I first met Hilary Franz on the evening of the governor’s ball in Olympia in January 2016 when she had simply been sworn in as Washington’s new Commissioner of Public Lands. I frolicked together with her for a couple of minutes and located her to be good, youthful, extremely humorous and effervescent with pleasure about her new job.
Now, after seven years in workplace, the joy has apparently worn off and she or he is able to transfer on — a method or one other.
The Commissioner of Public Lands is without doubt one of the extra obscure statewide places of work. Jack de Yonge, who was the primary editorial web page editor I labored for at first of my cartooning profession, used to joke about the heavy process of commissioning all that land, however he left journalism to run for the workplace, himself, in a dropping marketing campaign to oust an entrenched incumbent who was a software of the timber trade.
Operating as an environmentalist didn’t work out for de Yonge, but it surely labored for Franz, who has finished a really credible job managing the state’s forests. Nonetheless, apart from when 1000’s of these publicly owned timber have yearly gone up in flames, Franz has not gotten a whole lot of media consideration — definitely not as compared with the far more seen state legal professional basic, Bob Ferguson, who grabbed headlines and the hearts of Democrats along with his many lawsuits in opposition to the Trump administration.
That notoriety imbalance proved to be a handicap for Franz in her marketing campaign for governor. She was competing with Ferguson, and the AG has change into the odds-on-favorite within the race to succeed three-term Gov. Jay Inslee. Fortunately for Franz, one other political job opened with sixth District U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer’s announcement that he’s not working for reelection. Franz instantly deserted her gubernatorial campaign and declared her candidacy for Kilmer’s congressional seat (and rapidly obtained Kilmer’s endorsement).
If voters find yourself sending Franz to the opposite Washington (the one with out burning forests), she’s going to convey a badly wanted sense of the absurd to a Home of Representatives mired in chaos as a result of antics of the Republican’s’ Freedom Caucus (or, as they is likely to be extra aptly characterised, the Free Dumb Caucus).
So, good luck with all of that, Hilary. Whenever you transfer on, the timber are going to overlook you.
See extra of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View different syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
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