Archives for April 2006

Neil Modie’s got the scoop in today’s Seattle P-I on a really major Federal Elections Commission complaint the WA State Dems plan to file against GOP senate candidate “Lobbyist Mike” McGavick.

The Dems allege that the revised compensation package McGavick struck with Safeco on December 6, 2005 — more than a month after he officially declared his candidacy — essentially amounted to an illegal, $17 million contribution to McGavick for “personal use.”

I haven’t had the chance yet to read the complaint, but my understanding is that the facts really aren’t in dispute… this will simply come down to how the FEC (and eventually, the courts) interpret campaign finance law. But should the ruling go against McGavick, the consequences could be huge. The Democrats are seeking “the highest civil penalties available under the law.”

I’ll reserve my comments on the merits of the complaint until after I’ve had the chance to study the relevant code, and perhaps discuss it with some legal experts. But the part of Modie’s article I found most interesting was the GOP’s official response:

“These are baseless accusations,” Julie Sund, McGavick’s campaign spokeswoman, replied Tuesday.

“The Democrats are obviously looking at the same polls we are. The race is getting tight and they’re resorting to early, mean-spirited attacks because the know the incumbent is in trouble and they want to divert attention away from the real issues in the race.”

Uh-huh.

Of course, if you’re going to categorize an FEC complaint as an “early, mean-spirited attack,” then I guess it’s worth pointing out that state GOP beat the Dems to the punch with their frivolous FEC complaint against WA-08 challenger Darcy Burner. Likewise, if it is fair to imply that the Dems’ complaint was prompted by concerns over a tightening race, then the same should certainly be said of the GOP complaint coming in the wake of Burner’s surprising fundraising results and rising profile.

Of course, the difference is, the GOP complaint was not only frivolous, it was trivial, involving a couple hundred dollars worth of volunteer work… whereas the Dems allegations are huge, describing a deliberate attempt to skirt the campaign finance laws by funneling millions of dollars directly into McGavick’s personal bank account.

In the battle of the FEC complaints, I say, score one for the Dems.

UPDATE:
Read the full text of the Dems complaint.

As reported yesterday on Slog, the Rothenberg Political Report, a highly respected and non-partisan political newsletter, upgraded Washington’s 8th Congressional District race between incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert and up-and-coming challenger Darcy Burner from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up/Tilt Republican”… ranking it as one of the 14 most competitive races in the nation.

That’s right, WA-08 is more competitive than high profile CA-50, in which the much ballyhooed Francine Busby is fighting to succeed the recently convicted Duke Cunningham.

Burner had been maligned by Republicans (and ignored by some Democrats) as a “third tier” candidate with little chance of defeating Reichert, but the “Burner Buzz” (not to mention her impressive fundraising performance) has opened eyes in the other Washington. Locally, the GOP echo machine has graduated from snidely dismissing Burner’s candidacy, to ineptly attempting to smear her.

And in what is surely bad news for Republican hopes to retain control of the House, Burner isn’t the only unheralded Democrat displaying unexpected strength:

While Democrats have failed to recruit the top tier candidates that they would like in places such as Arizona 1, Pennsylvania 15, Missouri 6 and Iowa 2, they have broadened the playing field elsewhere and recruited enough credible lower first-tier/upper second-tier hopefuls to win the House if the Democratic wave is big enough in November.

[…]

We believe that the House definitely is “in play,” and the key to whether Republicans can maintain control is whether they can discredit individual Democratic challengers who otherwise would be positioned to win. We are increasing our estimate of likely Democratic gains from 5-8 seats to 7-10 seats (they need to net 15 seats for control), with a bias toward even greater Democratic gains.

Of course, all this horse race analysis means zilch if we don’t all do the hard work necessary to help the Dems take control… and locally, that means helping Burner win in November.

The political pundits now all agree — Burner can win this race — but only with your help. If you haven’t already volunteered or contributed, do it now, for if the Republicans retain absolute control in DC, we’ll have nobody to blame but ourselves.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Please join us for some hoppy ale and hopped up debate.

I don’t know of any special guests who have committed themselves to show up this evening, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw one or more candidates for the open seat in the 43rd LD. (That’s not just an invitation to the candidates… that’s a suggestion.)

For those of you on the other side of the mountains, please join Jimmy at the Tri-Cities chapter of DL, every Tuesday from 5:30 onwards, Tuscany Lounge, 1515 George Washington Way, Richland. Oh… and tomorrow night I plan to drop by the Burien chapter at Mick Kelly’s Irish Pub, 435 SW 152nd ST.

