In the history of Washington state politics, some figures are remembered for their scandals, and others are remembered for their longevity. Then there is Bernardean Broadous.
In 1994, Broadous did not just win an election. She shattered a glass ceiling that had remained untouched since Washington State was founded. She was the first Black woman elected to a county office in the history of Washington, and the first African American to hold an executive county position in Thurston County.
Today, her tenure is largely a footnote. It is often treated as a failed experiment in management. Meanwhile, the man who replaced her, Edward Holm, oversaw an office that cost taxpayers millions of dollars because of his documented behavior. Looking closely at the years between 1994 and 2002 in Thurston County reveals a stark hypocrisy. We see a woman of color judged by the noise of change she was trying to force, while her white male successor was given a pass for actual, adjudicated damage to the public.
The 1994 campaign for Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney was a masterclass in grassroots disruption. Broadous was a Republican with only three years of legal experience. She ran against John Bumford, a veteran Democrat who was the hand-picked successor of the retiring 20-year incumbent, Patrick Sutherland.
On paper, Broadous was a long shot. Bumford had fifteen years in the office and the public endorsement of 26 of the 28 deputy prosecutors in the department. The institutional resistance was immediate. Before the first ballot was cast, her future subordinates called her incompetent in the local press. Bumford focused his campaign on experience. Broadous flipped that argument. She did not say she had more years in a courtroom. She said those years were spent perfecting a broken status quo. She accused the office of being too quick to settle cases and claimed that, as a deputy, cases were taken away from her when she refused to reduce charges.
Broadous used a specialized team of volunteers to bridge the funding gap. Bumford outraised her two-to-one, with the vast majority of his funds coming from his own pocket. Her campaign used a fleet of painted vans to counter the expensive bus advertisements of her opponent. They filmed Broadous in living rooms answering questions to show her forthright nature. This was a sophisticated data operation, too. Her team analyzed precinct numbers to find winnable areas in the suburbs. They timed their mailers to hit exactly when ballots arrived. This strategy worked.
Broadous pulled off a stunning upset and won by 867 votes. And, in the broader sweep of history here, it was the last stand for Republican institutional power in Thurston County before it became a Democratic stronghold. 1994 was the last high-water mark for Republicans in Washington State and Thurston County, before falling reliably into today’s pattern.
Broadous entered office in 1995 with a mandate for change. She inherited an office that had functioned under one man for two decades. She brought a focus on accountability and efficiency. Her most significant achievement was the Juvenile Diversion Reform. Before Broadous, the juvenile system was slow and lacked direction. She started a program that required offenders to face sanctions or charges within 12 days of an arrest. She used Community Accountability Boards made of local volunteers to determine punishments. This program resulted in a 50 percent reduction in felony recidivism. Broadous was also a founding architect of the Thurston County Drug Court. She pushed for a system that offered non-violent offenders treatment and testing as an alternative to jail. She believed the message of the law was lost if punishment was not swift and sure.
Just looking at the raw numbers, prosecutions in Thurston County went from around 1,000 each year before Broadous to nearly double that during her tenure.
However, we cannot ignore that these reforms created internal conflict. Broadous was a demanding manager. She restricted plea bargains to prevent deal shopping. This stripped deputy prosecutors of their autonomy. To Broadous, this was accountability. To her staff, it was a lack of trust.
In her first 19 months, 18 deputy prosecutors left the office. This high turnover became the main criticism against her. Critics claimed the remaining staff were overworked. Defense attorneys complained that her refusal to negotiate was clogging the court system. Broadous did not back down.
By 1998, Ed Holm saw the turnover in the office as a political weapon. He campaigned on a platform of restoring stability. The narrative against Broadous was cemented by two legal actions filed just weeks before the primary election. In July 1998, a former employee named Betty Benefiel filed a lawsuit alleging Broadous treated her unfairly. In August 1998, a secretary named Sheila Kirby filed a claim for emotional distress. Broadous called these attacks politically motivated. The timing was certainly suspicious, but the damage was done. Holm used the lawsuits to argue that Broadous could not lead. Broadous lost the election and received less than 40 percent of the vote.
Holm was hailed as a stabilizer.
But the stability he promised was a myth. By 2001, three female deputy prosecutors sued Holm and his management team for sexual discrimination and a hostile work environment.
The details revealed in the Holm trial were far worse than anything alleged against Broadous. The plaintiffs alleged that women were given lower pay and less desirable assignments. They described the office as a boys’ club. The lawsuit detailed inappropriate sexual comments and lewd jokes. The jury eventually found that Holm and his office retaliated against the women after they complained about the discrimination. In 2006, a jury ruled in favor of the women. They found that the county had discriminated against them based on their gender. They also found that the office had created a hostile work environment.
The most telling part of this story is the final cost to the public. The lawsuits against Broadous that dominated the news in 1998 went nowhere. They stayed in the court system for four years. In 2002, after Broadous was out of office and Holm himself decided not to run again, the parties signed an agreement to drop the cases. No money was paid to the plaintiffs. No wrongdoing was ever proven. The cost to the taxpayers for these lawsuits was zero dollars. These claims were dismissed with prejudice, meaning they could never be brought again.
Compare that to the Ed Holm settlement. The jury awarded the three women $1.52 million for the discrimination and retaliation they endured. The judge then added $1.45 million in attorney fees. By the time the case was fully settled and the appeals were finished in 2011, the total cost reached nearly $6 million. When you weigh the two administrations, the Broadous years were characterized by administrative friction and turnover that cost the public nothing in court. The Holm years were characterized by systemic misconduct that left the county with a multi-million dollar bill.
The historical memory of Thurston County should take another at Bernardean Broadous. She was a historic first who tried to modernize a stagnant system. She was a Black woman who walked into a white male-dominated field and demanded high standards. She was punished for it. We remember her for the turnover and the noise of lawsuits that ended in nothing.
