Goldy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37eu8MSXdP8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Hate-mongering anti-choice activist Randall Terry holds his own vigil of sorts for Dr. George Tilly, essentially blaming the doctor for his own brutal assassination.

“Pro-life leaders and the pro-life movement are not responsible for George Tiller’s death. George Tiller was a mass-murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

Huh. Well, as long as Terry is promoting this eye for an eye school of biblical justice, perhaps the proper response to this sort of vicious terrorist attack is to take out one of the terrorist leaders in return? Maybe Terry should reap the same sort of hate and violence that he sows?

And if you think that sentiment is a little harsh, I’d be happy to discuss it further with you over a beer.  I like Guinness, and prefer my wings really hot and a little crispy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT1MhKhpqjA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

The Seattle Times editorializes about education, which as usual, leaves me totally confused.

Our state is at a crossroads. An ambitious education plan recently approved by the Legislature was a major hurdle crossed. The next hurdle is a question: where do we go from here?

Um… how about funding it?

Debates in this state about education reform rarely rise above the level of money.

You know, except during the past legislative session when an ambitious and expensive education reform package was passed to great editorial applause, without any discussion whatsoever about how we’re going to pay for it. Surely the Times isn’t implying that these reforms won’t require a major investment to turn all schools around?

Granted, it will take a major investment to turn all schools around, but without planning and general consensus, the cash will be useless.

Okay then, I’m all for planning and consensus.  Now where are we going to get the cash?

Federal input wouldn’t be intrusive, it would be welcomed.

Silly me… the money comes from the federal government, of course, because those are magical dollars pooped by fairies and wood nymphs, and don’t in any way come from the kinda income and estate taxes that the Times argues would be so unfair and wealth-destroying should they be collected in Washington state.

Education stimulus dollars account for the largest spending increase ever.

That’s swell, but what’s this about the largest spending increase ever? I thought we just dramatically slashed education spending in WA, even with the federal stimulus dollars? Am I missing something?

This state will use much of the money to mitigate education cuts imposed by the state Legislature, but millions will be available with varying degrees of flexibility. The new rule in spending should be money spent on unproven efforts is money wasted.

Wait… so do “education stimulus dollars account for the largest spending increase ever,” or did we just “use much of the money to mitigate education cuts imposed by the state Legislature”…? And if the latter, how does this in any way implement the “new rule” the editorial kvells about.  I’m soooo confused.

Encouraging signs from Duncan, and President Obama, are the two men’s refusal to simply throw money at public education’s many problems.

Right, because otherwise, gutless legislators, cheered on by gutless, anti-tax editorialists, might just use the federal money thrown at them to “mitigate education cuts” rather than applying it to public education’s many problems.  And we would want that to happen.

Consider this the warm up before Congress delves into reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The massive law should be tweaked, necessary improvements include additional flexibility and money, but not abandoned.

Again with the shilling for more federal dollars. Can’t debates in this state about education reform ever rise above the level of money? The editorial mentions money nine times; I thought we were talking about education?

(Oh, and note to the editors who edit the editors: that last sentence doesn’t scan well, so you might want to consider rearranging the clauses. But then, I graduated from public schools, so what do I know?)

So there we have it, the Seattle Times editorial board’s usual clarity of thinking: we need to spend more money on education, but federal money, not local money, and we want to be careful not to throw money at the problem because more money won’t do any good anyway, which is why we shouldn’t even be talking about money, investments, cash, dollars or money in the first place.

Oy.

There will be a vigil tonight, 6pm, near the south end of the reflecting pool at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle, to offer thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Dr. George Tiller, who was brutally assassinated yesterday by a right-wing terrorist as he was entering his Wichita, KS church.

Hey… apparently, I’m a genius…

“Everyone who owns GET plans, they’re starting to look like geniuses,” said Joe Hebert of TrueNorth Financial Services in Seattle.

We prepaid our daughter’s tuition when she was five years old, back in 2002, when the cost was only $42 a credit. After this week’s GET price increase, the cost is now $101 a credit. That’s a pretty damn good annualized return. But I’m no genius.

