EVERETT — In one of the state’s most crowded legislative races this year, six candidates are vying for an open House seat in the 32nd District.

The 32nd District encompasses parts of Edmonds, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, Shoreline and a small portion of northern Seattle.

Last year, 16-year incumbent Cindy Ryu announced her intent to challenge Jesse Salomon, the incumbent for the State Senate seat, opening up her seat for a legislative newcomer.

Three candidates — Will Chen, Jenna Nand and Keith Scully — have experience in city politics. Chen and Nand serve on the Edmonds City Council, and Scully serves on the Shoreline City Council. They’re being challenged by environmental recruiter Chris Bloomquist, former Federal Trade Commission Attorney Danica Noble and fundraising auctioneer Lisa Rezac, who is also the lone Republican in the race.

State legislators make $72,494 per year.

The county will mail ballots out July 14. The top two vote-getters will advance to the Nov. 3 general election.

Chris Bloomquist

Bloomquist, 49, is an environmental recruiter and small business owner living in Seattle.

He’s also a board member for the KD Hall Foundation, which provides economic advancement opportunities to women and girls. For the past few years, Bloomquist has been advocating in Olympia for school funding and equitable employment. This year, he was also inspired to run to protect immigrant communities.

“It breaks my heart that my mom, who’s been a citizen for over 50 years, a Chilean American, now has to carry her passport to the grocery store for fear of ICE,” he said.

If elected, some of Bloomquist’s other priorities would include investing in education and clean energy.

He would look to reimagine the state’s education funding model, particularly by detaching school funding from student head counts. He’d also look at ways to lower operational costs for schools, such as implementing solar energy and growing food from community gardens for meals.

With his experience as an environmental recruiter, Bloomquist would look to lower energy costs and invest in a green economy. He’d support economic development around clean energy, training programs, community and rural solar, and investing in electrification.

“I really do believe we can lead in a green economy with clean energy, with solar, with wind, where we can fight a number of battles that all dovetail into each other,” Bloomquist said.

To address the state’s budget challenges, he supports fostering economic development before taxing the working class. He’d look to support small business development to generate more tax revenue.

“Not just taxing the ultra-wealthy,” he said. “It’s part of the solution, but it’s got to be more than that, it’s got to be about economic development for the working class.”

One of the top issues facing the 32nd District, Bloomquist said, is public safety.

To address public safety, he’d want to build relationships with local law enforcement and hire more first responders. He also wants to invest in programs that help first responders through their own trauma.

As of Thursday, Bloomquist had raised $53,393 for his campaign, according to state filings. He has endorsements from State Sen. Jesse Salomon, State Rep. Lauren Davis and Lynnwood Mayor George Hurst, among other elected officials. He’s also endorsed by the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs, Washingtonians for a Brighter Future, the Environment and Climate Council of the Washington State Democratic Party and Moms Demand Action.

Will Chen

Chen, 56, is a certified public accountant living in Edmonds. He’s served on the Edmonds City Council since 2022, runs his own accounting firm and is the co-founder of the Asian Service Center.

As a first-generation Chinese American, Chen said he wants to bring representation to the statehouse.

“I think my experience on the Edmonds City Council has just proven that my representation in a public office has benefited not only the underserved population, but also the entire community by bringing everybody together,” he said.

He was also inspired to run for state office to address affordability for working families and seniors with fixed incomes, an issue he said is directly impacting the 32nd District.

“I feel like people are being squeezed because the cost of living is rising at a faster pace than wages,” he said.

Chen said he would also focus on helping small businesses.

“Small businesses are the cornerstone, are the main fabric of our society,” he said. “They create jobs, and the people who are running the small businesses, most of them are self-employed, so that’s a very important sector of our economy that I want to help protect and promote.”

To address the state’s budget challenges, he’d encourage the Legislature to look at ways to reduce expenditures while continuing to fund essential services such as education, transportation and environmental protection.

He’d also look to reduce the state’s regressive tax structure and prevent working people from disproportionately paying taxes, he said. He said his experience as an accountant would prepare him for the role.

“There are a lot of good attorneys in the pool, which is great, but I think Olympia can use some other representation,” Chen said.

Another top issue for Chen is housing. He said he’d look for creative solutions, such as private and public ownerships to promote different housing types. To address homelessness, Chen said the state needs to combine affordable housing with wraparound services, mental health services, job training and detox services.

