State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles: A considerable record of achievement

Even now, 18 years after arriving in the Washington state Senate, Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle), says rising to speak from the Senate floor is no small thing. “I still get a little nervous,” she allowed. 

At first blush, the 69 year-old legislator — whose 36th Legislative District includes Queen Anne, Magnolia, Ballard, parts of Belltown and South Lake Union and a westward chunk of north Seattle — seems a study in contrasts.

Kohl-Welles is a Seattle liberal from a Republican family, who, as a single mother, once, worked extra hard to stay off public assistance. She is soft-spoken yet takes on hard, sometimes quixotic causes. An academic with a doctorate degree in sociology of education, Kohl-Welles has been so effective in the scrum of Olympia politics that the nonpartisan Municipal League rates her as “outstanding.” 

She has kept close to the neighborhoods she represents, serving on boards and committees and mediator for micro-conflicts born out of the Seattle process, yet she has had an international impact on human trafficking, women’s issues and sexual abuse. 

On top of it all, once a week, Kohl-Welles joins her 96-year mother, whom she calls an inspiration, in a game of bridge at Bayview Manor on Queen Anne.

For all of the seeming contrasts, Kohl-Welles has been consistent in her outlook on issues that fall under the “social justice” moniker. The Democrat has one of the safest Senate seats in Olympia; she balances the micro and macro in a way that wears well with her constituents.

“I couldn’t have a better district,” Kohl-Welles said. “I can be consistent with my own values."

Case in point: Last winter’s vote on marriage equality, an effort led by state Sen. Ed Murray (D-Seattle) and co-sponsored by Kohl-Welles. For some lawmakers — and not just east of the mountains — the issue was something other than a no-brainer.

“It was excruciating behind the scenes,” Kohl-Welles recalled. “There were matters of conscience in some cases, and people voting from swing districts.”

In that same session, Kohl-Welles introduced Senate Bill 6251, which knuckled down on the advertising of commercial sexual abuse of a minor — think Backpage.com. Its passage received national attention. 

All told, a dozen Kohl-Welles bills were signed into law in 2012, ranging from the reporting of child sexual abuse in colleges and universities to adoption of core competencies for early care and education professionals.

If Kohl-Welles’ priorities reflect classic liberal compassion, the convergence of academic insight and political will is less common.

“She may be soft-spoken, but she will raise her voice for a cause,” noted Senate colleague Linda Parlette, Republican caucus chair from the Chelan area’s 12th District.

Coming of age in the ‘60s

Her parents met at the University of Wisconsin. Her father was a real estate broker; her mother, a high school English teacher. The couple waited seven years to marry. Married, her mother would have lost her job.

Born Jean Elizabeth Pearl Kohl in Madison, Wis., in October 1942, Kohl-Welles was 10 when the family moved to Southern California, where she graduated from Polytechnic High School in 1960, the year John Kennedy was elected president. She earned her bachelor’s degree from California State University at Northridge in 1965. In those five years, the old political and social assumptions were coming undone.

“I was pulled into those social issues,” Kohl-Welles recalled. “I thought I would really like to go get my Ph.D. in sociology. I was captivated by the idea of social change.” Once, while working for her doctorate at UCLA, she visited her brother in the Bay Area and stumbled upon a crowd gathered for the first anniversary of the People’s Park in Berkeley. The tear gas was not far behind.

“We thought we were safe,” she recalled, “because we were next to the media people.” With a wry smile, Kohl-Welles paused: “The police targeted them.”

These were years when Kohl-Welles was married with child. As an elementary-school teacher in the San Fernando Valley, she had to stop teaching in the middle of a semester because she was pregnant — the end of the second trimester was the school limit. 

She earned her master’s degree in sociology at UCLA in 1973 and her doctorate the next year. After a divorce, she remarried and gave birth to a daughter in 1974.

Teaching in area colleges followed: sociology, education and women’s studies. When Title IX was signed into law in 1972 — which prohibited sex discrimination in schools and colleges receiving federal funds — Kohl-Welles started a consulting company to help implement the provision.

