Script by Taylor Johnatakis • 23rd Legislative District, Position 1 • Revised September 10, 2026

Last week, the Washington Legislative Ethics Board ordered Rep. Tarra Simmons of Bremerton to pay about $52,000 in penalties and state legal costs. The board found she used her office in a way that violated conflict-of-interest and special-privilege rules. She says she will appeal. She is also the first formerly incarcerated person elected to a state legislature in this county, a Democrat seeking a fourth term, and — as of this November — a candidate with no Republican on the ballot.

Those facts sit next to each other. Kitsap voters should look at all of them before they decide what they mean.

Who she represents

Simmons holds House District 23, Position 1. The district covers Hansville, Kingston, Poulsbo, Bremerton, and Bainbridge Island. She was first elected in 2020, then re-elected in 2022 and 2024. She is vice chair of the House Community Safety, Justice and Reentry Committee, and serves as Deputy Speaker Pro Tempore. Her public brand is of redemption: nurse, then addiction and prison, then law school, then Olympia.

The criminal record — what the courts actually said

This is not rumor. It is the record the Washington Supreme Court recited when it allowed her to sit for the bar exam in 2018, and the record Kitsap Superior Court later vacated.

Juvenile adjudications: theft, possession of stolen property, and second-degree assault.

2001: adult conviction for second-degree assault.

2011: five adult convictions that included organized retail theft, unlawful possession of a firearm, and possession of controlled substances. A Kitsap Superior Court judge sentenced her to 30 months. She served about 20 months in prison from late 2011 into 2013, plus community custody.

Collateral damage: her nursing license was placed on probationary status. She went through two bankruptcies and a home foreclosure. Court fines and fees accrued interest — she has said 12 percent — while she was incarcerated. After release she worked at Burger King because she could not return to nursing.

Blake and vacation: a separate felony drug-possession count was wiped out by the state Supreme Court’s Blake decision in 2021. On September 8, 2023, a Kitsap judge vacated five remaining felonies under the 2019 New Hope Act. Those convictions no longer stand as a current felony record. They are still part of the public history that put her in office.

None of that is a secret she hid. She ran on it. The Washington State Bar Association’s Character and Fitness Board voted 6–3 to keep her off the bar exam. The state Supreme Court unanimously overruled that board. Justice Mary Yu wrote that “one’s past does not dictate one’s future.” That sentence is now the foundation of her political career.

The fines and ethics findings — 2025 and 2026

The old convictions can be explained as the wreckage of addiction. What cannot be written off that way are the complaints and official findings from 2025 and 2026, after she was already a lawyer, already a legislator, and already asking the public to trust her with a fourth term. Those are not leftover drug cases. They are new.

First, the Legislative Ethics Board. A complaint filed in February 2025 produced a seven-month investigation. In October 2025 the board found reasonable cause that she violated the Ethics in Public Service Act. She rejected a settlement. In June 2026 the board held a rare two-day public hearing — the first of its kind in about a decade. On August 14 the board found three violations of conflict-of-interest and special-privilege laws and assessed the maximum $5,000 civil penalty on each count, $15,000 total. On August 28 it added $37,457.98 in staff and attorney costs. The final bill is about $52,458. She has 90 days to pay and has said she will ask a court to review the order.

What those three counts were about, in plain language: the board concluded she used her legislative position to help steer public money to a nonprofit ecosystem tied to her outside work, including a 2024 grant structure that supported operations at an organization paying her a $120,000 annual salary, and that she tried to retaliate against the person who started the investigation. The board dismissed other counts — including claims that she conditioned a $10,000 surplus-campaign donation to hire a man she was alleged to have a relationship with, and that merely working for an organization that later received state money was itself a violation.

Second, the Public Disclosure Commission. Separate from the Ethics Board, 23rd District Democrats chair Val Torrens complained that Simmons sent $30,000 in surplus campaign funds — two $15,000 gifts in July and August 2025 — to a Nevada nonprofit called Better Minds Better Communities. That group is tied to Nevada Assemblymember Jovan Jackson, another formerly incarcerated lawmaker. It had no active website and had not filed IRS reports since 2021. The PDC did not treat this as a proven personal-use scandal. It treated it as a technical violation: surplus funds may go only to registered Washington charities. Simmons signed a Statement of Understanding, paid a $300 civil penalty, and took a written warning about earlier surplus gifts to groups that were not registered charities. The commission closed the case.

