Archives for June 2005

As was previously noted, Saturday’s triumph of Steve Hammond over political momma’s boy Raymond Shaw Reagan Dunn was not only surprising, it was downright hilarious. Vying for the party’s nomination in the King County Council’s 9th District, Hammond eked out a narrow 25-vote victory out of the 444 ballots cast at the GOP’s county convention. The funny part is, that there were only 436 delegates seated. That’s right… there were more ballots cast than delegates who voted!

Let’s see now… 8 divided by 436… that’s a discrepancy rate of 1.83 percent. If the Republicans had staffed KC Elections, and had achieved the same startling accuracy rate, we would have seen a discrepancy of about 16,500 more ballots than voters. And on Saturday they only had to deal with 436 delegates (…or maybe it was 444) instead of the 900,000 KC voters who participated in the November election.

And the problems didn’t stop there. According to Republican Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer and others, the entire convention was chaotic.

Von Reichbauer wants the convention process reviewed, because the date conflicted with school graduations, delegates couldn’t vote by absentee ballot and soldiers fighting overseas couldn’t participate.

So the Republicans couldn’t reconcile the vote, and they disenfranchised military voters!

“It was an inconvenient process,” von Reichbauer said. But then, “inconveniencing” voters has been a mainstay of Republican voter suppression strategies for decades… so I’m sorry if I’m wary about Republican proposals for electoral reform.

So much for party unity
Before the May 18 caucuses and in the weeks that followed, both Hammond and Shaw Dunn indicated that they would abide by the convention’s outcome, and not run in the September primary if they didn’t win the GOP’s official nomination.

But after yesterday’s vote, Dunn said he would file anyway, although he didn’t know whether he would do so as a Republican.

“I can’t abandon this campaign because of 24 votes in June,” he said, referring to Hammond’s victory margin (and getting his math slightly wrong).

How convenient. But then, the GOP is not only the party of convenience, it is also the party of poor losers.

A reader tipped me off to a column by Thomas Oliphant in the Boston Globe, discussing Dino Rossi’s ungracious and telling mischaracterization of the Washington State Supreme Court. It was interesting to read an out-of-stater’s impressions of our election contest.

What Rossi said was not that the battle was over and that no matter how maddening the situation was, it was time to accept the judgment. What he said was that he was halting the legal battle ”because of the political makeup of the Washington State Supreme Court.”

Rossi’s implication was in one sense accurate in that Democrats nominally predominate there, but what struck my eye was the implication that there is a direct connection between ”makeup” and assumed result. In his eyes, judges were no more than robots, a source of votes in a case instead of reasoned opinions on the legal merits.

Indeed, after two recounts of the disputed result by machine and then an exhaustive tally of the state by hand that produced the Gregoire lead, the Republicans went judge shopping for their court case. That search, of course, assumed that ”conservative” county or ”conservative” judge implied an expected connection between the adjective and the anticipated result.

What was missing was the political argument first framed in 1968 by Richard Nixon and used ever since by Republicans in campaigns to encapsulate conservative legal philosophy as a presumed antidote to the presumed excesses of the late Chief Justice Earl Warren’s presumably activist US Supreme Court.

As Nixon first articulated it, the idea was that judges interpret law, they don’t ”make” it like legislators. They interpret law and the Constitution strictly, moreover. If the words aren’t in the founding document, they can’t be grafted onto it by judges. If the words don’t say Uncle Sam can do something, that something is reserved for the states and the people, as the Constitution says. The essence of judging is not the achievement of a desired policy result but the application of law. Agree or disagree with the philosophy, it is cogent and clear and deserves respect.

As Oliphant points out, Rossi went judge shopping, and Judge Bridges gave him every chance to win his case — according to the law. The Judge clearly laid out before trial the standard and burden Republicans would have to meet, and admitted nearly every piece of evidence the Republicans presented. In the end, Rossi simply failed to prove his case, and Judge Bridges held to his “conservative” principles… by holding to the statute.

Of the GOP invitation to theorize, he noted pointedly that ”to do so would constitute the ultimate of judicial egotism and activism.”

Contrast this classically conservative ruling with Antonin Scalia’s silly invention in 2000 of a 14th Amendment ”right” in stopping a statewide recount of Florida’s disputed presidential vote as belatedly ordered by that state’s supreme court.

And contrast Rossi’s crabby reference to the makeup of Washington’s supreme court with Al Gore’s gutsy, gracious acceptance of what was really an effort to keep the House of Representatives from having to elect George Bush.

