Andrew Engell, Hunter Abell Form New Slate of 7th Legislative District GOP Lawmakers

7th Legislative District Representative-Elect Andrew Engell believes part of his winning campaign message that struck a chord with voters came through instilling trust

"I think people saw me as genuine, interested in them, experienced enough to do the job, but really a solid conservative like the majority of people in this district are.  But also being respectable and caring about people of every walk of life and being willing to listen to understand their points of view".

Engell won the race with Republican Soo Ing-Moody with just over 62% of the vote for the Position 1 seat vacated by Jacquelin Maycumber who lost a primary bid to run for Rodger's seat in Congress.

Engell is talking with legislative committee members to determine his best role in serving the 7th District.  He hopes to land appointments to the agriculture natural resources committee, environment and energy, healthacre, wellness and housing.  Engell is prioritizing a request list for assignments.

He was a Deputy District Director for retiring Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers for seven years.

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The successor to Joel Kretz in the 7th Legislative District is Repbublican Hunter Abell  Representive-Elect Abell garnered about 70% of the vote over Democrat Paul "Rocky" Dean.   Abell says the result even outperformed what is usually strong support in the Conservative leaning seventh district

"I really chalk that up to just a tremendous amount of hard work by volunteers who supported us from beginning to end.  There was a lot of door belling, a lot of candidate forums.  We really went out there to tried to earn the support of every last voter that we could"

Abell said his campaign focused a lot of attention on the 7th district's new voters with recently expanded boundaries taking in areas of Douglas and Chelan County in Wenatchee after legislative maps were redrawn this spring.

"Douglas County and the parts of Chelan County that are in the district as well are really important to me and I spent quite a lot of time over there (during the campaign) talking about their concerns and so really tried to walk the walk showing Douglas County in my mind was an essentail part of the district"

Abell said he and seat mate Engell have discussed the importance and desire that one of them land a committe assignment on agriculture and natural resouces.  Abell says he would be one of a few conservative attorneys in the legislature if appointed to the committee on Judicial oversite but is aiming for roles on energy or agriculture.