When the people of Washington State’s 43rd Legislative District elected to send me to the state capitol to represent them by a 68–32 percent margin in November 2024, it was only the second time that an avowed socialist had won a race for the state house. Despite red-baiting from a right-wing opponent, I won my election as an open Marxist who campaigned with the Seattle chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and advocated taxes on the ultrawealthy to fund services we all use.

Before my election, the last and only time an open socialist had been elected to the Washington State House of Representatives was 1912. Those were the days of the powerful capitalists who transformed the American West through expropriation of indigenous lands, the construction of extractive industries, and above all exploitation of human labor. In the century since, Washington has become an epicenter of aerospace and tech, while in recent decades working-class movements like the World Trade Organization protests of 1999 and last year’s Boeing strike have contested local billionaire-class hegemony.

As a socialist lawmaker, I see my chief task as one of building the class struggle in Washington State. Thankfully, the short history of Washington’s first socialist state representative contains lessons for how the Left can wield the machinery of state government to secure material gains for everyday people.