State Legacy Project adds tribute to Jennifer Dunn

Jennifer Dunn The latest extraordinary Washingtonian to be spotlighted by an oral history program, The Legacy Project, Jennifer Dunn is the subject of a new biography released last week by the Office of Secretary of State.

Dunn’s story joins eight oral histories that have been published online as part of the project that operates on a shoestring budget and involves no publication cost. Subjects include former First Lady Nancy Bell Evans, astronaut Bonnie J. Dunbar, Bremerton civil rights pioneer Lillian Walker, and Krist Novoselic, the Nirvana rocker who became a civic activist.

The stories of former Governor Booth Gardner, Senator Gorton, and other oral histories are in preparation.

The Legacy Project is a partner in the Washington State Heritage Center that is planned for the Capitol Campus and statewide on the Internet.

The Dunn project, including a biography, facts at-a-glance, and scrapbook photographs, was published last week online at www. sos.wa.gov/legacyproject/.

Secretary of State Sam Reed joined the Dunn family in a rollout ceremony Feb. 10 in Bellevue.

“It is my great pleasure to honor the amazing Jennifer Dunn with a biography that tells her inspiring story as a political trailblazer in both Washingtons,” Reed said.

“She used her position to advance the idea that politics and government are a noble calling, and that civility and collaboration can achieve much more than negativism and partisan gridlock. Her story will serve as a great example for girls and women who aspire to public service. She was a class act, and a genuine friend to many.”

It is the first posthumous biography published as part of The Legacy Project.

Dunn’s history was written by Trova Heffernan based on interviews with family and colleagues, press coverage and interviews with Dunn during her lengthy career, and other archival materials.

On Jennifer Dunn

Dunn bounded onto the political stage as an effective political activist while rearing two young sons as a single mother.

She eventually became the first female leader of the state Republican Party and went on to acclaim as a high-ranking member of Congress and a voice of civility in politics and government.

A distant cousin of Sen. Slade Gorton, Jennifer Jill Blackburn was born in Seattle in 1941 to Jack Blackburn, a Canadian immigrant, and Helen Gorton. After graduating from Bellevue public schools, she graduated from Stanford University and worked for IBM while participating in grassroots politics.

She married Dennis Dunn, a Harvard graduate, in 1965, and they had two sons, Bryant and Reagan, named for Jennifer Dunn’s political hero, Ronald Reagan.

The Dunns divorced in 1979. She worked hard for Ronald Reagan’s losing battle for the GOP presidential nomination in 1976, and other campaigns, eventually becoming state Republican chairwoman, serving for more than a decade.

In 1992, the year of a Democratic landslide, she was elected congresswoman from the 8th District, the only Republican member of the house delegation in 1993 and 1994. She served until 2005, rising to vice chair of the majority conference, at the time the highest rank held by a woman in the House. She was a frequent spokeswoman for the party, delivering the GOP response to the State of the Union Address in 1999.

She co-chaired the Iraqi women’s caucus in Congress, expanded the AMBER Alert program, battled the federal estate tax, and urged her party to soften its sometimes bellicose rhetoric. She was an early supporter of Gov. George W. Bush for president.

She retired from Congress and joined the public policy section of a major law firm. She married a Brit, Keith Thomson, who later said, “She was an extraordinary, extraordinary human being and I was just privileged to know her. She was enormously emotionally involved in helping people, helping women particularly.”

She died in November 2004 of a blood clot in her lung at the age of 66.

“Her love was pure. It was perfect and it was permanent,” her son Bryant said.