When Bob Ferguson takes office next month as attorney general of Washington state, he will be — by far — the highest-ranking elected official who also happens to be a chess master.
Ferguson subscribed to a Russian chess magazine when he was 12 and became state chess champion for the first time when he was 18.
At his peak, Ferguson, now 47, was rated above 2300, putting him in the top 1 percent of serious players in the US.
Randy Bauer, a former budget director of Iowa, confirmed his own 2300 rating last year at the World Amateur Team tournament in Parsippany, N.J.
Bauer, a former member of the US Chess Federation’s policy board, has another distinction.
He gave “a couple of chess lessons” to then-Gov. Tom Vilsack, now President Obama’s secretary of agriculture. They were, he notes, not given during works hours.
And one more public official/chessplayer is Mark Funkhouser.
Funkhouser, an avid amateur but nowhere as strong as Ferguson and Bauer, played in Missouri tournaments while gearing up to run for mayor of Kansas City in 2007.
He won and served a four-year term, but lost his re-election bid last year in a primary.