Ridenbaugh Press/Northwest

Hans Zeiger

If 2010 does turn out to be a year when a lot of incumbents get tossed out, it’s also likely to be a year when a number of problematic – poorly vetted, little-understood – candidates get elected, or come close. Today’s case study is in Washington’s District 25 (eastern Pierce County), where incumbent Democrat Dawn Morrell is being challenged by Republican Hans Zeiger.

In the primary election, with six candidates on the ballot, Morrell got 40.3% of the vote and Zeiger scored an upset among the Republicans with 35.9%; another Republican, Steve Vermillion, was thought to be Morrell’s likely opponent, and the Tacoma News Tribune described him “as qualified a political newcomer as we’ve seen this year.” Zeiger was only lightly reviewed. But by the standard math of Washington primaries, this looks like a highly competitive contest.

Zeiger’s website is generic and says nothing most any challenger might not say, and makes little reference to Morrell. He remarks there, “That is why I am running for State Representative in the 25th District: for jobs, tax relief, and educational excellence.”

Start Googling Zeiger, though, as David Goldstein of Horse’s Ass has, and another picture emerges.

Notably on the very conservative WorldNetDaily site, where Zeiger is a regular contributor. (Zieger is also on WND’s speaker’s bureau, and their description of him there makes clear that he is highly plugged into the more ideologically-driven parts of movement conservatism.) This, for example (September 2005), writing about “the Girl Scouts USA national convention will be held in Atlanta. It will be a gathering of radical feminists, lesbians, and cookie peddlers …”

Not that he’s ignored the Boy Scouts. He is described as a spokesman for the Scouting Legal Defense Fund, and has written a book (which WND sells) called Get Off My Honor; the net’s description of it notes, “Hans shows how those who wish to destroy the scouts are attacking it for what it represents at its core – Christian values.” Doesn’t seem to be much mention of those sexual abuse cases that are what have gotten a lot of people’s attention.

Ideological as political attack? Another example, from Intellectual Conservative: “We speak much of terror networks in our time, and here is one of the vilest, for it has made greater progress in the tearing down of American institutions and ideals than Iraq or Al Quaeda have. NEA and GLSEN are not the only groups in the network; the ACLU and NARAL and Planned Parenthood and Americans United for Separation of Church and State and others come to mind. They mean to wage war on the most sacred and most enduring things of our civilization: our faith, our heritage, our character, our self-government, and our family structure.”

It’s not a reach to call this an appeal to hatred. Another sad case, in other words, of trying to set Americans against each other as if organizing a dog fight.

There is much, much more – it goes on from there. Jobs? Tax relief (other than the routine calls for tax cuts)? Educational excellence? Among these mass of high-profile, exceedingly ideological writings, there’s previous little to indicate those subjects gave him a moment’s pause. Until, maybe, filing for the House.

Now the question is: How much will the voters know about Zeiger before they cast their votes in Washington’s 25th?

In the Slog, writer Dominic Holden writes about numbers and what they indicate, or don’t, about public priorities.

In 2003, Seattle voters passed (59% in favor) a ballot issue declaring marijuana enforcement the lowest priority for city police. In the years since, the number of arrests on pot busts declined, and fr years stayed well below levels from 2003 and earlier.

In “Pot Paradox,” Holden wrote in August about an oddity: Arrests on pot offenses this year have (on a per-month basis) more than doubled. He wrote, “This year, 147 people have been referred to prosecutors with pot as the only charge, according to records from the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and the city attorney’s office. That is a fivefold increase in the number of pot-only cases (last year, only 28 of the 120 arrests were referred for prosecution with pot as the only charge). In other words, pot-only arrests rose from 23 percent to 85 percent. This is a drastic shift toward busting people solely for pot.”

Seemingly in response, Seattle Mike McGinn‘s office on September 1 posted a response. It said: Continue Reading »

Listeners at KBIO radio in Boise were asked to participate in a (self-selecting) online survey about President Barack Obama. Results on which they think describes the president best:

A foreign born Muslim – 49%
A foreign born Christian – 3%
An American born Muslim – 7%
An American born Christian – 22%
A president with really big ears – 20%

“Foreign-born Muslim” was actually up to 55% yesterday.

Where do these people get their misinformation – garbage that has been so repeatedly debunked over a period of years? In the case of this poll, the participants presumably were mostly KBOI listeners – local home of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservative talkers. Given that, the surprise may be that the 49% or 55% isn’t even higher.

weekly Digest

The Washington primary election week before last continues to r4everberate, but so does the impact of the tough economy. All three Northwest states reported some downer economic news during the week, cut however but some bright indications of new business announcing opening shop.

