Archives for November 2005

Huh. I’m guessing the Republicans’ little voter challenge stunt isn’t generating quite the kind of media coverage they had intended. The papers and TV newscasts are now filled with tales of angry voters, wrongly disenfranchised at the hands of the GOP’s unscrupulous leaders and incompetent interns. And more errors continue to surface as voters respond and Democrats pour through the list.

The Stranger drolly dubbed the fiasco “Fibby-gate”, but an astute reader pointed me towards an intriguing tidbit in the Mercer Island Reporter that suggests Fibby-gate may have closer connections to White House scandals than just a little amusing word play:

Island residents Linda Ayers and Lori Sotelo had a whirlwind four days last month when they visited Washington, D.C., after being invited there for a holiday reception by a friend who works for President George W. Bush.
…
The pair arrived in Washington on Dec. 12. The next day, they attended a briefing in the Executive Offices building with Bush’s chief strategist Karl Rove and Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

Of course it was KCGOP Vice-Chair Lori Sotelo who falsely declared “under penalty of perjury” that she had personal knowledge that her victims were illegally registered to vote. While I’m not necessarily suggesting that Rove himself had his fingers in the KCGOP’s botched voter intimidation effort, it is certainly the kind of dirty trick that bears a likeness to his handiwork, if not his actual fingerprints. Regardless, there can now be no question that Rove is a man who Sotelo knows, admires and emulates.

I hate making calls like this.

“Is this Denise Passinetti?” I asked the woman at the other end of the line. “The Denise Passinetti who served as Councilman Irons chief of staff?”

There was a long, awkward pause. “Yes…” she finally replied.

There was another awkward moment of silence, only this time, it came from me. I was calling to ask Passinetti about allegations that she had quit the councilman’s staff due to his abusive and harassing behavior, but since I had few details about the specifics, I was unsure exactly how uncomfortable this subject might be. I introduced myself, and struggled to put my question into words, but before I could finish, she cut me off.

“I think I know why you are calling,” she said.

Another uncomfortable pause. I guess I had hoped she would start offering up details. But she didn’t.

So I tried to reassure her and pressure her at the same time. I told her that she was not alone, that David Irons Jr. had reportedly turned his temper towards other council staffers, leaving angry, abusive voicemail messages, and exploding into screaming fits that sent at least one staffer running from the room in tears. But, I told her, none of the victims whom I had identified were willing to come forward, apparently fearful for their jobs, or concerned that such public allegations would disrupt the council’s unusually collegial work environment.

All I got in return was a long sigh. So I changed my tact. “I’m going to run with something,” I told her “and I don’t want to unfairly smear anybody. If I’m wrong about the reason you left your job, I want you to tell me.”

I had reached Passinetti on her cell phone, and she explained that she was waiting for an appointment, but she did want to talk, and that she would call back the next morning. I told her that I believed other reporters — real reporters — had her name as well. I meant it merely as a heads up, a warning that she might be getting more calls, but I guess she thought I was afraid I might lose my scoop, so she promised she would talk to me first. We hung up. At this point, she had neither specifically confirmed nor denied the allegations.

The next morning I awaited her call. It never came. I left several messages on her home and cell phone voicemail. No reply. Finally, a few days later she left a message on my voicemail. She said that she didn’t really want to talk about her time working for David Irons Jr., but that “my actions sort of speak for me.”

So in response to allegations that she quit her job due to Irons’ abusive behavior, all she would say on the record was this: “I was his chief of staff for a little over two years, and in this election I have maxed out my contributions to Ron Sims, and that’s who I’ll be voting for, for executive. So I’ll just let that speak for itself.”

Interpret our halting conversation as you will, but in context, and coming from a Republican staffer, I understood her refusal to deny the allegations as an unspoken confirmation of the underlying charge. I do not know exactly what kind of behavior caused Passinetti to leave her post, whether there was a specific incident or she merely tired of Irons’ temper. I do not know if he slammed doors or threw objects or screamed and yelled or worse… or if Passinetti may have been overly sensitive to the rude and intimidating tantrums of yet another high-strung, arrogant politician.