Washington’s in-state tuition costs were bizarrely low at the time we bought in, and there seemed nowhere to go but up. The GET program was only advertising (but not promising) a projected 6 percent average annual return at the time, but that seemed impossibly low considering rising costs and stagnating state tax collections. Besides, the “G” in GET stands for “guaranteed,” so it wasn’t much of a gamble to plunk down $16,800 in 2002 for four years of college tuition our daughter wouldn’t finish redeeming before 2019. I suppose it might have turned out to be a conservative investment, but it also bought us peace of mind.

But, as is my wont, I digress, for it’s not the virtues of GET I planned to blog about, but rather the first comment on the story in the thread on the Seattle Times, in which rawdibob asks:

Why has the cost of college tuition increased faster than inflation?

Yes, I understand that part of the government-run college tuition increases represents a decrease in the taxpayer subsidy but that is not all of the story.

No, the recent budget cuts aren’t all of the story, but this question gets to the heart of one of the basic misunderstandings many taxpayers have about the cost of providing government services… a misunderstanding I’d argue is intentionally perpetuated by many of those in the smaller government crowd.

Government critics often point toward population plus inflation as a formula for constraining government growth, and while that’s not the best metric (growth in demand for government services most closely tracks growth in personal income), it does appear somewhat reasonable, at least on its face. Problem is, there are multiple measures of inflation, and the familiar Consumer Price Index is perhaps the least applicable when it comes to measuring rising goverment costs.

Why? Because as a broad index of the economy as a whole, the CPI reflects productivity gains resulting from technological and policy efficiencies (such as trade) that simply aren’t available to state and local governments, for whom the bulk of the services provided rely on highly trained professionals.  Think about it.  You can automate a factory floor, resulting in fewer workers producing more and better product, but you can’t comparably automate a doctor’s office or a fire station or a police precinct.

Or, a classroom.

The only way to dramatically increase the productivity of a university professor is to either increase class size, or require the professor to work longer hours for less money, neither of which is a tenable alternative if your goal is to attract and retain quality students and faculty. And even if one were to head down that route, the productivity gains could not possibly be sustainable compared to those achieved in the broader economy, even compared to many industries that also rely on a highly skilled labor force. For example, Microsoft can exploit the global economy by outsourcing engineering to India and China, but the University of Washington simply can’t outsource its faculty.  (It can outsource its students perhaps, but not its faculty.)

Republicans point to year over year spending increases and argue that state government has grown too fast, but the fact is that the cost of providing most government services simply rises faster than consumer prices. Indeed, when adjusted for the Implicit Price Deflator for State and Local Governments (the IPD is widely accepted as the most accurate measure of inflation for various industries), Washington state taxes per capita were already at a 15-year low heading into the Great Recession that sent our budget off a cliff.

Just look at the widening gap between CPI and IPD. What that represents is a decline in government spending power.

And that, rawdibob, is one of the main reasons why the cost of college tuition has increased so much faster than inflation.

It looks like the long expected backlash has finally struck KIRO radio in the wake my controversial firing:

At KIRO-AM and KIRO-FM, well, it was time to be philosophical about the quake that had just gone through the market.  […] Ross and Monson and the rest of the gang had sunk from No. 3 in the winter 2009 book (which used the diary format) to No. 19 in the PPM rankings.

Yeah, I suppose KIRO’s plummetting News/Talk ratings might be due to Arbitron’s switch from diaries to PPM ratings, or due to the audience disruption created by dropping its familiar AM signal, or some combination of the two. But I prefer to think it’s all due to a delayed audience rebellion after my weekend show was dropped back in February of 2008.

Meanwhile, Fisher Communications’ STAR 101.5, which has its studio just down the hall from those of KOMO 1000, saw its ratings climb to number one exactly at the time I started showing up at the building, subbing on The Commentators.  Coincidence? I think not.

If you want to lift the curse Rod, you know how to reach me. Personally, I’d prefer Dori’s slot, but I’m willing to negotiate.

According to the Seattle Times, housing prices fell throughout the region during 2008, with the median price per square foot dropping 5 percent in King County.  But one neighborhood is bucking the trend, North Beacon/Rainier Valley, which saw median prices rise 12 percent over the year.

Why?

[I]t boasts an amenity almost no other neighborhood can offer: the region’s first light-rail line, scheduled to carry its first passenger July 18.

