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Last month I ridiculed Republicans for touting the latest partisan robo-polls as evidence that Sen. Maria Cantwell was in trouble. But now that a recent Elway Poll shows Cantwell maintaining a sizable 47 percent to 33 percent lead over her opponent Mike McGavick, I take it all back. You should always trust the latest poll. It’s never wrong.

Just kidding.

Still, it’s probably somewhat instructive tracking the Elway numbers over time, which seem to show Cantwell’s lead gradually but steadily shrinking from a 55-25 percent advantage in February to 47-25 in April to 47-33 in June. No question, the gap has been closing, and no incumbent likes to be under 50 percent.

But…

Look a little closer at the numbers and what you see is probably what you expect to see at this point in the race:

	Feb 2006	Jun 2006
Definite Cantwell:	31	34
Inclined Cantwell:	24	13
Undecided:	20	19
Inclined McGavick:	14	14
Definite McGavick:	11	19

What I see is Cantwell showing some weakness with her weakest supporters while both candidates have started to firm up their base. Yes, McGavick’s “definite” support has grown faster than Cantwell’s, but then starting from a meager 11 percent he had a helluva lot more upside.

And of course, let’s put this all in context. McGavick has been running a paid media campaign — unanswered — for the past six months, while Cantwell has been strategically sitting on a $6 million plus war chest. Yet at a combined preference of only 33 percent of voters McGavick has barely reached Will Baker numbers… the absolute floor guaranteed nearly anybody with an “R” next to their name in Washington state.

I’m not saying there aren’t some positives for McGavick in the latest Elway Poll; no doubt he’s gained some ground, and no doubt the race will tighten further. But assuming this poll at this stage of the race is meaningful at all, I just don’t see him gaining much traction.

Survey USA has Gov. Christine Gregoire at a positive job approval rating of 52% – 45%. That’s pretty middle of the pack as far as governors go, but a far cry from the 52% – 38% negative approval rating she had the same time last year, in the wake of the election contest trial.

Here’s my bold, pull it out of my ass prediction. Same time next year: 56% – 39% positive.

I missed this week’s Drinking Liberally, and in my absence Lynn from Evergreen Politics took over the reigns and led a “Boomer Edition” of Podcasting Liberally, featuring political and social activists from the Vietnam War era who are still active on the local scene. Guests included Alice Woldt, Don Hopps, Michael Hood and Howie Martin. I’ve been without broadband so I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’ve heard some really good buzz.

The show is 53:43, and is available here as a 33.4 MB MP3. Please visit PodcastingLiberally.com for complete archives and RSS feeds.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for producing the show.]

Things aren’t looking so good for I-917, Tim Eyman’s YATDCT (Yet Another Car Thirty Dollar Car Tab) initiative. Chris McGann reports in today’s Seattle P-I:

This month, despite spending $336,000 on signature gathering for I-917 this year, Eyman filed just 266,008 signatures on the July 7 deadline, roughly 41,000 more than he needed to get the measure on the ballot.

That means his signature failure rate — those signatures that are either duplicates or that are not from legal registered voters — cannot exceed 15.4 percent. Eyman’s track record indicates he is unlikely to make the cut.

Of the 14 signature drives Eyman has put his weight behind, he hasn’t had a signature failure rate below 16 percent.

Washington Secretary of State Elections Director Nick Handy said the signature failure rate for Eyman’s initiatives has ranged from 16.7 percent to 23 percent.

Why are Eyman’s signature failure rates so high? Well, as McGann reports, paid signature drives have a rejection rate of between 18 and 24 percent, whereas volunteer drives average between 11 and 16 percent. As we all know, Tim has relied on paid signature gatherers almost exclusively in recent years.

Of course we may not learn YATDCT’s fate until September, and it’s certainly possible it could squeak by. But even if it does make the ballot things still don’t look all that good for its prospect of passing. The latest Elway Poll, conducted in June shows anemic support for I-917:

Definitely Yes: 24
Probably Yes: 19
Undecided: 14
Probably No: 23
Definitely No: 21

While that may look pretty close to the, um… uninitiated, it is nowhere near the type of numbers initiative sponsors hope to have this early in the season. Remember, last year at this time I-912 — which also slashed transportation spending — led by a sizable margin in the polls… but went on to lose by a landslide in November. And the same folks who banded together to defeat I-912 are busy raising money to oppose I-917.

Either way it looks like Eyman’s sugar daddy, Michael Dunmire may have thrown away a few hundred thousand dollars. Still, you can be sure that Timmy will manage to get his cut.