What I do know — or at least, reasonably believe to be true — is that Passinetti did indeed quit her job due to what she believed to be abusive and harassing behavior on the part of her boss. This is what she reportedly told others at the time. This is what she refused to deny to me.

And this depiction of a short-tempered, verbally abusive David Irons Jr. is one I’ve heard again and again from county staffers, from former Brigadoon officers and from Irons’ own family.

One of the reasons I found Janet C. Irons account of her own son’s abusive behavior so believable, is that while the details were shocking, they were totally consistent with what I had been hearing for months. As Gregory Roberts, writing in the Seattle P-I gingerly put it, Irons “has developed a reputation in some quarters as a sometimes short-tempered co-worker who’s not good at listening.” Indeed, I would reckon that there is not a single reporter who has closely covered the King County Council who has not heard tales of Irons’ angry and abusive temper… most recently an incident that occurred during the taping of his video voter guide, in which Irons unexpectedly exploded at young, female staffer… a tantrum so shocking in its context that it remained a topic of office scuttlebutt for weeks to follow.

According to multiple sources, Irons was accompanied to the studios of the Seattle Channel by a part-time county elections worker, whose job that day was to assure that the video met the county’s detailed ethical guidelines. County protocol prohibits candidates from displaying emblems of organizational affiliations, and so the elections worker asked Irons to remove his customary Rotary lapel pin… at which point he exploded in an abusive rage.

Those present were stunned by the suddenness and ferocity of the outburst, especially in such an inappropriate setting, and report that the woman who was the target of Irons’ rage was visibly shaken. While sources at the Seattle Channel refused to provide details or go on the record — citing the necessity to remain neutral observers if they are to achieve their primary function — they did confirm that an incident took place. Friends of the woman have also confirmed the general description of the events, but she herself has declined to be interviewed, and so I must honor her desire to remain anonymous.

Indeed, the reason I have sat on such damning charges as long as I have, is that nearly all my sources have insisted on remaining anonymous or off the record entirely, for with the exception of Passinetti’s subtle non-denial, I could not garner permission to use a single accuser’s name. Of course this is not surprising coming from central staff who must fear retribution from Irons should he be elected, and who cannot possibly perform their jobs effectively without maintaining the trust of his Republican colleagues… regardless of who holds the executive office.

Yet the accusations are numerous, explicit, consistent, come from multiple sources… and tell a story of a pattern of abusive behavior — almost exclusively targeted at female staffers — that Irons has displayed throughout his career on the council.

Many of the stories arise from when Irons was Vice-Chairman of the Growth Management and Unincorporated Areas Committee. During last year’s sometimes bitter negotiations over the Critical Areas Ordinance, Irons developed a reputation for leaving abusive voicemail tirades for several female staffers, often recorded during angry, late-night rages. One staffer remarked on the level of anger the councilman displayed, calling it “unpleasant and over the top,” while another described these messages as “scary” and “downright weird.” Yet another staffer reportedly transcribed a particularly harassing voicemail and passed it around the office. (A public records request searching for this and other communications won’t be fulfilled before November 8.)

But the incident most frequently cited involved a female central staffer, who was working alone with the councilman on some CAO related issue, when Irons suddenly became enraged, screaming with such fury that the staffer ran from the room in tears, refusing to return, and eventually sending a male co-worker back to retrieve her papers. According to very reliable sources, the incident prompted Councilman Dow Constantine, the chair of the committee, to intervene on the staffer’s behalf, establishing an unwritten protocol that Irons was never to be alone in a room with that staffer again. I asked Councilman Constantine’s office to confirm or deny the allegation, but he declined to comment through an aide.

