EVERETT — The race for the District 5 seat on the Snohomish County Council pits Republican incumbent Sam Low against newcomer Democrat Kelli Johnson in the upcoming general election.
District 5 covers the county’s southeast, including Lake Stevens, Snohomish, Monroe, Sultan, Gold Bar and Index. Unincorporated areas, such as Clearview and Maltby, will be directly represented by the winner.
The election will take place as the council grapples with a projected $26 million overage and $5 million shortfall of sales tax revenue.
County Council members earn $151,496 per year, according to the county rate table. As of Wednesday, Low had raised $78,276 for his campaign, according to campaign finance records. Johnson had raised $21,433.
Ballots were mailed out Thursday and Election Day is Nov. 4.
Sam Low
Low is seeking his third and final term on the Snohomish County Council. A member can only serve three consecutive four-year terms, according to county code. However, Low began his career on the County Council in 2016 with a one-year term, taking Dave Somers’ seat after he was elected county executive, meaning Low would serve a total of 13 years if reelected.
Previously, Low was on the Lake Stevens City Council for three years, and in 2022, he was elected to represent District 39 in the Washington State House of Representatives.
Low chairs the county’s Public Infrastructure and Conservation Committee and is the vice-chair of the Health and Community Services Committee. He also chairs the state’s Transportation Improvement Board.
His top priorities are road infrastructure, maintaining a balanced budget without raising taxes, public safety, city growth and representing his constituents, particularly farmers, Low said.
“Transportation is what I’m known for,” he told The Herald.
Highway 522 — which traverses 25 miles from Monroe to Seattle — is his bread and butter, he said. When Low took office, the state had only allocated $10 million over four years to a construction project to make the highway run more smoothly.
“I was able to work with the Legislature — we got that increased to $33 million,” Low said. “The next time a transportation package is passed in Olympia — hopefully in the next year or two or three — we’re ready to do construction on 522.”
The money raised has paid for design work, but the total cost of construction is projected to be $300 million.
He also believes U.S. 2 should be invested in as a secondary priority route after I-90, Low said. He will continue to advocate for funding to go toward the $2 billion U.S. 2 trestle project, the replacement of aging bridges and adding a lane in each direction.
To fund these projects and others, Low is against raising taxes, he said.
“Last year the County Council, on a 3-2 vote, raised property taxes by 4%,” he said. “I voted against that, and I’ll vote against it again because we need to live within our means.”
This increase affected the county’s portion of homeowners’ property tax payments, which equates to about 6% of the total bill. Fire districts, schools, libraries, roads and others get the rest.
The vote took place in 2024 during the implementation of the county’s first two-year budget, which passed with a $16 million structural deficit. Now, four departments — District Court, the Office of Public Defense, the Sheriff’s Office and Corrections — are projected to overspend $26 million, and sales tax revenue is trending underbudget by $5 million.
Council members Low and Jared Mead were the primary advocates for having the department heads present to the council on Aug. 19, even though discrepancies don’t have to be resolved until the end of the biennial budget in 2026.
Low has continued to have conversations with the County Executive and will continue to monitor the situation closely if elected, he said.
“Steps are already happening to bring those departments to compliance,” Low said in an email. “By the end of the first quarter next year — if we don’t see noticeable improvements between now and then we will need to have some hard conversations.”
When it comes to public safety, Low believes in addressing problems within the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office appropriately, he said.
However, “law enforcement should not have a bad name and does not have a bad name because of one or two or three,” Low said. “I support law enforcement. I support our deputies.”
Property rights are “extremely important,” no matter what size property you own, Low said. However, it centers around the Growth Management Act and whether or not you live within a city’s Urban Growth Area.
The Growth Management Act became state law in 1990 and dictates where development will go and where it will not.
“I support why we put the growth in the cities and why we have Urban Growth Areas. But at the end of the day, I support the people who elected me and my constituents know I’m going to fight for them,” Low said.
Late September, the County Council voted to approve a request to annex the North Lake Urban Growth Area by the city of Snohomish. Low was 1 of 2 no-votes after he visited with almost half of the North Lake residents, he said.
The fight was an “uphill battle,” Low said before the vote, because North Lake was in the Urban Growth Area. “I’m going to fight for them because that’s who I represent.”
He also believes in continuing to fight for farmers, Low said.
“When I first decided to run for County Council the very first group that got behind me was our farmers,” he said. “If our farmers could not survive in this valley and have either crops or cattle or agritourism, then they have no choice but to sell to developers, and I don’t think any of us want that.”
This year, on the state level, Low co-sponsored an agritourism bill with Rep. April Berg, D-Mill Creek, which was signed into law in April, he said.
Low is endorsed by many state and local legislators, including Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, Rep. Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn, Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia and Snohomish County Council member Nate Nehring. He is also endorsed by the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs, the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council and Mainstream Republicans of Washington, among other organizations.
