Ridenbaugh Press

Today’s recommendation toward more informed voting and citizen participation: Turn off your cable TV news - C-SPAN and some special events like debates excepted. Really. Put a block on those channels. You too can recover from past exposure to this trash masquerading as news: Your take on the world as it actually is will rapidly recover from the endless distortion those operators purvey.

The reasons for that rant are enough to fill several books (and several have been written). Today it is brought to you by one particularly trashy, idiotic and hateful stunt pulled by one of the worst offenders, Bill O’Reilly, one that has a distinct Northwest connection.

It starts [and see this post too from Firedoglake] with two men, business consultants, from the European Union who flew to Seattle to transact business. They’ve been described as appearing as if they might have some Middle Eastern background (to our eyes, based on the photos, they could’ve come from a whole bunch of countries round the globe, including this one). After their business wrapped in Seattle, they decided to have a look around, and hopped a ferry ride.

Their appearance was enough to draw the attention of another passenger, who in turn notified Washington State Ferries officials. Someone followed the two men around, snapped pictures of them (this should start to get a little spooky right about here), and someone apparently concluded they “showed an inordinate interest in the operation of the shipboard systems.” (Tip to ferry passengers: Avert your eyes from the machinery, not that this will be easy since it happens to be all around you.) (more…)

The brief Seattle Times editorial on executive compensation at Fisher Communications pretty much says it all, but we can’t help pointing it out here.

Call it a small, but encouraging, indicator. If others do in fact take enough notice.

Geoff Simpson

Alot of political calculation probably is going on about now in and around the 47th House district, on the subject of Representative Geoff Simpson, D-Covington. He’s got some trouble, the kind that might not be politically survivable.

Only but so many details are publicly available; we do know the case involves an evidently bitter divorce, a meeting between the legislator and his ex-wife, a call to local law enforcement, and Simpson charged in King County District Court with fourth-degree assault and interfering with a domestic violence report. (A police report has bee posted via Sound Politics; sounds like the case in question, but the names have been blacked out.) Simpson has predicted exoneration. Meantime, we learn today, House Speaker Frank Chopp has removed Simpson from his committee chair.

The political issue here involves Simpson’s house seat. So, just a bit of background.

The district is in rural southeast King County, east of the Renton area; the main communities are Black Diamond and Covington, where Simpson has been a visible figure (in city government, too) for some years. Traditionally, this was part of the Republican King County east side, and Republicans did represent it for a long time. In 1996, for example, Republican Suzette Cooke took seat 1 with 62.4% of the vote; two years later another Republican, Phil Fortunato, took it with 52.6%. He lost the seat to Simpson two years later in 2000, in a 50.1%-49.5% squeaker.

In this decade, here is how the Republican percentages for that seat have gone: 49.5% in 2000, then 48.5% (Fortunato losing a second time to Simpson) in 2002, then 46.2% in 2004, and 40.3% in 2006. The trend line is matched on the other side. It’s roughly matched by the other House seat and the Senate seat in 47 as well; in 1998 the district was all-Republican, and today it’s all-Democratic.

Other conditions being more or less equal, you’d expect this House seat would remain Democratic this year. Depending on what emerges next in the Simpson legal case, though, Simpson may or may not be able to maintain that party advantage - this could be the kind of candidate-specific problem that could overcome partisan advantage.

Catch is, there’s not long to decide. Filing time in Washington is just a month away. Simpson has, in other words, some political reason to try to resolve the case in his favor (if he can) by then. Otherwise . . .

Mark Emmert

The theory behind paying those high executive salaries and compensation packages, like the $905,000 for University of Washington President Mark Emmert, usually carries the explanation that top talent needs top pay. Needs it, the theory goes, both as incentive to do a good job (though if they were so good, would such incentive be needed?) and as a loyalty encourager and enforcer: You wouldn’t put any other obligation before the one that pays you so well, right?

Which raises a question of what degree of loyalty two of Emmert’s newest employers - they are paying him for services rendered - might expect. They’re both board positions, but Emmert will be compensated substantially for them: By Weyerhauser $70,000 a year and $70,000 in stock, and by Expeditors International $200,000 a year in stock.

Where exactly does that put him in any dealings those corporations might have with UW?

The story has broken all over the Seattle media; we were taken by this tag on a Post-Intelligencer blog post: “It isn’t untypical for highly paid university leaders to sit on boards. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported earlier this year that the only two public university presidents earning more money than Emmert in the 2006-2007 school year both sat on corporate boards.”

A closing thought: What if we offered to pay university presidents, say, $50,000 a year and reasonable expenses? Might weed out a lot of the money obsession; and our guess is that the level of executive talent wouldn’t change much.

