Recently departed Speaker Emeritus Frank Chopp would have turned 72 today, and already the activist roots, which grounded his political career have been seldom included in the frame of remembrance since he passed away on March 22.
It’s true that Chopp was a 21st century political rarity: a powerful Democrat with partisan self-respect. When he left office on the day I officially succeeded him as 43rd Legislative District State Position 2 Representative on January 13, 2025, it marked the end of a 30-year legislative career in which he helped build a heaping majority for Washington State Democrats, presiding over it for two decades as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Unlike many liberals, Chopp understood that politics was a competition between conflicting worldviews; there are real stakes for partisan failure or success. “My parents would disown me if I became a Republican, trust me,” he once said.
Less retold than Frank’s indelible three decades as an institutionalist, however, are the lefty underpinnings of his legislative career.
Of late, local and national political pundits have found a favorite punching bag in the activist left, blaming radicals and protestors for everything from Donald Trump’s November victory to the hegemony of center-right ideas about public safety and homelessness in Seattle. The critics must contend with an inconvenient fact: one of the most influential politicians in Washington State history didn’t get his start in public service as a polite sycophant or a wealthy ladder-climber, but as a sign-wielding organizer who squatted on private property in the 1970s and packed Seattle City Hall with anti-poverty demonstrators during the Reaganomic doldrums of the 1980s. A civic-troublemaker-done-good, Chopp’s activist roots are worth unearthing.
“I’m a red diaper baby,” he told me the first time we met at an Italian restaurant in Wallingford a few years ago:
“Do you know what that means?”
Many saw him as more myth than state lawmaker: Frank Chopp, the mustachioed mafioso who wielded the gavel as Speaker of the House, and who wielded as much power as any state lawmaker in Evergreen history. I knew him as a mentor and a friend, as a co-conspirator at the social services agency Solid Ground, and as a fellow organizer thirty years my senior who I followed into the Washington State Legislature. As our association unfolded beginning the summer of 2020, I came to see that Frank’s working-class background was central to his life’s work in ways that weren’t part of how he was perceived.
Frank’s parents met on a picket line in the mining town of Rosalyn, Washington. His mom a cafeteria worker and his dad a mineworker who began working at age 12, the elder Chopps reared the boy and his siblings with dinner-table conversation about the New Deal and labor struggles. A grandson of Croatian immigrants born May 13, 1953, Frank Vana Chopp would frequently joke about being “a white boy from Bremerton fighting for reparations” when we worked together on the Covenant Homeownership Act in 2023.
When Frank Chopp arrived in Seattle to attend the University of Washington in the early 1970s, the city was alive with antiwar activism, including freeway protests on Interstate 5 in 1970 of Chicano activists who occupied Beacon Hill Elementary School to create a community center that eventually became El Centro De La Raza in 1972, of Indigenous organizers who recommissioned an abandoned military base in 1970 into the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center that later opened in 1977. Decades before C.H.O.P., Chopp occupied private property to prove a point: While a student at the University of Washington in 1974, Frank constructed and lived in a geodesic dome in a vacant lot in South Lake Union. The demonstration was meant to call attention to the need for more low income housing options in Seattle, a subject that would become a lifelong focus for him.
For twenty years between his housing protest and his ascent to the State House of Reps in 1994, Frank was a serial citizen activist, petitioning against freeways and political graft, co-founding Solid Ground and the Low Income Housing Institute, attending neighborhood housing debates all the while. He met his wife Nancy at one of these gatherings. The couple had two kids. Frank remained committed to public service. On November 8, 1994, he was elected to 43rd Legislative District, Position 2. “I’m an organizer who happens to be Speaker of the House,” he said after ascending to the position at the turn of the 20th century.
