Forty years of service

Term limits are ending Snohomish County Councilman Gary Nelson's four decades of public service. Were it up to the voters, the popular politician might be in office, well, forever.

Nelson steps down at the end of the year with his reputation intact and the respect of his colleagues. That's no small feat after 40 years of pushing and shoving in the political arena. Lyndon Johnson was president when the young Air Force veteran was recruited to run for the Edmonds City Council. Four years later, county Republicans were looking for a candidate for the Legislature.

Nelson would go on to represent the 21st District for more than two decades as a state representative and two-term state senator. He brought equal amounts of political tenacity, public purposefulness and an engineer's attention to detail to the Snohomish County Council in the mid-1990s.

Nelson has had the power and prerogatives of leading and serving in the majority and the frustrations of the minority, in both the Legislature and the County Council. He gets kudos for fairness when he controlled the gavel, and for a professional and welcoming relationship with citizens appearing at council sessions and public hearings.

His departure also means the council is losing a broad, deep institutional memory about how state and local laws and regulations came into being, and what that meant for proposed changes.

Former Snohomish County County Executive Bob Drewel, a Democrat, nicely sums up Nelson's record and service as consistently more interested in public service than his own agenda.

Snohomish County and the state of Washington were the beneficiaries.