December 10, 2007 by Stuck In Spokane.

Chris Gregoire has an important deadline coming up, a blackout period during which she cannot raise money for her re-election campaign, this is due to the legislature going into session. She has put out a plea to good Democrat’s to help her maintain her fundraising lead over Dino Rossi, and I for one intend to help her maintain that lead.

Click Here to Contribute to Chris’ Campaign

Every dollar will help her maintain a lead on the slime machine that is Dino Rossi and the state Repuglican party. We know that Chris has done great things for this state and will continue to do so in her next term, we just don’t want the start of her second to kick off on the same note as the last one. So please, everyone, donate what you can be it a dollar, five dollars, or even their maximum of 2,800 dollars!

There are many good Democrats running for other offices in the state that will not be limited by the legislature being in session, one of which is Peter Goldmark. He is running for Commissioner of Public Lands, a post that usually does not get much attention, despite how important it is to the environment around us. Peter is running to unseat 2-term incumbent Doug Sutherland, a man who has sold off our public lands to timber interests at Black Friday sale prices, and if re-elected will continue to rape our poor state to the point that we can no longer claim to live in the “Evergreen State.”

Click Here to Contribute to Peter’s Campaign

Please, do what you can to help these two worthy candidate out, they both are working to make the Washington we live in a better place to live.

Posted in Christine Gregoire, Dino Rossi, Governor, Democrats, Peter Goldmark, Elections, Commissioner of Public Lands, 2008, Washington | 1 Comment »

August 28, 2007 by Alpha.

So there’s more coming down the pike on Senator Larry Craig’s current situation.

1. Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate GOP leadership will ask the Senate Ethics Committee to open a file on Senator Craig. While I wouldn’t expect any serious repercussions, this is certainly going to keep the story circulating. It also indicates that the Republican Party has no plans to rally around Craig - it looks very much like they’re cutting him off and hoping the stink won’t spread.

2. Speaking of smelly things, Craig has resigned his post as Senate co-chair for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s Presidential race. This could be an issue going forward for Romney, as he was no doubt banking on southern Idaho’s heavy Mormon population for long-term support. Will he be able to get the backing of another major conservative leader in the west?

3. Michelle Malkin’s readers (not usually me, I swear) think Craig should get gone. Malkin herself called Craig “a supremely arrogant lying crapweasel” which may actually enter my personal lexicon. Thanks Michelle, you “supremely arrogant lying crapweasel!” Awesome.

4. Conservatives are jumping all over themselves to give Craig the hairy eyeball, from Malkin (above) to Ari Fleischer to Sam Brownback. And to think that just yesterday I was worried that Dems would look bad for piling on. Since when do Republicans do Democratic dirty work?

5. Finally, Craig on Craig: it’s the Statesman’s fault. That’s right, Senator, blame that notorious left-wing media for all of its, you know, investigative journalism.

In other news, Rep. Brian Baird threw a town hall last night. Brian’s a pretty charismatic guy, alright, but what anti-war Democrat holds a town hall the night after announcing that President Bush’s surge might be helping? Jon Soltz, of VoteVets, showed up and called Baird out on his support for a clearly failing policy.

My question is what Rep. Baird thinks he’s doing here. I’v met the man and most of his staff, and he doesn’t seem to put up with a lot of foolishness. So where’s the percentage here? He took heat for voting against the Iraq war, he took heat in the ‘06 cycle for not being anti-war enough for his more liberal constiuants, and now he’s taking heat for saying we need to give the surge another 6-12 months.

Brian, please. Pick a stance, and stay with it. And if you’re going to pick the least popular of all possible stances, do it with some finesse!

Posted in Idaho, Elections, Washington, Iraq, Campaigns | 1 Comment »

August 27, 2007 by Alpha.

Gonzo is out the door. I hope that I will, one day soon, have the pleasure of posting a mashup of “Hail to the Chief” and “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead.”

Like the salacious icing on corrupt ineptitude cake, Roll Call is reporting today that, way back in June, Sen. Larry “The Pride of Idaho” Craig was arrested at the Minneapolis airport for “lewd behavior.” Apparently he came on to a (male) plainclothes police sergeant. In an airport bathroom. I couldn’t make this up!

