‘Working for the people’: Colleagues remember Joyce Mulliken

FLORENCE, Ariz. — Former colleagues remembered longtime 13th Legislative District’s Joyce Mulliken as a hard working legislator who knew how to negotiate and cared a great deal about the people she was elected to serve.

Mulliken died on June 26 in Arizona of cancer. She was 75.

“She was a great person and we had a good life together,” said Mulliken’s husband Mike. “Her main focus in life was helping others. She loved to help people, and that is one of the main reasons she got into the legislature.”

Mulliken was first elected to the Washington State House of Representatives in 1994 and served four terms before winning a seat in the state Senate, where she served for three years before being appointed to the Growth Management Hearings Board in 2006.

Mike said Joyce loved life, loved people and was a devout Roman Catholic who kept in contact with the congregation at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Ephrata despite retiring to Arizona in 2012.

“She was never sick until this happened, until last year,” Mike said. “She just lived life to the fullest.”

Sen. Phil Fortunato, R-Auburn, described Mulliken as a mentor and one of the few Republican legislators who knew how to negotiate effectively with legislative Democrats — and had walked out in the past to get what she felt was best for her constituents.

“In 2017, the GOP had the majority in the Senate, and we did the budget. It was a good budget, it funded everything and it didn’t raise taxes,” Fortunato said, adding the proposed Democrat budget contained $8 billion in new taxes. “She told me, ‘You’ve started where you want to finish. What do you have to give up?’”

Fortunato said he also remembers Mulliken, who knew sign language, going up into the gallery when a group of deaf kids visited the capitol building, and conversing with them.

“She was a unique blend, to have that soft and very friendly and outgoing and be very tough. But not nasty,” he said. “She got what she wanted and she was tough at it.”

Bill Hinkle, a former state senator from Kittitas County, as well as a current member of the Growth Management Hearings Board, said he continued to speak regularly with Mulliken and seek her advice, and was elected to fill the House of Representative seat she vacated when she was elected to the Senate.

“It’s kind of a shocker. I just talked to her, and it’s always hard to lose a colleague,” Hinkle said. “She was a hard working person, always working for the people, and she served God and her country.”

Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, said he knew Mulliken before she got into politics, and described the former legislator as courageous and never afraid to take a stand.

“We didn’t always agree, but we always managed to reach an understanding, no matter what the issue,” Dent said. “Joyce was a problem solver and had a certain energy about her. She will be missed greatly.”