SNOHOMISH COUNTY—A Lynnwood Times investigation uncovers that Snohomish County Council candidate Kelli Johnson has not lived in the county for three consecutive years, leading to legal questions if she meets the residency qualifications to hold the office, if elected.
Elections in Snohomish County have officially kicked off, with 333 candidates vying for 182 offices. An incredible 95 of the 182 races are unopposed securing an almost certain victory for those candidates in the November 4th General Election. This Primary Election season, 63 candidates are vying to advance to the General Election in 20 races.
Races with a crowded Primary Election ballot this year will be Everett Mayor with four candidates, Everett City Council District 1 with five candidates, Marysville City Council Position 3 with five candidates, Mountlake Terrace City Council Position 3 with four candidates, and Mukilteo City Council with five candidates. The Lynnwood Times will be diving into these and other races in future articles.
The dynamic duo, Jared Mead (D-Mill Creek) and Nate Nehring (R-Arlington) are running unopposed for their respective Snohomish County Council seats, however, Sam Low (R-Lake Stevens) will face District 5 Primary Election challenger Democrat Kelli Johnson, an emergency room registered nurse at Providence Hospital in Everett and a UFCW3000 Union member, who is also running to be elected to the Board of Directors for the Washington State Nurses Association later in May.
Johnson, a resident of Snohomish County living in unincorporated Everett, bought her current residence, located just north of Mill Creek, on September 12, 2022, where she lives with her husband Eric Levenhagan, a U.S. Army veteran. Prior to residing in Snohomish County, she and her husband resided in King County, Seattle at 2335 NE 86th Street. Both a Marriage License Application, dated March 4, 2021, and a Certificate of Marriage, signed and dated March 22, 2021, of Kelli Johnson and Eric Levenhagan, lists the Seattle address of 2335 NE 86th Street as their address.
According to Snohomish County Code Section 4.30 Qualification — Limitations, the three requirements to be eligible for a candidate to hold the office of County Council Member are:
- Be a citizen of the United States over the age of twenty-one,
- A county resident for the three years immediately prior to filing for or appointment to office, and
- A registered voter of Snohomish County.
The current language of this section of the Snohomish County Code was amended, and adopted, and codified by Snohomish County voters in the 2006 General Election and went into effect on January 1, 2007.
Prior to the amendment’s codification in November of 2006, the language in Section 4.30 regarding residency read only “a three-year resident” and not the current language “a county resident for the three years immediately prior to filing for or appointment to office.” The language was amended “to clarify residency requirement” according to the 2006 Charter Review Commission Briefing Paper Miscellaneous Election Issues by Stephen Reinig, Administrative Analyst for the 2006 Charter Review Commission.
The purpose of the 2006 Charter Review Commission briefing paper was to provide “background and suggested language changes” related to changes being considered by the 2006 Charter Commission to “bring the Charter in compliance with state law.”
Because Johnson resided in Seattle from at least March 4, 2021, through to September 11, 2022, the earliest date for Johnson to allegedly meet the three-year residency requirement immediately prior to her May 9, 2025, filing would be May 9, 2022. However, according to a Lynnwood Times investigation, Johnson allegedly did not establish residence in Snohomish County until September 12, 2022—four full months short of the “three years immediately prior to filing” date requirement.
Also, the Lynnwood Times discovered public video testimony of Johnson publicly testifying in August 2022 (at the 23 minute mark) to the Snohomish County Council stating that she lived in Seattle—a month before her Everett home purchase in Snohomish County.
When contacted if she were aware of the three-year residency requirement to be eligible to hold the Snohomish County Council seat if elected, Johnson told the Lynnwood Times that she is “aware that there is a three-year requirement” but was told by the “election office” that “it would be up for interpretation if someone wanted to challenge whether or not I met the requirements,” with regards to living in Snohomish County for three “consecutive years.”
Johnson explained that prior to her moving from Seattle in September 2022, which is located in King County, to her home in unincorporated Everett, she briefly lived in Mountlake Terrace—a city located in South Snohomish County. According to a phone records search by the Lynnwood Times, Johnson lived in a Mountlake Terrace apartment from September 2019 to late 2020, before moving to Seattle until September 2022.
“I gave her the dates that I lived in Mountlake Terrace, Snohomish,” Johnson told the Lynnwood Times in a phone interview, “And then I gave her the dates of where I live now. And what I was told was that it would be up for interpretation.”
