Ridenbaugh Press

Just a few months ago the chief of police of Portland, Derrick Foxworth, was demoted (and is now at legal war with the city) and generated a local firestorm over a sexual relationship with a female member of the force. Actually, to put it more finely, the firestorm erupted from a batch of emails between them, mainly his to her, which became the subject of withering public discussion for weeks.

Bill Douglas

One obvious lesson in this: if you’re working in a public agency, watch those emails, especially any centering around personal relationships and most especially any with sexual component - those last are PR lighter fluid.

Just that has embroiled another public official, Kootenai County (Idaho) Prosecutor Bill Douglas, who neither sent nor received the mails but presides over the office where it happened.

The key emailer was Chief Deputy Prosecutor Rick Baughman, who has been accused of sexual harassment and who, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, sent a number of sexually explicit emails (reported at about 50) to them, some with graphic attachments. Evidently at least one of the women reciprocated.

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After reading twice the Monday Gregoire/Bergeson press release on the math portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning - WASL - and considering its history, the chain of realistic conclusions seems clear.

The WASL was intended as a measure of how well students in the upper grades of Washington public schools are learning certain core subjects. So what do you do if the WASL doesn’t indicate what you want it to? Try teaching to the WASL - take time away from general learning so that students can do better on the test. (There’s been no lack of reportage about that tendency around the state, and even of students driven to WASL-induced stress illness over their test-taking.) And if that still doesn’t work? Change the standards, which is what the Gregoire/Bergeson “temporary alternative” to WASL math standards, to be proposed to the legislature next session, is essentially about.

State education agencies have reported “progress” on reading and writing test scores, but ongoing “diffuculty” in the math sections. That has led to protests, and elected officials - notably, officials who will be on the ballot in less than two years - have responded. Specifically: “Governor Gregoire and Superintendent Bergeson are proposing that students who have not passed the high school WASL continue to take rigorous math classes until they graduate or pass the test. Taking the test or an approved alternative would be required annually. The option of allowing students to graduate without passing the math WASL would remain in place for three years - for the graduating classes of 2008, 2009 and 2010.”

As to where that’s leading, consider the logic in this quote from Governor Chris Gregoire: “I want to let students and parents know that we are listening to their concerns and we believe this plan promotes math skills without penalizing responsible, hard-working students and teachers.” But - that formulation logically suggests - letting slide the irresponsible, indolent students and teachers.

There is in all this a clue for the legislature, which is that it might profitably begin peering outside the WASL box in consideration of a superior mousetrap.

One of the unwritten rules of D.C.’s Capitol Hill is that the members of Congress are to be seen and heard (as often as possible), but not the staff: Their names are supposed never to show up, for example, in news stories. For the greatworld outside the beltway, these people, who make a whole lot happen and shape congressional directions and careers more than many elected officials will ever acknowledge, remain a shadowy presence.

Reason enough to appreciate LegiStorm, a web site and service now just a couple of months old. (Hat tip to the Oregonian blog for noting it.) Formed as an outgrowth of a watcher of Pentagon activities, LegiStorm apparently will expand but has started as a tracker of salaries of congressional staffers - those working for a member of Congress. (Committees, offices, leadership positions and other nooks have staffers too but aren’t covered.)

So how does the Northwest delegation pay? A surface scan suggests: About normal for the nationwide marketplace. Which is what it is, since many of the key staffers for members of Congress float around among the congressional offices.

Pulling together material posted on LegiStorm (but not exactly in their format), here’s a statistical piece of the picture: The chiefs of staff for the members of the regional Senate delegation. (Are you a political junkie? You are if you know the names of these chiefs of staff, though many of them ought to be well known . . . so consider this an excuse to meet some of the people behind the curtain . . .)

This covers the year ending last March 31. Note that in all cases, the numbers may include or exclude some payments (bonuses and so forth) so the comparisons may not be strictly apples to apples.

