Washington State
The Washington State Democrats have elected Shasti Conrad as the new chair of the Washington State Democrats at its Reorganization Meeting and Officer Elections event on Jan. 29. She is the first woman of color and youngest person to be elected chair of the Washington State Democrats as well as the first South Asian and first Indian American woman to serve as a State Democratic Party Chair in the country.
Conrad, 38, a political consultant, ran unopposed, “with the support of Gov. Jay Inslee, both of Washington’s Democratic U.S. senators, most of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation and a passel of other elected Democrats, The Seattle Times reported.
She takes over from Tina Podlodowski, who had served as party chair since 2017 and announced this month that she would step down. The young political consultant “assumes leadership of an organization whose voter contact operation has played a key role in Democrats’ statewide electoral dominance since the 2016 election,” according to The Seattle Times report. “In the last six years, Washington Democrats have won control of every statewide elected office, flipped two Congressional seats, flipped the state Senate, and grown their legislative majorities in each of the last three election cycles, the report — all while electing the most diverse cohort of state legislators in Washington’s history,” the report added.