Washington’s campaign season is officially under way.

Filing Week opened with a bang Monday with hundreds of candidates statewide filing for office.  There are 344 state offices open this year, along with potentially thousands of party precinct committee officer slots.

Besides the presidential election and a U.S. Senate race, the state has an unusually rich assortment of open offices this year that are sure to attract heavy attention this week, says Secretary of State Sam Reed.  Reed himself is an example of an officeholder who will turn over the reins to someone else.   The state also will elect a new governor, attorney general and state auditor, in addition to numerous new judges, local officials and state and federal lawmakers.

There is unusual turnover in the state’s U.S. House delegation: Jay Inslee has resigned from the 1st District to run for governor, touching off two elections — one in the old 1st for the final month of his unexpired term, and a second contest in the newly redrawn 1st for the upcoming two-year term. Washington has a brand-new 10th District, thanks to population growth in the state, and Norm Dicks is retiring after a long career representing the 6th District. All districts have changed boundaries, some drastically.

Reed said he’s expecting heavy interest in running for office this year, and that most candidates have been fund-raising, organizing and campaigning for weeks or months. He added:

“The voters I’ve met as I traveled around the state in the past month are very enthused about this election, and you get the sense that it is a generational or ‘change’ election coming up.   When you add the presidential election and potentially some very volatile ballot measures, we may see record voter registrations and record turnout.”

The crop of candidates who file this week will be on the Top 2 Primary ballot and the two favorites for each office will advance to the General Election.  Ballots go out in July for the primary, with an Aug. 7 deadline for postmark or return to the elections office or a drop-box. The General Election deadline for return or postmark is Nov. 6.

Online filing runs day and night until 4 p.m.  Friday, May 18.  In-person filing ends at close of business on Friday. If you’re running for a legislative or judicial office within one county, you file with your county elections office. If you’re running for a legislative or judicial office encompassing more than one county, you file with the Secretary of State. You can file online, by mail, or in person. In-person candidate filing at the Secretary of State’s office will be at our Executive Office, second floor of the Legislative Building in Olympia.

Filing Week previously took place in early June, but a state law passed in 2011 moved it to mid-May, starting this year, to accommodate overseas and military voting. This year’s Top 2 Primary is a week earlier than last year.

This might be a very exclusive group, but nobody complains about its criteria to join or when its members gather. In fact, it’s cause for a big celebration when they do.

The Washington Talking Book & Braille Library last weekend hosted its annual Ten-Squared event celebrating its patrons who are 100 years or older. WTBBL currently has 61 patrons across the state who are at least 100. Last year there were 50 at this time.

Three centenarian patrons attended this year’s tea event, along with staff, patrons and volunteers from WTBBL, the Washington State Library, and the Office of Secretary of State. The photo shows in the front row, from left: Emma Harman, Isidore Starr  and Margaret Franzen, all age 100 .  In the back row are Acting State Librarian Rand Simmons, State Historian John Hughes (the tea’s keynote speaker, who spoke about the importance of oral history) and WTBBL Manager Danielle Miller.

The National Library Service for the Blind & Physically Handicapped-Library of Congress Ten-Squared Talking Book Club was created to recognize the accomplishments of centenarian patrons and promote the value of lifelong reading.

WTBBL is part of the Washington State Library, which is a division of the Office of Secretary of State.

(Image courtesy of Washington State Archives)

As many business owners know, our office’s Corporation Division is where companies register trademarks that are used exclusively within Washington State or the region.

In fact, the Secretary of State has been registering trademarks since statehood.  Of course, many of the early products and goods are no longer sold, but their trademarks live on. Our State Archives has preserved roughly 3,000 expired trademarks, many of them beautifully artistic and scenic — frame-worthy even (see below).

The State Archives provided the low-down regarding Washington trademarks:  On Feb. 21, 1891, Washington’s  2nd Legislature passed House Bill No. 134, “An Act in relation to trade marks,” which stated that “Any person may adopt, for the exclusive use of said person, any mark, vignette, monogram or other device..not already in the rightful use of any other person in this state, to be known as a trade mark.” The law’s intention was to identify and distinguish by whom goods were being made and sold in Washington.