There is a lot of opportunity to make fun of the Times’ latest effort at real estate market cheerleading, not the least of which being its apparent attempt to lump everything south of I-90 and east of I-5 as a single neighborhood. (The examples cited appear to be from distinct neighborhoods we locals would describe as Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, Mount Baker and Rainier Beach, covering a distance of five light rail stops… but then I guess from Times’ distinctly suburban perspective, all us Southeast Seattleites must look alike.)

Still, it’s good to see the Times finally acknowledging something we light rail boosters have been arguing all along: folks like choo-choos. In fact, they like them so much, they’re willing to move to be near them. On the flip side, I challenge the Times’ intrepid real estate reporters to find one anecdote of a person willing to spend a little extra for a house on the basis that it’s a mere eight minute walk to a bus stop.

Put aside for a moment the question as to whether this behavior is rational, and don’t worry your pretty little heads debating the relative economic efficiency of investing in buses versus rail. All that’s entirely beside the point. Rational or not, for whatever reasons, folks simply prefer trains and trolleys over buses. And it’s a preference whose impact is consistently repeated wherever rail systems are built.

It is ironic that, in a nation that otherwise reveres the market, establishment voices like the Times should so often ignore consumer demand when debating transit alternatives, always arguing that we should build the transit system that costs taxpayers the least, rather than the one they actually want. That’s no way to run a business, and I’d argue that’s no way to run a government either… at least not if your goal is to keep your customers happy.

So North Beacon Hill/Rainier Valley is about to get its light rail, and I’m guessing once it does, our region’s other four “neighborhoods” will want their’s too.

You knew it would happen eventually, but now we get to see how the right responds to the first terrorist attack on US soil since Obama assumed the presidency:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.

No, it’s not anywhere near the scale of 9/11, but it fits the definition of terrorism nonetheless: “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.”

Will Republicans rally around President Obama in his efforts to fight the terrorist threat, as Democrats rallied around President Bush in the immediate wake of 9/11? It remains to be seen.

There are a number of set strategies that come into play when running or opposing a ballot measure, and some of the most time tested involve the ballot title. So it is curious to consider the No side’s strategy in challenging the title to Referendum 71, which would put the recently passed domestic partnership legislation before voters.

No doubt the the original title assigned by the Attorney General’s office is more than acceptable to the Yes camp (those who would favor upholding the legislation), while the alternative proposed by the R-71’s sponsors (those who oppose the legislation) is more favorable to their electoral prospects.  Here is the original ballot title language:

“Same-sex couples, or any couple that includes one person age sixty-two or older, may register as a domestic partnership with the state. Registered domestic partnerships are not marriages, and marriage is prohibited except between one man and one woman. This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations of registered domestic partners and their families to include all rights, responsibilities, and obligations granted by or imposed by state law on married couples and their families.”

And here is the alternative proposed by a referendum sponsor:

“The bill would expand the rights, responsibilities and obligations of registered domestic partners to be equal to the rights, responsibilities and obligations granted by or imposed by state law on married couples, except that domestic partnerships will not be called marriages.”

The original title is certainly more informative than the proposed alternative, accurately noting that “Registered domestic partnerships are not marriages, and marriage is prohibited except between one man and one woman.” Specifically restating our state’s DOMA-enforced definition of marriage can’t help but soften opposition to expanding rights for domestic partnerships, so I’m guessing that’s the language that the R-71 sponsors are most opposed to.  And for good reason.

But while a favorable ballot title (that is, favorable to your side) can amount to as much as a point or two advantage at the polls, it’s not worth a hill of beans if you don’t get your measure on the ballot in the first place, and that’s the kind of Sophie’s choice the two camps were faced with in making their calculation whether or not to challenge the ballot title.

R-71 sponsors have only until July 25 to collect 120,577 valid voter signatures. Add the recommended 20% cushion to account for duplicates, mismatched signatures and other discrepencies, and you’re looking at a target of about 144,000 signatures in less than eight weeks… and counting.

Had the No camp let last Friday’s challenge deadline slide, they could have printed petitions overnight and started collecting on May 23, giving them 63 days to gather their signatures at an average rate of about 2,286 signatures a day. But now, with a Thurston County Superior Court judge not scheduled to hear their challenge until next Tuesday, R-71 sponsors will have at most 52 days to gather signatures. At an average rate of over 2,769 a day, they’ve effectively added almost 500 extra signatures a day to their burden—a 21-percent increase—while losing two Sundays, a definite blow to a canvassing campaign that will likely rely on churches to produce a large chunk of its signatures.