Jim McDermott

The Jim McDermott legal case is done, with McDermott’s payment of a $1 million court judgment to John Boehner, the House minority leader. (The suit had to do with Washington Representative McDermott’s release of a recording of an overheard phone conversation.) The case was a civil lawsuit between two private parties, meaning that Boehner legitimately could have pocketed the money. Instead, he said he will donate it to Republican candidates - which would seem to sting McDermott.

A Boehner spokesman was quoted, “I wouldn’t expect he’ll receive a lot of thank-yous come November.”

Maybe not, considering how appreciated an extra million will be to the various Republican campaign funds running hard-up this year.

Although and unless: McDermott, who has had a legal expense trust fund in place for the case (part of the money for the settlement came from it, the rest from his campaign treasury), could do a make-good by setting up another fund: One to counter the money he just game Boehner.

Just a thought.

The metric shouldn’t be overstated - we say here over and over that while money is important in political campaigns, it isn’t all, and candidates outspent by their opponents win more often than you would think.

Still, a chart of House races - races involving an incumbent seeking re-election, not an open seat - comparing candidates’ cash on hand (according to the most recent reports), got our attention. (It was compiled at the website Swing State Project.) That’s partly because of the race at the very top of the list nationally, the number one race for a challenger with much more cash on hand than the incumbent:

Idaho’s 1st District, where Democrat Walt Minnick has $327,909 on hand, to incumbent Republican Bill Sali’s $124,191 - 264% more. Only one other race in the country (in a Texas district) has nearly so large a challenger advantage.

However, in fourth place on the list, we do find another Northwest race: Democrat Darcy Burner, with $921,615 on hand, to incumbent Republican Dave Reichert’s $698,035, in the Washington 8th.

There are just 10 races in the country featuring an challenger who has more money banked than does the incumbent; those are the only two in the Northwest.

We wrote a bit last week about the departure of Dave Ammons, the dean (is that still proper terminology?) of the Washington statehouse press corps, from his perch as head of that Associated Press office. But another remark seems worth note here too.

That comes from David Goldstein of Horse’s Ass, who reflects on his interactions with Ammons over the years. A view from the inside - an inside - worthy of a look. And an indicator, buried within, of the power of the AP.

The newly newspaper-less counties in Idaho who just got word their weeklies in Shoshone and Rupert will be closed, might have another option. Over in western Washington, the same thing just happened to the small community of Orting. There, the locals didn’t just sit still for it: They up and created their own new online newspaper, with contributions from the editor of the old print version.

Via Olympia Time, we were interested to read an early edition of the new effort, the Orting News. Some Idahoans might want to swing by as well.

So the Northwest loses another of its major businesses: SafeCo, apparently about to be bought out by Liberty Mutual Group of Boston. SafeCo has been a major regional player; to the point that a former top executive of it, Mike McGavick, was a U.S. Senate candidate from Washington last cycle.

The SafeCo name is supposed to remain the same, and the cutbacks could be smaller than in some other cases because its major segments of business within the insurance do seem more to complement than overlap with Liberty’s. (There will almost certainly be some cutbacks around Seattle, of course.) Still. If it feels like a cut to the Northwest, that’s because, most likely it is.

The talk is of a man who’s filed lawsuit after lawsuit and, some of his critics say, is making - with his attorneys - a cottage industry out of it. He’s certainly been awarded substantial sums of money. All of which in these days of frivolous lawsuits reasonably sounds suspicious, except for two things:

First, he’s been winning.

Second, his lawsuits have been performing a public service.

The man is David Koenig, a construction worker from Federal Way. As a story in the Tacoma News Tribune outlines today, it all started about a decade ago when a family member was sexually assaulted, and he asked the city of Des Moines for public records - and they were clearly public - related to that incident. He was denied. (There was, we should note, an issue here about whether the form of his request in effect identified the otherwise unnamed victim in a sexual assault.) He took his case to the Washington Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor, and ordered Des Moines to pay his (and his lawyers) $83,000.

Koenig has been after public records ever since. The small town of Buckley paid him $22,700 in another law enforcement records case; the larger city of Tukwila paid $27,000; and now still larger Lakewood in Pierce County has been dinged $40,000 - all for refusing to turn over public records. (Keonig says he’s using the part of his intake that doesn’t go to attorneys to pursue additional public records cases.)

A number of local government officials, naturally, are up in arms, and one can imagine seminars at local government association meetings about how to avoid similar judgments. We can cut to that chase right here: Unless you have a clear-cut no-question exemption in state or federal law and can point to it immediately, turn over the damn records.

Sooner or later, the taxpayers of Lakewood, Des Moines, Buckley, Tukwila and other jurisdictions likely will get the point. When they do, the questions they put to their officials may be more pointed than Koenig’s.

Jim Dunn

Toss this one near the top of the list of most contentious Washington state House seats this cycle: District 17, the seat now held by Republican Jim Dunn, R-Battle Ground.

