Matt Ready (Jefferson County Public Hospital District 2 (East Jefferson) Commissioner Board Position 3, Washington, candidate 2025)
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Matt Ready ran for election to the Jefferson County Public Hospital District 2 (East Jefferson) Commissioner Board Position 3 in Washington. He was on the ballot in the general election on November 4, 2025.[source]
Ready completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
[1]Biography
Matt Ready provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on October 6, 2025:
- Birth date: September 17, 1973
- Birth place: Washington DC, Washington District of Columbia
- High school: Walter Johnson High School
- Bachelor's: University of Maryland, 1995
- Gender: Male
- Religion: Agnostic
- Profession: Writer
- Incumbent officeholder: Yes
- Campaign slogan: Healthcare Access for All
- Campaign website
- Campaign Facebook
Elections
General election
General election for Jefferson County Public Hospital District 2 (East Jefferson) Commissioner Board Position 3
Stu Kerber and Matt Ready ran in the general election for Jefferson County Public Hospital District 2 (East Jefferson) Commissioner Board Position 3 on November 4, 2025.
Candidate | ||
| Stu Kerber (Nonpartisan) | ||
Matt Ready (Nonpartisan)  | ||
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Election results
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Ready in this election.
Campaign themes
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Matt Ready completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Ready's responses.
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I’ve lived in Port Townsend since 1998 and have spent most of my adult life serving this community through Jefferson Healthcare. I worked there for 15 years before being elected Hospital Commissioner in 2013, first in Information Systems as a technician, database administrator, and interim director, then in Performance Improvement helping departments analyze data, streamline operations, and improve patient care. Those years taught me how hospitals really work—from technology to teamwork to the human side of healthcare.
As a commissioner, I’ve focused on transparency, accountability, and protecting public control of our hospital district. I fought to ensure board meetings are recorded and accessible, advocated for one of the most generous charity care policies in the state, and pushed for honest governance guided by community values, not private interests.
Outside the boardroom, I’m a software developer, writer, and artist exploring how technology and democracy intersect. I helped organize Occupy Port Townsend and co-founded the Association of Washington Public Hospital Commissioners to strengthen the voice of elected boards statewide. My wife, Stacey Larsen, is a local educator and farm-to-school advocate. Together, we believe in building systems—healthcare, education, and government—that serve people openly, fairly, and with compassion.- Healthcare is a human right, and our public hospital should reflect that value. Everyone deserves access to affordable, high-quality care—including mental health and substance-use treatment—without fear of financial hardship. I’ve fought for one of the most generous charity care policies in the state and will continue pushing for expanded services, fair wages for healthcare workers, and modernized systems that prioritize patients over profit. Jefferson Healthcare must remain a model of community-centered medicine where compassion, transparency, and accountability guide every choice. No one in Jefferson County should ever go without care.
- Transparency is the foundation of democracy. For over a decade I’ve fought to ensure every Jefferson Healthcare board meeting, retreat, and decision is accessible to the public. I personally recorded off-site meetings so there would be a public record when the board refused to make one. Public hospital districts belong to the people, not to administrators or lawyers who decide what the public “should” know. I will continue to demand open meetings, clear communication, and honesty in all decision-making. The people of Jefferson County have the right to see, hear, and participate in how their hospital is governed.
- Public hospitals must remain publicly governed. I oppose efforts to shift control to private nonprofits or outside boards, including secretive alliance proposals that would dilute local authority. Jefferson Healthcare should always be accountable to the people of Jefferson County through elected commissioners who serve openly and transparently. Our hospital is one of our community’s greatest assets, built and maintained by local effort and trust. When decisions are made privately, accountability disappears. I’ll continue protecting public control, supporting open dialogue, and ensuring that all major decisions happen in full public view.
I’m passionate about healthcare reform, open government, and democratic innovation. I believe strong, transparent public institutions are essential to community well-being. I’ve worked to make hospital governance more accessible, to promote universal healthcare, and to defend public oversight from private influence. My focus is on transparency, accountability, and building systems where people—not corporations—set the priorities. I’m also passionate about civic technology and community engagement, creating software platforms to help people collaborate in safe equitable environments.
Public hospital districts are a truly unique form of municipal corporation—narrowly focused on healthcare, yet granted remarkable flexibility within that field. They are also unusual because of the large amounts of money that flow through them, which can make them appear, at times, more like private corporations than public institutions. One of the greatest challenges is resisting the tendency of some CEOs and commissioners to govern with a corporate mindset—prioritizing secrecy and control instead of openness and accountability. Public hospital commissioners must fully embrace the public nature of these districts, uphold transparency, and ensure they function as genuine instruments of government by the people, for the people. Only then can we guarantee that decisions are guided by the public interest, not private agendas.
I am inspired by brave revolutionaries, activists, and artists who lived their lives standing up for what they believed in and refused to obey authority when it violated their values. People like Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, the man who stood before the tanks in Tiananmen Square, Native American leaders, and countless writers and activists who work for freedom, equality, justice, truth, and democracy. I also believe every person must care for their own well-being while striving to improve the world around them. I try to move through life with mindfulness for both personal balance and collective good. If I had to choose one figure whose courage I hope to emulate, it would be the lone man who faced down the tanks in Tiananmen Square. His silent act of defiance transcends words—it represents the moment when conscience overcomes fear. Every time I think of him I feel emotional.