Without a large infusion of cash to pay professional signature gatherers (we’re talking several hundred thousand dollars) this target just doesn’t seem doable, especially considering how noncontroversial the domestic partnership legislation has proven within the general population. Perhaps the R-71 sponsors are hoping for a miracle, but I don’t remember Jesus performing any magic tricks in the interest of promoting discrimination.

Meanwhile, the ballot title challenge itself was a crapshoot to begin with, with judges tending to retain the AG’s original language more often than not. Yes, the stuff about marriage being between one man and one woman sucks a lot of the outrage out of voters on the fence, but it will be hard for the No camp to successfully argue that voters should be presented with less information, unless they are fortunate enough to draw a judge who both sympathizes with their agenda, and is willing to use his court to act on it.  (You know, one of those damn activist judges the right is always complaining about.)

So it makes me wonder what the No camp’s strategy really is? Do they really believe they can gather the requisite signatures in a little more than seven weeks? Are they confident they have a chance of prevailing at the polls if they do qualify? Or have they wisely started to question whether waging a losing battle over R-71 might ultimately cause their anti-gay agenda more harm than good?

Yeah, I’m cynical, but this ballot title challenge sure does look like a poison pill. Which I guess, ironically, might make this religious right backed referendum our state’s second documented case of death with dignity.

UPDATE:
The ballot title challenge has been withdrawn after wasting a week of precious signature gathering time.  So I guess there’s no dignity after all.

I’ve already gone out on a limb by predicting that none of the challengers in the Seattle mayor’s race have the political chops to unseat unpopular yet effective incumbent Greg Nickels.  It’s not an endorsement of Nickels, I just calls ’em as I sees ’em.

So why haven’t I made a similar effort to handicap the King County Executive race? Well, because like nearly every other political observer I’ve talked to, I haven’t the foggiest idea who’s gonna eventually come out on top.

What I do know is the that the wet dream scenario for each of the four Democrats would be to face off against Susan Hutchison in November, but while she’s the only Republican, the only woman and the only candidate with name ID north of 30% in the race, I’m still not so sure this scenario is such a sure thing. Name ID and gender won’t do it alone, so if Hutchison expects to make it through the primary she can’t keep ducking interviews and candidate forums. And while I suppose the $58,200 she’s raised thus far is respectable, nearly $45,000 of it has come in the form of double-max donations from the usual suspects (Kemper Freeman, Bruce McCaw, John Stanton, et al), accounting for a stunning average of over $1000 per contributor. Thanks to contribution limits, at some point Hutchison is going to have to expand her base beyond the very, very wealthy if she expects to stay competitive, even in the money race.

Before Hutchison stepped in, the primary was shaping up to be a regional playoff, with Eastside legislators Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter battling to faceoff in November against the winner of the Seattle bracket contest between Dow Constantine and Larry Phillips. But Hutchison is at the very least a monkey wrench that makes all efforts at prognostication nearly impossible. A fairly even split on one or both of the Democratic brackets works strongly in Hutchison’s favor, but even mildly lopsided outcomes in the regional contests could easily result in an early exit for the former newscaster. We’ll see.

As for the Constantine vs. Phillips, Hunter vs. Jarrett subplots, well, it’s too early to pick discernible favorites.  For a while there I thought Constantine was picking up momentum, but that appears to have stalled at least for the moment. And neither Jarrett nor Hunter have had time to do much campaigning or fundraising since the end of the legislative session.

So while I don’t know how interesting the debate will be, for the moment at least, it looks like an interesting horserace.

There are a lot of wire stories the Seattle Times could reprint and plug from their home page, but they chose this one:

National sales tax idea getting fresh look

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a moneymaking idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Uh-huh.

Had John McCain won the White House… were the Republicans currently even a credible opposition party, if not a legitimate threat to seize control of the House or Senate in 2010… then perhaps the notion of a highly regressive national sales tax might amount to something more than just a right-wing fantasy.  But he didn’t, they’re not, and it won’t.

So the question remains, why would the Times reprint this particular piece of pointless, idle speculation? Wishful thinking?

