Max Vekich, candidate for Seattle Port Commission Position 4, has been active in healthcare issues since he began his political career.

He has been a political activist since the age of 18, when he first became a precinct committee officer for the Democratic Party.

At 28, he was elected to the Washington State Legislature as a Democratic representative from the 35th district, which covers parts of Grays Harbor, Thurston, Mason and Kitsap counties. He spent eight years in the Legislature, 1983-1990, the last four of which he sat on the House Committee on Health Care alongside now U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell.

After being elected to the Legislature, Vekich says, he received a shocking and saddening introduction to healthcare issues when he saw five children in the Bremerton area with medical expenses that topped half a million dollars before they were even six months old.

This experience inspired Vekich’s “First Steps” legislation, passed into law in 1989.



The law focuses on maternity care for low-income women and healthcare services for children living in poverty. It also includes an educational outreach program stressing the “importance of obtaining maternity care early during pregnancy.” Vekich secured $42.8 million for the program.

Vekich and Cantwell were also sponsors of Washington State’s Health Care Access Act of 1987, which created the Basic Health Plan (BHP). The BHP has received significant press recently because 40,000 low-income Washingtonians were at risk of being removed from the rolls due to budget cuts in the last legislative session. At the beginning of August, the state announced that instead of cutting a fixed number of people, rates would be increased.

Vekich’s work on healthcare legislation came as part of his political career, but within his own family, healthcare issues hit him far more personally.

In 1995, Ivy, his wife of 17 years, lost a long battle with cancer. “Healthcare is why I left politics,” Vekich says.

After her death, he raised their two children as a single father.

His wife’s battle with cancer was also an extremely expensive one. Through this experience, he says, “I became aware of the haves and the have-nots.” Based on that, he believed “what we needed was a more universal, national approach.”

After his wife’s death, he began serving his community in a different way. “I became involved in my union to help pay back the debt,” he says.

Through his union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 24, he remained involved in policy. In 1997 he was elected as a convention delegate and by 2001 was the local president.

Now he is ready to return to public life by running for the Seattle Port Commission.

The Port of Seattle is affected by healthcare policy every day. “The cost of cargo is cheaper through Canada because the cost of healthcare raises rates,” Vekich says.

He believes the current healthcare system is one that “helps our competition.”

In an interview on the Seattle Community Access Network, Vekich said, “We talk about competition with Canada. They have nationalized healthcare. They have a national health service. Take that out of the equation and American workers look a heck of a lot better.”

Vekich believes the Port of Seattle should be a player in the healthcare policy reform debate. “The Port should be weighing in,” he said.

The problems facing the Port, the state of Washington, and the country as a whole are not simple. But as Vekich says, “I was a state legislator. I’m used to tackling big problems.”

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