Washington state megathread

[Alcon]

The last sentence makes this article.

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[Alcon]

Haha sighh.  Democrats: WA-8 fail.  I think I'm going to start referring to Suzan DelBene as "Windows ME."  Or "Darcy Burner ME."  Or something.  I'm working on it!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009086085_delbene20m.html

(Bold to emphasize the funniest part)

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Bonus materials:  Super-awkward interview with a notably unenthusiastic Stranger.

[Alcon]

Does Curley have secret Nazi regalia in his basement?  Evening Magazine is fluff sure, but I don't find him all that annoying, and he doesn't scream "pure evil" to me in any way.

[Alcon]

Does Curley have secret Nazi regalia in his basement?  Evening Magazine is fluff sure, but I don't find him all that annoying, and he doesn't scream "pure evil" to me in any way.

Nazi regalia? Pure evil?

Did I miss something?

I figured he had some Hutchinsonian open-secret political views that might prompt Meeker's "filth" comment

[Alcon]

My count is Constantine, Hunter, Hutchison, Jarrett and Phillips.

I frankly don't know much to differentiate Constantine and Phillips, but isn't Hunter supposed to be pretty smart?  I can't imagine he won't split the vote with Jarrett.  I truly have no idea who would win this field, but my bet is that the King County Democrats will crack the whip some.

P.S. Seattle Times stop calling Hutchison an "eastside" candidate thanks

[Alcon]

One of the three remaining San Juan County Republicans has filed an initiative to repeal the National Popular Vote compact.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009146605_webreferendum29.html

The guy doesn't have any history of initiative success, and Shaw Island seems like an awkward place to run an initiative drive from, so I can't imagine he'll get very far.

[Alcon]

Washington state politicians aren't very good at voting

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/politicsnorthwest/2009/05/04/seattle_mayoral_candidates_les.html

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[Alcon]

Just how conservative is Lt. Gov. Brad Owens?  I always heard him talked about as a 'conservative Democrat', but what does that really mean in Washington state's context?  Is this primarily in reference to being 'pro-business', or what?

Being generally pro-business isn't a big deal in Washington state.  In the legislature it might challenge the Democrats' orthodoxy a bit too much.  But on the whole, Washington is a free-trade state.  We're full of well-off Democrats (even in Seattle) who like the idea of "trade" itself.

Owen's conservatism is more kind of an annoying anti-intellectual traditionalism.  He opposes gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization -- although really he has no idea why.  He's the sort of politician who's satisfied with "DARE sez" with no curiosity about the science or anything.  It's a Moderate Hero sort of thing -- a mix of emotionality and "it's centrist" to frame most of his positions.  And then he dedicates a lot of time to them, especially the anti-marijuana stuff.  He's amiable and reasonably effective but not especially useful.  I would not want him as Governor; he'd probably get steamrolled.

Plus, his rock band is kinda bad

[Alcon]

Um, so news!

Larry Stickney's group has filed an initiative to repeal the domestic partnership law.  Apparently, Pastor Joe Fuiten is already getting queasy after seeing some allegedly terrible polling numbers.  At this point, many social conservatives are hoping this thing doesn't make the ballot.  It's a hopeless cause.  I haven't seen a public poll, but I've heard things as bad as 2-to-1.

Fred Jarrett's campaign has released a poll for King County Executive:

Undecided 59%
Hutchison 20% ("Hutchinson" in the poll text, ouch)
Jarrett 7%
Constantine 6%
Phillips 5%
Hunter 3%

's all I got.

[Alcon]

To be fair, most of the fundie community leaders in Washington consider this to be a completely lost cause.  They're getting mutilated in the polls and the news spin is awful.  At this point there's a growing cloud-of-doom feeling among the Christian right here.  It may be that a massive initiative failure will just expedite the march toward gay marriage.

[Alcon]

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=cd8c0ab8-ab65-4767-a525-bb41fac2daf8

Nickels approval stands at 31-56.  Individual issues:

Law enforcement: 55-55
City services: 34-57
City parks: 53-36

Quality of life 57-28 getting worse
Traffic 79-13 getting worse

[Alcon]

...oh, and:

25% Mayor Greg Nickels
17% City Councilwoman Jan Drago
9% Ex-Sonic James Donaldson
7% Sierra Club Guy Michael McGinn
6% T-Mobile Guy Joe Mallahan
3% Tunnel-Hater Elizabeth Campbell
2% Unreachable and undocumented SWP member Mary Juanita Martin
1% "Executive specialist"/Mary-Juanita-Martin-loser-to Norman Sigler

[Alcon]

I like how the Democratic candidate for Dist 16 Pos 2 lists his mailing address as Idaho.  Lewiston is only, what, 300 miles from his "legal residence" in White Salmon?

[Alcon]

Even worse of a candidate than I expected.

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Susan Hutchison:  She doesn't lie about that one thing, and you know her from TV.  (Also no "N"!)

[Alcon]

CK -- Cool map.  Aesthetically pleasing, too.

Baird could hold that district in a walk, but it would be extremely competitive.  Hard to tell how much of Yakima you put in, but Obama actually narrowly won the 15th LD -- South Yakima is a competitive area because of the Hispanic and Native population, and the Clark County portion is the only bedrock GOP area.  If you take Yakima City without its suburbs, you've still got an easy Baird victory.  The dude racks it up in even Lewis County -- he'd manage.

