She also provided me with some sage advice while I was a party official.

Marchioro kicked the Democrats into shape

A key section:

She came into politics at a time when Sens. Magnuson and Jackson ran things using personal networks. The Democratic “headquarters” was a musty Arctic Building office, populated by musty people.

For a while in the late 1970s, there were two Democratic parties in the state — a liberal party under Marchioro, and a rump faction aligned with Gov. Dixy Lee Ray.

After years of mutual loathing, Jackson’s forces and party peaceniks made peace: Marchioro was a key player.

As you can see, these fights between the DINO’s and the progressives aren’t a new fight, and Karen was there at the barricades. A true loss to the Democrats and progressives state-wide.

The P-I also has an very informative obituary:

Even before 1981, when the suburban mother of seven and one-time anti-Vietnam war activist began a 12-year tenure as the party’s chairwoman, she had started transforming it from a relatively conservative, lopsidedly rural-dominated organization into a liberal one and the state’s dominant party.

She did so by suing and then out-organizing the Democrats’ old-guard leadership.

And an informative piece of history that I didn’t know about:

She became party chairwoman of the Eastside’s heavily Republican 48th District two years later and then King County chairwoman. The county organization became the liberal counterweight to the more conservative state party, dominated by Jackson forces and the rural counties.

Marchioro and her allies sued the state party to try to overturn a state law that gave each county two members of the state Democratic central committee. It led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the state party convention the power to ignore state law in choosing the composition of the central committee.

The party then added two members from each legislative district, breaking the smaller counties’ lock on state party control. After a protracted parliamentary battle with the party’s old guard, Marchioro was elected state chairwoman.

Today, one can argue that the legislative district organizations have much more influence than the county organizations based simply on having state party delegates. In many ways, the county organization’s focus is now solely limited to local races.