Secretary of State Sam Reed, the state’s senior statewide Republican elected official, says he won’t run for a fourth term next year. Reed, former president of the nation’s secretaries of state and a veteran of more than 40 years in public life, said Tuesday that he’s made the “bittersweet decision” to step aside after his term ends in January, 2013. He is 70, and said it’s time to let Washington choose a new generation of leadership in this and other…
WA Secretary of State Sam Reed says he’s increasingly optimistic that the national Democratic and Republican parties will move the 2012 presidential primary season to later in the calendar. Reed, a national leader for presidential primary reform, said the National Association of Secretaries of State heard from party representatives last week about proposals now moving through both the Republican and Democratic national committees to address the widely-criticized “frontloading” of primaries during recent times. In 2008, for instance, the Iowa caucuses…