HorsesAss.Org

I’m not ashamed to admit I that I like Joel Connelly. Sure, he’s a curmudgeonly old curmudgeon with a penchant for repeating the same old jokes and stories again and again (and again), and yeah, as a writer, he’s one of those persnickety old-timers who apparently believes that Strunk & White was carved in stone by the almighty hand of, well, Strunk & White. And then there’s his wistful nostalgia for the mythical days of statesmanlike bipartisanship. Oy.

But Joel’s also a walking encyclopedia of Northwest political lore and a deft practitioner of the lost art of the follow-up question, and unlike the rest of our local media’s persnickety curmudgeons and curmudgeonly persnickets, he respects us unruly whippersnappers enough to actually engage with us… sometimes passionately.

Take for example his column today at SeattlePI.com (or, “coloooom” as Dwight Eisenhower used to pronounce it), in which Joel attempts to slap me and Erica for our “anti-religious bigotry.” At least it shows he cares.

Militant secularists in the Internet estate are demonizing the former KIRO-TV anchor and candidate for King County executive. David Goldstein, on his Web site Horsesass.org, sneered at Hutchison for her Honolulu prayers, and witness that the prayers were answered with the message that God wanted her both “professionally ready” and “spiritually ready for the next step.”

“What is this thing with Christians praying for touchdowns, and lottery tickets and news anchor jobs, and thinking that God doesn’t have more important things to do than answer their petty, materialistic prayers?” Goldstein wrote.

Huh. I think I snickered more than “sneered” at Hutchison getting down on her knees and asking God “Why aren’t you doing this for me?” in regards to a coveted job promotion that wasn’t happening, but regardless, I think I raised a valid theological question.

I mean, what is it about this Santa Clausification of God in which earthly rewards are lavished upon those who pray (to the right God, in the right way), and at what point does this brand of religious devotion border on mere magic?  I’ve read my Max Weber, and I understand the Calvinist ethos in which our material success here in this life is supposedly a reflection of our eternal glory in the next, but I don’t need to accept or respect it. Praying for a weeknight anchor job just strikes me as petty and narcissistic, and voicing that opinion is not an act of religious bigotry. Perhaps Hutchison is one of the millions of her fellow Christians who absolutely believe that I am going to burn in Hell for all eternity, simply because I refuse to accept Christ as my savior; would it be religious bigotry for me to question that particular religious tenet as well?

Whether Hutchison actually talks to God, and whether He actually answers back in His own voice—as in, “And He told me something then that I have never forgotten…”—or whether her reported conversation with the Lord was merely meant as a metaphor for her own internal dialogue, I don’t know. But when she uses this anecdote to talk about how being “spiritually ready” is more important than being “professionally ready,” I think it a reasonable springboard to a discussion of how professionally unready she is for the job she seeks.

If Joel wants to get his undies in a knot over such blunt theological discourse, that’s up to him, but when he argues this Christians-as-an-oppressed-minority bullshit, I’m totally unapologetic.  First of all, to even imply that my opposition to Hutchison is based on religious bigotry is patently ridiculous when I’ve been such a famously unrepentant fanboy of Ron Sims, an openly devout Christian himself. It’s not their faith that sets them apart in my mind, but how Hutchison, through her association of with the Discovery Institute, endorses the dominance of a Christian theistic world view in the public sphere.

Second, from my perspective as a non-Christian in a nation dominated by Christians, Joel, I’m not sure you understand how incredibly overbearing, intrusive and insulting your people’s incessant proselytizing can really be.

Missionaries are allowed to come to my door to tell me that I’m going to burn in Hell for not believing what they believe, and that’s okay. Preachers are allowed to go on television and tell me that I’m going to burn in Hell for not believing what they believe, and that’s okay. Rev. Ken Hutcherson is allowed to come on my own radio show and tell me that I’m going to burn in Hell for not believing what he believes, and that’s okay. But publicly critique their crazy religion, and apparently that’s off limits.

