Kelly Chambers, 49, grew up on the Eastside of Tacoma. She lives in Puyallup with her husband of 15 years, Jeff, and has three children and one grandchild, with a second due on Election Day. She and Jeff run two franchises of Visiting Angels, a home health aide agency, which at its peak employed 250 people. She is also a three-term state representative for the 25th legislative district now running for Pierce County Executive.
It wasn’t easy. “I got pregnant my sophomore year of high school and I had my daughter my junior year when I was, ironically, class president,” Chambers said. “I literally went to school in labor and after third period Spanish, I was like, I think I should go home now.”
She was 17.
“I went back to school after eight weeks or so,” she said. “I had my daughter in daycare close by and I went there every day because I was breastfeeding between classes. I was just focused on wanting to go to college and not let having a baby disrupt that goal. It was one foot in front of the other, leveraging financial aid and scholarships, and welfare, to make that dream a reality.”
Chambers graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a second in Education.
She wanted to be a teacher but could only find short-term assignments at the time and moved on to private industry.
In 2004, her mother, who had become a certified nursing assistant, asked her to help run a Visiting Angels franchise, placing home health aides.
Over the next 20 years, their efforts resulted in three franchises and 250 employees, though Chambers has since scaled it back.
As part of that work, she testified before the Legislature on the need for home caregiver support and testified about bills affecting her industry, foreshadowing things to come.
In 2019, Rep. Melanie Stambaugh (R-25th LD) announced she would not seek reelection.
“She called me the same day and asked me to run,” Chambers said. “And I said no. And my husband said yes, you need to run, and you will win.”
She is now in her third and final term representing the 25th LD and is running for Pierce County Executive, the leader of the executive branch of local government.
“It’s for the same reasons as getting into the Legislature,” she said. “(Executive) Bruce Dammeier has been there for eight years and now it’s an open seat. And just like in the Legislature, I think we need to have more people that have actually run a business making some of these decisions. The combination of elected plus private industry experience I think is very valuable.”
Chambers said county residents share many of the same challenges whether they live in Tacoma or on the Key Peninsula.
“I will work to address the same issues out there that the rest of the county is facing, like affordability, housing, homelessness and public safety,” she said. “I know (the KP) has a growing share of homelessness, and we have to try to find that balance of offering people the services and help they need by addressing mental health and addiction, which is a significant part of it.”
Another part of it is reducing crime. “Washington is already at the bottom of the list, being 51st in the country for officers per capita, and that’s even worse in Pierce County because it’s so large with only so many officers and dollars to go around,” Chambers said.
As a legislator, Chambers worked to restore police pursuits based on reasonable suspicion by supporting Initiative 2113.
“Restricting police pursuit was an experiment gone wrong and it was a mistake that was actually deadly,” she said. “We had an incident in my district in which two 12-year-old girls were hit by somebody in a stolen landscaping truck, killing one of them on a Sunday morning after a sleepover. I was reluctant to reach out to that family — it took a year — and ask, do you think that lack of pursuit had anything to do with her death? And they said absolutely. So they started coming down to the Legislature and testifying and telling their story. I think that was a huge success.”
Chambers said she is endorsed by Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer, his predecessor, Sheriff Paul Pastor, the Pierce County Sheriff ’s Deputy Independent Guild, the Tacoma Police Guild, and by Pierce County Executive Dammeier, among others.
“I think that some of the issues with public safety in the state are exacerbated by shortages in staffing, but in Pierce County that has not been as much of a problem because people want to work for an administration that supports them, and we’ve had strong leadership with Bruce Dammeier. In that position, I’m going to continue to support law enforcement so that they will continue to want to work here so that we don’t have massive vacancies that we can’t fill, like some other jurisdictions.”
Chambers cannot run for reelection to her seat in the Legislature while running for another office but is prepared to move on. “I’m a good fit for this,” she said. “You look at other jurisdictions like King County and the City of Seattle that are facing budget deficits because of their spending. Then look at eight years in Pierce County and see what sustainable budgeting and spending looks like.”
“But as far as the Legislature goes, I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I love my colleagues. It’s really been an honor to serve.”
For more information, go to www. kellychambers.org.
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