“I became a feminist,” she said.

By this time, she had divorced again. The single mother now had five kids. “That made me strong,” Kohl-Welles recalled. “I was piecing things together with a broken heart. I did not want to go on public assistance.”

In 1982, she met Alex Welles, grandson of President Franklin Roosevelt advisor Sumner Welles and a member of an Eastern seaboard family on the Social Register. Welles, owner of Welles Investments and a mountain climber and trekker, was fixing up old houses and selling them at the time. 

The couple — “both of us were independent spirits,” Kohl-Welles said — moved to Seattle in 1985, buying a house on Queen Anne. They married later that year. 

Kohl-Welles taught sociology and women’s studies part-time at the University of Washington. After two years teaching sociology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma in 1986-1987, she applied to Seattle University for a full-time position in the sociology department. She said she was called by the department chair, who asked about her position on abortion. 

She had applied to Seattle Pacific University, too. Kohl-Welles said she got a call from the dean before the interview about why her last name was different from the name on her published works in the past.

“Were you divorced?” she remembered being asked. Follow-up questions queried the circumstances, including the topic of infidelity.

“I needed to work,” Kohl-Welles said. She became involved with groups writing legislation; her academic focus shifted to public policy. She got involved with the 36th District Democrats, which opened up a new world. 

In 1989, she became a member of the Queen Anne Community Council and dealt with critical community issues, including white supremacist leafleting of the neighborhood and homelessness.

In 1992, the Metropolitan King County Council appointed Kohl-Welles to replace Larry Philips in the state House of Representatives after Philips’ election to the council. Two years later, she was elected to her current Senate position after incumbent Ray Moore had stepped down when it turned out he was technically a resident of the Big Island in Hawaii. 

Anticipating the public mind

“I like public policy to effect social change,” Kohl-Welles reflected. “This is the most direct way to hopefully affect people for the better.”

Though far from being a classic political animal, the former academic says, “I get fascinated by the political process: It’s organic; not all of it is written down. Sometimes, it’s intuitive."

She maintains the toxic divisiveness that has characterized national politics has not filtered down in the same way to Olympia. “You have to find common ground," she said. “There’s been less of that in the past couple of years," she conceded, but “most legislators operate on principle rather than just not letting the other side win.”

State Sen. Linda Parlette, whose family roots run deep in the orchards around Lake Chelan, comes from a far different place than Kohl-Welles, but the two are able to work together.

“She’s more liberal than I am, for sure,” Parlette said. “But she’s such a pleasant person.

“Jeanne is able to sponsor so many bills, I would tease her,” Parlette continued. “She’s known on the floor for giving long speeches,” she said of the former professor.

Kohl-Welles said the biggest disappointment of her legislative career has been the governor’s partial veto of a medical-marijuana bill last year and the failure of a follow-up effort to overhaul its confusing loose ends.

One of the highlights is the 2002 International Marriage Organizations Act, better known as the Mail Order Bride Act, which provided protections for those coming to this country to marry a Washington resident. This came about after state Rep. Velma Veloria’s House Bill 2381, which set up the first task force against human trafficking. The bill became the model for the International Marriage Broker Act at the federal level in 2005.

The list of awards Kohl-Welles has received is extensive and speaks to her political passions: Lincoln Freedom Award from Seattle Against Slavery, Ancil Payne Leadership Award from Washington Ceasefire, Legislator of the Year from Humane Society of the U.S., Angel for Children Award from Parents for Safe Child Care — the list goes on.

She has traveled internationally to speak on women in politics, public policy and human trafficking, including Cuba, Japan, Brazil, Chile, Niger, Sweden and the Baltic countries and Ukraine. 

Kohl-Welles’ current term expires in January 2015. She says she hasn't decided whether she will seek reelection. Parlette believes she won't.

“The last three years have been brutal,” Kohl-Welles said of the budget cuts that have shredded the social welfare safety net. “I have tried hard to address changes that are needed, particularly for children and the vulnerable.”