Frank Chopp’s 43rd Legislative District contained breadbaskets of progressive Seattle voters in Fremont, the University District, and Capitol Hill. Historically, the district’s state reps have used the seat as a springboard. A century ago, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson’s political career culminated as America’s foremost anti-communist pundit during the Red Scare; he got his start as a 43rd L.D Rep in 1908. Just days before Frank’s passing, the Washington State Legislature held a joint memorial service for recently departed members of the State Legislature; former 43rd L.D. Rep and eventual Governor Dan Evans was included in the program.
The collegiality of the Washington State House of Reps seemed to fit Frank’s personality better than executive office, allowing him to play to his strengths as an organizer (behind-the-scenes coalition building), while others got the clout for policy wins he slid them. People who knew him might agree that dying two days after his memory could be celebrated in the State Legislature’s 2025 annual remembrance ceremony was classic attention-allergic Chopp.
The modern political history of Washington State could be narrated through the lens of Chopp: a bluish state on the brink of ‘swing’-status grows into a liberal stalwart (1990s-2000s), becomes synonymous with progressivism (2010s), and is simultaneously seen as what is right and wrong with the Democratic Party (2020s). From his sole assumption of the House Speakership in 2002 until he relinquished the position in 2019, Chopp was a pillar in the political economy of Washington State, his career implicating the corporate center and hard left of Seattle politics, interfacing with powerful capitalists and socialist insurgents alike. His public profile in these years is a case study in the possibilities and constraints of advancing socioeconomic progress from within an institution.
On issues of labor, housing, and social services, Chopp’s record was strong. Shortly after becoming Speaker in 2002, he steered the bill that granted academic student employees collective bargaining rights via UAW 4121, then became a champion of efforts to organize home care aides via SEIU 775NW. Chopp’s deepest and most emotional ties in the 43rd Legislative District were at the intersection of housing and social services, a passion that likely grew out of his experience with disabled and mentally ill family members.
Through the document recording fee, the Housing Trust Fund, and Apple Health and Homes, Frank Chopp was responsible for tens of thousands of units of low income housing throughout the state of Washington. A late-career passion project of his was the “Home and Hope” initiative, which sought to accelerate the construction of affordable housing and youth services on public land. Because he was skeptical that the private market would ever provide housing for all – low income renters, citydwellers with disabilities – urbanists sometimes criticized Chopp for displaying “N.I.M.B.Y.” tendencies. Among the last endorsements he ever gave were of the lefty-backed “House Our Neighbors” campaigns for public housing in Seattle in 2023 and 2025.
With respect to taxing the rich, Chopp was supportive, but deliberate in implementing revenue for an expressed reason. His patented legislative three-step was 1. To begin by describing a popular area of public need (education, housing, etc.), 2. To create a dedicated state account with a ringing title (“Workforce Education Act”; “Housing Trust Fund”), and 3. To lastly describe the revenue source that funded it. Something of his parents’ appreciation for the New Deal survived in Chopp’s ambitious-but-grounded approach to policymaking: “It’s a lot of fun to see a need, come up with an idea to solve it, and then get it done,” he said in January 2024.
Chopp’s approach inverted typical lefty tax messaging. Many Washington progressives tend to begin with accurate but rehearsed descriptions of the state tax code, proceed to dense tax rates with gargantuan dollar figures and tedious percentages, and then detail how these funds would help people. Chopp chose to emphasize the aspirational nature of state programs over the less accessible descriptions of state revenue.
Over time, Frank Chopp’s School of Steady Incrementalism provoked rebellion from challengers who believed it didn’t go far enough. In the second half of his political career he drew radical opponents, winning each race decisively, but in the process fueling the Seattle left’s perception of him as ‘Schröedinger’s progressive’ – simultaneously the reason why so much good could be done in Olympia, but also the reason why not enough of it happened. Contentious as these elections were, Chopp relished the chance to explain his record as a lefty to the lefties he’d known himself to be one of.