Craig paid a fine, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He is presently serving a year of probation. Apparently Sen. Craig made something of a fuss, presenting the arresting officer with a business card (you know, those sweet looking official Senate business cards that you and I pay for) and asking “What do you think about that?” For some reason I doubt Sen. Craig was attempting to inflate the sergeant’s ego…

Now, I’m reporting on this for three reasons.

Right out of the gate, Senator Craig hasn’t been particularly progressive about gay rights or sexual freedom, so I find the precise circumstances of his “lewd behavior” particularly hypocritical and therefore noteworthy. Nobody gets away with attempting to play “Is that a veto in your pocket?” in an airport bathroom while telling me a little sodomy between friends is wrong. Two words: Bull; Twinkies.

Second, this is just bad politics. Sen. Craig is up for re-election (we presume) in ‘08. Big Gay Dem activist and all-around shenaniganologist Mike Rogers has been sniffing around for a while, and finally declared Craig “outed” last October. Now, those kind of accusations aren’t generally all that sticky (eww!). Craig, and his staff, vociferously refused to acknowledge the accusations, which almost certainly would have eventually evaporated. But when you have a cloud like those accusations hanging over your head, you probably want to take the high road when it comes to public man-on-man canoodling (or “manoodling”, if you will). This smacks of a certain lack of professionalism, no?

Lastly, this story is funny. I won’t lie. This story reminds me of the hilarious revelation that Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (solo, for over 24 hours!), had a daughter with a black woman. It suggests to me that, at least in America, those who claim to wish to restrict the equality of rights generally do so either through misguided obsession or through cynical public claims.

In all seriousness, I have no doubt that the last several months have been hard on Senator Craig, and that the foreseeable future is no brighter. The Senator has three options: 1. Accept that the people who elected him before aren’t going to elect him again, resign, and let Republican Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter appoint a successor who might be able to win in ‘08; 2. Accept that the people who elected him before aren’t going to elect him again, come to Jesus, and try to get a segment on 60 Minutes explaining why one of America’s biggest gaybashers is, well, a little gay; 3. Refuse to acknowledge that anything happened, blame it all on a Big Gay Conspiracy, remind Idaho’s voters that Nancy Pelosi is from San Francisco (gasp!) and pray that the suckers who’ve elected him to the Senate three times before will do it again.

Of course, deep down in the cockles of my partisan heart, I hope that Senator Craig will run all over the board with this crisis, paralyzing Idaho’s Republican machine and landing a Democrat in an Idaho Senator’s seat. What’s your best guess?

UPDATE: CQ has more, including some comment from Senator Craig’s office. Looks like he’s running with the classic “this is all just a big misunderstanding” opening. I wonder if anyone’s going to come back with the old “just which part aren’t we understanding?” gambit. We shall see.

Posted in 2008, Idaho, Elections | 1 Comment »

July 17, 2007 by Alpha.

Yesterday we broke the news that Dr. Peter Goldmark is will mount a campaign against incumbent Doug Sutherland (R - Lacey) for the post of Commissioner of Public Lands for the great state of Washington.

I will readily admit that until very recently I knew very little about what the Commissioner does, and even less about Mr. Sutherland. I am familiar with Dr. Goldmark’s qualifications for the job, so in an effort to paint a deeper picture of the race, I spent today in research mode.

Here’s what I’ve been able to find out about Mr. Sutherland. According to his official bio, he was born in Helena, MT then lived briefly in Vancouver, WA before settling in Spokane in 1946. In 1959, he received a B.A. in History from Central Washington University. He worked for Boeing from 1960-71, then bought up the Tacoma Tent and Awning Company, which he passed to his son in 1989.

Sutherland served on the Tacoma city council in 1980-81, before being elected Mayor of Tacoma. He held that post until the end of 1989, when he took the job of City Manager in the newly incorporated SeaTac. He was there until 1992, when he took over as Pierce County Executive. That post he held through the end of 2000, when he began his first term as Commissioner of Public Lands. In his first campaign he defeated former Governor Mike Lowry, after successfully painting Lowry as a left-wing eco-nut. I recall that election season in Eastern Washington for the great deal of hysteria about endangered owls and whether they “really mattered” to “real Washingtonians.” In 2004 Sutherland fended off a challenge from Democrat Mike Cooper.

