HeraldNet: Nafziger leaving, Busch returning to Senate Democrats



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The Petri Dish

September 8, 2009

Nafziger leaving, Busch returning to Senate Democrats

Posted at 10:25 am by Jerry Cornfield

State Senate Democrats will soon bid adieu to their chief of staff and welcome back a former holder of the job.

Rich Nafziger will be stepping down at the end of the month as the top administrator for the caucus led by Sen. Lisa Brown.

Nafziger told senators of his decision in a Sept. 1 e-mail.

“I want to be my own man is the logic of it,” he told me this morning.

I pressed on whether he'd encountered difficulties working with Brown in his two-year stint and he replied: “Not really.”

Nafziger, 56, said he had decided right after the 2009 legislative session he wanted to make a change but deliberately took a couple of months to decompress and think it through.

He said he'll be doing some consulting on education-related undertakings with North Seattle Community College and WestED of San Francisco, CA.

For Nafziger, this ends 20-plus years in public service. He worked on the staff of two governors, Gary Locke and Booth Gardner, and 13 years in the Legislature, much of that as the House of Representatives Chief Clerk.

His successor will be Carolyn Busch, a former chief of staff for the caucus who now works on higher education funding issues in the Office of Planning and Development for the University of Washington.

One of Busch's strengths is a friendship with Brown. Buschs served as the caucus advisor on budget and taxes when Brown chaired the Senate Ways and Means Committee in 2002.

“I consider her a very good friend and an extraordinary woman,” Busch said this morning. “I'm really excited about being part of finding good solutions.”

Busch was UW's director of government relations until joining the Senate Democratic caucus in 2002. She said she did three sessions as advisor and three as chief of staff before heading back to the UW.

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