The expired trademarks collection includes eight note cards that are unretouched scans of trademark designs submitted to the Secretary of State between 1892 and 1895.

Earlier this month, we featured an 1878 version of the Washington Constitution and Japanese Internment records from World War II.

We’ll do a blog post soon that features the online poll allowing you to vote on your favorite May Archives treasure.

For candidates throughout Washington, the official start to the 2012 campaign season kicks off Monday morning with Filing Week, which runs May 14 through May 18.

Online filing begins Monday at 9 a.m. and runs day and night until 4 p.m. next Friday, May 18. In-person filing starts Monday at 8 a.m. and ends at close of business on Friday. For the Office of Secretary of State, close of business is 5 p.m. If you’re a candidate running for a legislative or judicial office within one county, you file with your county elections office. If you’re running for a legislative or judicial office encompassing more than one county, you file with the Secretary of State. You can file online, by mail, or in person. In-person candidate filing at the Secretary of State’s office will be at our Executive Office, second floor of the Legislative Building in Olympia.

Filing Week previously took place in early June, but a state law passed in 2011 moved it to mid-May, starting this year. This year’s Top 2 Primary Election will end on Aug. 7, a week earlier than last year.

Candidates who wanted to get a head start on filing did so starting April 30 by mailing in their declaration. So far, our Elections Division has received 14 mail-in declarations, far above normal at this point.

Go here to learn how to get on the ballot and link to the 344 state offices open for election this year.

If you have questions about the Top 2 Primary, check out this FAQ section.  Here are two questions we’ve heard lately: continue reading

From left: Samantha Smith, Oliver Reed and Clare Doran.

If you ever wonder if books can influence and inspire students, look no further than the winning letters submitted by the three new state champions in the annual Letters About Literature contest.

The annual contest, co-sponsored by the Washington State Library, encourages students to write letters to their favorite authors, living or dead.

The new Washington champions were honored are:

• Level 1 (grades 4-6):  Clare Doran, a sixth grader at The Bush School in Seattle.  Doran wrote her letter to Jamie Ford about his book Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Part of Clare’s letter reads:

“Your book has made me realize that I am so lucky that I’m not treated how the Japanese-Americans were during World War II. Sometimes I feel guilty because I complain about little things like “I’m hungry!” or “I don’t want to clean my room”, not realizing that I have it easy. I don’t get called mean names just because of where I’m from and I don’t have to be punished
and sent away from my closest friends and neighborhood. Thank you for teaching me this valuable lesson of understanding other people around me who may have difficulties that I can’t see.”

• Level 2 (grades 7-8): Samantha Smith, an eighth grader at Blue Heron Middle School in Port Townsend. Smith penned her letter to Julie Anne Peters about her book Keeping You a Secret. An excerpt from Samantha’s letter:

“After I finished Keeping You a Secret, I made an effort to find other books like it. I
read more of your books, such as Far from Xanadu, Luna, and Define “Normal”, as well as books written by others with similar content, for example, Empress of the World by Sarah Ryan. I love how these books make me feel like I have friends in familiar situations. Even though they’re just book characters, they seem real. Sometimes their fictional actions give me the confidence that I didn’t have, to do things that I otherwise never would have done.”

• Level 3 (grades 9-12): Oliver Reed, a 10th grader at North Central High School in Spokane. Reed (no relation to the Secretary of State) wrote his letter to William Ernest Henley about his poem “Invictus.” From Oliver’s letter:

“Throughout my life, I have been held captive in the darkness, and it’s been terribly long. The tides have taken their toll, and enough is enough. The  light is on, and I move onward. I have high goals and dreams to accomplish. I have people to meet and places to go. The darkness shall never again hold be back. Mr. Henley, your poem has turned my life right side up. I wake up every morning and I think about those last two lines, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul”, and I know right away that I choose the path. I cannot thank you enough for how you have transformed my mindset.”

With family, friends, teachers and librarians in attendance, Doran, Smith and Reed were honored Friday afternoon by Secretary Reed in his office. The state three champions read their letters aloud.

All three of this year’s state champs were named as national runners-up in each level of the contest, the first time that’s happened since Washington joined the competition.

The state champion awards ceremony was covered by TVW, which will have the event available for viewing online and on TV.

