April 19, 2025
The Idaho Legislature has just adjourned for the year - sine die (properly, that's see-nay dee-ay, though no one says it that way). The last bit of business was a compromised (and apparently somewhat straightened out) highway bonding bill.
Reflections tomorrow on the session and Governor Butch Otter's relationship to it.
This should be good for a Friday afternoon laugh . . . if, of course, you don't live in Seattle.
The new edition of Seattle Metropolitan magazine is out with, as is typical of such magazines, a rundown of the best places in the area to live. (Portland's counterpart did one on special neighborhoods in this edition.) And it determined the best Seattle place to live.
The Slog announces: "Do you know where Seattle Metropolitan says the best place to live in Seattle is? Kent. Kent is the best place to live in Seattle. Thank you, Seattle Metropolitan! See you next month!"
The comments section is priceless.
We've been viewing the subject of a from-the-right primary challenge to Republican Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, a topic arising periodically on blogs both left and right, with interest but not with the thought that anything critical is happening, yet. At least one name has surfaced - activist and initiative organizer Bill Sizemore - but even that prospect has simply been in the kicking-it-around stage.
Until now. Now, a post on Blue Oregon points out, Club for Growth is getting into the picture, notably with the establishment this month of Club for Growth Oregon. And that could change everything.
Oregonians haven't seen it a lot, but Club for Growth may be the single most serious player nationally in support of hard-conservative campaigns. It's not too much to say it is the biggest reason that, across the border in Idaho, Bill Sali is now in the U.S. House - Club for Growth threw in masses of support for him, millions of dollars and much more backing besides. When he seemed to be in trouble, they redoubled their efforts for him and against his opponents, Republicans and Democrats. The Club's role in the Sali campaign was the topic of much discussion, brought up even more (in debates, speeches and elsewhere) by Sali's Republican opponents than by Democratic. The story was similar in Club-backed races elsewhere; it is, for example, why Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee nearly lost his primary to a much more conservative challenger in what may be the most liberal state in the country. And there were a bunch of additional cases in 2006. The Club is solidly Republican, but it sees Republicans who violate its definition of conservatism as no better than Democrats, maybe worse, and ripe for attack.
The Oregon site so far mentions only statehouse politics and legislative actions, and it may become somewhat involved on that level. But the Club for Growth has only one credible reason for paying serious attention to Oregon in this cycle, and that would be going after Gordon Smith.