Kelli Johnson
Johnson has worked as an emergency room nurse for almost 11 years and in the medical field for over 12.
“Working during COVID in the ER, that is probably going to be the hardest experience I’ve ever had,” she said in an interview.
If elected, her top priorities would be making Snohomish County more affordable, addressing policies that are no longer working as intended, public safety, providing mental health services, traffic and preserving wildlife habitats.
Johnson decided to run for County Council after two frustrating experiences supporting state legislation.
“Some of the policies that we were trying to get passed should have been a slam dunk, but it turned out to be one of those situations where the hospital corporate lobbyists proved to be more influential,” she said.
She supported a bill in 2023 that represented a compromise between nurses and hospital leaders. When signed into law, it required the two sides agree on the number of staff assigned to each patient and assured proper rest and meal breaks. However, nurses did not get the patient-to-nurse ratios they wanted written into the bill.
At the beginning of the year, Johnson provided the majority of the language for House Bill 1567, she said. She worked with a policy writer and Rep. Mary Fosse, D-Everett, to get Rep. Monica Jurado Stonier, D-Vancouver, to be the primary sponsor and introduce the bill in the House Health Care and Wellness Committee.
HB 1567 would require hospital administrators and executives hold the same standard of care as all licensed health care professionals, she said. “This concept came together in response to a patient who died in the ER lobby.”
However, this bill did not make it out of committee.
It felt like the elected officials didn’t take them seriously, she said.
“I’m running to be different than that,” Johnson said. “What people are really wanting is no more lip service. Do the work and start representing people.”
Johnson believes work as an elected official as an extension of advocacy, she said. She wants to solve problems, even if she can’t solve them directly.
“Find the people who can do something about it,” she said. “We need more people who are problem solvers to run for office.”
One problem Johnson hopes to focus on is the rising cost of living, she said. Developers should be building houses in Snohomish County that meet the needs of people.
Johnson said the Growth Management Act is no longer working as intended and new policies should be proposed to address the issues.
“Is it just because people aren’t following the rules and they’re not being enforced, or is it because the law literally is creating this space for these things to happen?” she said.
Helping with affordability would work to resolve other issues, including the budget discrepancies the County Council is currently addressing, Johnson said.
Departments are overspending because of cost-of-living adjustment bargained for after the budget was put in place, she said. “Which I think reinforces the issue that Snohomish County is quickly becoming an area that is not affordable to live in for the people who work and live there. And that includes people who are employed by the county.”
“They negotiated wages based on the cost of living in the area,” she said. “As someone who has been on a bargaining team, I could have seen this coming a mile away.”
Johnson would stay connected with workers because it gives insight into potential problems down the road, she said.
If she were currently on the council and tasked with handling the budget issues, she would look for a solution that has the least financial impact, she said.
“If it’s more cost-effective to address it head on, then address it head on,” Johnson said. If it is less expensive to handle at the end of the biennial budget in 2026, she would go that route.
As for public safety, Johnson said she supports Snohomish County deputies, but would also hold them accountable.
“If you’re going to make sure that you have a safe community, you do need police officers,” Johnson said. “I don’t think it’s a good thing to villainize an entire workforce.”
The goal is to make more people willing to do the job, she said. Addressing the police shortage will result in fewer deputies working overtime, which helps prevent mistakes and saves county money.
Johnson also believes in bolstering mental health resources and services, she said. Drug rehabilitation resources would save the county money and contribute to improving public safety.
In 2024, about 2.2 million Washington residents lacked access to mental health services, according to data from the Health Resources and Services Administration, ranking the state tenth in most mental health care deserts.
As a nurse, Johnson watched the ER be used as a drug-care resource, an “extremely expensive resource that the state pays for,” she said.
The county needs to address the root causes of drug addiction and homelessness, she said.
“I would work with the hospitals in the area. I would work with people at the state level. I would work with people who actually work and care for the patients,” Johnson said.
Johnson also wants to develop other traffic solutions, instead of focusing on expensive road infrastructure projects, she said. People who move from Seattle or Bellevue to Snohomish County are still commuting back to those cities for work.
“We need to start having conversations about how we’re bringing these businesses and having satellite locations in places like Everett, where people don’t have to drive an hour and a half to get to work,” Johnson said.
Finally, as a novice birder, Johnson said the outdoors and the county’s rural feel are what make it special, especially in District 5.
“To see how the rapid loss of wildlife habitat, in the name of development for affordable housing, crushes me,” she said.
Johnson supports growth in the bigger cities, not in rural areas, she said.
“We don’t need to be another King County,” Johnson said. “How can we build up Everett, the community where there’s already public transportation available and you already have most of the infrastructure already there to do it?”
Johnson is endorsed by the Snohomish County Democratic Central Committee.
Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay
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