“It has to be going hand-in-hand, otherwise we’re just throwing money at the issue,” he said.

Chen’s other priorities include public safety and protecting the environment.

For public safety, he said police should be adequately funded. At the same time, he’d look at ways to educate residents, especially seniors, on how to keep themselves safe from common crimes and scams, citing his work with the Asian Service Center.

For the environment, Chen supports strengthening tree protections while still encouraging development.

As of Thursday, Chen had $51,288 in campaign contributions, according to state filings. Chen has endorsements from Mountlake Terrace Mayor Steve Woodard, Lynnwood Mayor George Hurst and Snohomish County Council member Jared Mead, among other elected officials.

Jenna Nand

Nand, 42, is a business attorney living in Edmonds. She began serving on the Edmonds City Council in 2024.

She was inspired to run for state Legislature this year to address issues facing the 32nd District community, including a high cost of living.

“The younger generations have been victimized by really bad fiscal policies, and it’s time to start undoing a lot of these things,” Nand said.

One of those fiscal policies, she said, is the 1% property tax cap that voters approved in 2001, barring local jurisdictions from increasing property tax collections by more than 1% each year without voter approval. Now, many cities, including Edmonds, are unable to keep up with the pace of inflation, Nand said. She also supports a flat state income tax and reducing regressive fines and fees.

One of the top issues currently facing the 32nd District is housing affordability, Nand said. She wants to invest in state land trusts to encourage turning blighted properties into affordable housing. She’d also want to encourage developers to build condos rather than apartment buildings, although developers have said state insurance regulations make it difficult to build condos.

“We’ll just challenge that narrative and actually look at the codes and see if there really is an impediment or there’s just more of a profit motive to build apartment buildings,” she said.

Additional priorities for Nand include subsidizing tuition at public colleges, creating more union jobs, investing in climate resiliency and protecting healthcare.

Protecting healthcare is personal to Nand, as she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. She wants to ensure continued access to Medicaid, known as Apple Health in Washington, and protect state health programs from federal threats.

“I think that we can pursue some practical health care reform, not entirely just shutting down innovation, but so people aren’t necessarily facing bankruptcy if they get a life-threatening diagnosis, and that’s something that’s very personal to me,” she said.

In addition to her career as a business attorney, Nand has also been a small-business owner and did pro-bono advocacy with immigrant refugee communities. She was also a caregiver for her father for 10 years.

“I feel like I have more personal experience than most local politicians when it comes to the issues facing marginalized and underrepresented communities, and I’m very excited to try to provide a platform for those voices to speak for themselves,” she said.

As of Wednesday, Nand had raised $31,471 for her campaign, according to state filings. Nand is endorsed by Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers, Lynnwood Mayor George Hurst and Edmonds Port Commissioner Selena Killin, among other elected officials. She also has endorsements from Women of Color in Politics, the Washington Education Association political action committee, the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington and Democrats for Diversity and Inclusion.

Danica Noble

Noble, 47, is a former attorney with the Federal Trade Commission living in Seattle. She left her job earlier this year to run for office.

For the last four years, Noble worked on the Federal Trade Commission’s anti-trust lawsuit against Meta. Noble’s part of the case was online harms for children, which led to recent verdicts against Meta in Los Angeles and New Mexico.

“That was a pretty depressing thing for a mom of kids in elementary, middle and high school to work on for a long time,” she said. “That evidence really showed explicitly in the documents that we looked at — like just millions of documents over those years — that Meta was willing to sacrifice the safety of our children for profits.”

In the Legislature, some of Noble’s top priorities would include placing guardrails on technology and funding education.

Last year, Noble helped draft a bill that would ban cell phones in schools. The Legislature went with another cell phone ban bill, which later turned into a study that aims for device-free schools by 2030. Noble wants to see a ban sooner.

“That’s another thing that I really want to change,” she said.

She also wants to look into educational technology companies that many school districts in the state use, such as i-Ready and Magic School. In June, California parents filed a lawsuit against i-Ready — an online education platform — over student data collection.

“These companies are very explicitly using our classrooms as data mines, using our students as products, and I think we need to have a lot more transparency and rigor in terms of which of these we use, specifically tying it to requiring demonstration that these technologies actually help and improve learning outcomes, and I think that evidence is hard to come by,” she said.