A few weeks back I wrote a post arguing that as bad as the fundamentals may be newspaper industry wide, struggling publishers need to take a little personal responsibility for their own poor business decisions:

For while the whole industry is struggling, the financial precariousness of some of our most threatened papers is at least partially due to the awful business decisions of their owners, in particular, the incredibly over-leveraged position they find themselves in as a result of ill-advised acquisitions and other bone-headed ventures.

For The Columbian, it was the construction of a new $40 million office tower that landed a shrunken newsroom back in its old digs, and publisher Scott Campbell in bankruptcy court.  For The Times, it was Frank Blethen’s ill-fated foray into the Maine media market that has left him with a couple hundred million dollars of debt coming due, and no obvious means of raising more capital.  Both papers are currently losing money on their daily operations, but neither would be struggling to survive this particular recession if the bankers weren’t pounding at their doors.

That’s the kind of critical analysis one doesn’t often read from a medium tasked with covering itself, and so it was no surprise to be castigated in my own comment thread for daring to challenge the self-soothing meme that it’s Google and bloggers and various technical and economic macro-trends that primarily threaten the industry, rather than the poor business decisions of industry leaders themselves. But it’s an analysis I stand by based on the available facts.

And, it’s an analysis that just got a dumpster load of support in the form of an incredibly in-depth and well-sourced article in the latest edition of Seattle Business Monthly that details the Blethen family saga, and how their own dysfunction accelerated the Times’ “slide toward insolvency…”

What is remarkable about the Times Co.’s current financial state is not that it is happening—newspaper companies from the august New York Times Co. on down are struggling. But while it is true that the Seattle Times Co. has been hammered by the same forces affecting others, the management performance of the Blethens themselves during the past decade has contributed significantly to the Times’ current troubles.

“We asked questions that any one of our own publishers would have known, and Frank didn’t know the answers,” says Tony Ridder, chief executive of Knight Ridder, which owned 49.5 percent of the Times Co. from 1929 to 2006. “It was,” Ridder adds, “a weak business leadership.”

Ouch. It’s one thing when this kind of critique comes from me, the Times’ self-proclaimed volunteer ombudsman, but it’s another thing entirely when it’s coming from Bill Richards, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter who the Times had hired for three years to cover its own JOA battle with the P-I.

Among the many disclosures culled from board meeting minutes, interviews and a Harvard Business School case study:

• In 2005, the Blethens blew off a Knight Ridder offer of $500M+ for their share of the Times Co. This offer, which was never disclosed, was solicited by Frank Blethen, according to Ridder.

• In 1997, Tony Ridder blocked the Blethens from using the Times as collateral to purchase a chain of Maine newspapers.

• The owners of the Maine newspapers manipulated the bidding for the property so that Blethen ended up bidding against himself and overpaying for it, and no one else ever made a formal bid for the chain.

• During the run-up to the disastrous 2000-01 strike, Frank Blethen took such a hard line, anti-union negotiating stance that Times labor relations chief Chris Biencourt, in a post-strike assessment prepared for the Blethen Corp., called the resulting strike “inevitable.”

• Top Times officials were so sure the unions would fold they failed to secure adequate strike insurance before the 49-day walkout.

• Frank Blethen and his cousins have used their dominance of the Seattle Times Co. to attempt to redress wrongs and injustices they felt were done to them by their own parents, including forcing the Times Co. to buy the Blethen Maine chain and providing jobs for any family member who completes college.

Richards concludes:

Blethen’s pride has repeatedly driven him into endeavors and to actions that have undercut the Times’ ability to survive and remain the family’s centerpiece. “Journalistically,” says Tony Ridder, attempting recently to explain this dichotomy, “The Seattle Times was a good newspaper. But Frank absolutely did not make good business decisions.”

Double ouch.

It’s a fascinating and, at times, somewhat sad read. It’s easy to feel empathy for a man like Frank Blethen, who says that he took his first job at the Times at the age of 21, in order to become acquainted with his physically absent and emotionally remote father, a man who never sent him a birthday card or a letter, and never called throughout Frank’s entire adolescence. It’s a tortured tale of Citizen Kane-esque proportions.

And it’s hard not to respect Frank’s goal of building family cohesion, and instilling pride in the newspaper and its values amongst the fifth generation of Blethens.