When I interviewed Irons’ mother for my original story, she expressed genuine surprise that her son had not shown more of a temper during his tenure on the King County Council. “He sometimes goes bonkers,” she told me. Well, as it turns out, she knows her son very well, for not only are stories of his abusive outbursts rampant amongst council staff, he apparently displayed similar behavior at Brigadoon.com as well. A top Brigadoon executive described Irons as “explosive” and “temperamental”, saying his biggest complaint with his performance as COO was the abusive and angry way he often dealt with people.

Yes, Irons denies that he ever hit his mother (although he’s yet to join her in taking and passing a polygraph), but he’s never refuted the larger pattern of abusive behavior she alleges… a pattern that he apparently repeated during his years at Brigadoon and on the county council… a pattern he would surely repeat as King County executive. It is a lifelong pattern entirely consistent with the character testimony of Irons’ own parents, who consistently argue that their opposition to their son’s candidacy is not based on a single incident, but rather on their sincere conviction that he lacks the integrity, the experience, the intellect and the temperament to run a county government larger than that of thirteen states.

A couple weeks back I shared some tales of Irons’ council outbursts with a prominent local columnist, who questioned what was possibly newsworthy about an arrogant and verbally abusive politician? I agreed that yes, there are many elected officials on both sides of the aisle, who are… well… assholes.

That David Irons Jr. is an asshole, may not be news. But nonetheless, voters have a right to know.

Chew on your own cud for a bit, while you wait to see what I’m about to post.

Have you or anybody you know been disenfranchised by the WA State Republican Party? Download the list of all 1944 voters who have had their registration challenged, and look for yourself.

It took less than 24 hours of voter backlash before the GOP was forced to belatedly withdraw 140 of their challenges (PDF)… after these voters had already received notice that their votes would not count unless they attended an administrative hearing. That kind of sloppiness is already inexcusable when it comes to a citizen’s right to vote, but I betcha on closer examination we’ll find a helluva lot more “mistakes.”

As the GOP’s incredible fuckup has just illustrated, the process of cleaning the voter rolls has never been as simple as the Republicans have tried to make it out to be in their cynical and patently dishonest efforts disparage King County Records & Elections. And like all counties, King has never been nearly as hands off as the GOP’s lying press releases would lead you to believe. Indeed cleaning the ever changing voter rolls is a constant and time consuming process, especially in a county with over 1.1 million registrations, where thousands of voters are moving, marrying and dying every day.

According to a fact sheet produced by KCRE, the county routinely runs queries to screen out post office boxes, duplicate registrations and deceased voters. Since the last election:

• Over 9,500 duplicate registrations have been merged.
• Over 8,900 deceased have been removed from the voter rolls.
• Over 73,000 registrations have been put on inactive status.

And that doesn’t even begin to count the thousands of new and canceled registrations and address changes that are processed every month. Some of these transactions are initiated by voters, others through the routine operations at KCRE. For example, take this anecdote I recounted back in August:

As a case in point, a friend of mine recently bought a house in West Seattle. I was over there for dinner the other night, and she told me how that very day, she had called King County Elections to change her address… and was surprised to learn that she was already registered at her new house! When she inquired how, she was told that they had mailed her a voter registration card, but that it was returned to KC Elections with a forwarding address; so they updated her records and mailed her a new card. Indeed, the new card was in her mailbox that very same day.

Talk about service. Call to change your registration, immediately look in your mailbox, and there’s your new voter registration card.

Now that’s the type of positive headline you’re never going to read

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According to sources, WA State Republican Party chair Chris Vance has already admitted that they will be forced to withdraw at least 170 of the over 1900 challenges that voters started to receive yesterday. But it is too fucking late.

Voters will not receive notice that their challenge has been withdrawn until after Tuesday’s election, but by then many will have chosen not to vote, just to avoid the hassle of an administrative hearing. The GOP will have achieved its goal: disenfranchising untold numbers of voters in predominantly Democratic precincts.