A third ethics complaint, also from Torrens, accused Simmons of using her office to pressure fellow Democrat Daria Ilgen not to run against her. The Ethics Board dismissed that one. Asking a potential opponent to stand down, the board said, is campaigning, not an ethics crime.

Simmons’ answer to all of this is consistent: these are “unsubstantiated attacks,” she received no personal cash kickback, and she wants the Ethics Board order reversed. Voters can accept that explanation, or they can notice that an elected lawyer just lost a formal ethics case and owes the state fifty-two thousand dollars.

Why do Democrats keep endorsing her?

Start with the blunt version. It is about power and money. Simmons is not a stray name on a sample ballot. She is a well-connected politician inside a party that holds this district.

She is Deputy Speaker Pro Tempore. Governor Bob Ferguson, Treasurer Mike Pellicciotti, Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Sen. Drew Hansen, and her seat-mate Rep. Greg Nance are on her 2026 endorsement list, along with the Washington State Labor Council, nurses’ organizations, and Planned Parenthood Votes. That is not a party in retreat. That is the institutional Democratic Party treating her as a feature, not a bug.

There are three reasons that support holds, even after the ethics order.

First, redemption is policy for this party. Automatic restoration of voting rights after prison — a bill she helped pass in her first term — is now state law. Vacating old felonies is now easier because of statutes she championed. If Democrats dropped her the moment an ethics board fined her, they would be walking away from the argument they have made for a decade: that a criminal record should not be a life sentence in civic life. While we agree with the principle, it should not apply as an eternal “get out of jail free” card. Past actions can, and should, be used to show patterns and proclivity of future actions. It is okay if it is a “that was then, this is now” situation, but when the “this is now” matches the behaviors of “that was then”, they should be taking into consideration. The Democrats, however, are stuck with defending a mantra that says all past discrepancies must not only be forgiven, but forgotten.

Second, she votes with the coalition that funds and sits on staffs of Democratic campaigns. She has a 100 percent Washington State Labor Council score. That is not a minor thing, it is how endorsements get renewed.

Third — and this is the part polite commentary likes to skip — both major parties exist to protect their own. That means downplaying problems, treating an ethics order as a “process” story, and denying that the findings are serious until the next news cycle moves on. Democrats are doing that for Simmons. Republicans do the same thing when the name on the complaint belongs to them. Sweeping it under the rug is not a glitch. It is the job description.

The most disturbing piece of this story is not only what the board found. It is how comfortable the parties, and a large share of the voting public, have become with official findings of unethical conduct. It is now so built into the process that many voters no longer treat it as part of the decision. If both parties protect their candidates, and both sets of voters shrug, then “they all do it” becomes the campaign slogan nobody has to print.

That comfort is the point. It is also why a $52,000 ethics order can land in September and still look, on paper, like a safe Democratic hold.

How does she keep getting elected?

Look at the map and the numbers before you look for a conspiracy.

In November 2024 she beat Republican Kurt Robertson 63 percent to 37 percent — 53,928 to 31,609. The same night, Sen. Drew Hansen took 64 percent in the same district and Rep. Greg Nance took 66 percent. That is a Democratic district. Bainbridge Island and the north-Kitsap corridor do not swing on a single ethics headline.

This is where one-party dominance has consequences. If a party and its candidates can absorb an ethics finding and still win because enough voters are marking the D and moving on, then this is what you get: a safe seat, a familiar name, and a lower bar for conduct. Party-line voting is legal. It is also how accountability dies in a district that rarely changes hands.

Washington’s top-two primary then does the rest. Name recognition, incumbent mail, labor walk lists, and a biography that is easy to tell in 30 seconds will beat a little-known Republican in a strongly Democratic legislative district almost every time. She does not “keep getting elected despite the record.” She keeps getting elected because a majority in the 23rd decided the record is the reason to vote for her — and because Republicans have not fielded a candidate who can break 40 percent.

One fact may still move a slice of the November electorate. The Ethics Board’s final cost order, and the news coverage that followed, landed September 3, 2026 — after the August 4 primary was already certified. Primary voters did not have a $52,000 invoice in front of them. General-election voters will.

Does it look like she will win this election?

Yes. Absent a collapse that is not visible today, she is the favorite on November 3.