But as a businessman, that doesn’t let Frank off the hook, and I’m tired of reading his editorial board demand that individuals take the same sort of personal responsibility for our actions that the Blethen family has thus far refused to publicly take for their own.

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The Seattle Times editorialized yesterday that a citizens commission used sound logic in freezing the pay of Washington state elected officials over the next two years, a sentiment with which I can’t argue in light of our current budgetary woes. But at the same time I think it needs to be pointed out that at only $42,000 a year, we don’t pay our state legislators nearly enough to attract a large pool of qualified candidates.

Yes, that’s right… those same legislators at whom I’m still more than a little pissed off for their collective lack of creativity and courage during the past session… I’m arguing we need to pay them more, perhaps even double. In fact, I’d argue that the body’s lack of effectiveness is at least partially due to the low pay, and the sort of candidates who can afford to accept it.

What we get now are basically two groups of candidates: the very wealthy, who don’t need the money, or the kinda candidate who looks at $42K and thinks “Hey… I’ll be living large!” There’s also a third group in the middle, who accepts the job and the huge cut in standard of living that comes with it, out of a sense of public service or narcissism or both, but those sort of legislators become fewer and fewer as the gap between what legislators could earn and what they do earn grows ever larger.

Now I know some of you will retort that $42K ain’t bad for a part-time legislature that only meets in session for six months out of every two years, but I’d argue that the job is only part-time if you’re doing it wrong. The best, most effective legislators are the ones who make themselves available to citizens, interest groups and their colleagues year round, providing constituent services while seeking community input and expert opinions as they prepare legislation and strategies for our artificially condensed sessions. And for state reps, hell, running for office every two years is a full time job in itself.

So if we insist on maintaining the fiction that this is a part-time job, and continue to compensate accordingly, well, if I remember my Adam Smith correctly, you get what you pay for. The wealthy legislators (think Eastside Dems), however pure their intentions, can’t help but lose touch with the struggles of average Washingtonians, while the pool of less affluent, highly qualified candidates, willing and able to make the financial sacrifices necessary to serve, grows ever smaller. And, more compromised, for we’ve virtually designed a system that requires many legislators to leverage their political expertise and position to earn outside income.

The shrinking size and power of the legislative middle class is reflected in a body whose politics and priorities have increasingly come to resemble a caricature of economic reality, where thoughtful policy debates have been replaced by B-movie showdowns between evil industrialists and union bosses. Or so it often seems. What’s lost in all this are passionate, effective voices who not only understand the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of Washingtonians, but who live this life every day.  Oh, we have plenty of legislators who walk the walk, and plenty more who talk the talk. What we’re sorely lacking are knowledgeable, competent, and courageous legislators who are able to do both.

This hollowing out of the political class—this increasing dominance of amateurs and hobbyists—can only lead to the election of legislators who are less capable of representing the needs of their constituents, or who lack the empathy to do so. For example, much has been made year after year about how Washington state consistently lags well behind the national average in teacher pay, but you gotta wonder how much sympathy this earns the profession in Olympia, when the average teacher still makes several thousand dollars a year more than the legislators who sign their paychecks? Perhaps this partially explains a Legislature that could pat itself on the back for passing landmark education reform, while obstinately refusing to even entertain the notion of honestly debating the kind of tax restructuring that would be necessary to make full funding of these reforms even a remote possibility?

So yeah, sure… now’s the wrong time to increase legislative pay. Not during this recession, in the midst of this outsized budget crisis. But if we want a Legislature better capable of handling the next budget crisis—or perhaps even avoiding it entirely—it’s past time to start thinking about paying a wage that might attract a more capable class of legislators.

In writing last week about why a campaign based on process and personality won’t be enough to defeat Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in November (“Will Voters Tune In to Seattle City Government’s Family Feud?“), I raised a question that’s surely on the mind of his challengers and their self-soothing consultants:

Now some might counter, if Nickels is so strong, why are his polling numbers so weak? But that’s a question for another post…

Well, with retiring City Council member Jan Drago officially announcing her candidacy today, it’s time for that post, and I don’t think it’s one the field of challengers will find any more encouraging or flattering than the last.

Let’s begin with the facts. Every survey out there—the mayor’s, his opponents’, and those from third parties—shows Nickels’ approval rating consistently polling somewhere in the mid-thirties, and anybody who knows anything about electoral politics will tell you that for a two-term incumbent, that’s an awfully bad place to be.  Just falling below 50% is conventionally considered a sign of vulnerability, but 35%…? It’s time to start sending out your resume.

