Joel Connelly, longtime Seattle political columnist, dies
Joel Connelly got his start in newspapers with a temporary summer job at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the 1970s.
He went on to a career spanning more than five decades as a reporter and columnist, becoming one of the Pacific Northwest's most renowned political commentators and a staunch advocate for the region's wilderness areas.
Even after officially retiring from the news business in 2020, Connelly kept writing about politics, publishing his final article - a look at a key midterm Alaska Senate race - over the weekend.
Connelly died Wednesday at 78 after years of declining health, with family at his side.
His death drew an outpouring of tributes from former colleagues, politicians and devoted readers.
Gov. Bob Ferguson called Connelly our state's premier political analyst" in a post on X.
"He had a real gift for weaving our state's political history into his stories," Ferguson said. "I had the good fortune of getting to know Joel well, and I'm saddened by his death. Our state is poorer for it. My prayers are with his family."
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray in a statement on X said Connelly "did important shoe-leather reporting. We didn't always agree, but that's not how he'd ever have wanted it - he knew his top job was to hold our leaders accountable."
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said Connelly covered politics "with unmatched wit and wisdom" and was "as integral to the Post-Intelligencer as the globe that topped the building."
Connelly grew up in Bellingham, graduated from Notre Dame and was attending graduate school at the University of Washington when he landed his initial summer P-I job.
He was hired full time by the newspaper in 1973 and went on to write about national and state politics for decades, interviewing four presidents and covering every major election.
Throughout his life, Connelly was driven by his Catholic faith and a deep love of the Pacific Northwest's forests, mountains and waters, becoming a fierce advocate for wilderness protections. He loved to hike and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the region's peaks and trails.
His first P-I scoop exposed a land-swap plan that would have resulted in heavy logging at Bellingham's Larrabee State Park, his former P-I colleague Casey McNerthney recalled in an obituary for MyNorthwest.com. Within 48 hours of the disclosure, the plan was nixed.
Connelly later reported doggedly on the collapse of the Washington Public Power Supply System - an ill-fated plan to build nuclear power plants that resulted in the largest municipal bond default in U.S. history. That work by Connelly and other P-I staffers was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize.
Connelly described his guiding principle as zealously defending "a part of the world that is not yet wrecked and firmly believing in not letting it get that way," said Bellamy Pailthorp, one of Connelly's stepdaughters, who works as a public radio reporter covering environmental issues in Washington.
Former colleagues remembered Connelly for his keen memory and deep knowledge of history and politics.
"He had so many sources. He was so widely respected by so many people in the politics business. He could get anybody on the phone," said David McCumber, the managing editor of the P-I from 2000 to 2009.
"His copy was unbelievable. He was a terrific writer," McCumber added. "He didn't need any help from an editor in general. He knew more than his editors."
Connelly worked for a time in the P-I's Washington, D.C., bureau and reported from across the country, venturing to the Iowa caucuses and reporting on key races in other states.
"I thought he would be this bigger than life kind of guy. He was always in his corner of the newsroom with this really cluttered desk," McNerthney said. "Everybody knew him. The whole city knew him."
Despite Connelly's iconic status at the P-I, he was approachable and generous with his time, McNerthney recalled, and seemed "energized by the younger people around him."
Connelly worked through the Hearst Corporation's shutdown of the P-I as a print publication in 2009, when most of the staff was laid off. He stayed on with a smaller team of mostly younger reporters and editors in an online-only newsroom.
His columns and articles were not without missteps.
In 2018, seattlepi.com took the unusual step of unpublishing an article Connelly wrote detailing ex-Seattle Mayor Ed Murray's views about a proposed city business tax.
The piece drew blowback for portraying Murray as a civic dealmaker while glossing over child sexual abuse allegations that had led him to resign in 2017. An editor's note about the article's removal said it failed to meet the publication's standards.
Connelly retired from seattlepi.com in 2020, announcing gratitude for long holding a job that "at times, allowed me to make a difference."
But even after that ostensible retirement, he kept writing regularly for other online publications, including Post Alley and for the Northwest Progressive Institute.
Andrew Villeneuve, the institute's founder, developed a 20-year friendship with Connelly and admired his advocacy against oil drilling and gold mines that threatened wilderness areas.
"He was often feisty and argumentative, and sometimes downright irritable, but he was also very compassionate and kind-hearted," Villeneuve wrote in a tribute to Connelly. "Not being able to talk to Joel anymore is going to be hard … really hard …"
In his final years, Connelly's health declined due to complications from diabetes, Villeneuve said, and he and other friends and family eventually persuaded Connelly to move from his longtime home in Madrona to assisted living at Horizon House on First Hill.
While the move was made somewhat begrudgingly, Villeneuve said Connelly found an active community there that he enjoyed and recently delivered an hourlong talk there to fellow residents about his life.
Connelly was preceded in death by his longtime partner, Michelle "Mickie Pailthorp, an attorney and environmental and women's rights activist, who died in 2002.
He is survived by his three stepchildren from that relationship: Bellamy, Melissa and Aaron Pailthorp. A public memorial service is in the works but details have not been announced.
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