He always does.

The more I think of this race, the more I think Burner might be the right candidate in the right place at the right time.

That’s the message I want to take away from Joni Balter’s column today in the Seattle Times. [Can Burner bushwhack Reichert?]

I want to thank Balter for recognizing and corroborating what us bloggers have been saying for months… that Darcy Burner is mounting a surprisingly strong challenge to first-term Republican Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, and that Reichert himself appears to be weaker than anybody had expected this time last year. I want to acknowledge Balter for acknowledging that this is a race that’s simply too close to call.

But I just can’t get past her second paragraph:

Reichert may not be the sharpest pencil in the backpack, but he has charisma to bottle and sell. More important, in his first term he distinguished himself as an independent thinker.

Well… I’ll give Balter the first clause of the first sentence. And while I’ve never understood the supposed charms of the silver-haired, leaden-tongued ex-Sheriff I’ll grant that the second clause seems to be the consensus. It’s the second sentence that makes me want to tear out what little hair I have left.

Reichert an “independent thinker?” Gimme a break.

In truth, neither of the two words apply, but it’s the adjective “independent” when applied to Reichert that particularly gives me heartburn. The fact that Reichert keeps claiming he’s “independent” and the fact that columnists like Balter keep repeating it uncritically just doesn’t make it so. But despite the fact that evidence to contrary keeps piling up — and despite the fact that Reichert himself has publicly boasted that the House GOP leadership tells him when to vote against them — the damn newspapers keep writing about Reichert’s supposed moderation.

So Reichert voted against the GOP’s self-righteous and politically cruel Terri Schiavo bill because he himself had already gone through the painful personal decisions surrounding a loved one’s end of life. So he can feel a little empathy. Good for him. Though I’m not sure we should always count on our representatives to have personal experiences to guide them through every contentious vote.

But apart from the Schiavo bill (a vote, by the way, that surely had no political downside in his home district) Reichert has never cast a vote against the House leadership or the Bush administration when it really counted. As Daniel Kirkdorffer has meticulously detailed at On the Road to 2008, the bulk of Reichert’s so-called “moderate” votes — those times he voted with the majority of House Democrats — came on procedural roll calls on issues of broad bipartisan agreement. And the handful of times he went against his party’s leadership on contentious issues, the final count was never so close that Reichert came near casting the deciding vote.

Take Reichert’s supposed opposition to drilling in ANWR, a vote Reichert once described as one he’s most proud of. Balter echoes the party line:

Reichert represents his district admirably on a few environmental issues by opposing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in certain votes.

Yeah sure, Reichert opposed drilling in ANWR in “certain votes.” You know… those that didn’t really count. But after casting several high profile votes against drilling in roll calls that were never close enough to make a difference, Reichert voted for the final appropriations bill that included the drilling provision.

Way to save ANWR, Dave.

Look, I don’t expect Balter or any other paid journalist to be as biased as I am, but it would be nice to occasionally see a little consistency. The local media just spent a week cynically deconstructing the internal workings of the Cantwell campaign, and yet they continue to naively take Reichert’s voting record at face value… even when he publicly instructs his conservative base not to.

Is Reichert anywhere close to being the most conservative member of Congress? Well, that would be kinda hard. There are some real nutcases in the House and apart from Reichert’s fairly staunch opposition to reproductive rights (um… all of them) he doesn’t really exude much passion on any other issue. Yet when push comes to shove he has proven himself to be a reliable vote on behalf of the administration… which is exactly the reason why President Bush flew cross-country to raise money for Reichert in the first place.

When you put Reichert’s “yeas” and “nays” in context, he just doesn’t come off as much of an “independent thinker.” But then sometimes, neither do Balter and her colleagues.

The good news is that the heat wave we flew into on the East coast finally broke last night when a front came through. The bad news is that the resulting thunderstorm knocked out power.

I’ll try to post something substantive tonight, but in the meanwhile talk amongst yourselves.

I’m on a little vacation (of sorts) so I thought I’d take the lazy blogger’s approach this morning and just throw stones at my good friend Stefan over at (un)Sound Politics.

Stefan, who fancies himself as a bit of a mathematician, has a post up from yesterday curiously titled “Darcy Burner’s Claim of ‘Raising More Money Than Reichert’ Is Bogus.” I say the title is curious, because it doesn’t change the fact that the official FEC filings from the two campaigns report that Burner, um… raised more money than Reichert in the second quarter.