So it’s understandable why Drago and the other challengers might feel buoyed. Up until Drago’s entrance it was a crap-shoot as to who might win the second spot on the November ballot (my sense is that Nickels and Drago are now the clear favorites to make it through the primary), and going up against such an unpopular incumbent, it would be the challenger’s race to lose.

Or so dictates conventional wisdom.

But the the thing about conventional wisdom is that it’s so damn conventional, and as such, tends to obscure the vagaries that surround all candidates and influence all political campaigns.  And as I wrote last week, anybody counting on 35% in April to automatically translate into defeat in November has another think coming, especially since, quite frankly, Mayor Nickels never seems to poll all that well.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the mayor poll above fifty percent,” one long time Nickels aide told me.  You know, except on election day… the only day that really counts. As to why the mayor polls so poorly, well, that’s hard to say, but I’m guessing it has something to do with his penchant for attempting to do stuff.

Are you an ardent opponent of light rail? Then you probably hate the mayor… likewise for those of you for whom the monorail was the stuff of wet dreams. Prefer the rebuild or surface/transit options for replacing the Viaduct? Well then, screw Mayor Nickels and his gold-plated, faith-based tunnel.

Angry at losing the Sonics?  Convinced the grocery bag tax is nanny-statism gone awry? Think Nickels is anti-business and/or in the pocket of developers? Affordable housing vs. plummeting home prices… transit-oriented development vs. preserving our neighborhoods… service cuts vs. tax increases… whatever side of whatever issue, you name it and you can probably find reason enough to blame the mayor.

Of course, the only alternative to doing stuff is to do nothing, but that’s just not in Nickels’ character, and besides, whatever reputation the mayor has for a willingness to spend political capital (sometimes frivolously), it can’t help but appear exaggerated compared to the how-low-can you-go profile of the city council.

I mean, here’s a thought experiment for you: pull out your stopwatch and see how long it takes you to come up with nine things you don’t like about the mayor and his policies. Pretty easy, huh? Now time how long it takes you to name all nine city council members.

See what I mean?

Yeah sure, there’s something about Nickels’ style that particularly pisses off those establishment types steeped in a lazy political culture that puts every contentious issue up for public vote, and too often confuses leadership for arrogance (all the while whining about the lack of the former), but he’s not the only executive to head into an election year with less than stellar approval ratings. Gov. Chris Gregoire had only just inched up to 45% by April of 2008, yet still managed to win by over six points come November.  And perhaps more relevantly, former King County Executive Ron Sims’ approval rating was likewise mired in the mid thirties in April of 2005, yet he still ran away to a 16-point win in his landslide bid for a third term.

So while no doubt the mayor’s people would prefer to see his approval ratings climb, they won’t start shitting bricks unless and until the coming barrage of campaign advertising fails to budge his numbers.

So now that we’ve settled that—35% approval rating bad, but not fatal—let’s talk about what the challengers can do to exploit Nickels’ obvious vulnerability.  And the answer is… um… not much. For despite the litany of mayoral gripes I’ve outlined above, and the many, many more I’ve neglected, there really aren’t any big, consensus building issues with which to attack the mayor.

Drago and the others can focus all they want on Frozen Watergate, but in a city that experiences major snowstorms every decade or so, snow removal is hardly a top priority, while efforts to spin the icy streets as emblematic will be hard pressed in the absence of evidence of a broader culture of mismanagement. The city failed to clear the streets for a week, and…? They better come up with an “and” or two if they truly want to use this issue to their advantage.

We had the snow as bad as anywhere down in my neck of the woods, but that’s one week out of the 385 or so Nickels has been mayor.  Over that same tenure our crime is down, our streets have been paved, our libraries renovated, and our playfields re-turfed. We’re not too happy about the direction our schools are going or the level of Metro bus service, but somebody should remind Mike and Jan that these two services don’t fall under the mayor’s purview. Meanwhile, we’ve got a shiny new train running through the Rainier Valley that’s driving much needed redevelopment, and is about to make us the envy of the region.

And I live in South Seattle, one of the most neglected areas of the city.