Conservative legal philosophy lives on, but much more so in Washington State than in Washington, D.C.

Oliphant clearly saw this election contest for what it was. It wasn’t about fairness or justice, it was about winning. And Rossi has proven himself to be a poor loser.

While I was busy getting candidate training at Camp Wellstone, at least one prominent local Republican was getting taught a lesson of his own. King County Republicans picked their official candidates today at a county convention… I haven’t seen any confirmation yet, but I hear there was at least one huge upset: in the KC Council’s 9th District race, anointed mamma’s boy Raymond Shaw Reagan Dunn apparently lost the nomination to Councilman Steve “The Executioner” Hammond, a favorite of Christian conservatives.

If true, this would be a stunning defeat for one of the KC GOP’s fastest rising stars. Shaw Dunn is the son of former Congresswoman Eleanor Prentiss Shaw Jennifer Dunn, and was clearly being groomed for power. In deference to his mother, the party leadership had stacked the deck in Shaw’s Dunn’s favor, and he came out of the May 17 caucuses with a substantial lead over Hammond. But in an unexpected show of strength by Christian conservatives, Hammond apparently turned out more of his delegates… enough to garner a narrow, 20 vote victory.

If I were GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance, I’d be worried. This not only represents a challenge to party unity, but in a post I-872 environment, where party officials are determined to choose candidates at convention, this rebellion indicates the willingness and ability of a well organized religious right wing to steer the party towards surefire losers in the Ellen Craswell mold.

One can only hope.

UPDATE:
From the Seattle Times:

In the 9th District, 436 voting delegates were seated

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Expect some light posting through the weekend, as I participate in Camp Wellstone, an intensive three-day training program for progress candidates, campaign managers, and activists. I’ll post my thoughts and observations on the sessions after I’m done.

This is the place were off-topic is on-topic.

From today’s Seattle Times:

Doc Hastings, the laconic Republican congressman from Pasco, has spent much of the past three days trying to avoid being sucked into the vortex of ethics complaints swirling around House Majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

News reports earlier this week linked Hastings to GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is under investigation for his lobbying on behalf of Indian tribes and is a key figure in the DeLay ethics dispute. The reports also tied Hastings to Seattle’s largest law and lobbying firm, Preston Gates Ellis, where Abramoff used to work.

Apart from the Times’ surprising use of the SAT word “laconic” in the lead sentence, should anyone be particularly shocked by this news? There’s a reason why DeLay named Hastings — possibly the nation’s least accomplished five-term congressman — to chair the Ethics Committee… he’s a DeLay toady, cynically installed to impede the committee’s investigations of his boss. And thus it should be no surprise to find Hastings linked to some of the same shady characters at the center of DeLay’s ever-expanding ethical scandals.

Abramoff has strong ties to the Pacific Northwest, including every right-wing Evangelical Christian’s favorite Rabbi, Mercer Island’s own Daniel Lapin. As chair of the House Ethics Committe, it’s only fair that the typically low-profile Hastings be subjected to extra scrutiny himself. I’m guessing that after a little more digging into his own finances, he’ll probably wish he had remained laconic.

[NWPT52]Writing in The Seattle Weekly, Geov Parrish contrasts the media frenzy over last week’s revelation of Deep Throat, with the scarcity of MSM coverage of the Downing Street Memo, a document that suggests a scandal of Watergate-like proportions.

The reasons are numerous, but it adds up to a depressing reminder that Watergate, as reported in 1972

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[NWPT48]I concluded my post-ruling analysis by demanding that Dino Rossi apologize for taking his meritless election contest to trial. But of course, I’m just a partisan blogger, so it’s nice to see a respected political commentator like The Seattle Weekly’s George Howland Jr. open his post-ruling coverage with the same demand (“A Fraudulent Finish.”)

Republican Dino Rossi should have apologized to Washington state. On Monday, June 6, after seven months of irresponsible rhetoric and fruitless litigation by his lawyers and spinmeisters, Rossi finally ended his bid for the governorship. He did not, however, take personal responsibility for his headline-grabbing, whiny, and expensive litigation. Instead, Rossi took a page out of the playbook of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, making an ad hominem attack on the integrity of the state’s highest court. It was as baseless as the rest of his legal arguments and should serve as a reminder that Rossi is deeply wedded to the radical right-wing agenda emanating from D.C.