More went on around the region as well. Gubernatorial debates were a hot topic of discussion in Idaho (where the first of the general election season was held in Idaho Falls) and Oregon (where negotiations over which debates will be held, or participated in, continued).

As a reminder: We’re now publishing weekly editions of the Public Affairs Digests – for Idaho, Washington and Oregon – moving from a monthly to a weekly rundown of what’s happening. And we’re taking it all-electronic: The print edition will be moving to e-mail.

That means we can include more information, and get it out a lot faster: The weekly Digests will be in your in-box first thing Monday morning. If you subscribe, of course: That’s $59 a year, for 50 issues and the yearbook. Yes, including the yearbook. The Idaho Yearbook, which we published for years up to 2002, will return early in 2011 – in printed book form – and Digest subscribers get it for free with their subscription. And the Oregon and Washington yearbooks will be coming out at the same time.

If you’d like to take a look at one of the new weekly Digests, here’s a link to the Idaho edition, to the Oregon edition and to the Washington edition. If you’d like to subscribe, here are the links (through to PayPal) for Idaho, for Oregon and for Washington.

A good site for general data – demographic, economic and so on – around the Northwest: Co-backed by the Community Action Partnership and the University of Idaho, the site Indicators Northwest is well worth a look.

It describes itself as “a one-stop source of up-to-date information on states, counties, reservations, and tribes. Whether you work for a non-profit group, private firm or public agency, this site is for you. Here, you’ll find text summaries that highlight major trends in each indicator. You’ll also find information displayed with graphs and maps. Users who want to analyze the indicators further can download data in Excel spreadsheets.”

Check it out.

The gas budget for our vehicles travelling roughly from Portland to Boise is about $60, each way. Craig Henderson, originally of Tacoma, plans to drive about twice as far – from the Canadian to the Mexican borders, on Interstate 5 – for $42. Or less.

It has to do with the way his car is designed, to get more than 100 miles of travel per gallon.

As the Northwest (Oregon most notably) gets more into alternative forms of powering motor vehicles, this would be a story worth reading.

It’s worth noting once again, just because so much anti-federal wind comes from Idaho, especially in this campaign season.

One of the biggest and best single pieces of economic development in Idaho in the last few years has been a massive wind power project that stands to take advantage of the often fierce winds blowing across the Snake River plains. How substantial an economic development this is shows up in a post by the state Department of Commerce:

GE and its partners, including Boise-based Exergy Development Group, have already begun building the Idaho Wind Partners project – 11 wind farms along the Oregon Trail from Hagerman to Burley.

The $500 million project will become Idaho’s biggest wind project and one of the largest in the entire Pacific Northwest. Once completed, the 11 farms will be able to generate 183 megawatts, enough to power 39,700 Idaho homes.

The project will create 175 construction jobs, 25 permanent jobs and, using federal Energy Department estimates, will support 2,200 full-time jobs a year nationwide. Eight of those jobs are with Precision Communications, which installed 43 miles of fiber optic cable that connects the wind turbines by computer, so they can be remotely shut on and off and monitored.

Jim Woodhead, president of PreCom, said he’s glad Idaho is catching up with its neighbors – Washington, Oregon and Montana – which all have more wind generation than Idaho.

Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter, who better than anyone else exemplifies the attitude that Idaho is just full of rugged individualists who get ‘er done as long as the feds stay off their backs, commented: “Otter said the development of the wind industry is the newest chapter in Idaho’s long history of creating its own power using renewable sources …”

Just below that, though, the department post goes on to say this: “The project was made possible by the 2005 federal energy bill, which included a grant to developers who could begin construction by the end of the year. “This project wouldn’t exist save for the federal grant,” [GE Energy Financial Services President and CEO Alex] Urquhart said. He said more wind projects like this will not be possible unless federal clean energy legislation is passed.”

Those nasty feds, seeding Idaho business again …

A question.

This comes out of news today that Conoco-Phillips, which has sought and gotten permits to run mega-sized trucks down the narrow and winding Highway 12 between Lewiston and Missoula, is appealing a decision by 2nd District Judge John Bradbury which blocks those trips, at least for now.

The appeal, of course, goes to the Idaho Supreme Court, for which Bradbury was earlier this year was a candidate, losing to one of the incumbents. That’s one interesting aspect of this; there seems to be some presumption that Bradbury may be overturned. We’ll see.

Our assumption has been that most people in the area have been opposed to the traffic of these massive trucks on a road that seems so unsuitable for them. (Travel via, say, Interstate 90 to the north might present some issues but on its face seem a lot more logical.) But is that so?

One commenter on the Lewiston Tribune story about this offered: “This is a waste of a lot of peoples time and efforts for such a small minority of opposers.” The formal (as if legal filing) number of “opposers” is of course small. But what’s the sense of how people overall in the area view this?