Or, God forbid, publicly embrace my own atheism, and that makes me, in Joel’s eyes, a “militant secularist.” Talk about a double standard.

The truth is, Joel, as both a Jew and an atheist, I’m the oppressed minority, not you or Hutchison or any of your Christian brethren. I’m the one your people are so convinced is condemned to hellfire (except, technically, for the Catholics, who officially grandfathered us Jews into Heaven under Vatican II), and honestly, if they believe their benevolent Lord would have me tormented for all eternity in the next world, how can I trust them to treat me with respect in this one?

Tell me Joel, in all your years of covering politics, how many overtly open, self-proclaimed atheists have you ever known to be elected to Congress? And how many Bible-thumping Christians? Now tell me, in the political realm, who is the real victim of bigotry here?

As for Joel’s other critique, that I am a brazen sexist:

Goldstein is also brazenly sexist in his treatment of Hutchison. He calls her “Suzie” and headlined his commentary: “Susie talks to God.”

That’s just plain silly. As Erica pointed out in her own response to Joel, that’s what Suzie’s close friends call her, and in fact I was merely mimicking what her close friends and fellow far-right-wingers David and Peggy Boze called her on air (as in, “Hey Suzie… you are our Sarah Palin”). Similarly, my close friends call me “Goldy,” which is an admittedly faggy nickname for a grown man, yet I don’t consider it anti-gay to hear it come from even total strangers.

In referring to Hutchison’s job as director of the Charles Simonyi Fund for the Arts and Sciences, he has called her a “philanthropic kept woman.”

Yeah, sure, that snide quip comes off as a little sexist, I’ll give Joel that. But it sure was funny, so I stand by it 100 percent.

But all this misses the point, which is: are Hutchison’s religious beliefs pertinent to her campaign for King County Executive? Joel emphatically says “no.” Erica and I say “yes”… not because we are religious bigots, but because we rightly fear that Hutchison would attempt to use the office to impose her values on others in a way that the equally Christian Ron Sims never did. Indeed, even those issues, such as Intelligent Design, which on the surface appear to have no bearing on the duties of the county executive, offer voters a useful glimpse into the candidate’s character and competency, yet Joel would apparently consider such a discussion off limits if she came to the issue from of a position of faith.

Had Hutchison rejected the science of evolution due to a cognitive deficit resulting from an unfortunate boating accident, I suppose even Joel would agree that voters had the right to know, and the right to reasonably question whether her head injuries might similarly impact her capacity to grapple with other complicated issues. But reject evolution from a position of faith….

Yeah… I better pull back from that analogy before I prove Joel’s premise.

The point is, Hutchison’s presumed opposition to abortion, her rejection of evolution, and her financial support of candidates who oppose even birth control, are pertinent campaign issues, however relevant they are to the duties of the executive, because they speak to her values, her intellect, and most of all her willingness and ability to decide complex issues based on the facts, rather than her faith.

Ironically, for all his fury, I think it’s safe to say that Joel, Erica and I are on the same side in this race, and that none of us wants to see the woefully unprepared Hutchison win office. Which briefly brings us to one last point of Joel’s, that of strategy.

Charles Darwin is not an issue in deciding how King County will better deliver services, cope with budget deficits and manage growth in a place of great beauty where 1.6 million people live.

[…] Instead, we should ask a question she didn’t answer at Thursday’s debate: Will Hutchison try to change (read dismantle) King County’s urban growth boundaries? Will the Building Industry Association of Washington find in her a willing ally? Hutchison has excoriated the county’s Critical Areas ordinance as a scourge on rural residents. “It tells citizens who own land how they will use it,” she told a Bellevue debate on Thursday.

OK, but how do you protect endangered salmon populations and keep building in flood plains?

Problem is Joel, people don’t vote for issues, they vote for people. And with the latest poll showing Hutchison still attracting support from 28% of Democrats and 18% of liberals, there are clearly plenty of voters who haven’t yet gotten to know Hutchison well enough.