Her only remaining challenger is Daria Ilgen, a left-of-center Democrat from Poulsbo. The August 4 primary was not close. Official figures reported by Ballotpedia: Simmons 60 percent (24,394 votes), Ilgen 40 percent (16,567). That is a 20-point gap. Republican Joel Ard filed in May and then quickly withdrew. No public explanation has been given. That left two Democrats, and both advanced.

Could Ilgen close the gap? In theory. He is trying to walk a narrow line: do not break the unspoken rule that you do not take a flamethrower to a fellow Democrat, but he makes inferences at her record. After the June hearing he said Kitsap families are “struggling with high costs” while Simmons is “justifying her alleged ethics violations.” He also has allies inside the 23rd District Democratic organization. That is unusual. It is still an uphill race against an incumbent with the governor, the labor council, and a 20-point primary cushion.

His website and platform read like a standard Democratic campaign. They do not draw a bright line between his program and hers. If he will not go hard at the ethics order — the one piece of this race that is not already priced into a 63–37 district — then he is asking voters to swap one Democrat for another without giving them a reason that survives a mail piece. That is not a viable alternative. That is a second name on the same team.

The honest forecast: Simmons wins unless something new breaks — a court ruling that is worse than the board order, a campaign-finance finding that goes beyond the $300 PDC penalty, or a late collapse in Democratic turnout that somehow benefits only Ilgen. None of that is the base case.

Why can’t the Kitsap Republican Party put a candidate on this ballot?

They did. Then they didn’t.

Joel Ard, a Republican attorney from Kingston, filed for District 23, Position 1 during candidate filing week in May. He then quickly withdrew. He was not on the August primary ballot.

As of this writing, KMJC has not obtained an interview with Ard about his reasons. Neither Ard nor the Kitsap County Republican Party has publicly stated why he left. Until they do, the reason is unknown. Guessing is not reporting.

What is known are the factors that make this a hard district to compete in.

Start with the math. A Republican in the 23rd is asking donors to fund a race that finished 63–37 last time and 64–36 in the Senate race on the same ballot. Smart money in the Kitsap GOP goes to the 26th and the 35th, where Republicans actually win seats. Recruitment notes from the Kitsap County Republican Party this winter asked for “good candidates to go up against” Simmons. Asking is not the same as producing a candidate who will spend six months knocking Bainbridge doors for a probable 37 percent.

Add the top-two problem. If a Republican finishes third, the November ballot is Democrat versus Democrat and the GOP is a spectator. Ard’s withdrawal made that outcome certain.

Voters are still entitled to the blunt reading of what happened after he left: the party did not replace him in the one Kitsap House race where the incumbent has both a vacated prison record and a fresh ethics fine. That is a failure of opposition politics. It is also a failure of the Republican Party to take its own argument into a district it has already decided it cannot win.

Yes, the numbers say this is a Democratic stronghold. Winning would be difficult. Not even trying is something else. It advertises the pessimism that has settled over the Kitsap and Washington Republican parties in seats like this one. A candidate can ride party loyalty only so far, and Simmons has tested that limit. A challenger who was not bound by the other party’s rule against attacking its own, and who had a party willing to fund the fight, could have made the ethics order the center of the race. The will was not there. The name came off the ballot.

What Kitsap should take from this

Hold two ideas at the same time.

People can change. The Supreme Court said so about this specific person, on this specific record, in a unanimous opinion. Vacating old felonies is now Washington law. Mocking recovery is cheap talk.

People who change still have to follow the rules that apply to everyone else who holds a gavel. A redemption story is not a waiver from the Ethics in Public Service Act. It is not a waiver from surplus-fund statutes. And it is not a reason for one of the two major parties to leave a legislative seat uncontested. The redemption story also gets weaker each time the same person is found to have broken the rules that apply after the comeback.

Democrats will keep backing Simmons because she is their proof-of-concept, because she is plugged into money and leadership, and because the 23rd belongs to them on paper. She will likely win in November because the only remaining opponent is another Democrat 20 points behind her who will not make the ethics case the whole campaign. Republicans will tell you the district is unwinnable. That is easier to say after your candidate has already quit.

Ballots go in the mail by October 9. The general election is November 3. Integrity. Accountability. Representation. If you want a different result in the 23rd, the time to recruit was filing week. The time to vote is now.