One of the most controversial occurrences stateside during World War II was the internment of Japanese Americans following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The State Archives has a collection of documents related to internment of Washingtonians of Japanese descent. This collection is the second item featured for May’s Archives treasures online poll.

These records come from the Washington State Planning Council’s War and Post-War Planning Files, 1942-1945. The record series includes surveys and plans pertaining to war emergency planning and immediate post-war planning. Subjects include construction, agricultural growth, hospitalization, compulsory military service, Japanese internment, and the hiring of veterans. The collection contains newspaper clippings, correspondence, organizational charts, memos, bulletins, correspondence of the Committee for Post-Victory Employment, and other items.

Found in this collection is a report submitted in February 1942 to the Tolan Congressional Committee on National Defense Migration. The report was prepared by Emergency Defense Council of the Seattle Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. From the report’s foreword: continue reading

For years, Secretary Reed has helped lead efforts to recognize and honor public employees during Public Service Recognition Week each May. During the PSRW event on the Capitol Campus Wednesday, Reed himself was recognized.

State Senator Karen Fraser, who serves Olympia and the rest of the 22nd Legislative District, presented Reed with a special award for co-chairing PSRW since 2001 along with State Auditor Brian Sonntag. Both Reed and Sonntag are retiring from office next January.

The award reads: “In recognition of your dedication and support of public employees through your service to Public Service Recognition Week 2001-2012.”

Other PSRW events are scheduled Thursday in Spokane and the Tri-Cities.

(Image courtesy of Washington State Archives)

State history buffs know that Washington officially joined the Union as the 42nd state on Nov. 11, 1889. But did you know there was an ongoing effort for many years to persuade Congress to make Washington a state?

In fact, Washington Territory voters approved a constitution on Nov. 5, 1878. The State Archives has the original of that document, and it’s the first “contestant” for the May version of the Archives “treasures” online poll. The book containing the proposed constitution is handsomely bound in leather and hand-written with iron gall ink on vellum.

The University of Washington’s Gallagher Law Library has background on the drafting of a constitution in the late 1870s:

In 1876, citizens of the Territory voted to apply for statehood. In 1877, Orange Jacobs, Washington’s Delegate to Congress, requested an enabling act that would allow Washington to become a state as soon as a state constitution was drafted and ratified by the voters. In 1878, fifteen delegates met in Walla Walla for Washington’s first Constitutional Convention. continue reading

(Photo courtesy of Washington State Archives)

Like sentries silently standing guard for decades, they’ve flanked the north stairs leading up to the Legislative Building, mostly unnoticed by the employees and tourists walking past them.

But the two blue spruces on the north side of the Capitol soon will be no more, victims of last January’s ice storm that wiped out so many trees in the Puget Sound region.

The Department of Enterprise Services announced that a contractor on Saturday will remove the two trees that were damaged by the winter storm. A recent DES Campus Update provides the details:

On May 5, a contractor hired by the state will be grinding 23 tree stumps, remnants of the storm, and remove two storm-damaged Blue Spruce trees that flank the north stairs of the Legislative Building. The spruce trees were planted in 1964 in honor of Earl S. Coe, former Secretary of State (1948-1957), who died that year.

Enterprise Services’ Landscape Restoration Master Plan calls for the replacement of the spruce trees with White fir (Abies Concolor), which will grow to a similar size and shape, and an understory planting of dogwood trees. The firs will be planted in the next two weeks.

Our State Archives staff found this old photo (above) from 1964 showing Governor Rosellini planting the blue spruce outside the Office of Secretary of State near the building’s northwest corner. A very recent photo (below) shows the weather-beaten blue spruce outside the Governor’s Office near the northeast corner.

(Photo courtesy of Washington State Library)

Leading wire to wire, the Asahel Curtis glass photographic negatives of Grand Coulee Dam was the overwhelming winner in April’s State Library jewels online poll.

The Curtis negatives took first with 62 percent, well ahead of the Seattle World’s Fair Commission records (31 percent) and W.E. McCroskey’s poem about Northwest Pioneers (7 percent). The image above is one of the few color negatives in that collection. The black-and-white negatives feature the dam’s construction.

Next week we’ll begin a blog series about May’s Archives treasures, so be sure to watch for that and choose your favorite out of the three items featured.