First elected to the Washington State House of Representatives in 2010, David was appointed unanimously by the Metropolitan King County Council to represent the 46th District in the state Senate in 2011 following the tragic passing of Sen. Scott White. Voters retained him in 2012 to serve the remaining two years of the open Senate term and he was re-elected in 2014 for a full term in the Senate. Though his party has been in the minority for most of his time in the Senate, David has nevertheless earned a reputation as an energetic and effective legislator able to pass progressive legislation and local funding priorities through a conservative body by working with both Democrats and Republicans.

After graduating with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, David served on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. as an aide to U.S. Rep. Romano Mazzoli, a senior member of the House Judiciary and Small Business committees. In this role, he worked on a variety of issues including consumer protection from misleading tobacco advertising, campaign finance reform and minority small business development. He also served as the main press aide for Rep. Mazzoli.

In the mid-1990s, David moved to California to work in public policy and marketing for a telecommunications firm. He subsequently worked at the University of California San Francisco School of Public Health as a research assistant on a project that analyzed the use of tobacco industry sponsored science on the debate surrounding the health effects of secondhand smoke. He returned to law school in 1995 and earned his JD from UCLA in 1998. Summer clerkships included a short stint in the civil division of the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles and with the Seattle-based law firm of Riddell Williams, which then hired him on as an associate lawyer in 1998.

From 1998 to 2000, David practiced employment and business law at Riddell. In 2000 he joined a boutique litigation practice in Seattle, eventually becoming one of the principal partners in the firm. Bergman, Draper & Frockt became one of the leading Northwest law firms representing asbestos cancer victims, many of whom were union workers from the industrial trades in shipyards, power plants, refineries and paper mills around the Puget Sound. David has since left the firm in order to accommodate his public service obligations. David and his wife Rebecca  live in North Seattle and are the proud parents of 14-year-old twins.