So you stick to the issues Joel, it’s the responsible thing to do, while I do my thing and drag Hutchison through the muck. My muckraking may not be as noble as your pursuit, but after all, it’s the only time the persnickety curmudgeons seem to pay much attention to anything I write. Even, alas, lovable persnickety curmudgeons like you.

I’m increasingly becoming a big fan of Seattle Times financial writer Jon Talton, who once again calls bullshit on his colleagues’ lazy and/or biased coverage:

Most Americans don’t get out much, so light rail is exotic, strange, even threatening (especially to a mythmaking minority of anti-transit fetishists and to the oil industry). The media, which are curiously incurious about the hidden costs and damage caused by freeways, will scrutinize every bump and burp of light rail.

For example, three non fatal collisions with light rail trains since testing started have garnered huge headlines, while how many people have died on our region’s roads during the same time period with nobody questioning the inherent safety of our roads and highways?

It’s a good thing for Susan Hutchison that she’s expected to breeze through the August primary into the general election for King County Executive, for as Richard Pope reveals in the comment threads, it looks like she probably couldn’t count on herself to deliver a crucial vote:

Someone should make an issue of Susan Hutchison’s voting record. Susan S. Hutchison (DOB: 03/24/1954) failed to vote in the August or September primary elections in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007. […] She didn’t vote in the presidential primaries in 2000 and 2008 either…

Eh… who bothers to vote in odd-year primaries anyway, what with only those peripheral local races on the ballot?

UPDATE:
Richard points out that the other four county executive candidates all have perfect general and primary voting records from 2000 through 2008.

Future Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in 1989 on the completion of the I-90 floating bridge:

”It’s a dinosaur,” Greg Nickels, a member of the King County Council, the governing body that covers the Seattle metropolitan area. He said the transportation solutions of the next century would include light rail systems and car pools.

Twenty years later, light rail is about to open, and soon to be extended across that very same bridge.

You can read Mayor Nickels in his own words, about the significance of tomorrow’s milestone, in a guest post over at Seattle Transit Blog.

As painful as it may be to write, I once again agree with the Seattle Times in their efforts to have court documents unsealed from Susan Hutchison’s discrimination suit against KIRO TV:

Hutchison, through her lawyer, says she supports open records but not when it comes to intruding into the privacy of an individual who availed themselves of the court. That sounds too much like she supports open records — just not her records.

That’s called hypocrisy, especially coming from someone who claims to have been a journalist. (Though in all fairness to Hutchison, it’s hard to call reading words off a teleprompter “journalism.”)

Court records and proceedings are generally public by default, both as a First Amendment right, and as a matter of judicial principle, as public oversight of the courts is our primary safeguard in ensuring that justice is meted out fairly. Indeed, such openness is fundamental to our entire system of justice. Think about it: secret courts equal tyranny and oppression.

That’s why court records are normally only sealed under certain circumstances, such as closed adoptions, juveniles (criminals and victims), witness protection, trade secrets and national security. Personal privacy is generally not one of these circumstances, apart from obvious things like social security numbers. Choose to bring a civil suit and you choose to make the information disclosed by both parties public. That’s the way the system works, and that’s likely the second most common reason, after cost, that parties choose to settle disputes privately, before their dirty laundry is aired out in court.

Hutchison was an aging female newscaster demoted from her weeknight anchor job in favor of a younger (and less expensive) woman. Right or wrong, that’s not uncommon in the cutthroat TV news biz. Still, she probably could have secured a modest severance settlement out of KIRO TV, simply by threatening a discrimination suit. That too is common in the biz. But whatever KIRO TV offered apparently wasn’t good enough for Hutchison, so she exercised her right to sue in civil court.

Hutchison and her surrogates claim that KIRO TV’s willingness to settle proves her discrimination claims, but with the records sealed and the terms of the settlement secret, such assertions are totally unsupported. Perhaps little or no money changed hands. For all we know, Hutchison ended up paying KIRO.

