Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Day: June 24, 2007”

Next up for Kate Brown?

Kate Brown

Kate Brown

Here's a guessing game: What's the reason Oregon Senator Kate Brown said, as she did this evening, that she will step down as Senate majority leader (and apprently from the Senate)? She said today that she's doing it, but not why.

Let's see. Such moves sometimes happen on occasion of scandal, except that there's been none (that we know of) in this case. Or on occasion of some awful political reversal (as last session's House Speaker Karen Minnis left leadership when her party lost the chamber), but that's not the case here either. Or there could be personal reasons, though nothing there has yet come to light. Another prospect is an impending run for higher office, an idea which is bound to raise some interest. Does she have interest in the U.S. Senate next year, or something else?

Not many answers yet.

UPDATE The first reports on this suggested a resignation from the leadership but not necessarily from the Senate. The Oregonian reports today that later Sunday she confirmed she's planning to leave the Senate as well; this post has been updated to reflect that.

Closing that primary

Increasingly looks as if Idahoans are going to have to choose their parties if they're going to vote in primaries - the closed primary system.

We don't think a majority of Idahoans would like the concept - to the contrary. But we take this quote, from the Coeur d'Alene Press by former state Senator Rod Beck, very seriously: "We now have a party rule that is in conflict with state statute. The only way to resolve that conflict is to have a court declare that statute unconstitutional."

We noted in a past post that the Idaho Legislature is unlikely to do that, but Beck's implication here is on target: A court probably would. Courts in a string of other states, including Washington, already have. Confirmation comes from Secretary of State Ben Ysursa - Idaho's long-time elections guru - who said that a lawsuit was "inevitable" and that the current relatively open primary voting system will be hard to defend in court.

We half suspect the papers are being drawn as you read this . . .

Spokane heat

Dennis Hession

Dennis Hession

Al French

Al French

Mary Verner

Mary Verner

The last time Spokane voters re-elected a mayor was 34 years ago - 1973. (Compare that to the re-election-as-norm in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Vancouver or Boise.) The incumbent mayor who is running this year, Dennis Hession, was appointed to the job in the middle of the current term, not elected, meaning both that he wouldn't necessarily have to beat history to win, and also that he's untested in a run for the top job.

Which may sound like an either-or, but we have some ease in suggesting the odds favor him.

One reason is the math of conventional political calculation. When an incumbent is on the ballot, the race almost always centers first around that incumbent - whether that person should stay or go. Hession, who is a former city council member (its president at the time he was chosen mayor, by a vote of the council), is opposed by two current council members, Al French and Mary Verner. Incumbents are ordinarily best-served by a divided opposition, and there's a good chance that will play out in this case.

There are other considerations, a few of them countervailing.

(more…)