OLYMPIA – No one worked harder to elect Steve Hobbs than Miwa Morita.
Nearly every day these past four months, for hours at a time, she stood on the sidewalk at a busy intersection or along a major road waving at passersby.
In rain or sun, the Japanese woman in a cowgirl hat also clutched a wooden stake with two signs tacked to it.
The top one read: Steve Hobbs for state Senate.
The other: My Son.
“At first there was only his sign. People kept asking ‘Who’s that woman?’ So I put the other one on,” she said.
Morita, 62, who spends summers in Washington and winters in Arizona, rotated between spots in Lake Stevens, Marysville, Snohomish and Mill Creek, the major cities in the 44th Legislative District.
“My right hand waved constantly. I wanted to make eye contact with every person in every car,” she said.
Her appealing smile and undaunted determination helped her son win enough votes to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Dave Schmidt in one of Tuesday’s major upsets.
Hobbs, 36, is one of six newly elected Democrats who, come January, will give the party a supermajority of 32 out of 49 members.
Hobbs likely also benefited greatly from voters’ anger with Republicans; across the nation hundreds of GOP politicians at all levels of government lost their jobs.
“I do think we got hit by a lot of backlash to Republicans nationally,” said Steve Neighbors, chairman of the Snohomish County Republican Party. “They got caught in the wave.”
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In winning, Hobbs ousted his first political mentor. Schmidt helped manage the Snohomish County Republican Party when Hobbs, an Everett Community College student, came in to volunteer.
“It’s a little strange. He taught me about campaigns,” Hobbs said. “I think he became out of touch with the district.”
As a teen, Hobbs backed the elder George Bush for president. But by 1992, Hobbs found the GOP to be too far to the right of his philosophical tolerance and switched parties.
“My ideology started clashing with their ideology,” he said.
In 1994, he lost his first bid for office to Val Stevens in a race for state representative.
He spent the next couple of years working, finishing college and volunteering in campaigns.
In 1997, he enlisted in active duty with the Army. In the next seven years, he served in Kosovo and in Iraq before coming home in 2004.
He re-entered the political arena in 2005 under the protective armor of Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon. Hobbs dueled with Dave Somers in the Democratic primary for County Council.
When the Snohomish County Democratic Party backed Somers, Hobbs was expected to step aside, but he didn’t, angering party activists.
Somers whipped Hobbs; some foes said goodbye and good riddance, thinking it would be his swan song.
It wasn’t. After former Snohomish Mayor Liz Loomis decided not to challenge Schmidt, Hobbs said he was encouraged to do so. Among those asking were union leaders whose rank-and-file later would campaign hard for him.
Reardon also was at his side. So too was state Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, who is chairwoman of the Senate budget writing panel.
She said she talked to Hobbs following his 2005 loss and told him not to take it too hard. She shared her own story of an election defeat at the outset of her career.
“Next thing I know, he’s ready to go again,” she said.
He wasn’t the only Democratic hopeful. Lillian Kaufer, a neighborhood activist who’s leading efforts to keep Wal-Mart out of Mill Creek, entered the race.
When she earned the Snohomish County Democratic Party endorsement, party leaders again wanted Hobbs to drop out, this time to avoid a contested primary they feared would divert resources from the effort to unseat Schmidt.
Hobbs didn’t budge, again, and many activists were rankled, again.
He defeated Kaufer in September’s primary. Party leaders came around quickly, as they wanted badly to unseat Schmidt. Some activists didn’t come to his aid.
“I’m not sure about that because I just continued on with my campaign,” he said. “My job is to be a good state senator and a good Democrat.”
Hobbs’ began the general election campaign with nearly no money and a divided party behind him.
He ran a “very aggressive campaign,” Prentice said. “He got better and better and then you could see he really wanted it.”
Schmidt posed a major challenge. He’s a moderate Republican who had won five straight elections: four as a state representative and one as senator. He had been endorsed by the Washington Education Association and League of Conservation Voters.
Schmidt raised $188,000 and spent $115,000 in the campaign. Hobbs raised $45,500 after the primary and most of it’s gone now.
Schmidt said it didn’t matter that he got his message out. The anti-Republican wind was blowing too strong.
“I could have spent another $50,000 and knocked on another 5,000 doors and would not have won,” he said.
Hobbs acknowledged the favorable wind. But he said, “If I didn’t have labor’s support, if I didn’t door bell and if I didn’t work hard, I think Dave would have won.”
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Miwa Morita never doubted her son would succeed.
“This was his dream,” she said. “When he was about 4, I bought him a nice jacket. He put it on, stood in front of a mirror and began waving. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I want to be the president of the United States,’” she recalled.
His resolve fueled her desire to rise before dawn, get out to the Everett-Bothell Highway and wave at commuters driving by.
“You understand when you are a parent, and your child is chasing that dream, you want to help them achieve it,” she said.
Reporter Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com
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