What we do know is that Hutchison failed to win her old job back, and she failed to secure a comparable anchor position at any of the three competing stations, so while age and gender no doubt played a role in her demotion, it was a cold, cruel business decision based on ratings and performance more than anything else. I mean, not every female newscaster is shoved aside once their youth fades; for example, Jean Enersen’s reporting and interviewing chops have earned her a steady hold on the KING-5 anchor chair since 1972.

The Times warns that Hutchison risks “squandering credibility by fighting this case,” but really, how much credibility did she have to start with? As a newscaster, certainly not as much credibility as Enersen. And as a political candidate for executive office with little or no political or executive experience at all… well… um…?

Perhaps we’ll be able to answer that question better once the court documents are unsealed.

Pat Buchanan mixes in a little ignorance to his outright bigotry [emphasis mine]:

When asked why the overwhelming majority of justices have been white, Buchanan declined to explicitly cite discrimination, but explained that “White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks, who were 90% of the nation in 1960 when I was growing up and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That’s why.”

I think Buchanan needs to brush up on his Civil War knowledge:

In May and June of 1863, 1600 Black troops fighting and dying under the official label of United States Colored Troops (USCT) at Milliken’s Bend, across the Mississippi River northwest of Vicksburg, made General Ulysses Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg a success and brought that “Gibraltar of the Confederacy” crashing to the ground on July 4, 1863.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paeuC-i8E1o&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I grew up about a half-mile from Cynwyd Station, and as kids, my friends and I found the train to center city Philadelphia much more convenient than relying on our parents to cart us around to movie theaters, sporting good stores, and other attractions. But it wasn’t just those of us with youthful vigor who frequently hoofed our way to the rail stop, for every morning as I prepared to walk to school, I’d see a stream of business suit clad men lugging their briefcases down the street in the other direction, some of whom routinely walked to the station from more than a mile away.

These weren’t granola crunching tree-hugging hippies. These were doctors, lawyers, businessmen and other professionals who, weather and circumstances permitting, left their cars at home in the driveway most days, not because it was the right thing to do, or the less expensive thing to do, but because it was the obvious and natural thing to do. Why battle traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway each morning when the train was a 10 minute walk away?

The commuter suburb of my youth grew up around the station, not by accident, but by design. Built in 1886, this short spur of the Pennsylvania Railroad was as much a real estate development project as it was a transit line, and that rail-centric ethos survived at least a century, before SEPTA budget woes resulted in drastically reduced schedules. The point is, people didn’t take the train because they had to, but because they wanted to, and with parking always limited at the station, many were happy to walk a mile or more for the convenience.

So when I continue to read news reports about complaints over the lack of free parking around most stations on Seattle’s soon to be opened Link Light Rail, I can’t help but shrug my shoulders. Build it, and they will walk. And if the folks who live there now aren’t willing to hoof it, over time these neighborhoods will attract new residents who will.

Which gets me thinking about my own relationship to the Seattle light rail system I’ve so passionately advocated, and how far I’m willing to walk to use it. I’ve half-jokingly complained for years about the elimination of the Graham Street station from the final plan, which would have been a mere 10-15 minute walk from house, quite possibly close enough to bump up my property value. I’ve also wistfully talked about moving into Columbia City to be walking distance both to its business district and its light rail station. But I’d never actually measured the distances myself.

As it turns out, the little map app on my iPhone says that Othello station is about a mile away, only a quarter mile further by foot than the corner of MLK Jr. & Graham, so my dog and I decided to walk it today for ourselves. At a comfortably brisk pace we clocked 18-minutes there, and 20-minutes back (climbing the hill from Rainier Ave. on the way home), and we could probably have made it a little faster but for the need to obsessively mark the path with urine, and briefly stop to pick thistle from our paws.

So, will I walk to light rail?