In an October 26 press release announcing the 1943 voter challenges, KC Republican chair Michael Young bragged, “If our volunteers can discover these problems, shouldn’t the professionals in their office be able to do the same?”

But the KCGOP’s obviously faulty list shows exactly why these sort of challenges should be left to the professionals and not the partisan “volunteers” who care little for how many legitimate voters they disenfranchise in the interest of a cheap publicity stunt… a stunt that has backfired, horribly… for less than one day after challenged voters started receiving notices, the KCGOP has already been forced to back track on nearly ten percent of its list.

This is not the same thing as the list-waving, McCarthyite grandstanding that took place during the election contest, after the fact, when everything would eventually be sorted out in a court of law. The Republicans’ actions have disenfranchised voters — intentionally — and there should be a price to pay at the polls… and I hope, in a massive, class action lawsuit.

UPDATE:
I’ve just been told that the GOP has dropped off a letter to KCRE, signed by Lori Sotelo, officially removing 140 names from their challenge list.

Expect more names to be removed… I’m hearing the apartment building in Belltown may not be the only one on the list.

I’ve been trying to track down the details of this story since late last night, but since The Stranger’s “Slog” has broken it first, here’s the link:

If this is real, this is an outrage. If the Rs of King County are knowingly, falsely challenging legit voter registrations in an effort to suppress Dem votes then they should be PUNISHED.

if this is the kind of “reform” that Republican David Irons intends to inflict on King County, then we’re in real trouble if he beats Ron Sims next Tuesday. Everyone in this apartment building whose registration was challenged should call a press conference, and this woman

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I just found this quote from Friday’s Seattle P-I so amusing — and revealing — that I just had to share it before I headed off to bed:

Rick Schroeder said his support for Irons had nothing to do with policy issues relating to road building or construction.

“He’s a property-rights guy,” Schroeder said of Irons. “He doesn’t ramrod trails right through the back yard of people’s properties as Ron Sims does.”

Schroeder lives in Sammamish but is not, he said, one of the homeowners along the East Lake Sammamish Trail who protested the Sims-backed plan to reclaim the public right of way for the trail that they had encroached on.

Um… so by “a property-rights guy” Schroeder means supporting private landowners’ rights to public property.

What a putz.

For those with a taste for satire (and the intellect to appreciate it), I have just posted again to Jesus’ General, this time on the subject of Judge Walter Steed and his three wives.

Enjoy. (Or not.)

Well, credit where credit is due. Apparently, King County Councilman and executive-wannabe David Irons Jr. is such a commanding leader, that he’s managed to cajole his council staff into performing two distinct jobs on a single county paycheck.

A quick look at Irons’ campaign website finds that over half the press releases on his press page were written by council staffers, with links going directly back to his official council web page. And he’s sure kept his staffers on their heels during this busy campaign season: since officially announcing his candidacy for county executive on March 14, 2005, his staff has written 28 press releases, compared to only 19 during the same period last year, and only 16 in 2003, when he was running for reelection to the council.

Of course, both the King County Ethics Code and Washington State laws expressly prohibit the the use of public resources to support political campaigns, but it is hard not to conclude that Irons is in effect using county staff to produce campaign website content on the taxpayers’ dime.

Hmm. I suppose if I were a litigious prick like some right-wing bloggers I know, I might be tempted to file an ethics complaint. (Oops… I just did.)

While we’re on the subject of polling, here’s a little tidbit from a Gallup poll on Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito:

If it becomes clear Alito would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade, Americans would not want the Senate to confirm him, by 53% to 37%.

This nomination is outside the American mainstream. No wonder Democrats are already openly using the “F” word. (Filibuster.)

Some Democratic members of the group said Tuesday that it was premature to rule out a filibuster on Judge Alito’s nomination.

“It certainly is a possibility,” Senator Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat in the group, said.