State	Member	Chief of Staff	Annual Pay
ID	Larry Craig/R	Michael O. Ware	$158,250
ID	Mike Crapo/R	John Hoehne	$158,204
OR	Ron Wyden/D	Joshua Kardon	$156,585
OR	Gordon Smith/R	John Easton	$156,257
WA	Patty Murray/D	Richard Desimone	$141,287
WA	Maria Cantwell/D	Kurt Beckett*	$96,230

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*Held the position only part of the year.

House information is available here.

Outside our front window, at low elevation

Yeah, there are some icy roads. But it’s pretty out there.

The whole Northwest - almost - has been drenched with snow, even places that seldom see it at all in the winter. The Willamette Valley in Oregon has a snow floor; the mountains to east and west may typically turn white, but the valley floor only uncommonly does.

A north-central Idaho friend informs us of 17 inches on the ground there. Seattle has been coping with the unexpected white stuff (though less ice, seemingly, than usual.) A string of ski areas will open for business in the next few days; the Spokesman-review’s Betsy Russell reports that Bogus Basin at Boise has gotten 14 inches of snow since late Sunday.

And more on the way. We seem well on the way to a solid snowpack for the season; might we get a white Christmas as well?

The next time you see an institution talking about conducting a year-long, nation-wide, expensive search to fill a high-paying executive post, remember Baker.

The Baker City Herald reports today on the city’s efforts to fill its city manager position, which came open when Jerry Gillham resigned on September 1. After a busy period shortly before the deadline for applications hit on November 15, the city totaled them up and found the position had . . . 91 applicants.

One of the reviewers remarked, “I think there’s a pretty solid group of 20 at the top.”

Probably is.

The quite serious subject of where the Washington Republican Party goes from here is given a thoughtful treatment in “Make or Break Time for the Washington GOP,” a Matt Rosenberg post on Sound Politics. It isn’t the final word on the subject, but it constitutes the best opening shot we’ve seen yet.

The situation is serious indeed, and he stakes are high. One of the comments to Rosenberg’s post notes acidly, “WA is now a one party state. There are many such states in the US, and the one thing they have in common is that the out-party (the GOP in WA) can sometimes win the executive’s office, but the statehouse is lost basically for a generation or more.”

That’s often true. Washington Republicans should look east to the plight of the Idaho Democrats for a vision of their future if they fail to reverse what has now become a decade-long slide. There, Democrats have been out of control of either chamber of the legislature for 46 years.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Washington and Oregon have each provided more rapid shifts in recent decades. The current Washington issue is that the switch looks structural. It was shown up starkly in a Seattle Times article and, especially, a map published today. The map shows the east King County legislative districts, seven or eight of them (depending on how you count) which only a decade ago were nearly all a lock for Republicans, and now are - with the partial split exception of District 41 - solidly Democratic. Much of that happened on November 7, but the trend has been building, accelerating, throughout this decade. It’s not a momentary lapse; this has been in the works.

If that means the suburbs as well as the central city of Seattle have gotten off the fence and landed on the Democratic side, then you can just about say: game over. Between those places and the other Democratic bases in the state - most of the rest of the Puget Sound area and most of the Olympic peninsula, plus part of Vancouver and central Spokane - there isn’t enough votes everywhere else to counterbalance. The Seattle suburbs were the key.

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The gubernatorial campaign of Mary Starrett, running under the banner of the Constitution Party of Oregon, generated a good deal of attention - not least for the candidate’s solid campaigning skills - but it failed to hit what would have been key benchmarks.

It failed to reach even into the upper single digits (the percentage was 3.6% of the vote). And it failed to generate enough votes that it could even qualify as a “spoiler,” prospectively making the difference in the outcome between the two major party candidates. Democrat Ted Kulongoski won by 8%, considerably more than Starrett’s vote.

(We do take note that Starrett’s highest county percentage, 8.1%, was in Democratic Columbia County, which overall went for Kulongoski; that county was loaded with Starrett yard signs during the campaign. What’s happening there is worth another check.)

All this is prompted by email today from the Constitution Party of Oregon, which notes a new state party chair, Jack Alan Brown, Jr., and some political analysis from its perspective.

