Bill Kiskaddon, who died Dec. 3, was one of the last Washington legislators to benefit from partisan redistricting.
Republican Kiskaddon’s first year in the state senate, 1981, was the last year that Washington legislators drew the boundaries of their own districts. Republican control of the State Senate and the House of Representatives that year meant that Republicans could control redistricting.
When Kiskaddon started his term representing Mountlake Terrace and the rest of the 1st Legislative District, Democrats held a 25-24 majority, but a party switch by a Bellevue-area senator gave Republicans a slim majority in the senate to go with a clear majority in the House.
Republicans drew the lines to keep Kiskaddon and a small part of Mountlake Terrace in a revised 1st District, most of it in Shoreline and north King County, where liberal Republican Kiskaddon could feel comfortable.
That made Kiskaddon the incumbent in a District with another incumbent, Shoreline Democrat Donn Charnley. Kiskaddon defeated Charnley in 1984, giving Kiskaddon a second four-year term, but in 1988, Kiskaddon lost to Democrat Patty Murray in an election that led to Murray’s election to the U.S. Senate four years later.
The 1981 redistricting was the last done by the legislature. Voters then approved a measure that gives the redistricting power to an independent bipartisan commission. Such commissions have done the redistricting in 1991, 2001 and 2011.
A former Associated Press reporter in Olympia called Kiskaddon “a true gentleman.” Former Associated Press reporter Dave Ammons, now communications director for the secretary of state, added, “He was beloved by people on both sides of the aisle.”
Kiskaddon was part of a dying moderate wing of the Republican Party. His first term in the State Senate coincided with the term of moderate Republican Gov. John Spellman, the state’s last Republican governor. Kiskaddon earlier had served three two-year terms in the state House of Representatives, 1967-73, covering two years of moderate Republican Gov. Dan Evans’ first term and all of Evans’ second term.
As a freshman House member in 1967, Kiskaddon was part of the legislature that reorganized the state community college system.
Kiskaddon once spoke of lobbying Spellman to veto a bill pushed by social conservatives in his own party.
Just as he would become uncomfortable in an increasingly conservative party, Kiskaddon had earlier become uncomfortable as a Boeing engineer; he earned a master’s degree in social work, and became a family counselor.
A memorial service is scheduled for Dec. 30 at 2 p.m. at the Richmond Beach Congregational Church in Shoreline.
Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.
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