It has been suggested to me that I should go easy on Rossi for his comments immediately following Judge Bridges’ decision, as he must have been speaking from a deep state of personal disappointment.

Bullshit.

For Rossi to have been deeply disappointed would have required a reasonable expectation that he might have prevailed Monday morning, an expectation that could only have been born out of ignorance, idiocy or ideology. It’s not that I have ever considered Rossi to be the most informed, intelligent or open-minded of candidates, but he isn’t stupid, and if his high-priced attorneys had left him with the impression that he should be measuring for curtains in the Governor’s Mansion, then he should sue them for malpractice. Perhaps the only thing legally surprising about Judge Bridges’ decision was its severity. As Howland reports:

The complete legal rout delivered by the judge came as no surprise to Seattle University law professor John Strait. “It’s pretty much what I would have expected,” says Strait. “I’m not sure that the Republicans ever thought they would reverse the results of the election. This was an organizing tool for them.”

An organizing tool for the state GOP, but I’m not so sure it will turn out to be such a great boost to Rossi’s political career. Had he bowed out gracefully in early January — at a time when the GOP’s most inflammatory allegations were at a fever pitch — he could have assumed the mantle of a martyr who sacrificed his own personal ambitions for the good of the state. Disenfranchised military voters, shady “enhanced” ballots, mishandled provisionals, and felon, dead, and double voters would have forever clouded the results of this election. But now with the charges “dismissed with prejudice” by a cherry-picked judge in conservative Chelan County, voters will be rightly suspicious of any attempt by Rossi to brand himself as a victim of corrupt Democrats. To the swing voters — mostly Democrats — who made this race closer than it ever should have been, the allegations are no longer merely unproved… they are disproved.

As to the party faithful, for whom no amount of evidence or common sense could ever refute the cult of the stolen election, it will be a long four years until Rossi’s inevitable rematch with Gov. Christine Gregoire. A reliable source assures me that it is “100%” certain that Rossi will not challenge Ron Sims for King County Executive. And other sources and circumstances assure me that a US Senate bid is nearly as unlikely. Indeed, the very fact that his campaign staff is finally disbanding, is as strong an indication as any that Rossi’s next race sits well beyond the 2005 or 2006 campaign seasons.

Rossi and his surrogates have made a lot of shrewd PR moves in their efforts to position him for his next campaign, but his Monday evening “concession speech” was not one of them. Rather than issuing an apologia for ending the contest, he should have issued an apology for bringing it.

In his grief, our good friend Stefan has suggested that Republicans respond to the failure of Dino Rossi’s meritless election contest, by committing massive electoral fraud.

I posted Plan B back in January. Of course it was all tongue-in-cheek.

On the other hand, as we learned, if individuals acting on their own in an uncoordinated fashion implemented Plan B, it would be impossible for anybody to do anything about it. Of course, I’m only making a sardonic comment about our election laws. I am not encouraging anybody to implement Plan B

“Plan B” urges Republicans from around the state and the nation to illegally register to vote in Seattle’s Precinct 1823, so as to defeat King County Executive Ron Sims and Council Chairman Larry Phillips. Hmm. I suppose that’s the kind of humorless, futile gesture you might expect from a poor loser… or a prick.

Of course, I’m only making a sardonic comment about Stefan. I am not encouraging anybody to call Stefan a poor loser or a prick. (But just in case you want to, here’s his email address.)

I’m just saying…

Do you live in Bellevue? Are you a progressive Democrat? Are you interested in running for Bellevue City Council? Financial and technical assistance is available for qualified candidates, no prior political experience required. Please contact Dean Nielsen at Progressive Majority of Washington for more information.

(This is no joke. There are seven Republicans and no Democrats on the Bellevue City Council… and yet John Kerry won nearly every precinct in 2004! This is a city that’s turned Democrat, and doesn’t know it. Three council members are up for reelection in 2005, and as of yet there are no progressive challengers. So if you’re a Bellevue Democrat with political aspirations, now’s the time to serve your city and your party.)

[NWPT52]I was listening to a report on NPR this morning about yesterday’s meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush. Blair was asking the US to join major initiatives on global warming and aid for Africa. Of course, in appreciation for Blair’s toadying support for the Iraq war, Bush gave Blair a “cold shoulder.”

But what really stood out in the report, was the footnote on the “Downing Street Memo.”