Apparently, there’s nothing “Lobbyist Mike” McGavick won’t do for a little campaign cash. After whoring himself for oil money in Alaska with Sen. Ted Stevens, and less than a week after holding a fundraiser with the most divisive, partisan Vice President in American history, the supposedly independent McGavick spent this past weekend in Nashville turning tricks for Senate Majority Leader Bill Fist Frist.

McGavick was the beneficiary of a fundraiser hosted by Sen. Frist’s VOLPAC, whose inadvertently gay-themed invitation became the source of much amusement in political circles.

It was with some trepidation that we opened a most interesting card, which announced on a blue-jeaned cowboy’s belt buckle something called the “5th Annual VOLPAC ’06 Weekend” in Nashville on April 21-23.

Problem was you had to unbuckle the cowboy’s pants and look inside to see what this was all about. Seemed a bit too “Brokeback Mountain.”

Imagine our relief to find only that we were “cordially invited” to the event honoring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and “Mrs. Bill Frist, M.D.”….

The back of the card shows the cowboy from behind with a red flowered handkerchief sticking out of his right pocket. Wait a minute — wasn’t there something about how this used to be some kind of code in the gay community years ago? A way to signal each other in crowded, noisy bars?

Um… yeah. Apparently, a red handkerchief indicates a penchant for “fisting,” and the right pocket signals the wearer is receptive to being the, uh… fistee.

A fitting metaphor for McGavick, who seems more than willing to bend over (forwards) for any member of the Republican establishment looking to drive home President Bush’s failed policies.

Rep. Dave Reichert goes out of his way to portray himself as a moderate, but a new, DCCC web-ad exposes his extremist views on stem cell research.

During the 2004 race, Reichert told FOXNews.com that he is “generally against embryonic stem cell research,” and he held to his position in 2005 by voting against final passage of HR 810, a bill loosening restrictions on federal funding for such promising research.

I haven’t seen any polling, but I’m guessing that puts him pretty far out of step with his district.

When it comes to FEC filings, the US Senate is so twentieth century.

Wanna know where Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner stands on issues? Go read her rather in depth (3100 words) Q&A over on Slog.

Hmm. If I ran a futile, joke campaign for the US Senate, would The Olympian cover it? Probably… yeah… because my futile, joke campaigns tend to be kinda funny, as opposed to Mark Wilson, whose campaigns tend to be just, um… futile.

Still, The Olympian apparently took Wilson seriously enough to give him some ink today for his campaign against Sen. Maria Cantwell in the Democratic primary, so I suppose it’s only fair to read what he has to say, and take him at his word.

A perennial fringe candidate who is running primarily on an anti-war theme, Wilson previously ran as a Libertarian against Rep. Jay Inslee and as a Green against Sen. Patty Murray.

Wilson said his criticism of the war has spurred all of his runs at office.

The run against Inslee as a Libertarian “was an opportunity to direct the conversation about the war,” he said. […] He cited similar reasons for his Senate run against Murray…

Yeah, that’s right… Wilson ran as the anti-war candidate against Murray, who not only voted against the war authorization, but who gave perhaps the second-most eloquent speech that day on the floor of the US Senate.

Whatever. While Cantwell is certainly more vulnerable on the war than either Inslee or Murray, I think what we learn from Wilson’s history is that his campaigns are more about Wilson than they are about any particular opponent. I don’t mean to knock him personally or anything — his behavior is pretty typical of politicians, and when I met him, he seemed like a nice enough guy — but it seems pretty clear that Wilson would be challenging Cantwell (from one party or another) regardless of her authorization vote.

And I certainly don’t mean to dismiss the genuine and passionate opposition to the war held by many of Cantwell’s critics. I was strongly opposed to a “preemptive” invasion of Iraq, and all of my fears and concerns have certainly been borne out in the war’s execution.

But… there’s more to being a senator than just this one issue, and before rank and file Democrats buy into Wilson’s hoo-hah about being the “populist voice” of the party, they might want to look a little closer at where this “populist” Libertarian Green Democrat actually stands on the issues.

Wilson said “90 percent” of his platform is unchanged from 2002, when he first ran for Congress as a Libertarian in the 1st Congressional District, which was won by Democrat Rep. Jay Inslee.

Uh-huh. “90 percent.” That means that on issue after issue, Wilson is not a progressive Democrat… he’s a Libertarian. For example, on health care, where Progressive Punch scores Cantwell at a perfect 100% (better than both Patty Murray and Jim McDermott,) Wilson had this to say on his 2002 campaign website.

2. What, if anything, should Congress do to expand health-care coverage?

Every attack on private health insurance markets should be resisted. A genuine free market in health care will encourage competition and help reduce costs. Comprehensive Tort Reform would take the bite out of insurance premiums and promote personal responsibility. Insane lawsuits awarding multimillions, punch taxpayers right in the fries.

