Peninsula Daily News news sources
SEATTLE — Joe Hawe, a former Clallam County sheriff, may be replaced as the state’s western regional U.S. marshal.
State Rep. Mark Ericks, D-Bothell, is seeking to be appointed by President Barack Obama to the job.
Name submitted
Washington state’s senior senator, Patty Murray, D-Freeland, submitted Ericks’ name to the president.
Federal marshals — there are 94 nationwide — are appointed by the president, subject to approval by the U.S. Senate.
Ericks, a former police chief in the Seattle suburb of Bothell, thinks he is the only candidate.
“It’s a great opportunity to do something I’ve always loved, law enforcement, and I can do it again at a different level,” he said in an interview with the Everett Herald.
“I also will be able to spend more time at home.”
“But it’s a process. Who knows how it will turn out?”
Or when.
Obama’s staff would check Ericks’ background before forwarding his name to the Senate for confirmation hearings and a vote.
The process could last months — and could stretch into 2010, Ericks said.
Hawe was appointed marshal of Washington’s Western District on March 19, 2008, by President George W. Bush.
Hawe beat out two other candidates, then Snohomish County Sheriff Rick Bart and Kirkland Police Chief Stan Aston.
Hawe served as the Clallam County sheriff from 1990 to 2003, when he resigned — less than a year after his re-election to a fourth four-year term — to join with the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs in Olympia.
Security force
The U.S. Marshals Service provides for the security of federal courthouses, the transporting of federal prisoners and the tracking and capturing of federal fugitives.
The Western District, headquartered in Seattle, operates in 19 counties from the Oregon border north to Canada and east to the Cascades.
Ericks, 58, worked 18 years in the Bellevue Police Department from street cop to major crimes commander and then 12 years as Bothell’s police chief.
He also served three years as Bothell’s director of administrative services.
He was elected to the state Legislature in 2004 and is in his third two-year term.
Ericks is vice chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a post that had him deeply involved in writing this year’s state budget.
He also serves on the House’s finance and rules committees.
He said he plans to remain in the Legislature until — and if — he gets the marshal’s job.
If it does not work out, he said he will run again in 2010.