That Stefan is up to his usual accounting tricks is no surprise — you know, tricks like arbitrarily deciding that Reichert’s $240,000 of “transfers from other authorized committees” actually should be counted as “individual contributions,” while not allowing Burner similar consideration. But even more unsurprising is the fact that Stefan seems to intentionally not get it.

It doesn’t matter if Burner raised $20,000 more or less than Reichert, and it doesn’t really matter where any of the money came from. What made the 2Q filing newsworthy is the fact that Burner was even close.

Reichert is an incumbent for chrisakes, in one of the most hotly contested races in the nation. So hot that the President of the United States of America flew cross-country to headline a fundraiser.

Local R’s led us to believe that Reichert might raise over a half million dollars on that day alone… instead he barely raises that much money for the entire quarter. It begs the question: what the hell was Reichert doing the other 90 days?

As Stefan and his friends are constantly trying to reassure themselves, Burner is a political novice, a first time candidate who really shouldn’t pose a threat to a (gag) “popular” incumbent. And yet she’s managed to outraise Reichert two quarters in row. Other than abusing one’s congressional franking privileges, campaign money is a candidate’s primary means of getting the message out, and as long as Burner can stay financially competitive she can make this a race.

UPDATE:
Oh… and to make Stefan’s new math even sillier, take a look at Daniel’s post over at On the Road to 2008. It turns out that if you really want to figure out who Reichert’s contributors are, his FEC reports aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. While Burner has a 100 percent disclosure rate, Reichert is only fully disclosing contributors 82 percent of the time.

But then, that’s kind of competency we’ve come to expect from the Sheriff.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
From The News Tribune:

“Those are very good numbers,” said David Wasserman, the House editor for the Crystal Ball Report, a national election analysis Web site. “If the numbers hold up … she’ll be among the top challengers the Democrats have fielded in the country.”

Speaking of transit, I’m in transit today, so expect some light posting.

Awww, what a sweet sentiment:

Light rail, like mass transit itself, has its share of earnest doubters and critics. Now that this crucial decision has been made to expand light rail, we hope that critics of the mode itself can shift away from debating the premise of light rail and focus on ensuring that its implementation is as efficient and cost-effective as possible.

Yeah… when pigs fly.

Many of light rail’s most vocal critics are the same people who ridicule efforts to mitigate the impact of global warming. They are obstructionists pure and simple, who simply do not want real mass transit. I guess they think it’s un-American or something.

Yet another light-hearted romp through local and national politics tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”– Newsradio 710-KIRO, from 7PM to 10PM. Here’s the line-up, but as always, things could change depending on breaking news and guest availability.

7PM: A third of Seattle families send their children to private schools, and yet study after study shows that on average, public schools do as good a job or better than private schools at educating the same children. Such a deal. Joining me to discuss the relative of merits of public vs private vs charter schools is fellow parent and blogger Mollie Bradley-Martin of The (liberal) Girl Next Door.

8PM: The fighting is escalating in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Israel is bombing Lebanon and apparently itching for a fight with Syria and Iran. Is this World War III? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich seems to think so… and says it could be a winning issue for the Republicans in 2006. What do you think… is World War III a good thing?

9PM: Seattle Times political writer and fellow blogger David Postman calls in with a battlefield report from the 2006 midterm elections. Did Sen. Maria Cantwell blink? Is Rep. Dave Reichert in trouble? Are we really in the midst of World War III? Here’s your chance to get your questions answered by a professional journalist.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

According to the Seattle Times’ David Postman, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich thinks Republicans need to nationalize the 2006 midterm elections. And Gingrich has a great idea for a campaign theme:

America is in World War III and President Bush should say so.

World War III? Um… and that’s a good thing?

“It takes more than a few bucks and a slap on the back to run a Senate campaign,” Mark Wilson told me Friday afternoon, expressing frustration at charges that he was somehow “bought out” by Sen. Maria Cantwell.

“Maria didn’t need to offer me a job to get out of the race,” he bluntly explained. “I was done. The only thing missing was the funeral.”

Wilson said he sank about $20,000 of his own money into the race, but more significantly had sacrificed about $80,000 of income over the past 16 months. He had also begun to question whether his quixotic campaign was doing more harm than good, and he did not want to play a role in helping Republicans cement their Senate majority with a McGavick victory.