That’s nearly a direct quote from the Cato Institute, the libertarian standard bearer whose Cato Handbook for Congress states the following conclusion in their chapter on health care:

Every calculated attack on private health insurance markets should be resisted […] Health care costs will remain too high and the value of health care insurance too inadequate until we restore a genuine free market in health care…

Unfettered private health insurance markets and tort reform? That’s not the platform of a progressive candidate… that’s the platform of insurance industry lobbyist/CEO/GOP candidate Mike McGavick.

All those self-proclaimed progressives who say they simply can’t vote for Cantwell because of her Iraq war vote are missing the bigger picture. Yes, the war was ill conceived, immoral, and incompetently executed by the politicians in charge. But it is also draining our nation of the resources necessary to adequately address health care, education, the environment, alternative energy and a host of other issues that form the core of the progressive agenda… issues on which Cantwell has not only been a reliable vote, but often, an outstanding leader.

Wilson on the other hand… as a Democrat, he’s at best a 10 percent solution, and if you want to know where he stands on the other 90 percent of the issues, you better read the Cato Handbook.

That said, go ahead and cast your protest vote for Mark Wilson if that’s what you really want to do. No harm done, I guess, as Wilson can’t win, and Cantwell won’t waste any time or energy campaigning against him. But anything you do to undermine Cantwell’s prospects in the general election is nothing more than a contribution to the McGavick campaign and the Republican Party that got us into Iraq in the first place.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has a column in Monday’s Washington Post, in which he warns about President Bush’s final thousand days… and it’s a must read.

The Hundred Days is indelibly associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Thousand Days with John F. Kennedy. But as of this week, a thousand days remain of President Bush’s last term — days filled with ominous preparations for and dark rumors of a preventive war against Iran.

The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure [emphasis added]. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’; but he will say to you, ‘Be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’ ”

This is precisely how George W. Bush sees his presidential prerogative: Be silent; I see it, if you don’t . However, both Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, veterans of the First World War, explicitly ruled out preventive war against Joseph Stalin’s attempt to dominate Europe. And in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, President Kennedy, himself a hero of the Second World War, rejected the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a preventive strike against the Soviet Union in Cuba.

[…]

The Cuban missile crisis was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in all human history. Never before had two contending powers possessed between them the technical capacity to destroy the planet. Had there been exponents of preventive war in the White House, there probably would have been nuclear war.

Read the whole thing.

From The Washington Post: “Nepal’s King Agrees to Yield Powers.”

Now if only our king would agree to do the same.

Today is not only Earth Day, it is a day on earth much too beautiful to spend indoors blogging. So I didn’t. Instead, I spent much of the day outside, pulling ivy, trimming bushes, mowing the lawn, and doing other such good neighborly stuff I’ve been neglecting for much too long.

And when I was done, you could barely tell the difference.

We all know that entropy is a powerful force in the universe, but it’s especially strong around my house, which quite frankly, I’ve allowed to go to hell since HA took over my life in the weeks surrounding the November, 2004 election. A lot of people ask me how I manage to find the time to write so much, and the answer is simple: I’ve been neglecting just about every other aspect of my life, other than my daughter. My house, my yard, my car… they’re all a total mess (not to mention my finances.)

And it’s been totally worth it.

Still, there’s a lot of mess to clean up, and I hope if I take a break like this every once in a while, you all keep coming back.

Anyway, happy Earth Day.

Looking for something to talk about? George Howland has a very informative, even-handed piece on the proposed tunnel replacement for the Alaska Way Viaduct. It’s worth a read.

Hmm. If you knew that John N. Nordstrom gave $25,000 to finance the political schemes of the leader of a local chapter of the John Birch Society, would you be more or less likely to shop at his family’s department stores? If you knew that the gay-bashing recipient of Nordstrom’s largesse had once sponsored a city initiative to overturn the sexual orientation provisions of Seattle’s fair employment and open housing ordinances, would you hesitate before spending your hard earned cash at our city’s most famous retailer?

Well… now you know.

As of the latest public disclosure period, Nordstrom is by far the largest contributor to Initiative 920, which would repeal Washington’s estate tax. Indeed, his $25,000 comprises over a third of the total contributions raised thus far.

And the initiative’s sponsor and committee director is none other than Dennis Falk, a disgraced ex-Seattle police officer and lifelong Bircher, who was removed from active duty in 1978 after killing a retarded man by shooting him in the back. (Two officers who were near the scene testified that they never heard Falk yell any warnings before shooting the suspect.)

