Brenda Lykins in Bid for Pierce County Council

Fiscally responsible government is not a partisan issue.”

Brenda Lykins spent much of her career meeting families on some of the worst days of their lives.

As a neonatal nurse practitioner, she said the job required her to listen first, establish trust, and understand what people were going through before helping. Years later, after the jump from health care to elected office, Lykins found herself relying on many of the same skills.

“I found that the therapeutic listening skills that we have in medicine translate really well to politics,” she said. “Just seeing yourself as the voice of the people and taking their personal stories to make a difference.”

Lykins, a Democrat and former Gig Harbor City Council member, is running for the District 7 seat on the Pierce County Council. She faces Republican Mike Solan in the Nov. 3 general election.

Lykins advanced from a four-candidate August primary with 56.9% of the vote, according to certified results by the Pierce County Auditor’s Office. Turnout in District 7 was 44.9% — the highest of the three Pierce County Council races on the primary ballot and well above the county’s overall 30.4% turnout.

The district stretches from North and West Tacoma across the Narrows to Gig Harbor, Fox Island and the Key Peninsula. 

Lykins said her priorities include public safety, infrastructure, managing growth, and preserving the rural character of communities like the Key Peninsula.

Politics was not an obvious career move for Lykins. She grew up as the youngest of six children with what she described as a Republican father and a strongly Democratic mother.

“We had to collaborate, or we didn’t eat,” she said.

She has worked in neonatology for more than 35 years and said she first became interested in local government after seeing decisions in Gig Harbor that she believed affected residents’ everyday lives.

Then-Gig Harbor City Councilmember Robyn Denson, now the outgoing District 7 County Councilmember, encouraged Lykins to run for an open city council seat.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of terrifying. I’m nothing special,’ ” Lykins said.

She ran anyway and served on the Gig Harbor City Council from 2022 to 2025, including two years as mayor pro tem. She now serves on the Pierce County Charter Review Commission.

Lykins said elected office taught her that campaigning on an idea and governing are two different things.

“You realize that some of the things that you want to do may have already been tried, might not be allowed, or might not be within your authority,” she said.

Her father, she said, used to remind her that people have “two ears and one mouth.”

“You have to recognize your role and be willing to listen,” she said.

Lykins now lives in North Tacoma, but said the Key Peninsula is familiar territory. She lived in Gig Harbor for more than a decade, and one of her children rode horses on the KP. She crossed the Purdy Bridge as often as six days a week and spent considerable time around Key Center.

“There’s a real sense of rural character where people count on each other, where people say, ‘Let’s get together and make this happen,’ ” she said about the KP.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office provides law enforcement in unincorporated areas, and staffing at the Peninsula Detachment has been a longstanding concern for residents.

Lykins said she wants to see more sheriff staffing but stopped short of promising a specific number of deputies. County Council members approve budgets, she noted, but the sheriff decides where deputies are assigned.

“My role is, once (the sheriff’s office) comes to an agreement, to fund that through the budget,” she said.

Still, Lykins said the size of the Peninsula Detachment’s service area, which stretches from Fox Island to Longbranch, makes staffing and response times a concern.

“I think it’s unacceptable for people not to feel safe in their homes,” Lykins said. “I think it would be wonderful to improve staffing, particularly in Key Peninsula.”

Lykins supports the county’s recently approved 0.1% public safety sales tax and said increasing the number of deputies overall must come before the Sheriff’s Office can flexibly staff specific areas.

Some Key Peninsula residents strongly support preserving the area’s rural character, while property owners may also bristle at limits on what they can build on their own land.

Lykins said the state Growth Management Act sets much of the framework counties must follow. She supports concentrating most new housing closer to urban areas and existing infrastructure while keeping rural areas rural.

For Lykins, that means accepting some limits on rural development. She said concentrating growth near existing roads, utilities and other infrastructure can help prevent rural systems from becoming overwhelmed.

The District 7 race is partisan, but Lykins said many of the decisions county council members make do not fit neatly along party lines.

“Fiscally responsible government is not a partisan issue,” she said. “I think most people aren’t in that hyperpartisan, hyperbolic world. I think most people are out walking their dogs, getting their kids to soccer practice, and just want good government.”

She describes herself as socially liberal, with views shaped in part by a career spent in health care. But she said many of the issues that reach the county council — roads, public safety, infrastructure, and spending — don’t divide as neatly along party lines.

“I may have a D after my name, but I will listen to anybody and try to come up with a compromise,” Lykins said. “I’m quite pragmatic.”

There are limits to that pragmatism.

“Basic decency and treating people with kindness are a few of the mountains I’m willing to die on, but there aren’t too many others.”