There was some talk that Dunn might not run again, which might have changed the character of the contest this year. But word now is that he is running, so things are getting interesting.

Dunn isn’t a newcomer; he’s been a state rep from the rural Clark County area (including some of the Vancouver area) since 1996, apart from a term out in 2002-03. He lost in 2002, and his margins have been less than impressive overall; his races have been much more competitive than those of the typical incumbent. And that was before late last year. The Washington House Republican caucus had just been reeling over difficulties including a resignation and preceding scandal, at which point Dunn made remarks to a female Republican staffer considered so inappropriate that his fellow Republicans took away his committee assignments and cut his expenses. Those remarks were, apparently, not considered entirely unusual, either; presumably, most of the Republican caucus would rather see another Republican replace him.

And that might happen, but there are questions and issues.

Another Republican, Joseph James, has entered the race (possibly hoping that Dunn would opt out), and has been at work: Among other things, reporting campaign fundraising of $74,000, considerably more than either Dunn or the Democrat in the race, Tim Propst. However, Chris Mulick at the Tri-City Herald reports some unusual aspects to that large number: “Since January he’s counted about $3,000 a month as an in-kind donation from himself for use of personal space for a campaign office and another $700 a month for use of a personal vehicle. He’s also listed lots of other in-kind contributions from himself for things such as gas and meals. The Public Disclosure Commission database doesn’t appear to be quite caught up with incoming reports yet but it appears only a bit more than half of James’ total contributions have been cash donations. James has filed two summary reports recently and I can’t tell which one is current. But either way it appears he has less than $10,000 on hand.”

So how does he fare against a well-known Dunn in the primary? Or against Probst (we’ve met him, and he appears to be an energetic and presentable candidate) in the fall? This race is very much up in the air.

SEE ALSO an additional review of James’ background at this Clark County political site.

The chant wasn’t something on the order of, “Go Sonics!” - although, as the Seattle Sonics happened to win last night’s game against the Dallas Mavericks, the crowd was certainly supportive - but rather - “Bennett sucks!”

Bennett being Clay Bennett, leader of the group which owns the Sonics and plans to move the team to Oklahoma City.

We’d guess that before long, someone will launch a new basketball team at Seattle, likely not major league but something professional. The audience for basketball clearly is there; money can be made. Question: Is that good enough? Or is it that the idea of major league, as opposed to basketball, is what’s important here? And if that is, why?

You have to wonder whether this will be picked up on elsewhere. Maybe it won’t. But that it has happened in a place like Spokane, well . . .

The story is that the Spokane County Republicans, the Spokesman-Review reports, “formally rejected the Iraq policy of their current president and their party’s likely nominee, saying American troops shouldn’t be on overseas missions for more than six months without a formal declaration of war. At a county convention that some party leaders said may have set an attendance record for Republicans in Spokane, supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul Saturday handily defeated an attempt to scale back the platform’s stringent limitation on using American troops on foreign soil.”

Aha! It’s those Ron Paul people checking in again; and they did show some substantial strength in Spokane during the February caucuses. Still, they had similar strength in a lot of other places around Washington too. And the Iraq battle at the Spokane organization means that although their candidate won’t be a Republican nominee (though they still sent a pile of Paul delegates to the state convention), they may not yet be done in pursuing his agenda.

Well, this is going to be the real news of the season at Olympia: Dave Ammons is leaving the Associated Press to go to work for the secretary of state’s office.

We’ve not had the pleasure of meeting Ammons, in person; but years of reading his weekend columns on Washington politics for so many years makes that seem a detail. Political reporter at Olympia for the AP since 1971, he may be one of the handful of truly key statehouse reporters in the country, in place so long as to develop an overwhelming memory of what has been (with insight into what will be), and the best news platform of all, the AP. For those outside the news business: Most news used by newspapers and broadcasters gets there via the AP, and the AP’s coverage of stat events and politics is what most people around a given state read about it.

David Postman of the Seattle Times wrote a 2001 column on Ammon. It’s worth a read, and a reflection on how little point there would be to such a column at all if the subject were most journalists. But Ammon - the source, certainly, of a large chunk of what we’ve come to learn about Washington politics - is one of the exceptions.

Chris Gregoire campaigning at Vancouver/Stapilus

The lasting impression, watching Washington Governor Chris Gregoire working a crowd at Vancouver on day one of her first major campaign swing of the year, was that she’s gotten better at this than she was four years ago.