I like your setup around the Sound.  It makes the 8th actually cohesive, and gets rid of exurban Pierce hickland to the 9th (which is a lost cause for cohesive anyway).  On the other hand, I think its biggest weakness is the 6th -- Vashon+Tacoma+Centralia, now there's a district.

Kind of hard to tell without a zoom-in around Lake Washington (Yakima would be nice too), but Reichert would probably be the last GOP congressman from the 8th unless things turn around.

Also, you put Dicks and Inslee in the same district.  Not sure if that's fixable.  Although Inslee does have a record or not minding moves, and who wants to live in Belfair anyway?

[Alcon]

Chris Hurst won't run for WA-8, denies that Suzan DelBene is a "Darcy Burner" trainwreck, and clearly wants someone else anyway.

McDermott starts a Public Works employment project for the completely guano batsh**t.

Referendum 71 is now one percent more screwed.

Goldy should really stop "analyzing" poll numbers and go back to talking about seltzer or whatever.

On the other side of the fence, why has Sound Politics turned into just being sporadic posts about Shawna Forde?  Why (now that she's apparently shot people) are they blogging about Shawna Forde at all?

[Alcon]

Uh, huh:

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=24aea2b0-ebf6-4c88-bcc8-0d8f5f8bc1b0

Hutchison 41%
Constantine 12%
Phillips 7%
Hunter 6%
Jarrett 4%
Goodspaceguy 3%
Lippmann 2%
Lobdell 2%
Undecided 23%

Way to go on this one, King County Democrats.

In other news: Will anyone really miss Kent?

[Alcon]

Does anyone know the current status of Ref. 71's sig gathering quest?

They're either scrambling or doing just dandy, depending on how much you trust Gary Randall's report of drastically increased sign rates.

They claimed to have 75,000 signatures on July 11th.  They also claim to be receiving 8,000 a day, which seems a little unlikely if they've only managed 75k so far.  They need about 120,000 signatures by July 25th to qualify.  At 8,000 a day, they'd have 179,000 by the 25th.  More specifically, they'd need a little bit under 3,500 per day to qualify.

I tend to suspect that they're liar faces, although a >129% overstatement would be an impressive lie.  Reports are that they're peddling the whole thing as pro-gay rights (since it will be on the ballot, technically) and getting signatures on Queen Anne Hill.  Who knows, though.

Eyman's latest initiative is on the ballot for sure, by the way.  No one else is trying.  I can't remember the last time we had so little initiative activity in a General election.

[Alcon]

R-71 petitioners say they'll submit signatures on Saturday.  Won't say how many they have now.  They've heavily been hitting up church congregations and -- Meeker totally called it -- Wal-Mart.

Also, for anyone in the Tacoma/University Place area, MISSED OPPORTUNITY.  And he was wearing camo, too

[Alcon]

R-71 petitioners say they'll submit signatures on Saturday.  Won't say how many they have now.  They've heavily been hitting up church congregations and -- Meeker totally called it -- Wal-Mart.

Also, for anyone in the Tacoma/University Place area, MISSED OPPORTUNITY.  And he was wearing camo, too

Don't worry, he's coming back: http://seattle.craigslist.org/tac/pol/1280199122.html

And apparently won't be changing his pants.

Or maybe his closet is full of them.

[Alcon]

Gary Randall says that Referendum 71 is "too close to call" (read: totally screwed)

http://referendum71.blogspot.com/2009/07/r-71-too-close-to-call.html

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[Alcon]

The more I've thought about it though I think a crushing defeat for them could help spur the legislature into actually passing marriage equality...

I guess I'm still hoping it won't get on the ballot though.

I'm of two minds.  I think results would be fascinating on one hand, but on the other hand, I do enjoy watching the Washington Christian right fall on their collective ass on this one.  But I also think the conventional wisdom is that this would be close, when I think it would probably fail pretty handily.  That would be good p.r. for the marriage equality side, I agree.  So I actually do want it on the ballot, although that's still mostly to see the results .

I'm a little worried that public support for gay marriage is going to stall in the upper 40's.  Also, an off-year General Election may not be the best time to get it on the ballot because youth turnout will suck.  I'd love to be the first state to have it stand up to a public vote; I really, really do not want to see it lose narrowly, as I suspect it would today.

[Alcon]

Washington's same-sex couples have nothing to gain from a vote, they can only lose what they should have.

Sure they do.  A massive electoral victory that polls indicate would inevitably occur.  It wouldn't necessarily increase the number of their rights, but it would make the state legislature a little less queasy about the potential of passing marriage equality in the future -- although I hope they don't jump the gun.  That would find its way onto the ballot and actually be competitive.

Anyway, a few hours and we may have a better idea of whether this is all moot anyway   I suspect it will be.

[Alcon]

I think they take a random sample, see if the random sample's invalidation rate justifies checking all the signatures, and count them if not.

Faith and Freedom Network claims they delivered 135,000 signatures with another few still coming.  That's more than the requirements, but they really needed 150,000.  Randall looked pretty beaten and said that an initiative might be next.

[Alcon]

Is anyone interested in maps for King County Exec and Seattle Mayor (and whatever else)?  If so, I can set up ArcExplorer.