Andy Hill running for 45th District Senate seat
May 2, 2010
By J.B. Wogan
New: May 2, 2:23 p.m.
Republican Andy Hill, 47, says he doesn’t want to be a career politician. That’s not what Olympia needs right now.
“I think that they need more common citizens,” Hill said. “I’m not the kid who in third grade started dreaming about running for office … even if I become elected, I don’t know that I want to call myself a politician.”
Andy Hill
Hill may not have the traditional training of a politician, and he may not want to call himself a politician, but he is running for political office — the 45th District State Senate seat occupied by Democrat Eric Oemig.
Hill received a dual bachelor’s degree in physics and computer science from Colgate University before earning a master’s degree in business administration at Harvard.
His life since leaving Microsoft last year involves his wife Molly, his three children, and coaching youth soccer.
Hill said he hopes voters will see him as having a special set of skills that would be well suited for reforming government at the state level. He said his mix of knowledge in technology, his big picture understanding of business management, and his experiences as a father and youth sports coach would all help prepare him for the job.
Hill said he didn’t even think about politics until last fall and he didn’t make a decision to run until January.
So far, Hill has raised $35,925 for his campaign and had spent $4,755.
Oemig’s financial figures are slightly bigger than Hill’s so far: $38,453 in contributions and $10,653 in spending.
Both Hill and Oemig have degrees in computer science and work experience at Microsoft.
Hill lives in unincorporated King County, just outside Redmond. Oemig, who is running for re-election, is from Kirkland.
Hill said he would have voted differently than Oemig on a few matters, but his main focus is addressing bigger problems in Olympia.
“I think Olympia is off track and … it needs to be fixed,” Hill said.
He specified that he was frustrated this winter when the State Legislature suspended Initiative 960, which voters approved in 2007.
“I feel very passionately that if the people have voted on something, that should set the priority for the legislature,” Hill said. “It’s left me over the years feeling powerless when it comes to state government.”
Both Hill and Oemig will have to wait until June 1 to make their campaigns official by filing with the Secretary of State’s office.
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.
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But let me guess, he will gladly take political contributions, speak at political rallies, accept political votes, and if elected, hold political office while making political decisions.
Are Republican voters REALLY that rhetorically gullible?
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Gullible is the tax payer who keeps believing, election after election, that so-called “progressive” politicians who keep legislating us into even higher regressive taxes. Or maybe that’s the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again with the expectation that the result will somehow be different the next time around.
I will give credit to our incumbents though. They are reliable. They can be trusted to vote in lockstep with Seattle Democrats nearly every time. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be working out very well for the 45th. If you’re from Seattle, then I guess I understand why you support keeping them in office. But then we’re getting back to the discussion on higher taxes.
Based on a few of my own life experiences, people who have been given a second chance at life often seem motivated to be doing things for the right reasons. To help people. To serve people. To restore honor to the oath of office. To give back to a community that has given us so much in a meaningful way. Not the money, not the power, not the perverse pathological sense of prestige some people who actually like to call themselves politicians seem to thrive on.
I think it’s going to be a great race and I’m looking forward to it. The first one to start a smear campaign against the other loses my vote. And I’m not voting until the last day, because that seems to be when the real slimeballs make themselves known. Once they’ve locked in the “gullible” voters who thought they were running a clean campaign, the filth starts flying. Only saying because I’ve seen this exact thing happen before in the 45th. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, not happening.