“That would be a tragedy,” Wilson told me, arguing that Democrats need to keep their eyes on the “big prize.” Wilson said he went into the race with eyes wide open, never expecting to have much of a chance of defeating Cantwell, and always publicly promising to enthusiastically endorse the Democratic nominee. A year and a half ago he thought he’d stick it out through the primary, but in recent months he started to fear that his campaign had not only become electorally futile, but counterproductive towards his larger goals.

And if lightening struck and he somehow won the nomination? Well, Wilson said, “that would have been a disaster” too. For as vocal as some of Cantwell’s critics have been they simply haven’t put their money where their mouth is. After 16 months of campaigning Wilson said he would be surprised if he had raised more than $40,000 total.

“That’s gas money,” a clearly exasperated Wilson exclaimed. “I didn’t raise enough money to run for City Council.”

For all the words of encouragement and slaps on the back he got throughout his campaign, Wilson exited the race with zero cash and almost no organization. With only 6 weeks between the primary and the general election, Wilson recognized that a victory over Cantwell would have been Pyrrhic, virtually guaranteeing a win by a well-oiled, well-heeled McGavick campaign. Likewise, a bitter and divisive primary battle would have left little time for Democrats to come together before the November election.

Thus his decision to support Cantwell now, rather than later. These are dire times Wilson warned, and progressive voters simply do not have the luxury of taking “the high road to Hell.”

Wilson is thankful for all the support he did get, and says he comes away with “no regrets” from this “enriching and enlightening experience.” But he does think that some progressives are simply unrealistic about what it takes to have a real impact on the political process, saying that if progressives wanted a nominee that more closely reflected their values they should have started organizing in earnest two years ago. He feels privileged to have had so many people open their hearts to him, but considering how few opened their wallets he seems somewhat taken aback by the vehemence with which a handful of former “supporters” have turned on him in recent days.

“I was out of resources. If people wanted me to keep going they should have put money into it… I wasn’t going to take any more food off my family’s table.”

As for the $8,000 salary, Wilson said there was no premeditation and no negotiating. He went into his meeting with Cantwell aware that his campaign was all but over, but came out an enthusiastic supporter. “What can I do to help you win?” he asked her at the end, to which Cantwell replied “Come work for me.”

A few moments later, after Cantwell had left the room, a top aide asked Wilson what it would take to bring him on board full time, and Wilson said he couldn’t afford to continue neglecting his business and his personal finances. The aide asked how much Wilson earned from his business. Wilson said $2000.00 a week. The aide said “done.”

Is he worth the money? Wilson says he has a mature business with lots of longtime customers, and generally works only 30 hours a week to earn his two grand, whereas he expects to put the same 70-hour weeks into Cantwell’s campaign that he had been putting into his own. As for Cantwell, she has consultants who earn a helluva lot more for doing a helluva lot less, so Wilson comes across as a relative bargain considering all he brings to the table.

And if you ask me, it’s also a pretty good deal for Cantwell’s Democratic critics, for the biggest thing Wilson brings to the table is himself. The “peace and justice” folks now have the ear of somebody who has Cantwell’s ear, and in that respect I suppose you could say that Wilson’s candidacy was a huge success.

For his part, Wilson says that he is grateful to have the opportunity to finish the job. Whether his former supporters choose to take advantage of this opportunity is up to them.

This is huge… simply HUGE!

The official second quarter results are in and Democratic challenger Darcy Burner reports $590,561 in contributions compared to GOP incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert’s $569,077.

What with a nearly unprecedented presidential visit and numerous other high profile fundraisers, I had just assumed Reichert would significantly outraise Burner in the second quarter, and to be honest, I was all prepared to spin a good second-place showing by Burner into a rhetorical victory. Now that I don’t have to, I’m virtually speechless.

And once again Burner spent less to raise more, closing the all important cash-on-hand gap to about $340,000. Burner now sits on $770,000 in reserves compared to Reichert’s $1.11 million.

This was Burner’s most impressive fundraising quarter to date, and according to the DCCC her $1.13 million total thus far puts her in the top fundraising tier for Democratic House challengers nationwide.

“Our momentum continues to grow,” commented Zach Silk, Campaign Manager. “We benefit from both incredible local support and national recognition that this is one of the strongest challenger campaigns in the country.”

It certainly is. The Republicans pulled out all the fundraising stops in the second quarter and Burner still beat Reichert’s totals. Money is all about getting your message out, and if Burner can remain financially competitive she can beat Reichert in November.

This remains one of the hottest House races in the nation.