I wrote about this secret memo way back on May 2, and the story is only now beginning to filter its way into the mainstream US media. Originally leaked to the British press just days before parliamentary elections, the memo reveals that the White House had already decided to invade Iraq as early as July of 2002, and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Had this been a Democratic administration, impeachment hearings would already be under way, but so far the Republicans and their corporate media patrons have managed to keep this issue below the radar. However I’m beginning to see parallels between this story and the way the Watergate scandal slowly built to a media crescendo that brought down a corrupt presidency. The news media is a business, and at some point they simply can’t ignore a story the competition is running with.

Congress needs to investigate this memo so that Americans can learn the truth… and you can help. Rep. John Conyers is asking citizens to sign on to his letter to President Bush asking for full disclosure — over 110,000 have signed thus far. And Sen. Ted Kennedy is urging you to write your Senators and urge them to speak out on the Downing Street Memo.

The Bush White House sent American soldiers to die in the deserts of Iraq, based on a lie. There were no WMDs and there was no tie to 9/11 or Osama bin Laden. And Bush knew it.

[NWPT48]

Mr. Michael Pieper
Executive Director
Republican Governors Association
555 11 th Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington ,D.C. 20004
(202) 662-4140

June 7, 2005

Dear Mr. Pieper,

Eat me.

No really… eat me.

Maybe you were drunk when you issued a press release asking for Governor Gregoire’s resignation. After all, you had just watched almost-member Dino Rossi getting his ass whooped by a cherry-picked judge in a conservative county… so I’m guessing beer-thirty came a little early yesterday. But whether you were drunk or just plain stupid, you know what…? This is none of your fucking business.

See, here in the other Washington, we have something we call “laws,” which are written by democratically elected legislators, not half-witted, cirrhotic PR hacks like you. And according to our laws, Christine Gregoire was duly elected governor. So rather than cynically laboring to undermine the electoral process of a state no Republican governor has called home for over twenty years, why don’t you just focus on something you’re good at… like helping your members devise new and exciting ways to deny poor children health care.

Either that, or eat me.

Respectfully yours,

David Goldstein
HorsesAss.org

[PS: eat me.]

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. I invite you all to join me as I raise a toast to Judge Bridges, Gov. Gregoire, and an end to Rossi’s stunningly cynical election contest. And if you buy me a beer, I’ll toast you too!

I’ll be on the Kirby Wilbur Show (KVI-570) at 8:30 am, wrapping up our election contest discussion. Say what you want about KVI (four-letter words are often aptly descriptive,) but both Kirby and John have been very gracious in inviting me to air my liberal perspective.

And while we’re on the subject of wrap-ups, Evergreen Politics reminds us that not only did Rossi lose, but that Christine Gregoire won. Lynn Allen has posted a brief interview with our duly elected Governor, in which she talks about her first five months in office, and her plans for the rest of her term.

UPDATE:
For those introduced in abusing me for an embarrassing slip of the tongue, here’s the audio from my somewhat jet-lagged appearance with Kirby this morning.

[NWPT48]Judge Bridges bitch-slapped Dino Rossi.

There’s really no other way to interpret the decision he issued today in the election contest lawsuit. Apart from a few lines at the start, criticizing the “culture” of King County Elections, about the only positive note Republicans can take out of the Judge’s ruling is that he didn’t impose Rule 11 sanctions on the Rossi camp for bringing a frivolous lawsuit. I’m guessing Timothy Borders et al were a bit nervous there for a few moments, waiting for Judge Bridges to order them to reimburse the Dems for legal costs.

“Dismissed with prejudice.”

No… the Democrats didn’t get off on some technicality. The Judge ruled that the Republicans resoundingly failed to prove their case. He ruled that there was no evidence ballots were changed or that ballot boxes were stuffed or that legal votes were removed from one candidate or the other. There was no evidence that Gregoire engaged in wrongdoing, or that election officials committed fraud… no evidence of intentional misconduct, partisan bias or an attempt to manipulate the election… and no evidence to question ballot security, or that reconciliation errors were anything more than just that. There was no evidence presented as to how felons and mishandled provisionals might have voted, or even if they had marked a ballot for governor at all. Indeed: “There is no evidence in this record that Ms. Gregoire received any illegal votes.”

And after rejecting the Republicans’ proposed “proportional deduction” methodology as “unscientific”, Judge Bridges twisted the knife:

“An election such as this should not be overturned because one judge picks a number and applies a proportional deduction analysis. To do so within the context of the facts of this case would constitute the ultimate act of judicial egotism and judicial activism.”

