Steve O'Ban is an interesting guy. After a long career as an attorney, he finally indulged his passion for politics by running, and getting elected to the State House of Representatives in 2012, representing the 28th Legislative District, which encompasses Joint Base Lewis-Mcchord. He recently received an appointment to the state Senate after the sudden death of Sen. Mike Carrell. O'Ban has been married to his wife, Laurie, an instructor at Tacoma Community College, for 25 years. We caught up with O'Ban in between meetings as the Senate and House worked to pass a budget. He was funny, engaging and knew his stuff.

ON PUBLIC SERVICE: when I was fresh out of law school I had a job with a firm in Seattle and I was given the opportunity to go down to the legislature and be an attorney for the legislative session - that was 1988. I was fascinated with the opportunity to write laws and positively affect the people of the state of Washington. For the next 20 something years I worked and dipped my hand in politics, and the opportunity arose in 2010 to run for office so I took the opportunity. I lost in 2010 by a narrow margin and was elected to the House in 2012.

MINORITY VS MAJORITY: In the House I was in the minority and now I'm in the majority and there are greater opportunities to have influence on the bills but also a greater responsibility to govern. You look at the issues in a different way when you can shape the actual content of the legislation. In the minority you have very little opportunity to affect the content.

ON BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN JBLM AND THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITIES: It's a big issue. Forty percent of folks who separate from JBLM end up staying in our state and a high percentage of those end up in my district. I sponsored a bill to help folks who are separating and applying for public sector jobs get the preference points they deserve. The problem was you couldn't apply for those jobs until you had left the service, basically guaranteeing a period of unemployment. So my law allows servicemembers to benefit from those preference points while they are in the process of separating, so they can secure a job before they leave. It's a small change in the law but a big impact.

HIS FAMILY TIES: I have two sons at JBLM: One just graduated from West Point and he'll be here as his first posting - 2nd Stryker, and my other son is a Civil Air Specialist in the Army Reserves. It heightens the interest and it helps me be more aware of what happens on base.

BIG ISSUES: The transportation issue along the I-5 corridor. Transportation projects take so long, but now that I'm in the Senate I'm going to make it a top priority to get state and federal money focused on alleviating that area to help everybody, including the folks trying to get on base every morning. And education. We are really blessed with some great schools in my district, including Clover Park, which has a lot of military dependents. There are a lot of great programs to help military kids, especially during deployments that can be so unsettling to the family. With dads and moms deployed there can be educational issues, so I want to make sure we have funding to handle some of those unique issues.

FAVORITE SPOT FOR A QUICK BITE?: The teriyaki wok place by my house.