negotiate, he said.

“The point of politics is the art of negotiation, finding a way through,” Steele said. “I do that in a way that leads with respect, leads with kindness, leads with compassion, leads with listening and not going in there thinking I’m more right than somebody else.”

Steele is endorsed by the Washington State Labor Council, the House Republican Organizational Committee, the Washington State Medical Association, Associated General Contractors of Washington and APRNs of Washington State, an organization representing advanced practice registered nurses.

Steele has received $53,849 in campaign contributions as of Monday, state filings show.

Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X:@BTayOkay