Reuven Carlyle

Legislative background

Carlyle was first elected to the Washington House of Representatives in 2008, representing the 36th legislative district as a Democrat. The district spans the Seattle neighborhoods of South Lake Union, Belltown, Queen Anne, Magnolia, Greenwood, Crown Hill, Blue Ridge. It is home of the iconic Space Needle in the Seattle Center, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and PATH as well as globally impactful companies including Amazon, F5 Networks, Expedia, Trident Seafoods, Juno Therapeutics and more. He was appointed to the state Senate in 2016 to succeed veteran Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles who was elected in 2015 to the King County Council.

During Carlyle’s seven years in the House he focused on a range of policy areas including budget, tax, higher education, transportation, health care, open data and election issues. He sponsored major legislation to reform higher education finance and improve the educational success of foster youth. Carlyle has been the prime sponsor of legislation in each year to abolish the death penalty and replace the policy with life in prison without the possibility of parole. Carlyle has been a critic of efforts to expand coal and oil trains and exports throughout the Pacific Northwest. He has been a vocal legal and political opponent of initiative promoter Tim Eyman's efforts to alter the state constitution to require a supermajority to raise taxes.

In 2013 Carlyle was appointed chair of the House Finance Committee and as a budget writer. During his three years as Finance chair, Carlyle sponsored legislation to provide transparency into Washington’s tax structure. He also passed major legislation to reinstate Washington’s estate tax as well reform the state’s telecommunications taxation. In the Finance role, he was a prime sponsor and a supporter of the accountability and transparency provisions of the Boeing tax package, widely considered the largest state tax incentive package in U.S. history. Carlyle was publicly critical of the abbreviated process of the special session.

Carlyle was named in 2012 as “one of 12 legislators in the nation to watch” by Governing Magazine. He was named one of the most “tech savvy” legislators in the nation by GovTech. He was named by the progressive organization Fuse as a champion of tax reform. In 2016 he was awarded the Ballard/Thompson Award by the Washington State Coalition for Open Government, the state’s premier organization for open government and public access to government information.

Personal

Carlyle resides in Seattle with his wife Dr. Wendy Carlyle an anesthesiologist practicing at Swedish Medical Center in Ballard. They have four school-age children: Adi, Liat, Zev and Nava. Carlyle grew up in Bellingham, Washington and developed his interest in government while serving as a teenage page in Congress. He served as a page for two years in the U.S. Senate for Senators Warren Magnuson and Henry “Scoop” Jackson, and one year in the House of Representatives where he served briefly as personal page to Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. Carlyle’s mother, Joan Hadiyah Carlyle, self-published her autobiography “A Torch in the Dark, one woman’s journey.”

Prior to his election, Carlyle was appointed by Governor Chris Gregoire in 2004 as a member of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. He crafted legislation in 2007 as a citizen activist for foster youth, Passport to College Promise, a scholarship program. Carlyle was a citizen co-founder of the Seattle/King County Chapter of City Year, a national AmeriCorps program.

Education

Carlyle received a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.