The first critical principle is to know your mission. As a hospital commissioner, my mission is the health of the community. The second key principle is a desire to keep learning. Elected office inevitably involves many complex and diverse systems, so you must be committed to continuously learning in order to understand the systems you are overseeing. The third principle is honesty, integrity, and a clear focus on serving the public good—not your own ego. Unfortunately, politics tends to attract people who enjoy prestige and power, and who are insensitive to the suffering or criticism of others. It’s a rough business, but we need people who are not in it for themselves. Run for office if you want to do good things, not to improve your own lot in life.
Public Hospital Commissioners are the fiduciary stewards of the public hospital district. We are responsible for ensuring the well-being of the district in every respect—financially, operationally, and through the quality of care, employee support, and patient outcomes—while keeping our focus on the ultimate mission: the health of the community. Commissioners must also ensure the board operates transparently and in full compliance with all governance and legal requirements, including the Open Public Meetings Act. I’ve consistently pushed the board to improve transparency by recording meetings and have spoken out when the limits of executive sessions were abused to conceal the Peninsula Health Alliance proposal with Olympic Medical Center. I will always put the public’s right to know and the community’s best interest above anyone’s personal preference for secrecy.
I wrote a book called "Revolutionary Mindfulness" which I try to share many of my greatest learnings of life including what I have learned from meditation. By practicing stillness with ourself we can better see who we are, what we really need, and then what we want to do. I majored in college in Philosophy with a minor in "Ideology and Utopia" because I truly dream of building the best of all possible worlds for everyone- utopia. I hope through the course of my life I help us get closer to that goal and hopefully my life helped a few others find their personal happiness.
The Space Shuttle first launches while in elementary school and then the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding. I was in 7th grade when that happened.
My first job was in a dry cleaners in Bethesda Maryland. I had it for a summer when I was 14. This is not counting babysitting and paper routes. My second job was at a printery where I learned a ton about graphics design and printing back in those days. Two summers in college I worked as a camp counselor at a vacation home for functionally disabled adults in Ocean City New Jersey which was incredibly satisfying. After moving to Port Townsend in 1995 I bounced around a ton of interesting jobs until I became a computer geek during the early days of the Internet revolution. That interest led to my first job with Jefferson Healthcare in the Information Technology department. The rest is history.
The Razors Edge by Somerset Maugham. It is the story of a mans sincere search for the meaning of life and happiness- and he dives into philosophy both western and eastern to help find it. I feel it really helped shape how I have lived my life. I also love Siddhartha by Herman Hesse- another search for enlightenment tale. A super unknown book that also has inspired me is a little book called "Mr. Blue" by Miles Connolly. Mr.Blue is the happiest character I have ever experienced in any work and something about him is just again..inspiring and beautiful.
I don't think I would trade places with any fictional character- but I would love to live in a world perhaps similar to the Star Trek universe- because it is generally speaking styled as a technological utopia in a universe filled with thousands of aliens and the technology to explore the entire universe. I find the possibility of such a scenario incredibly interesting and I would love to explore other planets and learn about alien cultures, history, and art. (I would not want any of the intergalactic wars though.)
I lost my mother far too early, and I miss her every day. Still, I’m deeply grateful for her, my father, and the loving foundation they gave me. Like many people, I’ve struggled at times to find meaning and purpose in life, but I’ve also been blessed with support and perspective that keep me grounded. In recent years, serving on the hospital board has been one of the most emotionally draining experiences of my life. I’m proud that I blew the whistle on the secret and illegal planning behind the Peninsula Health Alliance proposal, but it has created real tension within the board and the community. Unfortunately, there has been no professional, transparent process to examine what happened, why it happened, and how to prevent it in the future. Instead, the majority of the board and administration have chosen to deny and defend their actions. It’s hard to move forward productively in that environment, but if re-elected, I will continue doing everything I can to help this hospital district heal, learn, and grow into a stronger and more transparent organization that truly serves the people of Jefferson County.
Most people aren’t fully aware of the work done by public hospital commissioners. Aside from a few dedicated healthcare watchdogs and members of the press, public attention to our meetings has been limited. For over a decade, most commissioners have even run unopposed, leaving little public debate about the board’s major decisions and controversies. While our formal duty is high-level fiduciary oversight, one of the most critical—and often overlooked—responsibilities is to ensure that all governance discussions remain open and transparent to the public. I’ve had to fight to keep meetings recorded and to prevent important deliberations from being hidden behind closed doors. I also blew the whistle on secret negotiations with Olympic Medical Center to form a private nonprofit called the Peninsula Health Alliance. If that plan had proceeded, it would have dramatically altered control of our hospital district. The public deserved transparency and accountability from the start.
Experience can be overrated. We need people who have a passion to learn and true integrity to be interested in serving the public good. That said, there is definitely a learning curve to understand how a public hospital district works.
patience, a desire to learn, facilitation, familiarity with roberts rules of order, legal or financial background, healthcare background, information technology background, political lobbying experience
Our public hospital district is one of the most powerful and impactful institutions in our community. The elected commissioners have final say on shaping how that institution evolves into the future which will impact the health and livelihood of everyone in Jefferson County and beyond. We need commissioners with honesty, integrity, patience, creativity, and passion for public service.
The stories that made me run for office are the painful tales of people suffering from health concerns but they are too worried about costs to seek care. Those stories are what spurred me to run for office as a public hospital commissioner and work for universal access to healthcare.
I am proud of my record working for transparency and truth as a public hospital commissioner.
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Other survey responses
Ballotpedia identified the following surveys, interviews, and questionnaires Ready completed for other organizations. If you are aware of a link that should be added, email us.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
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Candidate Jefferson County Public Hospital District 2 (East Jefferson) Commissioner Board Position 3 |
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Footnotes