The political party Socialist Alternative took two swings at Chopp’s seat, running eventual Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant against him in 2012, then trying again with Jess Spear two years later. Socialist Alternative framed Chopp as a symbol of Obama-era liberal complacency that necessitated the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011.. The org circulated a Black Panther Party-inspired graphic with several corporate logos superimposed upon a photo of Chopp. When Sawant hit him over taking corporate donations during a 2012 debate, Chopp pointed out that he parried these surplus funds to anti-poverty nonprofits and to Democrats in swing districts. Chopp defeated Sawant by a 71-29 margin in 2012. He beat Spear by 64 points in 2014.
Had Frank lived down to the stereotype of the out-of-touch mainstream Democrat he was often portrayed as, his opponents may’ve scored the years-earlier Seattle equivalent of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking defeat of Congressman Joseph Crowley in 2018. But by the time People’s Party candidate Sherae Lascelles challenged him in 2020, Chopp had become well-practiced at winning elections by not taking them for granted. On the way to a 30-point win, he argued for a capital gains tax rate that was more progressive than the proposal put forward by Lascelles, who campaigned with the support of the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.
From an anti-capitalist perspective, two of the more compelling moments of Chopp’s tenure as Speaker of the House both involved the State Legislature’s relationship to major corporations threatening to leave Washington: The departure of the Seattle SuperSonics in 2007, and the Boeing bailout package of 2013.
After the City of Seattle declined to provide professional men’s basketball an arena subsidy in 2006, pro-sports activists pivoted to asking the State Legislature. During the 2007 Washington State Legislative Session, Speaker Chopp sided with a group called “Citizens For More Important Things,” arguing vehemently against state funds for billionaire sports leagues. “I’m sorry, but the education of our kids is a much higher priority,” said Chopp, absolutely not sorry.
In a 2007 committee hearing for an arena financing plan, Chopp scrimmaged against N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern, a contest between men who weren’t accustomed to losing. When Chopp won, the Sonics left. To this day, a certain stripe of disgruntled Seattle sports fan believes that he – not coffee mogul Howard Schultz, who ran the team into the ground, nor oil tycoon Clay Bennett, who bought the team with the intent of relocating it – is the single person most responsible for the Sonics departing. In retrospect, Chopp’s flagrant foul might have been being too correct too quickly: as time passes, the since-familiar spectacle of sports franchise owners attempting to shakedown the public sector for handouts may well cast his decisions in a different light.
In the case of Boeing, the saga of corporate relocation replayed with higher stakes: During Chopp’s time as speaker, the state’s largest employer threatened to relocate, and in response, the State Legislature held a special session to hand them an $8.7 billion tax break. For Chopp, the reason for backing the neoliberal bailout was straightforward: if Washington’s largest employer relocated, House Democrats would get blamed, and the Republicans would weasel their way back into a majority. Boeing moved 2,000 jobs from Washington State anyway, prompting Speaker Chopp’s House to clawback the giveaway a few years later.
That the biggest private sector bailout ever issued by a state government took part on Chopp’s watch didn’t go unnoticed. I’d always taken it as a cautionary tale that the realpolitik of elected office in a capitalist system exerted real pressures on even the best-intentioned.
The Washington State Legislative Building can be an intimidating environment. Its tall ceilings and steps are designed to make you feel small; many a big idea has died in its grey marble halls. In this setting, Frank could be generous with younger politicians, showing genuine interest in your perspective while sharing insight to help you navigate the legislative terrain he created. Conversely, if you crossed Frank with low-integrity behavior, you were dead to him, and honestly, I thought his vindictive streak was one of the most relatable things about him. Otherwise, the mindset required to move to the next bill, to the next committee hearing, to the next caucus fight, to the next floor debate, to the next governor, to the next campaign, to the next disappointment – for 10,962 days as a state lawmaker – made him seem a different phylum of political animal.