This was an elected judge from a heavily Republican county, speaking directly to Republicans in words he knew they would understand. “Judicial activism” is a phrase that resonates with conservative Republicans, and he made a point of explaining to voters that this was exactly what Rossi’s attorneys had asked him to exercise.

Judge Bridges had clearly laid down in pre-trial rulings the standard of evidence and burden of proof he would require, but for many of their claims, Rossi’s attorneys failed to even try to meet them. Thus no one should be surprised by the overwhelmingly one-sided nature of today’s decision.

No one except perhaps for the Rossi faithful who chose to get their “news” and “analysis” exclusively from right-wing talk radio and blogs like (un)Sound Politics. Oh, I don’t expect conservative Republicans to rely on an unabashedly liberal blog like HA for their election contest coverage (though I think it’s fair to immodestly point out that I was proven absolutely right on almost every single legal point.) But you would have had to have totally dismissed the extensive coverage in the MSM to go into this morning’s ruling with more than the tiniest shred of hope that Rossi might prevail in court. He had no case… and Judge Bridges wasn’t shy about pointing that out.

And that is why it is no surprise that Rossi has decided not to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, for to do so would have invited a judicial smack down that would have made Judge Bridges’ legal kick-in-the-groin look like a tap on the tuchus from my 87-year-old bubbie. As I had previously predicted, the cherry-picked judge from conservative Chelan County was careful to structure his ruling to make it virtually appeal proof. He admitted nearly every piece of evidence proffered by either side, and then made his decision by applying established precedent to findings of fact. Appellate courts nearly always accept the lower courts’ evidentiary findings, and by limiting the universe of illegal votes to a number more or less split between the two sides, the Supremes would have been as hamstrung by the evidence as Judge Bridges’ was by the statute.

So Rossi has ended his dishonest contest, not out of some desire to heal the state or personally move on, or even out of grudging respect for the rule of law — he ended his contest because he had no choice. Given the magnitude of his legal loss, and the manner in which the ruling was structured, he not only had no hope of prevailing on appeal, he had no hope of convincing anybody but the most ardently blind true-believer that even he believed he had any hope of prevailing in court.

Shortly before I boarded my plane, I called Andrew at Northwest Progressive Institute, and asked him to post an update to HA if Rossi conceded. The Republicans had always promised to appeal, and I had no advance knowledge to the contrary, but the Rossi folk had always shown a knack for savvy PR moves, and it seemed clear to me that quickly ending this hopeless fight was the savvy move to make in light of their lopsided legal loss. But while I somewhat expected a concession, when I read the quotes from his news conference, I was disappointed.

Rossi said because the “political makeup of the Washington Supreme Court” makes it “almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending this election contest.”

To blame his concession on a partisan court strikes me as both insolent and ungracious, at a time when a true statesman would have been more… well… statesmanlike (think Al Gore’s concession in 2000,) whatever the personal sacrifice and disappointment. I expect some of his faithful supporters to refuse to accept the facts — and perhaps Rossi himself really does believe that this was a stolen election — but a true leader must be bigger than partisan politics or personal ambition… and today, Rossi’s statements made him look very, very small indeed.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I empathize with the disappointment and frustration and cynicism many Rossi supporters must feel. If the shoe were on the other foot I might have been skeptical myself… although I hope that in the end I would have accepted that the facts of this case simply did not bear out the suspicions. But what really disturbs me about the angry rhetoric that continues to flow from the state GOP and its surrogates, is the complete and utter lack of empathy coming from their ranks.

As a Democrat, I am offended by the assumption that I am somehow less moral, less ethical, less honest and less capable than my Republican counterparts. I resent the oft-repeated notion that Democrats are more likely to cheat, and that we cannot win elections without doing so. I am in fact angry that Republicans would accuse Democrats in a court of law, of “stealing” an election… without even bothering to present any direct evidence to support their claim.

The contest statute is intended to remedy those rare elections where it is clear that the wrong candidate was declared the winner. It is not intended to be used merely as a vehicle for running a six-month PR campaign designed to extract a political price from the opposition for crimes they did not commit.

Yes, the Republicans had every right to pursue an election contest, but in dismissing their claims “with prejudice,” Judge Bridges made it clear that it was a right the Republicans cynically abused. Dino Rossi owes Christine Gregoire, Democratic voters, and the people of Washington an apology.