We intend to greatly increase our party’s visibility, building on the momentum created by Mary Starrett’s campaign for governor. One way we will be doing that is by fielding a few exciting ballot initiatives that directly relate to some of our platform planks. The first will undoubtedly relate to one or more of the following issues — abortion, English as our official language, and illegal immigration. We have other plans as well that we will unveil later.

Our presence in the governor race proved what I have said all along: Neither conservative nor moderate Democrats will ever vote for a moderate Republican, as they have nothing to gain. However, conservative Democrats might vote for a Republican perceived as a conservative, if their own party’s nominee is perceived as an ultra liberal, as the Nixon and Reagan presidencies demonstrated. If the Republicans can’t learn this, they might as well pack up and go home. The Constitution Party of Oregon, with its principles-over-politics approach, is here to stay!

Adding to Republican headaches in review of this Rubik’s cube of an election.

CORRECTION: The name of the new party chair was corrected.

Acouple of quick notes on latter-day newspapering, indicators of how the industry has changed.

1. The King County Journal, which has been up for sale for several months (we posted on that in June) has been sold - to a Canadian company. (Check out that earlier post for background on the Journal.)

The buyer is Black Press Ltd., which owns a string of Canadian properties and one of the two dailies in Honolulu. (We’ve followed, over the years, the adventures of that Hawaiian newspaper, the Star-Bulletin, in Ian Lind’s fine Online Daily from Hawaii - one of the first and still one of the most readable blogs; Lind, a former Star-Bulletin staffer, started it as an outlet to describe with brutal honesty what was happening as the paper went through major changes over the years. Journal employees might be well served to check it out.) Based on past history, our sense: The Journal will remain a daily newspaper, but will see more budget cuts.

2. Over at the Spokane Spokesman-Review, Huckleberries proprietor Dave Oliveria continues his look back at the Coeur d’Alene Press, notably the rapid turnover there.

We were struck by this bit in a comment and response: In the last 22 years, these people have been the managing editors of the Press: Bill Cooper, Jim Hail, Clyde Bentley, Gretchen Berning, Barry Casebolt, Mike Feiler, Mark Allison and Mike Patrick, who is there now. Count ‘em: eight MEs in that time, about two years and a few months apiece.

Acouple of quick notes on latter-day newspapering, indicators of how the industry has changed.

1. The King County Journal, which has been up for sale for several months (we posted on that in June) has been sold - to a Canadian company. (Check out that earlier post for background on the Journal.)

The buyer is Black Press Ltd., which owns a string of Canadian properties and one of the two dailies in Honolulu. (We’ve followed, over the years, the adventures of that Hawaiian newspaper, the Star-Bulletin, in Ian Lind’s fine Online Daily from Hawaii - one of the first and still one of the most readable blogs; Lind, a former Star-Bulletin staffer, started it as an outlet to describe with brutal honesty what was happening as the paper went through major changes over the years. Journal employees might be well served to check it out.) Based on past history, our sense: The Journal will remain a daily newspaper, but will see more budget cuts.

2. Over at the Spokane Spokesman-Review, Huckleberries proprietor Dave Oliveria continues his look back at the Coeur d’Alene Press, notably the rapid turnover there.

We were struck by this bit in a comment and response: In the last 22 years, these people have been the managing editors of the Press: Bill Cooper, Jim Hail, Clyde Bentley, Gretchen Berning, Barry Casebolt, Mike Feiler, Mark Allison and Mike Patrick, who is there now. Count ‘em: eight MEs in that time, about two years and a few months apiece.

The canvassed Idaho vote is now available, and for offices for legislative and up, and statewide ballot issues, county and precinct level vote information is now available at the secretary of state’s web site in downloadable Excel spreadsheets. (As per usual, they’ve done a fine job getting that information out there, well ahead of many of their counterparts.)

Lots of fun things are possible with this data, of course. We got right work on one: Charting the outlines of the culture wars in Idaho.

