In Pramila Jayapal’s campaign for Congress this year, one fact came up over and over again: Jayapal was the only woman of color in Washington’s State Senate, a body with only 17 women total last session. Jayapal argued that her personal experience lent a perspective the powerful legislative body wouldn’t have heard otherwise.

Now that Jayapal is headed to Congress, local politicians are considering who to send to Olympia as her replacement representing the 37th Legislative District—one of the most diverse districts in the state. They may choose a white guy.

In order to replace a member who leaves before their term is up, precinct committee officers in their legislative district party recommend three names to the King County Council, which makes the final appointment. The usual outcome of this process: The county council rubber stamps whoever got the most votes from the legislative district group.

In the 37th Legislative District Democrats' vote last week, Rory O’Sullivan, an attorney at the Housing Justice Project and current chair of the 37th Legislative District Democrats, took the most votes. Rebecca Saldaña, executive director of Puget Sound Sage, came in second. And Shasti Conrad, a political consultant who also worked on Bernie Sanders' campaign, came in third. (O'Sullivan won 46 votes to Saldaña's 35.) The county council is set to vote today at 1:30 pm on the appointment.

Now, Saldaña and her supporters—including Jayapal—are urging King County Council members to pick her instead of O'Sullivan, in part because she’s a woman of color.

"If Rebecca wasn’t qualified, it wouldn’t matter if she was a woman of color or not," says Jayapal. But, she adds, representation does matter.

"I also do think the experience she brings as a woman of color is incredibly important," Jayapal says. "There were so many times when my perspectives and my experience because of who I am allowed me to articulate perspectives that really hadn’t been articulated before. It was also very powerful in convincing some of my colleagues about issues that should be at the forefront. I think Rebecca will have the ability to do that as well. We’ve got to start recognizing that the Democratic Party as a whole needs to continue make sure we promote women and people of color into office."

U.S. Senator Patty Murray has also thrown her support behind Saldaña. King County Council Member Larry Gosset, who will sponsor the motion appointing Jayapal's replacement and whose county council district overlaps with the 37th, is rumored to be supporting Saldaña but did not return a call for comment.

While it's common for the county council to go with the legislative district's first pick, it's not unprecedented to select someone else. Back in 2013, the county council went against a legislative district group's recommendations in order to appoint a woman of color to SeaTac's 33rd Legislative District.

As Josh Feit pointed out at Publicola, the 37th isn't the only district this year that may appoint a white man over a woman of color to an open seat. (Meanwhile, the 37th appointment faces another controversy: a lawsuit alleging that the district practiced "ethnic discrimination" by not allowing some precinct committee officers to vote. That suit won't stop today's vote from moving forward, though.)

O'Sullivan says he "thought long and hard" about the question when he decided to run for the seat but says precinct committee officers, including women of color, encouraged him to run.

"They said, 'No we really want you to be part of this race. We think you’re gonna be the one we want to represent us,'" O'Sullivan says. "The reason I stayed in was because of the support I got, primarily from women of color."

Akilah Stewart and Christina Lewis, two 37th legislative district precinct committee officers and women of color who support O'Sullivan, say they reject the idea that Saldaña is better suited for the seat because she's not white. Stewart says she believes O'Sullivan will focus on bringing jobs to the district, and Lewis says she believes O'Sullivan's legal experience will help him work across the aisle in Olympia and stand up to a Trump presidency. Both pointed out that the other two politicians elected in the 37th—state Representatives Sharon Tomiko Santos and Eric Pettigrew—are people of color.

"It’s not fair to the 37th legislative district to always have to carry the water of other legislative districts regarding diversity," Stewart says. "Before Pramila became our senator for just two years, Adam Kline [who is white] was our senator... Because of seniority, he was head of the Judiciary Committee and he was able to do something every session to get rid of structural barriers for people in the criminal justice system."

Stewart criticizes Jayapal for supporting Kshama Sawant over Pamela Banks in last year's city council race and says because of that Jayapal's endorsement of Saldaña holds no sway with her.

"I don’t want to be in any situation again where my senator will endorse a socialist instead of a perfectly qualified woman who looks like me," Stewart says.

But Saldaña and her supporters say it's important that the state senate is not left without any women of color.

"If you are really committed to representing the concerns of women of color," says Saldaña supporter and political consultant Heather Weiner, "you would let women of color represent their own concerns."

Saldaña says she believes O'Sullivan won more votes because he started gathering pledges of support from precinct committee officers earlier than she did. If she is not appointed, she plans to campaign for the seat next year.

"Well-intentioned policy makers that are not centered in racial equity can have lots of poor and unintended consequences when they legislate," Sandaña says. "When we are looking at our state legislature having to buck up and figure out how they fund quality education with equity outcomes, how we deal with climate and pollution, how we deal with mental health programming and funding, it does make a difference when you have more diverse voices at the decision making table."