For the first time, a woman will be honored with her name on a Capitol Campus building

The new office building on Olympia’s Capitol Campus has been named after former Democratic state lawmaker Helen Sommers, marking the first time lawmakers have named a campus building after a woman.

The state Legislature approved a resolution last week to christen the offices at 106 11th Avenue after Sommers, who died in 2017 at age 84.

The resolution passed this year following a protracted fight over the name in 2017 between Republicans and Democrats that also held up a symbolic tribute to the late Sen. Andy Hill. Hill, a Redmond Republican, died after a recurrence of lung cancer in 2016 at age 54.

Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler of Ritzville has long argued the 106 11th Avenue Building was irresponsibly expensive and that Sommers — who had been a budget writer with a reputation as a fiscal moderate — would have disliked it.

Democrats, led by state Rep. Eileen Cody of Seattle, said naming the new building after Sommers would be a fitting tribute.

Republicans held a voting majority the Senate in 2017, but Democrats won full control of the Legislature in a special election last fall, paving the way for the building to be named after Sommers.

When Sommers “was first elected in 1972, there were only 12 women on the floor at that time,” Cody said in a floor speech last week before the building name was approved in the House. “So I think it’s very appropriate that she would be the first woman that gets a building on the Capitol Campus named after her.”

In a moment of legislative discord, the two parties last year tried to cut a deal to trade the Sommers tribute for a tribute to Hill.

The GOP hoped to name a state cancer research fund after Hill.

That swap failed and neither measure passed.

With the Sommers building secured, Democrats in the House on Monday approved the tribute to Hill, sending it to Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk. Both bills passed with broad bipartisan support.

State Sen. Joe Fain, R-Auburn, applauded renaming the cancer research fund after Hill in a floor speech last week. Fain said he was close friends with Hill, who negotiated budgets for Senate Republicans.

“I know perfectly that well (Hill) would find this a little superfluous — he was not much for honorifics and would probably wonder why we’re wasting our time naming things after him,” Fain said. “But I suppose it’s the type of people that feel that way about these kind of honors that are most deserving of that type of honor.”

Sen. David Frockt, a Seattle Democrat, also spoke on the Senate floor before the vote on Hill’s legislation to decry the back-and-forth “bickering” about the tributes to both Sommers and Hill.

Frockt described being in budget negotiations last summer when talks of a tribute-swap were ongoing.

“I literally thought to myself, ‘It’s the middle of June and we’re arguing over this,’ ” he said. “And I thought, ‘How stupid. How stupid that we can’t just recognize literally both great public servants.’ ”

The State Patrol occupies most of the soon-to-be Sommers building and is currently in the process of moving in.

Sommers represented Seattle in the Legislature for 36 years. Hill was first elected in 2010.

Cody, in her floor speech, celebrated.

Sommers is “definitely is a piece of Washington state history,” she said.

This story was originally published January 23, 2018 at 7:30 AM with the headline "For the first time, a woman will be honored with her name on a Capitol Campus building."