The lefty challenges of 2012, 2014, and 2020 regrounded Frank in a 43rd Legislative District that had changed since he was first elected. Out was the Boomerite-Clintonian centrism that once defined what it meant to be a Democrat; in were Millennials and Gen-Z’ers who saw milquetoast Democrats as an impediment to progress. The same barge of Capitol Hill precincts that sent Frank to Olympia in the 2010s and 2020s also formed an electoral moat for Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant in city hall for a decade.
As the donkeys achieved stable majorities in the 2010s and Frank resigned as Speaker in 2019, his responsibilities to the statewide Democratic caucus relaxed somewhat. His legislative focus regained further fidelity to his activist pedigree. “Let’s reinvest police funding in affordable housing and social services,” he said on Instagram in June 2020. “This type of community investment is a much better use of public funds than using toxic chemicals against peaceful protesters.”
The Frank Chopp I met for the first time in 2020 wasn’t interested in corporate bailouts, but in attempting to end tax subsidies for golf courses. By the time we began meeting regularly in 2021 to discuss his transition out of elected office, the few walks down memory lane Frank indulged were recantations of times when his non-conformist young adulthood was reanimated in the House of Reps. His refusal to allow the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to fall into the hands of a private firm in the mid-2000s was a point of personal pride.
When Frank announced he would be stepping away from the State Legislature in Spring of 2024, many were surprised: He seemed to be having more fun in Olympia than ever. At his retirement ceremony the weekend before election day in November, Frank jokingly announced a late write-in campaign for his old seat. At least one aspiring lawmaker in the audience was less than amused.
Which future Speaker of the House is at a protest right now, occupying private property like Chopp once did? And what can you salvage when your mentor passes away? Frank left behind many usable lessons. Chief among them: the virtue of stubbornness. In order to achieve great things politically, one has to first believe – unshakably – that great things are politically possible. Frank carried this confidence with him across six decades of public service, right up until his last days in March, which he spent lobbying elected officials for affordable housing in the 43rd L.D.
And though he did possess the privilege of a white male, Speaker Emeritus Chopp also showed you didn’t have to be born into money or hail from a political dynasty to make a difference. As mass protest becomes an increasingly vital instrument for everyday people facing austerity and authoritarianism, Frank set an important example: he was an insider-institutionalist whose first political instincts were that of an outsider, an organizer who thought well enough of progressive ideas to plant and water them somewhere. After he floated the idea in a 2012 campaign debate, the Workforce Education Act’s policy of free and reduced university tuition finally became law seven years later.
By extension, Frank’s focus on the why of taxing the rich was perhaps his most meaningful tactical contribution to the Seattle left. Though Democrats managed to pass a record amount of progressive revenue in a 2025 Legislative Session beset by a giant budgetary shortfall, the feeling in Olympia is still that centrists and Republicans still somehow control the narrative around taxes. When raised revenue is dumped in the state’s general fund – not into the dedicated accounts that Frank was such a fan of – the story about taxes becomes not housing nor education or social services, but dollar amounts, tax rates, and people who don’t want to pay them.
Not many can name the revenue sources that created the National Labor Review Board or the Grand Coulee Dam in the 1930s. Many more know that these programs created by Frank’s inspiration, F.D.R., continue to make a real difference in the lives of millions of Washingtonians today.
The Education Legacy Trust Account…the Housing For All Account…the Workforce Education Act… Did Frank imagine his pithy bill titles fitting on some Depression-era picket sign? I kept forgetting to ask.
The last time I saw him was a week before his passing; he was the moderator for a raucous 43rd Legislative District town hall during the 2025 legislative session. Enraged union members angered at the prospect of public employee furloughs joined in with leftist organizations to plead with the 43rd L.D. delegation –myself, Rep. Nicole Macri, and Senator Jamie Pedersen – to tax the rich to fund basic services we all use. In the chaos, Frank seemed in his element, a throwback to the days when he held a clipboard instead of a gavel. He stepped promptly to the mic at 1:00 PM:
“Time to rock n’ roll, everybody. If we start on time, we’ll end on time.”