When asked about the intent of the language could be viewed as a consecutive three-year requirement without a break in Snohomish County residency, Johnson replied: “I made it a point to call and ask if that definition included consecutive years in a row, how that was defined. And they said it wasn’t clearly defined, and it was up for interpretation. So, if there’s no language that says I had to have been a resident consecutively three years in a row in order to be eligible, then the total time that I have been a resident of Snohomish County between Mountlake Terrace and where I’m at currently in unincorporated Everett, it’s almost four years.”
On inquiring with the Snohomish County Auditor’s Office if the intent of a three-year residency requirement prior to filing to hold office is consecutive, Sierra Cornelius, Communications and Public Engagement Officer, told the Lynnwood Times that “under state law, we are prohibited from providing legal advice… For this reason, our staff are also very careful to simply point people to the requirements of the position without interpretation or confirming that a person meets the qualifications to run or serve in office.”
Cornelius explained that when an individual files for office, the Auditor’s Office confirms that the person is a registered voter and, if required, is registered in the district for the office.
“Our statutory role does not include confirming qualifications to hold office, such as age or length of residency,” Cornelius wrote in her statement to the Lynnwood Times. “A candidacy can be challenged in superior court, or a jurisdiction will ultimately determine eligibility to hold an elected office when they seat winners to positions after an election.”
According to the language in the Snohomish County Code, the word “immediately” follows the three-year requirement and precedes the words “prior to filing” — e.g. “a county resident for the three years immediately prior to filing for or appointment to office.”
In Black’s Law Dictionary, “immediately” is defined as “without interval of time, without delay, straightway, or without any delay or lapse of time.” However, in caselaw, “immediately” is subject to a reasonableness standard.
A “reasonableness standard” refers to how a judge would assess whether the county’s three-year residency requirement has been met by Johnson in a practical and fair manner.
The phrase “immediately prior” suggests no significant breaks in residency during the three years prior to the May 9, 2025, filing date; however, a court may apply a reasonableness standard to minor interruptions. For example, a court may deem temporary absences (e.g., for work, travel, or education) reasonable if the individual maintained legal ties to Snohomish County such as maintaining a domicile and/or voter registration in the county.
Despite her approximately 20-month gap to physically living within Snohomish County for the last 5.67 years, Johnson has been working in the county, specifically Everett, for over five years, she told the Lynnwood Times. She emphasized to the Lynnwood Times that she is not trying the “game the system just to be a politician.”
“If there’s someone who’s solely interested in being a politician and they’re looking for any way that they can easily win an election and therefore be a politician, I don’t think that that’s really fair and I think that that’s what these rules are intending to address,” Johnson said.
Johnson added that if she were attempting to “game the system” then she “did a terrible job picking an office where I’m going to have to run against Sam Low.”
“He [Low] is someone that I’ve worked with multiple times over the past year, year and a half, related to nursing issues,” Johnson said. “He’s been super helpful to me and very nice to me. And so, when I did make the decision to file, I was like, this is probably going to be one of the toughest people that I’m going to be running against and someone that I really, really like who’s in office.”
When asked why she decided to run against someone she liked who is in office, Johnson replied, “If I want to make changes that I’ve been dying to see for the past few years, like I got to start somewhere. And I think Snohomish County Council is a great place to start if I get lucky enough to win against Sam Low.”
Johnson told the Lynnwood Times she appreciates that Snohomish County “is one of the few counties I think I see where both the Democrats and the Republicans figure out how to work together.”
She is running for the same reason she became a nurse, “To help people.”
“My time in the ER the past few years has just shown me that there’s more that I could be doing beyond the ER,” Johnson said.
Author: Mario Lotmore
3 Responses
We have quite a winner here. If you want to do something start local, you don’t jump to county wide leadership (of a county that you’ve barely lived in). Obviously she feels that she is special and has all the answers. Why do we keep having people move here and love to tell us what to do? Is it a Democrat thing?
It looks to me like we have yet another lefty Democrat who simply made a calculated decision to grandstand and take a run at county wide government when she( hope She doesn’t mind the pronoun I chose for Her) is Clearly Unqualified by virtue of her residency! I hope that Sam Low challenges her qualifications!
We can always count on Democrats to flout laws and election rules. After all, this is the same party that is attempting to give citizenship and voting rights to millions of illegals. What is a residency requirement to such traitors?