This has a feel of significance to it:

Two months ago, in an effort to boost the candidacy of its 1st U.S. House district nominee Raul Labrador, the Idaho Republican Party said it was hiring two staffers that would be assigned directly to help in that race. (Here’s the release about one of them.) It was an implicit acknowledgement that the race was not easy – incumbent Democrat Walt Minnick had several advantages including a big money lead – but also an expression that the party would make a special effort to get behind the candidate.

In reports today, the Associated Press says that the two staffers won’t be so strictly assigned; their work instead will be much more based around general party activities.

One reason, which the party indicates, may be legal. There are legal limitations on how money not contributed directly to a congressional campaign can be used for it. Of course, that was true in June too.

But you get the sense that the resources could have been found, if the party were determined enough to get the assistance to Labrador. Was there a shift in priorities?

Might be that too much shouldn’t be made of this. But keep watch, and see what else in the coming weeks fit into a pattern.

Most people who track the news at all see a good deal of news about their own state, but little about others. That allows a particular sort of dishonesty to spread: Making all sorts of claims that one’s state is (depending on the agenda of the speaker) doing a whole lot better or worse than other states, in taxes, education, economy, whatever.

There are real differences among the states, of course. But many of the arguments that pick up the most currency tend to be facile and bogus. Washington state has no income tax? Wow! But before drawing too many conclusions, you have to factor in those high sales taxes (higher than Idaho’s, and obviously much higher than sales tax-less Oregon), not to mention the state’s substantial business and occupation tax. Washington isn’t horribly taxed, but looking at only one piece of the picture is highly misleading.

Oregonian columnist Steve Duin today took this on effectively, most specifically the argument that the state is unfriendly to business because of its tax structure. The argument essentially is a crock. Duin’s sharp, efficient takedown is a must-read. It may be Oregon-oriented, but the points in it are useful for Washingtonians and Idahoans as well.

Just how much we should make of the results in Washington’s primary election last week – beyond the determination of who will be on the ballot in November – won’t be clear until after the general election voting is done: Only then will we be able to do some conclusive matchups. But if you operate under the assumption that the primary results offer at least a general foreshadowing of what’s to come, we can at least draw some rough conclusions.

We can reasonably conclude that the U.S. Senate race is competitive, though incumbent Democrat Patty Murray has a discernible edge (for now anyway). We can realistically say that there are two competitive U.S. House races, in the 2nd and 3rd districts, with the latter being the tougher call.

And after reviewing results in the 123 state legislative races on the ballot, we can fairly say this: Republicans are not likely to win either chamber at the statehouse (though that could happen), but they are highly likely to pick up enough seats to trim the Democratic edge to only a bare hold.

Let’s unpack this, starting with the Senate.

Of the 49 Senate seats, 31 are held by Democrats and 18 by Republicans – team red would need to gain seven seats to take control. Of the 49 seats, 24 are not up for election this year – 12 each held by Republicans and Democrats, which will mean Republicans will have no structural advantage in 2012. This year, they do: Of the 25 seats up, Democrats now hold 19 and Republicans six. That defense challenge is heavy on the Democratic side; it would be a tough year for maintenance under the best of circumstances.

Of those 25 seats, candidates are unopposed in five of them: Three Democrats and two Republicans. And in two other districts, both candidates headed to November are Republicans. That means in total, Republicans now are guaranteed 16 seats and Democrats 15.

Democrats did a little better among seats competitive between the party. Nine scored well enough (over 50% and substantially ahead of the opposition) to be considered likely winners in November, while six Republicans scored comparably.

There are three other odd-case districts. In 38, incumbent Jean Berkey came in a narrow third against two other candidates, a Republican and a Democrat. But because the two Democrats on the ballot pulled 67.6% of the primary vote overall, the seat has to be considered safe Democratic. In District 32, Maralyn Chase got 47.7% of the vote, while a Republican got 39.9% and another Democrat got 12.4%; again, when you add the party totals, that looks like a Democratic win, though it could enter the gray area.

And then there’s District 44, where Democratic incumbent Steve Hobbs and his main Republican challenger, Dave Schmidt, nearly tied (Hobbs very slightly edged Schmidt), in a race also involving two other candidates. This one has to be called a true tossup.

Add these together, and the Washington Senate overall is beginning to look like 38 Democrats, 34 Republicans, and one too close to call – based on primary results. So you could say the odds favor continued Democratic control, but with a narrow margin. And the possibility of Republican control if their candidates run the table.

