By Craig Sailor
The News Tribune
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson is one of the most influential people on Earth, according to Time Magazine.
He’s one of four state newsmakers on Time’s list of The 100 Most Influential People.
Gen. James Mattis, Melinda Gates and Jeff Bezos were the others.
Ferguson was lauded for halting President Donald Trump’s first travel ban of visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries. Actor George Takei, who wrote the short profile, said the AG’s action exemplified “liberty and justice for all.”
“Bob Ferguson clearly believes everyone deserves those guarantees, no matter their background,” Takei wrote.
Ferguson made the list under the “Pioneers” section.
Takei, who is gay, said he first became aware of Ferguson when the AG spoke up for a Washington gay couple denied service by a Richland florist in 2013.
Richland is the home of Mattis. His mother still lives there.
The profile of Mattis was written by Robert Gates, former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense.
Robert Gates praised Mattis’ fearless ability to “speak truth to power.”
The general, Robert Gates said, “will care for our men and women in uniform as if they were his own children.”
Mattis made the list in the “Leaders” section as did Melinda Gates, the wife of MicroSoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Melinda Gates devotes her time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the “most ambitious and generous philanthropies in history,” writes Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook.
Melinda Gates has a commitment to empowering women and girls, Sandberg said.
“Her vision for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has helped lift the lives of millions of people,” Sandberg wrote. “Its work reflects her impatient optimism.”
Bezos, the founder of online retail behemoth Amazon, is a titan.
That’s the category Time put him in.
Titan is also the name of a veteran NASA rocket, the kind of rocket Bezos is hoping will take people back to the moon and beyond.
“I feel a special space kinship with Jeff Bezos — albeit one grounded not here on Earth, but far away on the moon,” wrote astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon.
Bezos is channeling his considerable fortune into his Blue Origin space company which hopes to reach Mars one day.
The 100-person list is a who’s who of recent news makers. They include Donald and Ivanka Trump, drag performer RuPaul, Olympian Simone Biles, soccer star Neymar and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
