Mark Greene announced this week he is switching his bid for state representative and will instead run for the Federal Way City Council, Position 1.

Greene will challenge incumbent Lydia Assefa-Dawson for her seat, as well as Anthony Murrietta.

Greene has a long-time record of political involvement, including challenging Sherril Huff for director of Elections in King County in 2011, garnering 22 percent of the vote, according to his press release.

Last year, he also challenged and lost to Congressman Adam Smith for U.S. Congress as a third party candidate. As chairman of the newly found Revived Citizens Party — which is an offshoot of the original Citizens Party that was founded in 1979 by the late environmentalist Barry Commoner — Greene said he is committed to ensuring the political system has “full and credible choices” outside of the Republican Party and Democratic Party two-party format. He said that format is “set up by custom, not the Constitution, which doesn’t refer to a two-party system but opens the system to many parties.”

Greene, who has lived in Federal Way for five non-consecutive years, is a legal assistant and chairman of Democracy in Election Process, which is a civic-minded organization dedicated to helping citizens with civic affairs, legal matters, election processes, including voter registration and maneuvering governmental bureaucracy.

This organization and the general Revived Citizens Party apparatus has helped to register around 1,000 voters in Washington state in the last 10 years, Greene said.

Greene was the sponsor of last year’s Initiative 1338, which attempted to label genetically modified foods.

Regarding local issues, Greene is an advocate for “making sure that our basic infrastructure needs, such as storm water drainage and sewer systems, water resources, roads and bridges are kept up to par, and that budgeting concerns prioritize basic city responsibilities, including public safety, health, provisions for persons without homes, and infrastructure repairs and upgrades, as our most important city obligations,” he wrote in his press release.