So
long to a fellow senator and true statesman
Statesmanship can be in short
supply at the Capitol, so I thought you ought to know that the state Senate,
and our state, have lost someone who exemplified the word
"statesman": Senator Mike Carrell, who passed away yesterday morning
over at a hospital in Seattle. He’d been diagnosed with myelodysplastic
syndrome, a blood-cell disorder, in mid-February and had to stay away from the
Capitol from mid-March on, because the aggressive treatment made him more
vulnerable to other health issues. Even so, and not surprisingly, he remained
engaged by phone from his home in Lakewood (about a half-hour’s drive north of
the Capitol) all the way through the April 28 end of the regular session.
Only one person served
side-by-side with Mike during each of his 19 years as a legislator: me. I had
two sessions under my belt when Mike came to the House of Representatives
following the 1994 election, and we both moved to the Senate starting in 2005.
Mike had spent time as a member of the Senate Republican leadership team, and this
year he was chairman of the Senate Human Services and Corrections Committee.
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Sen. Mike Carrell, at left,
was a skilled legislator and leader. This photo was taken in early March in
the Senate chamber; within a couple of weeks Mike had to stop coming to the
Capitol while he was treated for the blood-cell disorder that contributed to
his death yesterday.
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Although Mike served a largely
suburban, western Washington district, his accomplishments would ring a bell
with the people of the 9th Legislative District. As a career educator he was
well-suited to become a leader on the issue of education reform; considering
his constituents once included the inmates of a now-closed state prison, it
probably came naturally to Mike to write the state’s “Becca” laws, which help
identify at-risk youth who skip school so they can be given the assistance they
need to avoid becoming residents of the state’s correctional facilities.
He was a crusader for welfare
reform, a recent example being a successful effort to combat the misuse of
electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards. Mike's district includes the state-run
mental hospital in Steilacoom – the counterpart to Eastern State Hospital in
Medical Lake – and this year he successfully led the move to create a law that
takes the first step toward creating a comprehensive, statewide mental-health
database. Law enforcement will now have access a complete list of individuals
who should be prevented from owning firearms due to a mental illness.
Mike’s legislative district is
home to the state’s largest military base, and he also was a vocal advocate for
our men and women in uniform. His work on behalf of active-duty military and
veterans – such as the Interstate 5 overpass in Pierce County now known as the
Freedom Bridge due to his efforts – will not be forgotten.
Mike was a vibrant 69-year-old who, as a retired science teacher, would have known he had a tough fight on his hands once his illness was identified. While he passed away peacefully with family and friends at his side, the news of his death still came as a shock. I am sorry for his family’s loss, of course, but it’s also a loss for our state and the people he represented. As I said to the reporter from the Tacoma newspaper, Mike was a proud, conservative Republican who worked well with Democrats, especially when it came to issues related to human services and corrections. It’s a trait we need more of here, and we’ve lost someone with it.
Sen. Mark Schoesler
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