Why did Dino Rossi lose his second gubernatorial bid and his only U.S. Senate bid? The way I see it, Rossi lost because voters recognized something unlikable in him. The public’s first big taste of the unlikable side of Rossi came in his 2005 “concession speech,” following the loss of a bitterly-fought legal contest at the end of his first gubernatorial fight:
With today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest.
It wasn’t a moment of statesmanship for Rossi. In his subsequent 2008 and 2010 statewide elections, Rossi frequently exhibited a similar peevishness that left a bad impression with voters. Maybe he was deeply bitter (2008), or maybe he was annoyed at being forced to run a hopeless campaign (2010). Either way, he was unlikable.
Fast forward to late 2011. We have one Rob McKenna running for Governor. This is a man who has been elected twice to Attorney General, the second time with 59% of the vote.
This time McKenna has a serious liability in his run for Governor: He comes off as a petulant asshole.
We can all look back with bemusement that McKenna kicked off his campaign by excluding Goldy in his role as a reporter for The Stranger. Confronted by uber-legitimate Stranger reporter Eli Sanders, McKenna impishly replied:
“I don’t think David Goldstein qualifies as a journalist,” a miffed McKenna told Eli. “He’s a hack. He’s a partisan hack. He’s just there to parrot points from the other side.”
More recently, McKenna has decided that all Stranger reporters are personae non gratae:
Gubernatorial wannabe and anti-health-care crusader Rob McKenna is holding a campaign kick-off breakfast tomorrow morning, but The Stranger, if you can believe it, is not allowed inside. After I emailed the campaign to RSVP, I got a call back from McKenna-protector Adam Faber explaining, “Tomorrow’s event is for invited press only, and we didn’t invite The Stranger.” […]
“This is very simple and it is all I intend to say,” Fabar intentionally said. “The Stranger’s editorial director has made a $500 donation to our opponent and political blogger, Mr. Goldstein, is listed on the PDC reports as the head of a political action committee called the No Rob PAC. I think that speaks for itself.”
Well, Adam, it’s actually called the No Reversing Our Benefits PAC.
Dan Savage donated $500 to Inslee. Ooooohhh. Goldy, before he was employed by The Stranger created a PAC called “No Reversing Our Benefits PAC,” with the amusing acronym “NoROB PAC”. It was a fucking joke…unless you are a peevish and, perhaps, paranoid gubernatorial wannabe.
McKenna made a peevish spectacle of himself again when a Democratic videographer showed up to video tape his talk in a openly-advertised public venue. After his attempts to intimidate the videographer failed, McKenna terminated the presentation and beat a retreat to the “cupcake table.”
And then there’s the episode where McKenna had fucked up its own campaign cash rollover and bitterly complained about Jay Inslee’s query to the PDC about rolling over his federal dollars into his state campaign.
Recently a special session of the state legislature was convened that, by law, prohibits state elected officials, like McKenna but not Inslee, from fundraising. The McKenna campaign wailed like a spoiled child:
“At what point does Congressman Inslee start acting like someone following Washington state rules, instead of someone following Washington D.C. rules?” [McKenna’s campaign manager Randy] Pepple said.
(If McKenna wants a level playing field, perhaps he would agree to commute to D.C. for the work week….)
McKenna’s most recent display of petulance was last Friday when, at the last minute, he cancelled an interview with the Washington Education Association:
WEA members were disappointed McKenna decided not to share his opinions on education with the group, Lindquist said.
“The teachers here wondered why he wasn’t here. They were speculating that he was afraid to meet with us,” or that education was not one of his priorities, Lindquist said.
McKenna’s campaign manager, Randy Pepple, said the attorney general decided not to attend the WEA endorsement interview because he didn’t expect to have a fair hearing with people who were interested in hearing his point of view.
“It became very apparent yesterday that the WEA was turning today into `celebrating the endorsement of Congressman Inslee Day,'” Pepple said Saturday.
Lindquist said the WEA changed the date of its candidate interviews after McKenna said he had a conflict with the original Nov. 12 date. His campaign called the union on Friday afternoon to cancel his interview with the WEA-PAC Board. The union said he also refused to answer written questions about public education.
McKenna thinks he cannot win, so takes his ball and goes home. Maybe he got a cupcake.
Dissing the teachers was a stupid—and revealing—unforced error on McKenna’s part. For one thing, McKenna fancies himself as big on education. Apparently, he’s not so “into” it that he can communicate with teachers.
And dissing a teachers’ union raises a big red flag for folks who aren’t quite convinced that a Governor McKenna would do for Washington state what Governor Scott Walker has done to Public Sector employees in Wisconsin. Over the past year, we have seen a systematic Republican War on Workers. Would a Gov. McKenna bring the war to Washington? You know…the same way he forced us to join the multistate lawsuit against the healthcare reform law?
A better McKenna would have engaged the teachers, recognize common ground, acknowledge differences and made his best case. Instead, McKenna ran from the fight and then whined about it. And what we know from recent elections…the voters just don’t go for petulant whiners.
I guess I hadn’t read the time-line correctly when reading previous stories. It appears from this post that McKenna waited until the afternoon of the meeting, one that he had specifically scheduled for his convenience, to cancel? And he had no unavoidable reason for the cancelation, other than he decided it wasn’t worth his while????
Gee, that’s awfully rude, and in the business world I deal in, that’s increadibly stupid and inexcusable. Everyone has their own schedules to meet, and it’s difficult to get a number of people together at a given time, and most have to sacrifice something in order to do so. You don’t just blow off meetings, where you are an essential actor involved, without a good reason.