UPDATE:
I’ve just cross-posted (somewhat) to Daily Kos. Please recommend so that we can get Burner’s impressive accomplishment as much national recognition as possible.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
N in Seattle, not quite so tongue-tied as me today, points out in the comment thread over on Daily Kos how truly pathetic Reichert’s fundraising performance really is. Reichert had claimed that “hundreds” of donors attended last month’s $1000.00/plate snack with President Bush, but…

Even if the “several hundred” attendees described by the King County Journal was a mere 200 at $1K apiece, a very large proportion of Reichert’s 2Q total came from that one event. And his absence of other funding resources might, in fact, be even more striking — Daniel K, referring to […] the P-I, indicates that attendance at the Bu$h event was more like 400.

Along with his other inabilities, apparently Dave Reichert can’t raise money unless he has the big boys around to hold his hand.

I’m not sure what line in Reichert’s report accounts for the money raised that day — perhaps the 239,880.03 of “transfers from other authorized committees?” But he only shows $186,388.29 in total contributions from individuals for the quarter compared with $418,627.89 for Burner.

That’s a tiny number for an incumbent in a closely contested House race, and it either suggests a surprising lack of support from rank and file Republicans or a stunning inability to raise money. Perhaps Reichert is waiting for the DNA evidence to come in before capturing his base?

I was just pleasantly surprised to hear that Tim Eyman’s I-917, the YATDCT Initiative (“Yet Another Thirty Dollar Car Tab”), may not qualify for the ballot after all.

Eyman had claimed to have turned in over 300,000 signatures, yet the Secretary of State’s office has only counted about 266,000. That means a rejection rate of about 15.5 percent or more would put I-917 under the required 224,880 signature threshold.

How likely is that? According to past performance, moderately damn. The SOS reports that statistical samples of last year’s initiatives showed rejection rates of 13, 16, 17, 19, and 26 percent. The office is preparing to do a statistical sample of I-917, and if it’s close they’ll have to verify every last signature. It may be weeks before we know the outcome.

Why would Eyman inflate his reported count by about 34,000 signatures when he knew that the SOS would eventually announce the real number? I can only think of two explanations: either he’s a pathological liar or mind-numbingly incompetent.

Hmm. Let’s see. Huh. I guess, when push comes to shove, I’m leaning towards… both.

We all know Eyman’s a liar; there’s no question there. But the very fact that this initiative is even close should be a total embarrassment to a man who has made a career out of the initiative process. And it is doubly humiliating considering the fact that from all reports, Eyman virtually stopped gathering signatures by the first week in June.

All it takes to qualify for the ballot is enough money to buy the signatures, and in sugar-daddy Michael Dunmire, Eyman should have had all the money he needed. Dunmire invested over $300,000 in I-917, and unless there was some kind of late-campaign falling out it makes no sense that he would leave the initiative on the bubble for want of an additional $50,000.

If Eyman knew he hadn’t achieved the 20 percent cushion all campaigns shoot for, it was totally negligent of him not to ask for the money to finish the job right. And if Eyman actually miscounted the signatures — after all the money Dunmire had put into the effort — well that’s simply inexcusable.

If I were Dunmire I’d take my business elsewhere. One way or the other Eyman simply can’t be trusted to do the job, and there are plenty of other high-paid consultants who know how to hire signature gathering firms… not to mention perform simple math.

Oh… and there’s one other twist to this story that could come into play. As Steve Zemke has reported over on Majority Rules, Attorney General Rob McKenna has issued a somewhat twisted opinion that states that a new law that requires a signature gatherer declaration to be printed on the ballot, does not actually require the declaration to be signed. The SOS reports that about 3000 of I-917’s petitions came back without signed declarations — that could account for as many as 60,000 signatures, more than enough to keep I-917 off the ballot if disqualified if a court overules McKenna’s opinion.

Law suit anyone?

The Seattle Weekly’s Geov Parrish is filling in for Ken Schram on KOMO’s “The Commentators” this morning (1000-AM, 10-12PM), and it will be interesting to hear how Parrish’s less curmudgeonly but equally passionate (and more wonkish) demeanor plays against John Carlson’s partisan-Republican-in-objective-pundit-clothing routine.

While I know Geov has been making a living writing and talking about politics for some time, he’s really a progressive blogger in spirit, so I look at his commercial radio gig as yet another example of the inroads we’re making in changing the local media landscape. Both KIRO and KOMO seem to get it — one wonders if AM-1090 will ever get on the local liberal talk radio bandwagon before the old guard steals their market?