The House has a similar overall look. Continue Reading »

weekly Digest

The results of the Washington primary election on Tuesday – or rather, ending on Tuesday – surprised new one particularly. The state’s top-rank race, the Senate contest between Democratic incumbent Patty Murray and Republican Dino Rossi, materialized about as pundits had figured, and the Tea Party-backed candidates did not get far. Elsewhere, prospective close U.S. House races were set up in the 2nd and 3rd districts, and Democrats were hard-pressed in a number of legislative contests.

More went on around the region as well. Gubernatorial debates were a hot topic of discussion in Idaho (where the first of the general election season was held in Idaho Falls) and Oregon (where negotiations over which debates will be held, or participated in, continued). Economic indicators remained mixed at best.

As a reminder: We’re now publishing weekly editions of the Public Affairs Digests – for Idaho, Washington and Oregon – moving from a monthly to a weekly rundown of what’s happening. And we’re taking it all-electronic: The print edition will be moving to e-mail.

That means we can include more information, and get it out a lot faster: The weekly Digests will be in your in-box first thing Monday morning. If you subscribe, of course: That’s $59 a year, for 50 issues and the yearbook. Yes, including the yearbook. The Idaho Yearbook, which we published for years up to 2002, will return early in 2011 – in printed book form – and Digest subscribers get it for free with their subscription. And the Oregon and Washington yearbooks will be coming out at the same time.

If you’d like to take a look at one of the new weekly Digests, here’s a link to the Idaho edition, to the Oregon edition and to the Washington edition. If you’d like to subscribe, here are the links (through to PayPal) for Idaho, for Oregon and for Washington.

A Crosscut piece definitely worth the read: About the shift of ownership of one of the key churches, University Baptist Church near the University of Washington – a landmark among liberal churches in the area.

Now the Mars Hill Church, an Evangelical church known for its conservative stances and its criticism of the region’s dominant culture, has bought the place.

Takeaway quote from the Crosscut piece (which goes into some detail, with nuances beyond but largely backing the quote): “Once, in the not too distant past, Protestant Christianity was the religious expression of the prevailing culture and its values. Increasingly, it seems that Christianity, at least in its currently thriving expressions like Mars Hill, plays a more oppositional role in relation to the prevailing culture and its values.”

Seattle: As a prevailing matter, you’re either Evangelical or secular? Historically, that hasn’t been a realistic formulation. But it may be getting that way.

Not so much for the specifics noted – which seem incomplete and sometimes, to non-wonks, a little unclear – as for the basic approach, take a look at what the Oregon Democrats did with the economic proposal put forth by Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Dudley.

They took an original version of the file (PDFed originally, probably) and effectively used a red pen to editorially mark it up. (Writers who have worked with editors will immediately grasp the approach.) It makes for a visually arresting approach.

One comment here on one of Dudley’s 26 proposals, the one being part of number 3: “He will budget the way Oregon families and businesses budget, by determining how much money the state will have and then building a “Priorities First” budget within existing revenues.” First, that’s actually not so very different from what’s done now in times of revenue downturn. Second, it assumes something sacrosanct about the current revenue levels: What’s the argument for why they should not be higher or lower? But we’ll return to some of this in another day. The Democrats, as you might imagine, didn’t take quite that approach in their markup.

There are supposed to be four debates in the Idaho gubernatorial campaign upcoming, and if the first – in Idaho Falls, Thursday – is a reasonable guide, the next three ought to be entertaining at least. And something of a marker of the real differences between Republican Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter and Democratic candidate Keith Allred. Who “won” may depend on the world view you bring with you; what you got was a fair representation of both candidates.

(No full video of the event, backed by the Idaho Falls City Club, seems to be available. But Idahoans and others can listen for now at least to a stream uploaded by . . . someone, to an online storage site. Of that ogg vorbis stream doesn’t float your browser, there’s an mp3 available too.)

A generic gripe: Both tossed in so many references to the “founding fathers” that you began to wonder if either of them really understands that the year is 2010, not 1790. But then, this is an Idaho Falls audience.

Otter has traditionally gotten underrated as a debater, but over the years he has consistently shown some skill at it, and did again on Thursday. He sounded a little bombastic, often, and an angry tone seemed to seep in regularly; he only occasionally sounded like the happy warrior of yore. (He’s mostly having to defend now, not launch a crusade.)

But he slipped in some neat jabs at Allred, notably at the Democrat’s proposals to chop out some as-yet-unnamed sales tax exemption, which Otter routinely described as tax increases (which as a matter of practice is what they would be).

At one point in a rebuttal, Otter delivered a question to Allred, and Allred – stepping outside the debate rules – went ahead and answered it. To which Otter slipped in, “That doesn’t mean under the rules you get to reply” – drawing laughter.

But Allred got some laughter of his own (and showed off his own debate skilled) when he quickly answered, “It’s good to do this with a career politician who has learned all the tricks.” Continue Reading »