Locke will join Seattle law firm

Olympia Former Gov. Gary Locke, the country’s first Chinese-American governor, will join a blue-chip Seattle law firm, specializing in Asia trade and energy policy.

Locke, 55, will join Davis Wright Tremaine as a partner in mid-March, the former Democratic governor and the firm announced Tuesday. The salary was not disclosed, but it’s expected to be much higher than the $145,000 he made as governor.

Davis Wright has offices in Seattle, Bellevue, Anchorage, Portland, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Shanghai, with more than 400 attorneys.

Locke said the new post is a perfect fit, since it allows him to work in fields that greatly interested him as governor, including trade and foreign relations, energy policy and working on intergovernmental relations.

He said he expects to spend considerable time in Asia, which he visited repeatedly as governor. His wife Mona’s parents live part of the year in Shanghai, he noted.

“To a degree most of us in Seattle don’t realize, Gov. Locke is extremely famous in China,” said Norm Page, chairman of the firm’s executive committee and co-chairman of the China Practice Group. “Gov. Locke has been very active in helping Washington state companies that want to do business in China.”

Locke, who grew up in the housing projects of Seattle, not speaking English until he entered kindergarten, eventually went to Yale on a scholarship and got his law degree from Boston University.

He was a deputy King County prosecutor for seven years. He served in the state House for 11 years, was King County executive for three years and Democratic governor for eight years.

He announced in the summer of 2003 that he would not seek a third four-year term.

After leaving office last month, Locke, his wife and their three young children moved back to their Queen Anne home in Seattle. Mona Locke, a television newswoman before she became first lady, will join KIRO-TV in April, working on documentaries and special features.

School board candidates to be interviewed

The public is invited to attend interviews today and Thursday with six candidates vying for the open seat on the Central Valley School District Board of Directors.

Longtime board member Craig Holmes resigned in January.

The vacant position represents District 2, in the western half of the school district’s boundaries.

The current applicants are required to live within that district, and will be appointed to serve on the five-member board until November when the position is up for re-election.

The six candidates are: Blair Archibald, Tom Dingus, Lavonne Martelle, Chris Haase, Matthew Hawkins and Skip Bonuccelli, who was formerly the public relations officer for the district.

Half of the applicants will be interviewed today, starting at 3:30 p.m. at the Central Valley School District Teaching and Learning Center, 19307 E. Cataldo. The other half will be interviewed Thursday, also beginning at 3:30 p.m., said Melanie Rose, district spokeswoman. Each interview will last one half-hour.

The board will meet after the interviews Thursday at 5 p.m. to discuss the interviews.

They hope to make a decision at the Feb. 28 board meeting, Rose said.

Senator’s son faces three drug charges

Tacoma The son of state Sen. Pam Roach, R-Sumner, has been charged with selling OxyContin to a police informant last fall, Pierce County prosecutors said Tuesday.

Stephen Andrew Roach, 24, was charged Friday in Pierce County Superior Court with three counts of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance and two counts of unlawful possession of a controlled substance with the intent to deliver it. He is to be arraigned Feb. 24.

Deputy Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said Sen. Roach was not at the home when her son was arrested in September.

“There’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that she was there or had any knowledge of what was going on,” he said.

Sen. Roach declined to comment Tuesday.

OxyContin typically is abused by crushing the pills and then snorting the powder or mixing it with water so it can be injected to get a heroin-like high.

Stephen Roach sold an informant the narcotic pain relievers on three occasions between August and September, including once at the Sumner house where an informant videotaped him snorting some of the drugs, Lindquist said.

Lindquist said that if convicted of all charges, Roach faces up to just over eight years in prison, plus an additional three years because of a firearm enhancement charge. When Roach was arrested, officers found Oxycontin pills, more than $3,500, marijuana and three guns.

Controversial professor won’t appear at UO

Eugene, Ore.

The University of Oregon canceled an appearance by a professor who has come under heavy criticism for an essay suggesting the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists were justified.

Ward Churchill, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado, was scheduled to appear at an April 1 conference on race and immigration issues in the post-Sept. 11 era.

The university removed him from the list of speakers more than two weeks ago, shortly after his planned appearance at New York’s Hamilton College pushed him into the national spotlight. Hamilton officials had to cancel his appearance after receiving thousands of protests, including threats of violence. Oregon’s decision to follow suit is at least the fourth engagement struck from Churchill’s calendar.

Margaret Hallock, director of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, said that once the controversy erupted, it became clear that having Churchill on campus would shift the focus of the conference away from its intended subject.