Well, at least for the moment, I don’t commute, so it’s kinda a moot point in the context of this discussion, but if I were a commuter, and the rail line took me reasonably close to my workplace, yeah, I’d be willing to walk a mile in each direction, weather and circumstances permitting. If it was really hot or really cold or raining very hard, I don’t know that I’d be up for that hike, and if my afterwork plans took me inconveniently off-route, I’d probably take my car. But some days—perhaps most days—I find it a reasonable distance to walk.

Of course, if my circumstances were different, a daily walk to and from the train station would be more of a no-brainer. Before our divorce, we were a one-car family, and the opportunity to save the expense of buying and insuring a second car (let alone fueling and parking it) would make a walk+rail commute all the more attractive. But as a single father, going carless in Seattle isn’t as much of an option, and thus the cost savings of commuting by rail aren’t nearly as great.

As for my recreational use of light rail, the 2-hour parking restriction presents much less of a problem, as it’s only enforced 7AM to 6PM, Mondays through Friday, leaving the spots open nights and weekends for casual hide & riders like me. Meeting folks for drinks or dinner downtown? You can freely park your car near the station starting at 4PM, and make it downtown in plenty of time for happy hour. As a moderate drinker (even when Drinking Liberally), I’d likely choose that option over hiking it home late at night.

Opponents of light rail have long criticized it as social engineering, and to some extent they’re right. Like the commuter lines of the old Pennsylvania Railroad, the South Seattle segment is proving as much a real estate development project as it is a transit line, as evidenced by the massive residential redevelopment going on along MLK Jr. Way. Mixed income houses, townhouses, apartments and condos are being built for folks who want the convenience and economy of living a reasonable walking distance to a light rail station, and as these developments expand further out from the stations, so will the notion of what a reasonable walking distance is.

If anything, these quarter-mile restricted parking zones are too small, and neighborhoods will likely clamor for their extension when hide & riders cluster along the border. And after a while, the notion of healthily walking a couple miles a day to and from work, rather than driving to and from the fitness club for your daily workout, will become as commonplace around here as it was in the commuter-rail suburb of my youth.

And the best thing is, if you don’t want to be part of this new, socially engineered, walk & ride culture, there will always be plenty of Seattle neighborhoods without it.

That’s right, I support the Seattle Times… in their efforts to unseal court records from Susan Hutchison’s discrimination suit against KIRO TV.

The Seattle Times contends that of 859 pages filed with the court in the lawsuit, 753 are sealed improperly.

Hutchison’s attorney says that the King County Executive candidate supports open records, except, you know, when it comes to herself. For their part, KIRO TV apparently has nothing to hide, their lawyer telling the Times that “the court should unseal the files and has all authority to do that.”

So what’s Hutchison trying to hide?

I’ve been told that much of Hutchison’s suit was based on her claims that she was demoted to noon anchor because she was white, while KIRO responded with details of her abusive, insubordinate and unprofessional behavior on and off the set. Of course, the court records are sealed, so I don’t know if any of that is true. They’re just rumors. But if these rumors aren’t true, and the court records don’t support them, you’d think Hutchison might want clear the record by having it unsealed.

I’m just sayin’….

More people are starting to notice that we’ve had a very big problem in our City Attorney’s office [emphasis in the original]:

The executive committee had recommended a sole endorsement of incumbent City Attorney Tom Carr. But a delegate from the stagehands’ union reportedly stood up, and said that Carr’s involvement in Operation Sobering Thought, a bar and nightclub sting, “really hurt our members and he was too punitive,” said one of the delegates, on the condition of anonymity. Several delegates spoke against Carr, according to another man exiting onto the street, who said, “They think Carr could have been more fiscally responsible” and “he has cost the city a lot of money for his decisions.” The man added, “In the past, delegates spoke up for Carr, but they didn’t like what he has done his last years in office.” Several other members spoke in favor of Carr’s challenger Pete Holmes. Carr didn’t get a sufficient number of votes for an endorsement; in fact, Carr’s was the only executive recommendation that the group didn’t ratify. The executive committee may recommend dual endorsement—or a sole endorsement of Holmes—after the primary election.

Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey stopped by Drinking Liberally last night, and I immediately groused about how a dearth of irritating editorials in recent weeks has reduced me to dumpster diving over at Crosscut. Ramsey explained that he’d just returned from vacation, and that my complaint would be remedied in the morning with an editorial he penned on trade.

He didn’t disappoint: “Anti-trade bill that would hurt Washington state trade jobs should be stopped.”

At the risk of destroying his credibility with his co-workers, I have to admit that Ramsey is my favorite Times editorial writer (though as I explained to him last night, “it’s a pretty low bar”), largely because I find his columns both readable and consistent. The latter quality I attribute to his passionate libertarianism, a passion clearly on display in today’s editorial:

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act makes private commerce subject to the moral imperialism of advocates who do not conduct trade and don’t care about it.

Under the bill, if a foreign trading partner’s government doesn’t have “adequate labor and environmental regulations” — the adequacy determined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government hasn’t “taken effective steps to combat and prevent private and public corruption” — the effectiveness defined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government doesn’t have “transparency” and “due process of law” to suit American tastes, the trade can be stopped.

Uh-huh. Passion… check. Consistency… check. Facts… not so much.

Putting aside his efforts to dismiss those of us who care about human rights and environmental protection as mere “busybodies” (you know, “busybodies” like the Pope), Ramsey’s passionate hyperbole substantially misrepresents a bill that doesn’t actually include the authority to “stop” anything. Rather, the stated purpose of the TRADE Act is to review existing trade agreements, draw up standards on which to base future agreements and renegotiations, and provide greater Congressional oversight of the process, its main provisions consisting of:

• Require a comprehensive review of existing trade agreements with an emphasis on economic results, enforcement and compliance and an analysis of non-tariff provisions in trade agreements.
• Spell out standards for labor and environmental protections, food and product safety, national security exceptions and remedies that must be included in new trade pacts.
• Set requirements regarding public services, farm policy, investment, government procurement and affordable medicines and compare them with components of current trade agreements.
• Require the president to submit renegotiation plans for current trade pacts prior to negotiating new agreements and prior to congressional consideration of pending agreements.
• Create a committee made up of the chairs and ranking members of each committee whose jurisdiction is affected by trade agreements to review the president’s plan for renegotiations.
• Restore congressional oversight of trade agreements.

All existing trade treaties remain in force, and this bill provides no authority to modify or “stop” them. As for future agreements, the language within the bill is far from anti-trade or heavy handed, for example, Section 4, Subsection D:

(D) provide that failures to meet the labor standards required by the trade agreement shall be subject to effective dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms and penalties that are included in the core text of the trade agreement…

In truth, the “busybodies” Ramsey refers to are members of Congress, and even if they were to determine that a particular trading partner was, say, violating fundamental human rights (defined in the act as “the rights enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights”), they still wouldn’t have the power to unilaterally “stop” the trade as Ramsey implies. Rather, under future treaties, our government’s recourse would be to pursue “effective dispute resolution.”

Hardly a draconian, anti-trade provision.

Ramsey is right that Washington is perhaps the most trade dependent state in the nation, which makes trade a sensitive subject for members of both parties. And if anybody doubts the extent to which “free traders” like Ramsey control the debate in this state, look no further than the fact that none of our state’s House delegation are among the 110 U.S. representatives who co-sponsored the TRADE Act… not even typically reliable progressives like Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee.

But Ramsey does a disservice to our state and to his readers when he reduces a 44-page bill into a 229-word, knee-jerk screed against trade restrictions of any kind:

The idea behind this bill is that commerce is bad and is making workers in America poor. Tell that to workers assembling aircraft, writing software, or moving containers on the docks.

