“Just Be Nice.”
Was that a bumper sticker, a yard sign, a banner on a building? Nope. Those were the last three words in seven pages of scribbled notes after two hours with State Sen. Ron Muzzall. And those three words summed it all up pretty well.
In his two successful Senate campaigns and five years in Olympia, Muzzall has been intentional in building a reputation for civility.
“I’m not hyperbolic,” says the Oak Harbor Republican. “I don’t believe in attacking, tearing people down. I try to show empathy and compassion. In my last campaign (2024, defeating County Commissioner Janet St. Clair) our No. 1 decision was ‘we don’t go negative.’ The Tenth District is going blue, and we had no room for mistakes.”
Muzzall’s approach to leadership has its roots in the traditions and hard work of his farming family. He represents the fourth generation to work the same piece of land since his great-grandfather came to Whidbey Island in 1910. His father graduated from Oak Harbor High in 1939, in a class of 26 seniors. A generation later, Ron Muzzall’s class of 1981 graduated 400.
Muzzall’s father and two uncles served in World War II, his uncle Murray losing his life on Mindanao in 1945. That sacrifice and dedication to service, along with the relentless pace and lessons of farming, have shaped Ron Muzzall and his family for as long as he can remember.
It comes naturally to Muzzall to care for the land and his community, thanks to parents who insisted on leaving it better than they found it. So when he attended WSU and met a young woman from a Spokane area farming family, one who understood Muzzall’s values of long days and hard work, he knew immediately. She was The One.
He and Shelly have been married for 39 years. And they raised their three daughters with those same strong values.
“Structure, discipline, accountability,” Muzzall says. “And always remember who you are and what you represent.”
When asked to consider filling Barbara Bailey’s State Senate seat when she retired in 2019, Muzzall said no. He said it more than once. “My experience in government,” he says, “was that it can be incredibly frustrating. But I was honored, and humbled, and my family convinced me to say yes.”
Muzzall was no stranger to being asked to serve. As a young volunteer firefighter in the 1980s, he was asked to run for Fire Commissioner, and served for 20 years. Later, in his forties, he was recruited to the Boards of Directors of Skagit Farmers Supply and Land O’ Lakes, serving 15 and eight years respectively.
The senator’s humility and kindness have earned him respect from both sides of the aisle. He counts Democrat Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck as a close friend, and the two pals were featured in a 2023 Civility First forum, “How to be friends and disagree on politics.”
That’s an indicator of our times, isn’t it? Times when we need formal instruction on how to keep from insulting our way out of our most precious relationships? But that’s where we are. Ron Muzzall sees the danger in the water and paddles hard against the current.
“We’ve become gladiatorial,” he says, lamenting a nation that can’t seem to wake up in the morning without wanting to pick a fight. “Just this month, we’ve seen fistfights on football fields… after the games are over! If you look back at the last days of Rome, they kept getting more violent, more bloody… until there was no more Rome.”
Muzzall looks at the political landscape and sees a deadly lack of humility.
“I despise virtue signaling,” he says, a newish term defined by the Oxford Dictionary: the public expression of opinions …to demonstrate one’s good character or social conscience or moral correctness. Such claims to exclusive moral high ground, says Muzzall, “show a lack of empathy. Without empathy, humility, or compassion, when we don’t know or care what another person is going through, it’s easier to tear people down.”
Muzzall wishes our society’s norms would encourage that empathy, that compassion. “But how do we teach that?”
Muzzall’s efforts in the Senate show his empathy for struggling citizens. With a glance though his bill sponsorships in the 2023-24 sessions, it’s clear that he sees a need for better behavioral health services in Washington. And, contrary to the popular view that our legislature is hopelessly divided, many of the bills this Republican sponsored were passed with near-unanimous support from both parties.
Still, the wild card is money: finding it, and allocating it effectively. Muzzall believes that properly addressing behavioral health is a billion-dollar problem, with no consensus on where to find the funds.
“‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was the start of our overreaction to behavioral health in the country,” Muzzall says of the 1962 Ken Kesey novel about the horrors of mental institutions. The pendulum has swung too far, he believes, leaving states and communities on their own to deal with behavioral health.
“I said I’m not into hyperbole, but now we are in a crisis.”
So he keeps working, and he has confidence that he can be a part of the solution. Even if it takes years. “It’s frustrating. Welcome to government,” he says with a smirk.
Muzzall is grateful for the people in Olympia who have made his job smoother since he was appointed to office five years ago. He praises former Sen. Bailey, her legislative staff and the staff he has built around him. And he admires the great leaders in both parties working to move our state forward.
The best leaders, he says, “are truly humble. People know if you’re sincerely humble or not. They’re educated, intelligent, hungry for knowledge. They are excellent listeners, and listening leads to empathy. They care about the work, and the people, and not about glory.”
Looking to his next four years in office, Muzzall intends to put his head down and grind in his hardworking way, and “just keep serving my constituents. I’m not a politician. I don’t do this to rub elbows with the high and mighty. I don’t endorse politicians, I don’t ask for their endorsement. I’m an administrator, really. And, I hope, a conscience.”
Does he have a mantra, something to keep him focused as he heads south in January to represent his district in Olympia? You bet he does. That’s when he smiles and says it.
“Just be nice.”
William Walker’s monthly “Take a Breath” column seeks paths to unity on Whidbey Island in a time of polarization. Walker lives near Oak Harbor and is an amateur author of four unpublished novels, hundreds of poems and a stage play. He blogs occasionally at www.playininthedirt.com.