Falk is man who clearly does not represent the views or best interests of the majority of Washingtonians, as evidenced by what he told the Seattle Times in 1978 after the failure of his anti-gay initiative:

“I think we may have attempted to solve a problem a year or two in advance of when we should have put it on the ballot… Maybe we should have let these homosexuals carry on with their recruiting of our children for another year or so. As they flaunt their deviant behavior in the face of the general public, the public will become concerned and we’ll get it on the ballot again.”

Falk is a man who thinks Ronald Reagan was “a liberal” and who believes right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh are under the thumb an internationalist conspiracy:

“I appreciate him stirring the pot. But the day Rush attacks the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations is the day he will no longer be on the national airwaves.”

Uh-huh.

And that’s the kind of far right-wing, hate-filled political nutcase who Nordstrom is financing with his $25,000. It’s bad enough that Nordstrom — a company director and former co-chairman who owns a 3.6 percent stake — is putting so much of his family’s money into such a blatantly selfish initiative… but backing a man like Falk is simply inexcusable.

Public corporations and their principals — especially retailers — need to be very sensitive about the political figures and causes to which the contribute… lest they risk generating some awfully bad publicity for themselves and their business. So let this be fair warning to any other prominent businessperson who intends to back I-920: I intend to scour the PDC reports from here on out, and loudly publicize your financial contribution to the gay-bashing, back-shooting, lifelong Bircher, Dennis Falk.

“Darcy Burner is exactly the kind of candidate in the past that the DCCC would have let die,” said Rep. Ellen Tausher, D-Calif., a leader of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.

That is the most important message to take away from Joel Connelly’s column in today’s Seattle P-I about the close contest for WA’s 8th Congressional District. The Democrats failed to recruit a high profile candidate, thus this was a seat that only a few short months ago the bigwigs in both parties assumed was safe for Reichert.

Not anymore.

Worry-free last winter, Republicans are far from sanguine in the spring.

“This is where they think they can flip a seat,” KVI radio host John Carlson warned 1,200 people at Reichert’s re-election kickoff breakfast in Bellevue.

On that, there is bipartisan agreement.

Through sheer will, hard work, smarts and force of personality, Darcy Burner, an unknown “third tier candidate,” has turned WA-08 into one of the hottest races in the nation. This is a remarkable feat, and is in itself a huge blow to the GOP’s efforts to retain control of Congress, as Burner has forced them into sinking money into a seat they hadn’t budgeted on defending.

Reichert still has many of the advantages of incumbency, not the least of which being name ID and access to lobbyist and PAC money. (Thus far, Reichert has raised over 42 percent of his contributions from PACs, whereas PACs comprise only 7 percent of Burner’s funds.) But both these gaps are closing… and here is where the grassroots comes in.

Burner shocked the political establishment by out-raising Reichert $334,000 to $268,000 in the first quarter… but that still leaves Reichert with a $725,000 to $357,000 cash on hand advantage.

I expect Burner to spend her money more wisely than Reichert, but she needs to at least keep pace with his fundraising from here on out to keep this race close. And to do this, she’s going to need a lot more help from us.

If every one of my readers donated only $200 to Burner’s campaign, we’d wipe out the money gap overnight. Of course, I don’t expect it to be that easy (though you’re all welcome to prove me wrong,) but if only a hundred of you signed up to host a house party or fundraiser, it could easily put Burner over the top. We really can make a difference.

A lot of local Republicans were awfully damn smug about this race heading into 2006… wouldn’t you like to play a role in wiping that smile off their face?

Here’s a little tidbit that bodes well for Democratic candidates like Darcy Burner:

In an equally significant development, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reported having $23 million in the bank, almost equaling — for the first time in memory — the cash balance of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which was $24.4 million.

“The days of the ‘strategic cash advantage’ are over,” declared Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the DCCC, which raised $9.2 million in March, the same amount as the NRCC.

One of the things that made Burner’s first-quarter fundraising feat so important is that it qualified her for financial support from the DCCC. And with the DCCC’s own fundraising success, Burner can rest assured that if she makes her race close, the DCCC will be able to match their Republican counterparts dollar for dollar.

Meanwhile, the Senate Dems are actually out-raising Republicans, and have almost twice the cash on hand.

As Emanuel said, the GOP no longer has a “strategic cash advantage,” at least not in this campaign cycle, and while Reichert may outspend his challenger — as incumbents usually do — if Burner does her part to even the financial playing field, the DCCC will have the wherewithal to keep it even.

What this all means is that if we do our part to help Burner raise the money she needs to stay competitive, she’ll have every opportunity to win.