Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler will be leaving office in January 2025. (Courtesy of Washington state Office of the Insurance Commissioner)
Mike Kreidler, currently Washington’s oldest and longest-serving statewide elected official, exits the public stage next week, ending a political career spanning six decades.
He’s retiring after six terms as state insurance commissioner, a tenure in which he oversaw the expansion of consumer protections and fraud investigations and the regulation of insurers coping with increasingly complex challenges such as climate change.
In a half-hour podcast aired Monday, Kreidler, 81, touched on dilemmas faced, lessons learned and highlights of the job he first got elected to in 2000.
“For me, it’s being able to help people, to be able to have a health insurance system the way it’s supposed to be,” he said on the agency production, OIC Answers.
But he’s ready to get out and rototill the backyard and get planting.
“I’m gonna use my John Deere tractor,” he said, bemoaning the lack of hours he’s been able to spend at the wheel.