After nearly seven years as executive director of the Black trans feminist organization Lavender Rights Project, Jaelynn Scott is running for 37th District, Position 2, to represent the Central District, Columbia City, Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, Rainier Beach and Renton.

There’s no incumbent, or so it seems, and Scott may just benefit from a game of musical seats. When Sen. Rebecca Saldaña announced her run for King County Council, 37th District Rep. Chipalo Street told the Washington State Standard that he’d run for the Senate seat she’s leaving behind, which would leave his seat open. 

Scott has never held public office. If elected, she would be the first openly trans person in the Washington State Legislature. She is running on crisis care; her focus is on housing instability, homelessness, healthcare access, ICE abductions, and trans rights. She’s invested in helping the state’s vulnerable, like trans people and immigrants, with holistic solutions.

Local progressives believe she can get the job done. Sen. Saldaña, Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans, and City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster have endorsed Scott. She’s full of ideas, but what about follow-through? 

“There’s a lot on the line,” Scott says. “Everything in this race is holding the hopes and wishes and dreams of a lot of people who are struggling and suffering…Everything I do in the legislature will be absolutely critical because of the crisis that we’re facing as a country.”

Housing

The Lavender Rights Project operates permanent supportive housing in partnership with Chief Seattle Club, so Scott’s’s a big fan. The future of these programs has already been tenuous this year, because the feds have repeatedly threatened to pull huge chunks of its funding, but she believes partnerships and a hypothetical heap of public money from progressive taxation our state doesn’t yet have could scale up this model, which provides mental health, addiction and disability support for the recently homeless. 

“My approach would be, throw everything at it,” Scott says. “Let’s get our taxation where it needs to be and then face the challenges so we can get revenue as quick as possible.” 

Surveillance

Scott couldn’t say if surveillance tools like CCTV and automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) make the community safe, but she thinks they’re risky for the immigrants and transgender people being targeted by the federal government.

If she had her way, she’d turn them off. But in the interest of harm reduction, she supports a bill to limit data retention to 21 days, State Senate Bill 6002. Even so, a seven-day cap would be much better, she says, which is the limit ACLU-WA recommends.

“Until we know that it’s secure, let’s just pause [surveillance across the state] to keep the sanctuary that we want this place to be,” Scott says. “That is our goal and that means protecting us from federal intrusion.”

ICE

Scott wants ICE out, but she’s not sure how to do that.

“I want to spend these next months sitting in front of, not lobbyists, not legislators, not candidates who have great ideas—I want to actually sit in front of communities who are on the ground protecting folks and find out what are the policy recommendations that they have,” Scott says. (She followed up after the interview to say the legislature should revisit anti-ICE bills that failed last session, like House Bill 2641, which would’ve barred Washington law enforcement from hiring anyone who became an ICE officer after January 20, 2025.)

Trans Rights

Scott’s focus wasn’t on new legislation to protect trans rights, but on strengthening the social safety net. Trans people are disproportionately poor, and are often discriminated against at work. 

Protecting them means expanding access to housing and health care, and finding state resources to bypass the federal government as it tries to restrict Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care and abortion. (Sounds good, but that last one is a tall order.) 

“There’s a lot of fear and anxiety about rights being pulled back, but especially when I talk to communities of color, trans communities of color, immigrant communities, it always goes back to those three priorities,” Scott says. 

She really wants universal healthcare (who doesn’t?), and supports Whole Washington’s Washington Health Trust, a proposal to create a publicly funded, statewide universal healthcare system. But she didn’t know how to make it a reality.