The simplest way to do that this election is with House Joint Resolution 2, the constitutional amendment banning formal domestic relationships other than man-woman marriage. This surely drew the culture war line in Idaho as clearly as anything this election, and it may be one of the components in the Republicans’ sweep of the Gem State in the teeth of a Democratic wave. Statewide, the measure passed with 63.3% - a landslide.

But it did not pass equally everywhere.

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By way of the Republican RINO Watch, a new website dedicated to blasting Oregon Senator Gordon Smith’s stand on immigration:

Deport Gordon Smith.

Considering the recent history of the Ron Saxton’s campaign on illegal aliens, one has to wonder where Oregon Republicans - those, that is, pushing this latest effort - think this initiative is going to get them.

Dave Oliveria of the Spokesman Review blog Huckleberries reports receiving an email from Robert James, the newly former editor of the Bonners Ferry Herald, which is owned by Hagadone Newspapers. In it he wrote, “Last Friday, Hagadone corp. fired me, the managing editor of the Bonners Ferry Herald, apparently for endorsing democrat Jerry Brady in a personal opinion column.”

Remarked Oliveria, “And you guys wonder why I don’t cut HagaWorld much slack.” Oliveria does due disclosure in noting that he too once worked for and was fired from that organization. In further disclosure, your scribe also briefly reported for (though not long enough to be dismissed from) that same company.

Quick advisory on the National Journal Hotline report today on Oregon people and places. It notes but does not indicated probabilities on the prospect of a run by former Governor John Kitzhaber for the Senate against Republican Gorden Smith in 2008. Two more distinctive items emerge, however.

1. On the subject of Independent state Senator Ben Westlund - whose next moves are of high interest among Oregon political types - Stacy Dycus, who was his campaign spokesman during his run for governor this year, had little conclusive to say. There was this, however: “Democrats have been asking Ben to run against [Smith] but he really hasn’t considered it.” Same, she indicated, with re-election to the state Senate and with the office of state treasurer, where incumbent Randall Edwards will be term limited out. (Republican bloggers hve speculated Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski may champion a Westlund run for the latter as payback for Westlund’s support of him this fall.)

Maybe most intriguing, this: “He is an independent and all I can tell you is that his heart and mind is closer to the views held by Democrats, but he has no plans to change registration. If asked, he may caucus with the D’s this session.”

2. Among other Democratic names bring circulated for Senate if Kitzhaber declines: Edwards, Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo (nonpartisan in her current job, but a former Democratic legislator) and Clatsop County District Attorney Joshua Marquis (also in a nonpartisan job, but with Democratic background). The list of Democratic prospects seems to be growing explosively.

Much of the context is still lacking, but political topic A in Oregon clearly is: To what extent is Senator Gordon Smith, the only statewide elected Republican, vulnerable in 2008, when his seat is up? Not only Democrats but Republicans as well are pondering the question.

Gordon Smith

Nationally, of course, Smith is too obvious a target to miss: A Republican in an increasingly blue state, and the only Republican among the three Pacific coast states (excluding Alaska). Nothing resembling a definitive answer is possible yet, of course, because we lack so much of what will be the context for that race. What will the state and nation look like then? How will Oregonians assess the credit or blame? Will they feel as harshly toward President Bush and the Republican Congress as they do now? Will the Democrats in Washington and Salem do well or poorly? How will the presidential campaigns affect political 2008 in Oregon?

Not to mention more race-specific issues. Will Smith run again? (The presumption is that he will, but there’s no formal declaration yet, and likely won’t be for a while.) If he does, will he raise a huge amount of money, or less than that? (He apparently has about $2 million on hand now.) How does he present himself to the state now, as the Bush era winds down? How do issues impact him? What sort of a campaign does he run? And, needless to say, who might he draw as opposition?

Only on some of those latter points is even loose speculation feasible. Which, of course, isn’t slowing down the politically interested from taking a crack at it.

First step is working out Smith’s own relative vulnerability.

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Would be highly interesting, say a year or so from now, to check back on the aftereffects of this decision goes . . .