She also supports working on legislation to prevent surveillance pricing. One bill failed in the Legislature last year, and Noble said she’d like to work on and expand that bill.

Noble is also an education advocate with the Washington State Parent Teacher Association. Part of why she’s running is to “finally deliver on a strong public education,” including funding language services, putting guardrails on AI chatbots in the classroom and getting rid of the per-student funding model.

As of Thursday, Noble had raised $108,604 for her campaign, according to state filings. Noble is endorsed by State Rep. Shelley Kloba, State Rep. Mary Fosse, and Snohomish County Councilmember Meghan Dunn, among other elected officials. She also has endorsements from the Snohomish County Democrats, the Washington State Labor Council and the Washington College Democrats, among other organizations.

Lisa Rezac

Rezac is a fundraising auctioneer and former vice chair of the King County Republican Party. She was born and raised in Edmonds.

In 2024, Rezac was Ryu’s sole challenger for the seat. She automatically advanced to the general election and earned 31% of the vote.

According to her website, Rezac’s top priorities are government accountability, affordability, parental rights in education and public safety. Rezac did not respond to requests for an interview.

Rezac supports independent audits of major state programs, stronger fraud detection, and “zero tolerance for misuse of taxpayer funds,” her website says.

She opposes new taxes and fee increases. She’d also look to review and reduce regulations that increase housing and business costs, protect seniors on fixed incomes, and push for property tax restraint and protections for taxpayers.

On education, Rezac’s website highlights her support for increased parental rights in schools. She’d also look to restore focus on academic excellence in core subjects and expand vocational, technical and career pathways.

“Too many students are falling behind in reading, writing, math, and critical thinking while parents feel increasingly shut out of decision-making,” her website says.

On public safety, Rezac would look to support law enforcement and first responders, ensure accountability for repeat offenders, address addiction and mental health, and protect children from exploitation and trafficking.

As of Thursday, Rezac had raised $3,708 for her campaign, according to state filings. As of Thursday, Rezac did not have any endorsements listed on her campaign website.

Keith Scully

Scully, 52, is an attorney living in Shoreline. He began serving on the Shoreline City Council in 2015 and served as mayor in 2022.

Scully became involved in local government during his time working as a legal director of environmental nonprofits. He joined the Shoreline Planning Commission in 2010.

“Over the past 15 years, we’ve really transformed Shoreline,” he said. “We’ve built infrastructure around light rail, we’ve got mental health providers in the field, we’ve got shelters, we’ve got all kinds of stuff, but what I found over the years is that there were some real limitations in both what cities can do and mostly in what the state is doing.”

He also wanted to run to address the state’s budget challenges.

“They have literally built in a deficit every year, and because the law doesn’t let them operate with a deficit, that means they have to raise taxes,” he said.

He’d support a small, across-the-board cut to try to trim expenses, with the exception of education. In addition, he’d want to implement more progressive taxation and move away from the state’s regressive tax system.

In addition to the budget, Scully’s priorities include funding education and protecting the environment.

Scully said the state’s education funding model hasn’t kept up with increasing expenses in urban areas, as the per-pupil funding model doesn’t take into account the type of area the school is located.

Scully supports electrifying fleets, homes and businesses and wants to streamline permitting for solar and battery electric storage.

An issue facing the 32nd District right now, he said, is housing affordability. He said Shoreline has taken a number of steps that have either become state law or should become state law, including upzoning around transit and requiring that 20% of those units are set at 80% of the area median income or below. When it comes to “deeply affordable” housing or permanent supportive housing, there are still large gaps, he said.

“I love the idea of local control, but it’s got to have some teeth to it,” Scully said.

As of Thursday, Scully had raised $59,593 for his campaign, according to state filings. Scully is endorsed by State Rep. Cindy Ryu, Mountlake Terrace Mayor Steve Woodard and Shoreline Mayor Betsy Robertson, among other elected officials. He also has endorsements from the Snohomish County Democrats, Washington College Democrats and the Environment and Climate Council of the Washington State Democrats, among other organizations.

Jenna Peterson: 425-339-3486; jenna.peterson@heraldnet.com; X: @jennarpetersonn.