I’m not saying there aren’t failures in the mayor’s administration, there just haven’t been any major failures, and certainly nothing endemic. A couple weeks ago I chatted with a staffer for self-financed candidate Joe Mallahan, who after failing to goad me on snow removal and Key Arena (“Aren’t you angry about the Sonics leaving… or don’t you like sports?” she asked me, I think implying something lacking in my manhood should I affirm the latter), raised the specter of Seattle’s budget deficit as evidence of Nickels’ unfitness to manage city affairs.

The budget? Really?

Seattle’s projected $29.5 million revenue shortfall is nothing compared to that of the state or even King County, and the mayor’s proposed budget adjustments have proven proportionately less painful and controversial, mostly consisting of a mandatory one-week furlough for library employees, the elimination of 59 positions (half of which were already open) and a $5 million transfer from the city’s rainy day fund (leaving another $25 million in reserve, compared to the mere $2 million he inherited in 2001).

All in all, I’d say the city has recently managed its finances quite well, and I don’t get the sense that many voters are convinced otherwise.

Likewise, despite the many opportunities Nickels has had to piss off one constituency or another through positions he’s taken and the policies he’s advocated, it hardly adds up to a throw the bum out consensus, especially considering the utter lack of differentiation his opponents have enunciated on these very same issues. How exactly does Mike McGinn expect to court the environmental vote away from one of the most outspoken environmental mayors in the nation? Does Drago really believe she’ll be embraced as a credible alternative when she’s been the mayor’s most reliable ally on the council?

Yes, opinion polls show the mayor remains unpopular, but it’s not due to any major scandal—personal, ethical, performance or otherwise—and its not due to the stances he’s taken on major issues, which have largely been in step with the vast majority of Seattle voters. The fact is, Mayor Nickels is neither corrupt nor incompetent nor out of sync with our values. Folks just don’t like him.

The dilemma for the challengers is this: how do you defeat a competent, scandal-free mayor whose values you share, and whose policy agenda you largely support?  You beat him by being a better politician.

And that’s why I’m convinced that none of the challengers in this race, not even Drago, can beat Mayor Nickels, for as vulnerable as he is, and as grating as his style obviously can be, none of his opponents possess the force of personality necessary to get voters excited about change. I don’t write this as Nickels booster; I’ve got nothing against the mayor, though I’ve got nothing particularly for him either, and there have been plenty of issues on which we’ve disagreed.

But issues don’t win races, candidates do. Thus the solution to beating a scandal-free incumbent, even one with a pathetic 35% approval rating, is to simply be a better politician. And sadly for them, none of the challengers are that.

It’s a big day for big judicial news that really isn’t news at all to court observers.

Earlier this morning President Barack Obama announced his first US Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor, surprising absolutely no one. Sotomayor had been on the short list since before there was a short list, and many had handicapped her the frontrunner.

Republicans have been desperately bucking for a filibuster, but this would be an awfully tough moment to go nuclear. If confirmed Sotomayor would be only the third woman to serve on the Court, and the first Hispanic… two constituencies the GOP can’t afford to alienate any further. Sotomayor’s bipartisan pedigree also presents an interesting obstacle to placing obstacles: she was appointed to the federal bench by the first President Bush, and to the appeals court by President Clinton; seven currently serving Senate Republicans voted to confirm her back in 1998.

One other curious observation. While I haven’t found any definitive source regarding Sotomayor’s religious affiliation, she is of Puerto Rican heritage, and was educated in Catholic schools, so at the very least, it is pretty safe to describe her as coming from a Catholic background. Thus if confirmed, the Supreme Court would now be composed of six Catholics, two Jews, and only one Protestestant, the 89-year-old Ford appointee, Justice John Paul Stevens. As I said, curious.

And later today in momentous/unsurprising judicial news, the California Supreme Court is widely expect to uphold the anti-gay marriage Prop 8, in a decision to be released around 10AM.

UPDATE:
As expected, the California Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 today by a 6-1 margin, banning same-sex marriage, but unanimously ruled that the 18,000 or so same-sex marriages conducted before the measure’s passage remain valid. That’s kinda weird.

I suppose that’s a victory of sorts for the anti-gay forces, but only for the moment. History is clearly on the side of equal rights, and no doubt Prop 8, which only passed with 52% of the vote, will be reversed by initiative a few years hence.