Idaho U.S. Representative-elect Bill Sali has been elected to something else: President of his freshman class of Republican representatives. (The last such from Idaho was then-Representative Mike Crapo, in 1992.)

It is not a massive class, to be sure. But we will be intrigued to see how the choice holds up.

Comments more than welcome.

A hat tip to the correspondent who sent us a mail noting the development.

The new slogan almost harkens us back to those days, almost two years ago, when Washington state’s political eyes were centered on Wenatchee because of the big trial over the governor’s race . . . but that’s just us.

Those of us accustomed to seeing the familiar “Apple Capital of the World” sign upon approaching Wenatchee will see it no more, the Seattle Times reports. The new sign graphically points out the city’s dramatic canyon and riverfront location, and its words link to that: “Wenatchee. Meeting Rivers. Meeting Friends. Meeting Needs.”

It’s part of an ongoing development: Places are tending to define themselves less by their natural or agricultural resources. Check out the Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce web site and you’ll find a little thumbnail shot of an apple, and a screen-wide picture of east and west Wenatchee, stradding the river at twilight. Apples get a mention, but no more than that.

Check out the Wenatchee city site, and you’ll see much the same: “One of the most digitally connected places in the country, Wenatchee offers the perfect place to balance all aspects of life, from building a company to raising a family or meeting the challenges of a new career. Wenatchee is world famous for our apples but it has so much else to offer — like over 300 days of sunshine a year and a wonderful turn of the century downtown that serves as a vibrant arts, culture and retail center.”

Not everyone is thrilled. The Times pulled these qutoes from Wenatchee people:
“It sounds more like an outreach program than a city.” “This new [slogan] is too New Age touchy feely. [It] leaves me feeling like a phony.”

Okay. But spend a little time around Wenatchee - the city itself, not the countryside - and you’ll not find yourself thinking a lot about apples, either.

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The national or even regional real estate market is so large you can’t easily get your figurative arms around it. You wind up with oddities like a pair of stories in today’s Oregonian, headlined “Portland real estate goes own way - up” (actually, the story doesn’t very well justify the head) and “home building goes downhill.”

Maybe a little easier to absorb is the smaller-scale experience of a specific place. An excellent post on Blue Oregon lays out the situation in the Pearl District in near-downtown Portland.

The Pearl is Portland’s largest artsy and high-end district, blocks of refurbished warehouses now turned into restaurants, galleries and such - and condos, lots of condos. (Stroll by for a First Thursday art night and you’ll see the condo-ites overhanging their windows and balconies.) Condo construction has been brisk in this area, and so has the increase in condo prices. But in recent months, according to the post by Jenson Hagen, the bubble is bursting.

“They are still building these things like mad,” Hagen writes. “The John Ross by the new tram. The Wyatt will add another 245 units to the Pearl. The Strand is going up where I-5 crosses the Willamette. Their website claims an additional 1,335 condos are going up along the Willamette.”

But alongisde that, some disquieting trends. Hagen said that in July he started noting how many Pearl condos were available for sale on the major web site for such sales, Buying Pearl Real Estate. Those numbers rose from 266 in July, to 322 in August, 379 in September, 422 in October and 480 in November. The average condo price is not cheap - most you’ve seen listed in the last year or two run upwards of a half-million. But the numbers of condos offered for under $200,000 (steadily up from 13 in July to 41 in November) has risen faster than the average - an indicator of dropping prices.

Is that the distant sound of a train wreck we’re hearing?

Last of four posts on competitive congressional contests in the Northwest.

In our list earlier this fall of four close House races, we picked the contest in Washington District 8 as the toughest and prospectively closest. We were right (not, of course, that we weren’t in a rather large crowd in making that assessment). The reasons were clear enough. And now, after election day, as a lot of Seattle area Democrats wonder what went wrong, those reasons and others often mentioned this fall stand.

It was, for some months, presumed to be a close race. It was, very close, close enough that the outcome wasn’t fully clear until well after election night. It stood a fair chance of being one of Republican House seats the Democrats could pick up this year, but it never seemed likely to be a runaway win.

