Archives for August 2006

Rasmussen released a new poll yesterday showing Maria Cantwell up by 11% points over Mike!™ McGavick.

The poll dated July 17 has Cantwell at 48% and McGavick at 37%. Cantwell’s lead over McGavick is outside of the 4.5% margin of error, meaning that she has fully pulled ahead of McGavick after being in a statistical tie (although numerically leading) for three months. At 37%, Mike!™ is exactly where he started last November, down from his peak of 41% in May. Cantwell has gained 4% since last month. Additionally, her favorability has increased three points to 56% since last month.

Apparently, Cantwell’s new campaign ad is largely responsible:

The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll of 500 likely voters was taken a week after the launch of the 30-second television spot, “First,” which touts Cantwell’s accomplishments on behalf of Washington state’s families.

Wow…a four point rise after a one week media blitz!

Surely, McGavick will respond by unleashing his own media blitz very soon. Oh…wait…what was it Goldy was saying just last month?

McGavick has been running a paid media campaign

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Via Daily Kos, Congressional Quarterly has upgraded the Burner/Reichert race from “Republican favored” to “leans Republican.”

Republican officials scoffed when Darcy Burner

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In some sense, Mike McGavick took his first political bribe before he even swung into full campaign mode earlier this year. McGavick resigned last year as the CEO of Safeco Insurance Company in order to challenge Maria Cantwell for her Senate seat. In the process, he walked off with $28 million in bonuses and stock options.

Think about it. McGavick—a former lobbyist for the insurance industry—is paid by the insurance company he heads some $28 million to quit his job and become a Senator. “Win-win,” right?

To you and me that kind of a deal has the stench of corruption, both because of the potential for back-room agreements and because of the way it cleverly bypasses campaign finance laws:

Technically, Safeco is constrained by the same campaign finance limits as you or I, but insurance industry lobbyist cum CEO cum senate candidate McGavick is free to spend as much on his own campaign as his new-found personal fortune affords him. How convenient.

But not everyone sees this as a political scandal. Take, for example, 27 year old Emma Schwartzman. Today she filed a lawsuit against McGavick over his “excessive” severance package.

To Ms. Schwartzman this is not about politics. Instead, it is about theft. And it’s about family honor. Specifically, it’s about McGavick stealing from Safeco—a company founded by her great, great grandfather—and its shareholders.

In her own words:

Our lawsuit alleges that Mike McGavick didn’t earn the $28 million, he knew he wasn’t entitled to it, but he took it anyway.

I have brought this lawsuit to protect the assets and integrity of Safeco Corporation—a company that is important to me, my family, and my community.

My great, great grandfather was a founder of General Insurance Company, which later became Safeco. My great grandmother sat on the board and was an adviser to the company in its early years—at a time when most women had little role in corporate affairs. I own original shares passed down to me from my great great grandfather.

I have always been proud of my family’s role in building Safeco into a major employer in our state and a trusted member of the business community.

But under Mike McGavick’s leadership, Safeco lost its ethical compass. His greed has diminished the value of my investment and, more importantly, the ethical values of this great company.

As expected, the McGavick campaign responded with charges of “Political Smear!”

This is a politically motivated character attack. The allies of the incumbent senator have found yet another avenue to continue their daily personal attacks on me. […] These allegations regarding my compensation are without merit and obviously politically inspired.

Are the charges politically inspired, or contractually inspired? Here is the rationale for the lawsuit given by Ms. Schwartzman’s lawyers:

When McGavick became Safeco’s CEO in 2001, he drove a hard bargain. In addition to an annual compensation package worth as much as eight million dollars, McGavick also bargained for a “golden parachute” provision. This meant that if McGavick were fired, he would receive a multi-million dollar termination payment.

But Mike McGavick did not get fired from Safeco; he voluntarily resigned. And his employment contract clearly stated that if he resigned he would forfeit his right to a big payout. He would forfeit all compensation, including bonuses and stock options, and would get only his last paycheck. These employment contracts are quoted in the complaint, included in your packets, and posted on our website.

Instead of resigning from Safeco with his final paycheck, as his contract clearly provided, McGavick walked away with $28 million.

This lawsuit will prove that this $28 million payment was improper and fraudulent on numerous counts, and McGavick acted dishonestly and unethically in bargaining for and receiving this payment.

Ouch!

Just how did the bribe severance agreement circumvent McGavick’s contract?

