EDMONDS – While working for her Congressman father in Washington, D.C. or leading tour groups in Europe and Africa, it never occurred to young Peggy Pritchard that she’d wind up on the Edmonds City Council.
Discussions with state political heavyweights such as former governor and U.S. senator Dan Evans at her childhood home were commonplace.
“You’d just sit around and listen to that stuff, it was really fascinating,” recalled the woman who is now Peggy Pritchard Olson and a new member of Edmonds’ legislative body. She was elected in November and sworn in Jan. 13.
Olson’s father was Joel Pritchard, who served in the state Legislature from 1953 to 1970, in Congress from 1973 to 1985, and as lieutenant governor from 1989 to 1997. He passed away later that year at 73 after a long off-and-on battle with cancer.
Peggy worked on her first campaigns as a teenager, ringing doorbells – an experience that would later prove valuable.
The Pritchards lived in the Magnolia area of Seattle and Peggy and her brother and two sisters attended Queen Anne High School. Joel Pritchard owned a printing company and first got involved in politics at the precinct level. His parents instilled in him a strong sense of community service and he did the same with Peggy and her siblings, she says.
Peggy worked three six-week stints as a page in Olympia while her father served there. “You really get to know who’s down there, what the issues are – it was a tremendous experience,” Olson said.
In 1972, her father was elected to Congress for the first time. With this came one of many adages from her dad – the man he defeated had already picked out a house in Washington, D.C.
” ‘You never act like you’ve won until the last vote’s counted,’ ” she recalls him saying.
He got Peggy a job working at the Capitol without pay. It was during the Watergate hearings, which she got to witness first hand.
Around this time, she took a trip to Japan and Indonesia and in so doing inadvertently discovered her vocation. She’d had five years of college at the University of Puget Sound and Seattle Pacific University, earning a BA in history and a teaching certificate in special education.
After the trip, “I took a nine-week course and became a travel agent.”
Her dad was understanding, Olson recalls. “He said, ‘You’ll be a well-educated travel agent.’ “
Except for a couple of short forays into other jobs, Olson has worked in travel ever since. When asked where she’s been, she replies, “Let’s see, where haven’t I been? It’s easier to think of it that way.” Australia, South America and the southern half of Africa is the answer.
One of her travel jobs has been leading tour groups. In one memorable trip, all kinds of health problems cropped up for people on the tour, most of whom were less than agreeable to begin with, Olson says. One woman argued with an Egyptian tour bus driver, insisting there were no orange trees in Egypt even when he pointed them out through the window.
“That’s where you learn a lot of those skills – trying to keep people happy, and problem solving,” Olson said.
Though she now specializes in booking cruises for Elizabeth Holmes travel in Seattle, she doesn’t mind the tour work – “I’d do it again,” she said.
In 1987, she was introduced to Norm Olson, a salesman for Good Year. He lived in Edmonds.
“I thought, ‘That’s just so far north, that’s just out in the tules,’ ” she said. Within two years, she was living there.
Her father then asked her what she would do to get involved in the community. Being new to the area, she wasn’t sure, so her father called then-Edmonds Mayor Larry Naughten, who formerly had worked at Joel Pritchard’s printing company. He said there was an opening on the Library Board. Olson applied, was appointed and served 10 years. She later joined the Friends of the Library, of which she is now president.
Because of her work on the Library Board, Olson was approached by Sno-Isle Library District officials to run the 2001 campaign to annex Edmonds into the library district. It proved successful.
“It was one of the best campaigns I’ve ever worked on, it was the greatest group of people,” she said.
Later that year, she got a phone call from friend John Quast asking if she knew anything about a project called Brightwater. Olson joined forces with those opposing the regional sewer plant’s location in Edmonds and ultimately became vice president of the Washington Tea Party.
“That was a little more of a struggle” than the library election, “but it had a good outcome,” Olson said. “I’ll feel better when they start pouring concrete” at the selected site on Highway 9, she said.
An interest in city government developed as a by-product of her work on the Brightwater issue, she said, and that was when she decided to run for City Council.
“If I’m not happy with how things are going then I should put my money where my mouth is,” Olson said, summing up her thoughts at the time.
Her background in campaigns proved most useful, Olson said. “Yes, I raised lots of money,” she said. But she said she also did extensive doorbelling and had a very well organized campaign in which she and her eight volunteers had well-defined roles.
“They made sure I was doing the right things and staying out of trouble,” Olson said. She defeated incumbent Lora Petso by roughly 52 to 48 percent in a race expected to be closer or go the other way.
Now 53, Olson said her first term on the Council “is something I’m trying, we’ll see if it’s a good match.” She says she’ll take a particular interest in economic development, in trying to help build Edmonds’ tax base while maintaining the character of the city’s downtown and waterfront areas.
Her father’s influence shows in her political philosophy – “fiscally conservative, socially moderate” – and in her approach to politics, she says. She made an issue during the campaign of being someone who will attempt to govern by consensus.
“He said, ‘Don’t make an enemy out of your opponents because in six months you may need to work with that person to get something done.’ “
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