Yeah, well, tell that to the tens of thousands of Washington workers who have seen their jobs shipped overseas to low-wage nations with lax environmental, workplace and product safety standards, and often no right to organize at all.

I appreciate that Ramsey’s objections to this bill are consistent with his steadfast libertarianism; in fact, I almost respect it. But rather than foster informed public debate on this issue, his intent appears to be to quash it, and I expect better than that from my favorite Seattle Times editorial board member.

The only convincing thing one can say about yesterday’s KING5/SurveyUSA poll of the King County Executive race is that the top line is statistically unchanged from the one three weeks ago. Susan Hutchison drops a couple points, Larry Phillips rises one, while Dow Constantine and Ross Hunter remain steady. If there’s any motion, it’s from Fred Jarrett climbing from 4% to 7%, but even that might fairly be categorized as noise.

It’s hard to predict anything from these numbers except that Hutchison will make it through to the November election, but if I were Constantine’s folks I suppose I’d be somewhat buoyed, although Phillips does appear to be closing the gap with liberal voters.

Oddly enough, Hutchison continues to poll surprisingly well with liberal voters, relative to the other members of the field, which suggests that many voters just don’t know her very well yet. No surprise there, and something the Democratic nominee will ultimately have to work hard to correct, considering that word in the street is that the usual Republican suspects plan to spend $1 million on Hutchison’s behalf in the general.

Here’s hoping the usual Democratic suspects don’t get complacent.

UPDATE:
And speaking of the usual Democratic suspects, Constantine just beat out Phillips for the highly prized SEIU endorsement.

Earlier today, Goldy discussed the race for Seattle City Attorney and incumbent Tom Carr’s attempts to misrepresent his opponent’s qualifications for the office. Pete Holmes initially became Carr’s opponent in this race after he became so infuriated by his attempts to deal with him from his position as the attorney on the citizen’s police oversight board that he decided to challenge him. Here’s the latest polling on the race:

The results show a nearly 3:1 lead for Tom Carr, but 70% of the electorate remains undecided. Women and voters 35-49 both have an undecided count over 70%. It’s over 80% for Republicans. Of decided voters, Carr still maintains a margin of nearly 4:1 amongst respondents 50-64 and over 4:1 with those 65 and older.

The vast majority of voters just aren’t paying attention to this race. But they should be. Tom Carr has been the City Attorney for Seattle for the past eight years and has repeatedly shown himself to be overzealous in pursuit of nanny state crusades and completely out of touch with the voters of the city. Dominic Holden recently provided a recap of his horrendous track record:

– Tom Carr fought against I-75, the initiative to make marijuana law enforcement the lowest priority of Seattle Police.

– Since the passage of I-75, Carr has actually prosecuted a higher percentage of the pot cases referred to his office.

– After a citywide sweep called Operation Sobering Thought, Carr tried to send 27 bar employees to jail for up to a year for various offenses such as serving minors (none of them were successfully prosecuted).

– Carr used city resources to unsuccessfully appeal – all the way up to federal court – a free speech case against a balloon artist who claimed he didn’t need a permit to do his thing at Seattle Center, and has threatened to waste even more money appealing it to the Supreme Court.

– He aggressively impounded the cars of people with unpaid parking tickets until the state Supreme Court ruled that he was breaking the law. The fiasco later cost the city $1.3 million in a class-action lawsuit.

– He once briefly attempted to threaten several Seattle Times reporters with jail time if they didn’t reveal their confidential sources.

As Dominic mentioned, the office of City Attorney in most other places is not an elected official. While it feels nice to have direct influence over the person who does this job, what tends to happen instead is that political creatures like Carr can hold onto an office because voters tend to have too little bandwidth to follow these smaller races. But this one’s too important for that now, and Seattle really can’t afford another four years of this.

Join us tonight at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

Tonight’s crowd will, no doubt, be filled with wisdom and empathy.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KDExqKZBIU[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 332 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to get lost at.