I don’t know the makeup of the teacher’s union committee, but I imagine that some of them took the day off work, and traveled for some distance, to attend a meeting which McKenna decided to blow off. That tells you what McKenna thinks of teachers.
Inslee has some smart ops in his corner…the same folks who beat Mike! and the Dino-Sore. It won’t be that easy maybe, but McKenna ought to keep his potions open with EFF or ALEC or some assholes who will hire him for SOMETHING.
I don’t think the voters of the State of Washington will hire him for Governor.
…school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of menial workers.
Not really…
I would have to say the most ignorant and stupid PERSON I have yet to come in contact with is the lying scab, the societal parasite, the miserable cur (look it up you fuck), the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first.
Easy chioce.
Hands down.
Poor rujaxoff once again shows his jealousy…….thanks again for confirming what a loser you are……why don’t you go join your ows brethren….
Good thing for rujax that our family is successful…someone has to pay his way through society…
Shall we compare tax returns, and see which one is “a societal parasite”…or which one of us ignorant and stupid?
You lose, I win….and the beat goes on…
If this rancid motherfucker ever wonders why he’s thought of as a real piece of shit, there is ample evidence right here.
Great post, Darryl.
Rujax’s answer to everything: instead ofworking smarter and harder, its just easier to take from other people….
Yep, you fit in with the ows crowd……progressives at their finest.
The surname ‘Pepple’ is irritating to the ear.
McKenna and Pepple — Sounds like some kind of faux Louisiana hot sauce.
Let’s see some one call the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first’s daughter a stupid lying bitch.
This is a real asshole in action folks.
Sure.
Of course the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first’s answer is to shit all over the people whose paycheck makes the asshole’s BIGG ASS six-fugure income and FOUR rental houses possible.
Gonna be hard to keep that up when all those workers you fuck with can’t pay the rent anymore…fucking brain surgeon.
Everyone who works for us makes great money and has full benefits…how many people do you employ? Oh, that’s right..you employ nobody.
Rujax the failure again…
Simple little rujax is fixated on my paycheck…..simple little rujax doesn’t seem to know the difference between a paycheck and income…lmfao…..there is a reason people like you don’t go far, and you demonstrate it to us every day…
re 14 — “It is important for you to understand that a free market economy is driven not by producers but by consumers.”
http://futures.tradingcharts.c.....emand.html
My guess is that you are in your mid-fifties, drive a dead-zone k-car, and steal the Democrats’ political signs from the side of the road. You are NOT a force to be reckoned with, but, rather, to be pitied.
LOL! Ron Paul seems to think it’s the “healthy” thing to do.
Poor asshat, dressed up (i.e. bare-assed) with no place to go.
Like all narcissistic assholes, the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first seems to think anyone gives a flying fuck about his BIGG ASS six-fugure income and FOUR rental houses and BODACIOUS TAX RETURN.
Nobody would know about the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first’s wonderful good fortune in the world of Capitalism if the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first had not brought it up to somehow PROVE that the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first was better than the moere mortal man.
THat’s all the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first has to tout?
Who’s the fucking loser?
I’ll take this to the open thread..
@12
Oh, btw, you left out 2 other small businesses…….both of which are growing like crazy…we will be hiring 3 more people in q1 2012…maybe you should send in your resume….on the other hand, dont bother, we try to hire people who want to succeed.
…add @ 17…
The asshole has the worst reading comprehension I’ve seen in a long time.
the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first should go back to those TEACHERS he hates so much and try to figure out what he missed in high scholl while the execrable emperor max-minidick aka kaiser bun the first was FUCKING GREAT at sports.
Rujax and Max-i-poo,
Take it to an open thread. This is not an open thread.
You are right…sorry darryl.
Thanks Darryl.
Wow. I wonder if there any readers left down here to see my post.
McKenna is a skeezy operator. Back when he was a King County Councilman and also on the Sound Transit board, he fought light rail by any means available to him. Including conveying his insider information to rail opponents and their attorneys. It was like having an AirBus vice president on the Boeing board of directors. Absolutely untenable.
And when County Executive Ron Sims justifiably declined to reappoint McKenna to the ST board, he whined about it exactly like he’s doing now. Some people never change.
Calling the Stranger a Newspaper is like calling the Sun a light-bulb.
The noun form of “petulant” is “weenie.” Voters tend to not like weenies.
I wonder how much (note I’m not saying “whether”) largesse McKenna’s campaign has received from Fairview Frank. Betcha Mister Blethen would blow a gasket if reporters from the Times weren’t welcomed with open arms to one of Inslee’s campaign events.
re 25: You lie!!!!
“With today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest.”
Yeah, he didn’t have a Scalia and Thomas to rig the election outcome for him.
I don no why anyone vote for that skinny whippet light bulb haid cracker. Ther — I don sed it.
Poor Baby Mac :,-(
New Twist in the Obamacare Lawsuits
Roger can speak to it better than I, but ambulance chasing attorneys often bring bad case law. Baby Mac’s trumped up case just became a lot more convoluted.
Hey, what was the name of that other WA State Attorney General who led a national law suit that generated billions of dollars for states and saved lives? What was her name???
It’s not like McKenna hasn’t been using his office to get his name out there. How many public service TV spots have gone out with him in them or his name on them?
Educators from all over the state traveled up to 5 hours to participate in the interview on Saturday. McKenna likes to claim his policies and plans for public education are supported by members of the education community. Yet, McKenna has never actually engaged in a debate or even an open Q&A on his education beliefs. There are WEA members who hoped McKenna could follow Dan Evans’ footsteps and be a Republican who supported public schools. Instead, it looks like he could be the next Scott Walker.
So glad Jay Inslee is willing to be a Governor who supports excellent public schools for ALL students in Washington.