From legal assistant to campaign manager

Published 9:00 am Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Brenda Snyder still remembers the evening she was asked to stand in front of Judge David Larson.

It was the most nervous she’s ever been.

But Snyder wasn’t in any trouble. She was called upon by the Federal Way Municipal Court Judge to serve.

Unbeknownst to her, she was hand-picked by the consulting firm in charge of helping Larson during his run for Washington State Supreme Court Justice. All parties involved chose Snyder, a legal assistant with no prior political experience, to manage Larson’s run for the state’s highest court.

With Get-Out-the-Vote efforts ramping up now for Snyder and the Larson campaign, Snyder said she never expected her days to be this hectic.

“Life is insane,” Snyder laughed. “Fiercely insane. The days are busy. Days end only because time in a day does. I leave the office and go home, but my phone continues to go, emails continue to pour in, and I continue to check up on things. There’s a constant flow… All. The. Time.”

No job is too small for Snyder. At the moment, she works on drafting and preparing voter guides.

From arguing law to making it

Prior to becoming Larson’s campaign manager, Snyder worked as a paralegal for a criminal defense firm.

But she happened to have a close friend working for the consulting firm Larson hired to manage his bid for the bench. Due to the challenges she faces with staying calculated and organized as a legal assistant, her name was immediately passed on to Larson when his team was crafting its short list for campaign managers.

A phone call was received and an invitation to lunch was extended. Snyder thought she was just catching up with an old friend.

“Part of being a campaign manager is to know details and multitask,” Snyder said. “Letting your brain be overwhelmed all the time. Anyway, I went in and met with the principal of the firm, and we both thought it would be a good fit. But Dave needed to meet me to see if he wanted me managing his campaign. I think it was equally important for both of us.”

After the meeting, Snyder was on top of the world. She said she abruptly walked into her boss’s office at her law firm and quit her job.

Snyder said that, while she was happy with her position at the firm, she was at a career crossroad of sorts. She was looking for something she could do and make her own; something on which she could leave her mark.

With the state Supreme Court race, Snyder said the ability to have legal knowledge in terms of policy, and the opportunity to fight for the law through a political campaign is what drew her interest.

“The judicial politics side of things is really what drew me in,” Snyder said. “I thought it was all really interesting and an interesting way to have the best of both worlds that I want to know more about.”

Teaching is sort of her thing

Teaching and leading is in Snyder’s blood. It’s what she knows. She’s used to educating attorneys on what they need to know and what will help them win a case.

With the Larson campaign, Snyder says she educates the public on what her candidate believes and what he plans to do if elected to the state’s highest court.

There’s a reason it comes naturally: Teaching is exactly what Snyder did prior to entering the legal field. She was a teacher in India, and she eventually opened her own performing arts school.

“Walking a different path is not uncommon for me,” Snyder laughed. “There’s always a question of stability with me (from friends and family). It was a question I really didn’t know the answer to. But when you know something’s the right thing to do, you do it.

No “what if” questions

A few days after her initial meeting with the consulting firm, it was finally time for Snyder to come face-to-face with Larson. The firm set up a casual dinner to be attended by Larson, firm employees and Snyder.

Snyder said Larson wanted to know about her professional and personal background.

Knowing the stature and reputation of her would-be boss, Snyder said her nerves were wracked when she approached Larson for the first time.

“We ended up both really hitting it off,” Snyder said. “But I was terrified. I was shaking, he was in casual clothes. I’ve never seen a judge in casual clothes. Working in the legal field, it goes: Judges on the bench, then the attorneys, then us assistants running in and out of court, staying behind the wall. We’re real quiet and we hope to not be seen.”

Snyder said she was hit with both respect and awe at “the man in the black robe” and admitted she was completely unsure how to address Larson before and during the meeting.

“Do I call him ‘your honor,’ be extremely formal? In my world it’s against the law to talk to a judge,” Snyder said. “Meeting a judge, you always have a learned respect. So, I was like, ‘Um, do I call you “your honor,” do I call you Dave?’ And he laughed at me and said, ‘You call me Dave.'”

Despite having a secure position as a legal assistant with no “what-if questions,” Snyder decided to take the risk and join the temporary, seasonal, uncertain world of campaign staff. She said the choice to leave the the legal field for the campaign trail was daunting at first, but the opportunity to potentially serve law at a higher level was too intriguing.

“You weigh it,” she said. “Do I take this campaign position, a seasonal thing, and give up what I know for… this? Or do I stay with what I know? It’s that crossroad of taking a risk and something great happening or staying in our comfort zone and wondering ‘what if’. I don’t like ‘what-if’ questions, so I took the risk.”

Summer time and the living isn’t easy

Snyder officially started in June. That first week on the campaign trail, she said, was extremely difficult, and she’d take home notes three- to six-inches thick and spend most of the evening studying everything possible about Larson.

But all the studying and talking with Larson on long car rides, as well as hearing him speak at innumerable events, has made her endless duties easier as time’s gone on.

“I find myself writing things and I’ll end up sounding like him because we speak so much,” Snyder said. “And I hear how he talks at events. So now I write something, he might change a word here and there, but he usually just looks at me and says ‘giddy-up,’ which is his way of saying, ‘Get it out to the people.'”

For the first couple of weeks of the campaign, Snyder couldn’t bring herself to call Larson by his first name. She even found herself introducing him to an audience by saying, “This is Judge Larson.”

“This is Dave,” he’d remind her.

Stand up for the right thing

At this point, Snyder and Larson have worked together for nearly five months. The two don’t get to sit down and talk much.

But when Snyder was struggling to find her feet in the beginning, Larson told her a story; an insight into the judicial world from a judge’s eye.

“There’s an attitude that we’re supposed to stand when the judge walks in the room,” she recited. “Some people don’t stand; that’s fine. He sees it as, ‘The ones who are standing are reminding me that, “I better get this right.”‘ He’s taking power out of it and replacing it with service.”

To Snyder, the story illustrates how courtrooms are not supposed to be for “one side or the other.” Rather, it’s all a greater service to the individuals moving through the judicial system. From families to victims to defendants, it has nothing to do with power.

From what if to what’s next

Snyder and her future are much like the election outcome: yet to be determined. What if Larson wins? What if Larson loses? Both are important questions for Snyder and her family.

But she hasn’t given the “what ifs” much thought.

“No time,” she said. “Still a lot of work to be done.”

No matter which outcome Snyder has to face, at the moment she’s focused on what her candidate believes in most: service.

“You work toward this goal you’re so passionate about; something you know is the right thing,” Snyder said. “When you see the passion and the heart put into this… it’s life.”