She should have, of course. Candidate Gregoire in 2004 was Christine, with the proper name and the litigator’s manner. Intelligence and competence came across clearly enough, but she could be a little hard to warm to. 2008’s candidate Chris seemed more relaxed and easy, at least as energetic (maybe more so) but less wired. The crowd at Vancouver, where we watched her in action, was a group of Democratic activists, officials and supporters and so primed to support her, but the interaction seemed warmer than would have been obligatory. Every so often the lawyer flashed an appearance, and some of her pushes for enthusiasm were a little forced. She’s still not a natural at this, but nonetheless a stronger candidate than last time around.

(We look forward to running a comparison between Republican Dino Rossi 2004 and 2008 - sorry, no name change in his case.)

The stump speech was basic - no very striking twists - but fully functional. Job one for an incumbent seeking re-election is to make the case that things are better than they were when the term began, or at least that the incumbent did the best they could. Gregoire addressed all that thoroughly. Unemployment was highest in the nation then, and much lower now, she argued; the job market is much improved; the state has won kudos for capable management; and so on. It’s a case Rossi will necessarily attack, of course, but Gregoire is not neglecting her role in making it. Over-modesty will not be her undoing in this campaign. (Go ahead and laugh; but any number of incumbents over the years have neglected to make the case for themselves only to wonder why the voters didn’t award them another term.)

Her references to Rossi - who she didn’t mention by name, only by implication - were brief but sharp: He is “critical and fearmongering to the state of Washington . . . who in tough times cuts education, cuts public safety . . . indecisive and puts up their finger and asks how the political winds blow . . .” The lines of attack seem clearly mapped out as well.

This was, as noted, an early stop on Gregoire’s bus tour around the state: “She’s traveling to 10 cities in four days on a biodiesel bus.” The Vancouver event was located at a firefighters union hall, and drew a substantial labor contingent, along with what looked like most of the Democratic candidates and legislators from the area. If four years ago large sectors of the state seemed a little underserved by the Gregoire campaign, the sense was that won’t be true this time around.

Ellen Craswell, who served 16 years in the Washington legislature and in 1996 ran for governor, got a chance to do something only but a few people do: She tested, on a statewide level, the proposition that her world view could win support statewide.

It didn’t. In that test, the 1996 gubernatorial campaign, she took 42% of the vote to 58% for Democrat Gary Locke. Ever since, her race has stood as a kind of benchmark, and reasonably, because Craswell was totally straight-up about who she was and what she thought. Her message was unalloyed conservatism growing out of conservative Christian beliefs. (Gay rights, in her view, were “special rights for sodomites.”) She did not try to soften or blur the message; it was what it was. And so were the voting results.

She was similarly clear and focused in the legislature, and her path there was hardly easier. Of her six general election results in legislative races, just two (in 1978 ad 1980) marked really strong wins; after that, she took 54% in 1984 (a strong Republican year), and 51.1% in 1988; she lost her last legislative race in 1992 (44.6%). Her message, finally, wasn’t one most voters wanted to sign up with.

But there was never any doubt what it was.

She has maintained a lower profile since, but in a 2005 Seattle Times Magazine interview she said of politics, “We [her husband was highly active too] enjoyed it while we were in it, but now it’s time for another generation to carry the torch. It’s another season in our lives.” She said she had no regrets; the interviewer described her as having “gracious serenity.”

She died Saturday at Poulsbo.

And the Democratic presidential battle to collect superdelegates continues unabated. Especially wherever a group of Democrats gets together.

As witness - by way of photographic evidence - this from the Stranger’s Slog, collected from a meeting of the 43rd legislative district Democrats.

Let’s see: You have a major administrator in a fair-sized city who’s held the job for four months, then unexpectedly announces he will resign “to pursue new opportunities in the private sector.”

That could mean any of several things, but it almost certainly means this: There is more to the story.

The story has to do with Spokane Mayor Mary Verner’s chief of staff, Mark Early, who will quit effective the end of next week. No further explanation is being tendered, other than that “there’s no performance issues,” an indicator that he wasn’t fired for lack of ability.

More of the story will eventually out. When it does, it may say something - we know not yet what - about the new Verner Administration.

With all the many problems at the Port of Seattle, you wonder what bit of information it might be that would prove the tipping point for revolt - the point at which voters tell the elected board, “Off with all your heads.”

Maybe the reports that the private attorneys hired by the Port (which is to say, the people of the district) to defend it against criminal investigators at the U.S. Department of Justice, have so far been paid more than a quarter million dollars. Something about that factoid just seems as though it might do the trick.

If you have the misfortune to be a legislator who is a member of the minority party, does that mean you’re just SOL and don’t really even need to show up for work? Is your whole cause lost before you start?

Doesn’t always have to be. Case in point is this story from the Spokesman-Review on the legislators of eastern Washington’s district 4 - a senator (Bob McCaslin) and two representatives (Lynn Schindler and Larry Crouse) all Republicans. The story outlines some of what they did and the impact they did have. Less, doubtless, than if they were in the majority, but significant nonetheless.