Fraud

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Andrew at NPI just posted about an emergency rally for tomorrow to protest the flawed minimum wage bill:

HR 5970, which has passed the House and is now heading to the U.S. Senate, contains two cynical provisions inserted by Republicans serving their corporate masters:

• Permanent cuts to the estate tax for very wealthy estates – exempting up to $5 million per person or $10 million per couple
• Invalidation of state laws providing a minimum wage for restaurant and other tipped employees, a provision that will affect thousands of workers here in Washington

HR 5970 hurts the thousands of workers in our state who receive tips by invalidating our state law that sets the minimum hourly wage for tipped employees at the same minimum wage as all other employees. Washington is one of only seven states with such a law. Not surprisingly, though, Washington’s 3 Republicans – Dave Reichert, Doc Hastings, and Cathy McMorris – voted for HR 5970.

Reichert voted to hurt low wage employees in his district? Go figure.

The rally will be held at the Seattle Center tomorrow at 2:15 PM at the base of the Space Needle. Speakers will include Jay Inslee (the organizer) and Darcy Burner. (Note to Wingnuts: the Seattle Center is not in the 8th District. In fact, it is not in Inslee’s 1st District, either. But this isn’t a campaign event now, is it? The Seattle Center is a great place for people in the entire region to gather and protest.)

If you can make it tomorrow, please do! Either way, be sure to contact your Senators and express your concern about this cynical Republican stunt disguised as legislation.

Update: Those of you interested in an alternative to the low-wage-employee-hating Rep. Doc Hastings can tune in to KUOW 94.9 FM tomorrow at 9:00. Congressional candidate Richard Wright will be Steve Scheer’s guest on Weekday.

Update II: Correction…Richard Wright will be on KUOW 94.9 FM on Thursday, August 3rd at 9:00 AM.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight.

What do we really do each week at Drinking Liberally? Well, this week I suppose I’ll propose a toast to good health for Fidel Castro (better intestinal fortitude?)…while…um…burning an American flag…and…and…we’ll sing the national anthem—in Spanish—while smoking Cuban cigars. Yeah…that’s the kind of fun we have each week.

Won’t you join us?

We meet at the Montlake Ale House (2307 24th Avenue E). The fun begins at 8:00 p.m.

Drinking Liberally is hosted by Seattle bloggers Nick Beaudrot of Electoral Math and Thehim of Blog Reload. If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out Drinking Liberally at the Atomic Ale in Richland. Jimmy has the details.

As far as I know I’ve never met Stefan Sharkansky. But he wrote a friendly email to me about a year ago pointing out, among other things, that we overlapped as undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin in the mid-1980s. So, who knows, I might have had a beer with him on the Memorial Union terrace, played a pick-up raquette ball game with him, or worked with him on a team programming project for a computer science course. If so, I am sure I enjoyed his company—if we had discussed politics at all, we would have shared the common ground that neither of us had ever voted for a Republican for President.

So why am I seemingly sucking up to Stefan? Well, first because I feel a little bad that I never responded to his email last August. I was on the road in NY state that month, and had lousy Internet access. But, more importantly, I am about to gobble-up some of his bandwidth by linking to an audio file on his site. Sorry Stefan…when Goldy left me the keys to the blog, he didn’t give me file upload capability. In any case, there would have been all that trouble of asking permission to use the file….

What the hell is this all about, you ask? This Monday afternoon, Goldy and Stefan held a debate at Microsoft for the Microsoft PAC lunch. Stefan recorded and posted an audio file of the event. You can read his post about it here, or go directly to the audio here (15MB .WMA file).

I’ve listened to the debate and I must say that I sensed surprisingly little animosity between them. They laughed at each others jokes, they were not rude to each other, were pretty good about not interrupting each other, and they actually agreed on occasion. They produced an interesting debate over some issues like Darcy Burner and the 2004 election contest. The whole thing seemed shockingly civil! The debate is definitely worth a listen, whatever brand of politics you subscribe to.

In the late 1990s, Jay Leno suggested a hilarious practical joke in which he and David Letterman would swap places for a night (unannounced, of course). I once suggested something similar to Goldy—have Stefan post on Horsesass for a day and have Goldy post on Sound Politics for a day. My puckish suggestion may never happen, but after listening to these two rivals being civil in—and maybe even enjoying—their face-to-face interactions, it reminds me that the medium of blogs (and particularly blog comment threads) can sometimes act as an artificial barrier. Perhaps people who seem to hate each other in Goldy’s comment threads might find that they have common ground in their day-to-day concerns, and actually enjoy discussing topics like sports, microbrews or their favorite recipes. Hell…we might like some of the enemy!

Okay….enough of that feel-good shit. Back to the verbal daggers!