The big confusion for me, concerning what the Commissioner of Public Lands does, precisely, was greatly clarified when I realized two things. He is (1) the manager of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and (2) the chairman of the Board of Natural Resources.

Once I rightly placed the Commissioner at the pinnacle of the DNR I realized just how tremendously important this job is, no matter where in the state you live. In fact, I grew up with a plot of DNR grazing acreage literally next door. From the same biography of Doug Sutherland, we get this: DNR oversees over 2.8 million acres of public lands, and over 2.4 million acres of “aquatic lands,” helpfully enumerated as creeks, river, shorelines, and a whole mess of “land” under Puget Sound.

I’d always known how important DNR policy was east of the Cascades, but I didn’t realize that they, well, owned the Sound. Now maybe Mr. Sutherland has done his part to keep the Sound healthy, but if the policies we’ve seen on the east side are anything to go by, we’ve all got reason for concern.

The problem isn’t that Sutherland is stupid, though I can’t vouch for his intelligence. The problem isn’t that he’s corrupt, though I can’t speak to his integrity. The problem is that he sees his job as balancing the interests of industry (particularly timber, mining and land development interests) against the understandable urge to conserve and protect our limited natural resources.

I remember toward the end of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” there’s a sequence where he discusses a relatively recent high-level conference on environmental protection. The conference banner featured an image of a scale balancing, on one side several bars of gold and on the other a nice blue-green Earth. This, sadly, is how Sutherland sees his job. He takes his task as one of extracting as much revenue as possible from Washington’s forests, mountains, rivers and pastures. The problem is that, from his past behavior, there are long-term costs that he hasn’t factored in.

What is the spotted owl worth? How much would we be willing to pay to bring back the dodo? Which is worth more: a gold mine that may produce a few tons of the stuff, or a system of lakes and streams that supply water, irrigation, habitat and recreation forever?

From the framing of those questions, I’ll bet you can see where I’m at. One last thing: I’d like to see someone ask Mr. Sutherland who he’d rather see take the position of Commissioner of Public Lands: a man with a B.A. in History and a background in municipal government, or a man with a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and a background in ecology and agriculture?

For God’s sake, Dr. Goldmark has a lab on his ranch. He grows his own strain of wheat. The guy’s what you would get if you crossed Wyatt Earp and Reed Richards.

Ask Commissioner Sutherland what he thinks. Here’s his work contact info:

Commissioner of Public Lands
Department of Natural Resources
PO Box 47001
Olympia, WA 98504-7001
Phone: 360.902.1004
Fax: 360.902.1775

[Ed. to remove even more idocy] 

Posted in 2008, Commissioner of Public Lands, Elections, Washington, Campaigns | 5 Comments »

July 16, 2007 by Alpha.

I received a press release from an email list managed by Betty Fry. It is floating around the Intarwebs announcing that Dr. Peter Goldmark, rancher, former WSU regent, State Director of Agriculture and Congressional Candidate, is running for Director of State Lands.

I honestly cannot think of a better candidate for the job. Peter’s been a rancher all of his adult life, in part because he loves the land so much. He’s from Okanogan, a town (and county) that is very sensitive to the importance of protecting Washington’s resources. The last decade has been one drought year after another there, with declining snowpacks leading to ever-increasingly short supplies of water for people, livestock and crops.

I see public land use policy as an important opportunity to invest in the future. By using and maintaining our state land wisely, we can be certain that it continues to provide revenue and balance our region’s ecology. By thinking long term, we can get a win-win situation. Or we can sell off our pulic lands, license them to irresponsible logging firms and basically cash out. Sure, we might be able to forestall some budget deficits, but what are we getting in return? Increased erosion, degrading water quality and a future that looks bleaker than ever.

Dr. Goldmark’s website hasn’t been updated yet, and still wears the sad (but hopeful!) face it put on last November. Soon, no doubt, that location will be a hub of knowledge and activity around the new campaign.

Posted in 2008, Commissioner of Public Lands, Elections, Washington, Campaigns | 3 Comments »

June 29, 2007 by Alpha.

Today I caught, a little belatedly, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin’s editorial about the recent dust-up around Dino Rossi’s Forward Washington Foundation. The story, if you haven’t been reading along, is that a number of highly placed Democrats are grumbling about whether Rossi might just be, in the U-B’s words “using his nonprofit Forward Washington Foundation to finance an ongoing campaign for governor.”

