AP reporter leaves to work for Sam Reed

OLYMPIA – David Ammons, the venerable dean of the state Capitol press corps and one of the country’s senior statehouse reporters, is leaving the Associated Press after 37 years to serve as communications director for Secretary of State Sam Reed.

Ammons, 59, announced his plans Friday. He will begin working for Reed, the state’s top elections officer, on May 5.

“It’s difficult for us to imagine AP Olympia without Dave Ammons, and we’d like to bottle his institutional memory before he goes,” said Jodie DeJonge, the AP’s Washington bureau chief.

Reed said he has admired the veteran reporter for many years “for his professionalism, fairness, integrity and knowledge.”

“I’m delighted that a person of his stature and reputation agreed to take this key position in my office,” Reed said.

Ammons, a North Carolina native who grew up in Vancouver, Wash., joined the news cooperative’s Seattle bureau in 1970 after graduating from the University of Washington.

He joined the AP’s Olympia staff in 1971 and stayed nearly four decades, serving as the AP’s chief Washington state political reporter and columnist. He has covered every legislative session since 1972, eight presidential campaigns, eight governors and countless elected officials at every level.

Ammons also was the AP’s lead reporter on the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption – getting a seat on the last airplane to fly over the blast zone. He also reported on the search for infamous skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

Ammons’ insightful political coverage has spanned a generation, from the ambitious agenda of three-term Republican Gov. Dan Evans, to initiative promoter Tim Eyman’s confession about misappropriating campaign money, to the historically close 2004 governor’s election.

One of the most intriguing stories from Ammons’ long news career involves his acquaintance with a bright young staffer on the 1972 Evans campaign, whom Ammons tabbed as a rising star in political circles. He was Ted Bundy, executed years later as one of the country’s most notorious serial killers.

“I came back and said, ‘You know, we really ought to watch this guy. He’s going places,’ ” Ammons recalled Friday. “Yeah – the death chamber.”