“It may include some Republicans as well as Democrats,” Mr. Salazar said, criticizing the president for naming a man instead of a woman to succeed Justice O’Connor. “America deserves better than what we got here.”

Other moderate Democrats, including Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Mr. Pryor, said it was too early to rule out a filibuster.

I think Democrats sent an important message yesterday that they are not afraid to go nuclear. If the Democrats exercise their right to filibuster Alito, and the Republicans choose to respond with the nuclear option, the consequences are on the GOP’s head.

I try not to get too caught up in the polls, especially the cheap-ass, robo-call variety that KING-5 commissions from Survey USA. Any race close enough to be worth the effort of polling is almost certainly too far within the poll’s margin of error to let either side rest comfortably at night. And with a large majority of voters now casting ballots by mail, even an accurate two or three day snapshot of voter opinion is only marginally useful in predicting the outcome of a three-week election.

That said, I’d rather be up than down, and with a recent round of polling results being bandied about in the comment threads, I thought I’d take a moment to share a few comments of my own.

Some of you may have noticed an apparently stunning turnaround in the race between Ron Sims and David Irons for King County Executive. On 10/17 Irons led Sims 46% to 43%. Two weeks later Sims leads Irons 48% to 41%. Of course much of this movement is likely explained by the rather zaftig +/- 4.1% sampling error rate. But the pollsters do point out one statistically significant shift:

Most of the movement is among women voters. Women support Sims by 21 points today, compared to 3 points on 10/17/05.

Why would women suddenly flock to Sims? Hmm, I dunno… perhaps it’s because he never beat his mother?

Of course, assuming these numbers actually represent a real swing in broad public opinion, there are a lot factors that might have contributed to the shift. Still, one can’t help but wonder how much of an influence Mrs. Irons’ story might have had on women… most of whom love their mothers, and many of whom are mothers themselves. Physical abuse and verbal harassment of women at home and in the workplace is much more common than we might like to admit, and so many women found a mother’s description of her own son’s abusive behavior both believable and disturbing. Knowing little about the Republican candidate other than his parents’ character testimony, it is not surprising if voters reject the undefined Irons’ “anyone but Sims” campaign.

The truth is, negative campaigning works, a fact that Karl Rove has made a career of proving. Had Christine Gregoire spent a million dollars during the final weeks of the gubernatorial campaign defining her opponent, there never would have been an election contest. Had the eminently fair-minded Dave Ross abandoned the moral high ground and gone negative on Dave Reichert’s ass, we’d likely have one more Democrat in Congress. I respect Ron Sims for refusing to sling mud… but not so much that I was going to sit back and watch him lose an election while voters remained blissfully unaware of Irons’ explosive temper and his well documented history of showing it. (Not to mention his pathological lying and embarrassingly inflated resume.)

Would I rather talk about issues? Sure… Sims kicks Irons’ ass there too. But I’m comfortable that my mudslinging was truthful mudslinging, and that I didn’t do anything to Irons he wouldn’t have done to Sims… had Irons actually had any mud to sling. (Remember, this is the guy who sprung a closed FBI investigation on Brian Derdowski the night before the absentee ballots dropped. What goes around comes around.)

All that said, I have no idea if my efforts have had any impact on public opinion, and I’m certainly not relaxing now that the KING-5 poll shows Sims with a 7 point lead. This race could still go either way, and anybody who throws away their vote on a third party candidate that is neither qualified for office nor has a snowball’s chance of winning, risks putting King County’s $3.4 billion government in the hands of a lying, resume inflating, mother beating, tantrum tossing, tool throwing, unqualified Bush Republican. Third terms are extremely difficult to win for any executive office, and Sims would be struggling regardless of the opposition. Irons biggest backers, the gambling and building industries, want you to believe that you have the luxury of casting a protest vote. You don’t.