Of course, Rossi has said he isn’t running for anything, and he hasn’t done anything wrong, which totally puts the issue to bed. The quote from Rossi is priceless: “Gregoire is clearly scared about something.” Yes, Dino. She’s clearly terrified that you aren’t running against her again. Yet.

The people of Washington, the U-B chides Dems, “want to know where Gregoire and Rossi (should they choose to run in 2008) stand on everything from education to corrections to tax policy.” Indeed! Washingtonians don’t have a stomach for scandals involving Republicans. Proven fact.

Now, hold the phone. Can we roll this whole thing back to the actual story, the one that underlies this editorial? You know, the story where a former gubernatorial candidate, who has been heavily rumored for either a repeat against Chris Gregoire or a US Senate run against Patty Murray, may be routinely and repeatedly misusing a non-profit that he runs? And maybe, just maybe, it’s worth noting the the only explanation that Rossi has for us is a flat denial and a refusal to hand over any real evidence that he’s running the Forward Washington Foundation above board.

Oh, yeah. One last point. You may have noticed that the URL for the Forward Washington Foundation is misspelled. I thought it interesting, so I looked it up in the OED. It turns out that just one hundred years ago it would have been totally normal to spell “www.forwardwashington.org” as “www.dinorossi.com.”

The more you know…

PS: Click here and look at the top result. Would Google lie to you?

Posted in Elections, Washington, Campaigns | No Comments »

June 26, 2007 by Alpha.

Whereas the Republican Presidential nomination is developing into something approaching a cohesive narrative (Giuliani and McCain collapsing, Fred Thompson fizzling, and Mitt Romney picking up the proverbial spare) the Democratic picture remains murky. Here are the national polling numbers:

Six Months Ago/Today
Clinton: 35% / 34.4%
Obama: 18% / 22.6%
Edwards: 12% / 12.4%
(Gore): 12.5% / 15.9%

Hillary Clinton has a huge cash-on-hand advantage, that should serve her well as February 5th approaches. Her fundraising numbers for Q2 are rumored to be low, but my gut tells me her campaign is sandbagging. Her campaign has, however, started showing signs of “fruntrunnerosis,” from the quirky selection and announcement of her “campaign theme” to the downright strangeness of the Clinton webteam’s own Drudge-style newsfeed. And although she leads decisively in national polls and holds leads in New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida, she’s lost traction in South Carolina and Iowa. If her national ad machine can’t make Super Duper Tuesday a big victory, Hillary might face big troubles.

The biggest present threat to Clinton comes from Barack Obama, who shows a recent but sizeable lead in South Carolina and who beat Clinton’s mark for primary-funding in Q1. He is hugely popular with younger voters, and has the netroots support to drive that crowd to the polls. The big questions hanging over Obama now are ones that only he can put to rest: Is America ready for a President with a black dad? Is Obama ready for the White House?

John Edwards, though locked in third for the last several months, is still sitting on more than enough cash to mount an effective advertising blitz going into February. He has an excellent staff and he enjoys a significant lead in grassroots organizing in many states, particularly Iowa, where he leads in polling. Edwards certainly has everything he needs at this point to be a contender, but if he wins it will be a thrilling race.

And then there’s the rest of the pack. These five candidates are all strong(ish) but are more marked by question marks than by exclamation points. Will Joe Biden let Sam Brownback steal his Three-State Solution for Iraq? Will Chris Dodd impress, well, anyone? How did Dennis Kucinich land his wife? Is Mike Gravel older than Bob Dole? What’s Bill Richardson’s strategy for dealing with the fact that he is hispanic in the middle of a truly ugly immigration debate? Finally, just how long is Al Gore going to continue getting asked if he’s running? If he’s said it once, he’s said it a thousand times: “Well, not right now, no.”

I strongly doubt that, with the amounts of money being raised by the top three candidates, any of the second-tier fellows will make it through the end of the year. That said, a certain Arkansas governor made quite a splash in 1992, have been ranked as low as 13th in primary polling. Who the heck knows what will happen?