Let’s review the main reasons Washington 8 was competitive to begin with. It is a historically Republican district trending Democratic, and based on the state legislative election results on November 7, you could reasonably argue the area has now shifted from “lean Republican” to “lean Democratic.” Fertile ground, in other words, for a Democratic challenge. The challenge, from former Microsoft manager Darcy Burner, was unified - no primary conflict - highly energetic and (increasingly as the year went on) well funded. Burner was a fine fundraiser and a reasonably skillful campaigner. Republican incumbent Dave Reichert was framed to a degree as a manipulated good haircut riding on the glory of an old criminal case he oversaw when he was sheriff of King County. And in a year of fury at President George W. Bush and the Republicans in charge in Washington, Reichert made the mistake of allowing himself to be identified fairly closely with them.

But don’t forget what’s countering that. While the 8th district is in transition, that doesn’t mean all the Republicans in it have crawled into caves - or that a lot of the voters are disinclined to split their tickets. (The transition probably goes along with increased ticket splitting; the heavier Democratic voting below may have slightly depressed Democratic voting above.) Burner was, if intelligent and enthusiastic, also a new candidate, with a learning curve not only on her part but also on the the part of the voters - they didn’t know her all that well. Because much of the campaign backing her was based on the anti-Republican mood, they didn’t learn a lot. But they did know Reichert, and for all his flaws, a lot of people in the area liked the guy.

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Third of four posts on competitive congressional contests in the Northwest.

Those Idahoans - some Democrats and some Republicans - convinced at the end of May that the nomination of Bill Sali would open the door to a Democratic nominee in the 1st congressional district of Idaho, obviously were shown on election day to be . . . not entirely right.

Not entirely wrong, either. We’ve become convinced that an opening did exist, but the Democrats did not wind up taking advantage of it. That was not for lack of an appealing candidate or energetic campaign, both of which they had. Whether a similar opening will reappear in future elections is uncertain, but Idaho Democrats would be wise to focus a good deal of attention in this area.

Before going further, we should restate the outlines here. In its recent voting patterns, Idaho is as blood red a state as any in the country, laying reasonable claim this year to the top of the list. It elected no Democrats at all above the level of state legislator. In the first congressional district, Republican Sali defeated Democrat Larry Grant 50% to 45%; in the race for governor, Republican C.L. “Butch” Otter, a veteran elected official, defeated second-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brady 53% to 44%. Those were not massive wins, but a few local Republican disabilities should be noted. Otter’s campaign was relatively weak and accumulated bad headlines from the beginning of the year all the way through to about election day. And Sali was poorly regarded by a number of fellow Republicans, insulted and even threatened by two state House speakers of his own party and was blasted during the campaign by other Republicans, notably the candidate who came in second to Sali in the Republican primary for the House seat. Atop that was the hope generated by what looked like, and what in many places was, a national Democratic tide in the mid-term elections.

The easy response to these races and some others (such as those for state controller and superintendent of public instruction) is: A working majority of Idaho voters look for the “R” by the name and vote accordingly, and no other considerations enter in. And in most recent elections there’s been little evidence to the contrary.

This time, some evidence of a more complicated story does exist.

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Almost anything can become grist for a lawsuit, apparently. Not least the courts themselves. Or even - in effect - one court suing another over who has control of a legal case.

That may be a slight twisting of the legal realities in City of Spokane v. County of Spokane, which made all the way to the state supreme court (which released its opinion today). But it isn’t far off.

At the end of 2004, then-Spokane Mayor Jim West (yes, him again, but not about that) sent the word to the Spokaken County offices: Municipal court would go it alone. State law allows, quirkily, a municipal court - which ordinarily is under management of the court district court - to break off and become its own separate entity. That is what West was proposing in the case of Spokane.

Litigation arose when the city and the county disagreed over whether the city or county would be responsible for certain cases which were still active in the court at the time of transition. (The Supreme Court mostly sided with the city.)

It’s what they call meta.