Irons is all but guaranteed a floor of about 35% of the vote; this represents the Will Baker Wing of the Republican Party… those who will vote for any candidate with an “R” next to his name, regardless of qualification or pulse. Then there are those single issue voters who will reject Sims on Sound Transit or the CAO or the nixed SWA deal… or who have totally bought into the GOP bullshit that KC Elections is corrupt and incompetent. (It is not.) This puts Irons’ floor firmly in the low to mid 40’s.

The Democrats have their own robotic voters, but they are much less reliable than those in the GOP, eroding the D’s natural numerical advantage. The result is that Sims too has a floor in the low to mid 40’s, leaving the election in the hands of undecideds and would-be Greens. While I can certainly envision Sims winning with greater than 50% of the vote, Irons squeaking by on a 45% to 44% margin is just as likely.

So while I find the latest polls somewhat encouraging, I feel far from reassured. And neither should you. If you don’t want Irons to be King County executive… vote for Sims.

KING-5 also commissioned polls on Initiatives 900, 901 and 912, which make one thing perfectly clear: I-901, which bans smoking in public places, is going to pass. Of course, we all knew that.

We’ve also always known that I-900, Tim Eyman’s superfluous performance audits initiative is a bit of a toss-up. It’s a rather complicated subject likely to confuse voters, and so there’s the natural instinct to vote no. But it is vaguely anti-government, and voters like that, so I still think it’s likely to manage a couple point victory. Still, it won’t come anywhere close to passing with a kind of mandate that could be understood to say anything about the mood of the electorate.

But it’s the numbers on I-912, the anti-transportation initiative, that has spurred the most interest. Survey USA shows I-912 failing, 44% to 50%, but as encouraging as this may be, I’d take these results with a large boulder of salt. Eyman’s own anti-tax initiatives have routinely polled 10 points lower than the final vote — I suppose some supporters are embarrassed to reveal themselves as selfish bastards — so I-912’s defeat is anything but a sure thing. But clearly, the initiative has not generated the overwhelming support some had predicted.

A look at the crosstabs are in fact fascinating, with I-912 supposedly drawing only 43% in Eastern WA… statistically comparable to the 42% support in Metro Seattle. I find both these numbers hard to believe, but in different directions.

I’ve always felt this was going to be a close vote, and if voters really understood the gas tax and what it pays for, I-912 would go down to defeat. But win or lose, if Republicans were looking for some voter backlash to slap in the face of Gov. Christine Gregoire and the Democrat controlled Legislature, this poll suggests I-912 won’t be it.

So there you have it… I find the recent round of polling interesting, encouraging… but ultimately, meaningless. With the exception of I-901, these races are all too close to call. So don’t throw away your vote.

I am guest blogging this week on one of my favorite blogs, Jesus’ General, and I can’t tell you what an honor it is to serve my country under the command of the inimitable Gen. JC Christian, Patriot.

And so I proudly direct you to my first post on The General’s site, regarding Judge Samuel Alito’s Amazon customer review of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Tonight I’m doing one of those dad-daughter things, so I will likely not be able to attend. But I understand that Port Authority candidate Rich Berkowitz will be there… so who needs me?

The Seattle Times is having a live, online chat today at 1 PM with the candidates for King County executive — the incumbent Ron Sims, and his overmatched challenger David Irons — and they have provided an online form where you can pose your own questions.

Hmm. Well, if you can’t think of anything to ask Irons, here’s a few suggestions:

Q: “Have you ever left an angry message on the voicemail of a female employee, which could have been or was perceived as threatening or abusive? Did anyone ever talk to you about this behavior, and if so, who?”

Q: “Have written or unwritten protocols ever been set up at the Council for your interaction with any female council staff member(s) due to your abusive behavior? When and by whom?”

Q: “Has anyone, whether in the private or public sector, ever left her job because of angry, threatening phone messages and/or harrassment by you?”

Just thought voters might be curious to hear the answers.

UPDATE: Irons chickens out!

Irons, who was scheduled to participate, has canceled.

Hmm. I wonder why?