Edwards has raised enough to keep up the fight till the end, no matter how bitter. But realistically, his numbers can’t compare to the $20M+ Clinton and Obama have raised, especially given the frontloading of next year’s primaries. The Obama/Clinton fight is going to be an ugly one: Clinton’s certitude against Obama’s optimism; Clinton’s cold calculation against Obama’s apparent improvisation; Clinton’s triangulation against Obama’s guesstimation; Clinton’s ineptitude against Obama’s inexperience.

Then there’s the elephant in the room. A woman? Competing against a man? Who is only half white? This is madness. You’d think that the Democratic party had turned into some kind of heathen land, where people who weren’t white men could, maybe, just maybe, have a shot at the Presidency.

In all seriousness, we have to ask ourselves which prejudice is more entrenched, and getting liberals to freely discuss a quantitative or even qualitative comparison of racism and sexism isn’t my job. If it were, I’d demand a big raise.

I’ll cut right to it: Hillary has a lead among women, but she trails among men. Obama looks good among African-American voters, but that difference is smaller. Is it possible that women like a woman who frequently gets called masculine more than blacks like a man who is… mulatto? I think so, unfortunately.

During the 2000 election, a friend asked me who I thought the United States would elect first: a black man or a white woman. As I said then, I say now that sexism runs deeper than racism. The big problem with that is that Barack Obama apparently isn’t qite black enough. The mulatto problem, one which has been close to my heart for some time, won’t be solved by Barack Obama’s candidacy.

Barring a significant mistake by the Clinton campaign, or an unprecedented act of sheer genius by the Obama camp, I’m picking Hillary Clinton to face off against Mitt “the Glove” Romney next year.

Posted in Elections, Presidential, National, Campaigns | 6 Comments »

June 12, 2007 by Alpha.

Uncle Sam (Reed) has elected to put Washington’s official primary right there on the verge of relevance. February 19th, 2008 will be Washington’s big day. Of course, the whole story’s a little more complicated…

The party caucuses will begin on the 8th of February, just after Super-Duper Tuesday, putting Washington in line to be about the 25th state to allocate its delegates to the nominating conventions.

But wait! There’s more! The parties have decided, finally, to have it their own ways in the nominating process. The Republicans will allocate their delegates based in part on their caucuses and in part on the results of the primary vote itself. It sounds like the two results will be weighted, 19 delegates from the primary, 22 from the caucuses, and 3 “automatic” delegates, members of the state and national committees.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are putting everything behind the caucuses: The primary vote will count for precisely nothing, with all delegates being selected by caucus, just like in the good old days.
Now, I’m going to take what I like to think of as the high ground on this issue. You might disagree with me. The editorial board of the Longview Daily News sure seems to. Their editorial (reprinted by the Spokesman-Review here) blasts the Washington State Democrats as, har, undemocratic for denying Washingtonians “this opportunity to voice their preference, even if most party leaders don’t want to hear it.”

That kind of Republican water-carrying is all well and good in Longview (although Cowlitz county went to Cantwell 56-40 in 2006), but it simply won’t do here. Their argument is that it’s better for the people to vote on things. I’m sympathetic to this position. In fact, I almost always agree with it.

In Washington we’ve had a lot of conversations over the years about how primaries work, and how they should work. Here’s the sticking point for me: the people should choose who wins the various offices of state, but who the parties nominate is exclusively the business of the party. If you don’t like the way your party’s working or who they’re nominating, then get in there and do something about it.

My ultimate preference would be a shift toward a single transferrable vote (STV) system. The mechanics of STV systems are tricky, but the gist is this: it totally eliminates spoiler candidates and ensures that whoever wins is actually the most-desired candidate. STV could be used in primary elections, general elections or both, any of which would be a big step forward for both third party candidates and democracy. If you’re curious, there’s a wonderful Wikipedia article that goes into depth on the topic. The next-best thing: long, drawn-out, exhausting, totally partisan caucuses.

I like caucuses because they are purely partisan events. People actually talk about the relative merits of the candidates and then vote on who the group supports. This is progressive politics, grassroots politics, at its very best. The argument that the Daily News editorial board floats seems to suggest that having more people making a decision is better, regardless of the mechanism of deciding. I’ve always thought that how we get to a decision is pretty important.

Agree or disagree in the comments.

Posted in Elections, Washington, Presidential | 1 Comment »