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Councilman Bob Ferguson — the Joe Lieberman of King County Politics — just issued a joint press release with Councilman Raymond Shaw Reagan Dunn announcing that he would join the King County Council’s four Republicans in putting a charter amendment on the ballot that would make the County Auditor an elected office.

Just the kind of pandering, conniving politics I’ve come to expect from Ferguson, who seems intent on using his status as the Council’s swing vote to maximum personal advantage. It is also incredibly irresponsible and counterproductive if Ferguson’s goal is to actually stabilize and improve operations at Records and Elections.

Putting aside the larger issue that an elected Auditor would virtually assure that one of the largest elections jurisdictions in the nation will now be run by a political hack rather than a qualified professional, Ferguson’s ill-timed announcement may have just made it impossible to fill top-level positions in the interim. I’ve been told that the county is close to bringing in one of the nation’s top elections officials, but Ferguson may have created just enough uncertainty to scuttle the deal. And worse yet, Ferguson knew this before he made his announcement.

In their press release Lieberman Ferguson & Shaw Dunn argue that King County should join the other 38 counties in the state that already administer elections under a separately elected official, but that’s just a red herring. Many of the state’s counties are tiny, and you just can’t compare their elections operations with that of a county that serves over a 1.2 million voters, about a third of the state’s entire electorate.

Indeed, even before the transition to all vote-by-mail King County already processes more mail-in ballots than any other jurisdiction save Los Angeles County. And of the top 20 voting jurisdictions in the nation (King County is number eleven), the majority fourteen appoint their top elections officers, because such complex operations require elections expertise rather than political savvy.

Of course, Lieberman Ferguson and his Republican allies will pooh-pooh such arguments, continuing to point towards over-hyped controversies surrounding the 2004 gubernatorial election as evidence of the need for dramatic change. This despite the fact that the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks will honor King County Elections with its Best Practice Award in recognition of its mail ballot processing during the 2005 election.

“The King County Elections Office submitted an impressive examination of their mail balloting practices and the challenges election officials experience when conducting elections with an ever-increasing volume of mail balloting. Our members will be able to take the procedures outlined by King County and immediately put them to use in their own jurisdictions which is the whole purpose of NACRCs Best Practice program,” said Harris County Clerk and NACRC Chair Beverly Kaufman.

Yeah, but who cares about the improvements KCRE has made over the past two years if there’s political hay to be made by trotting out the 2004 election contest once again? And who cares if Lieberman Ferguson & Shaw Dunn set back the County’s transition to all vote-by-mail — a transition that Lieberman Ferguson championed — when there are cozy little backroom deals to be made.

See, council scuttlebutt is that Lieberman Ferguson & Shaw Dunn have a little vote trading pact going. Rumor has it that Shaw Dunn recently broke ranks to support Lieberman Ferguson’s efforts to squash a North Lake Union development project, and now Lieberman Ferguson is breaking ranks on the county auditor vote as pay back.

Either way politicizing the elections department is just bad public policy. Here’s hoping the ambitious Lieberman Ferguson gets an earful from his constituents.

Oh, and if you’re one of those lucky folks who have had Lieberman Ferguson ring your door bell, better give the button a wipe with a little Lysol. You just never know where his finger’s been.

Via Slog, the NY Times rates the Burner-Reichert race a toss-up.

The Stranger’s Josh Feit has been on the campaign trail with former Safeco CEO Mike McGavick, following his “Open Mike!” tour through Eastern Washington. But as it turns out, Mike!™ hasn’t been all that open… not really a surprise coming from yet another conservative Republican attempting to run towards WA’s mushy, undefined middle. (AKA: “The Dino Rossi Strategy”.)

See, Josh is a reporter, and so he keeps resorting to this devious, reporterly trick of his, which basically consists of trying to, you know… pin Mike!™ down on the issues. How uncivil.

But Mike!™ refuses to bite. During an interview, Josh asked about our state’s gay civil rights bill and attempts to repeal it by initiative, to which Mike!™ responded:

“I do not and will not talk about state issues. Because I’m working at the federal level. I’ve been asked about the gas tax last year. I’m now being asked about this. I’ll be asked about other things. I do not comment on state initiatives because I’m focused on the federal issues.”

Uh-huh.

Josh points out that this is a clever and lame excuse to avoid alienating voters by taking a position on controversial issues. And, um…

It’s also not true. Earlier last week, on a campaign swing through Colville, Washington, McGavick talked about state initiative I-937. I-937 would invest money in renewable energy, although the initiative does not put much focus on hydro power.

Colville is in the northeastern corner of the state in Stevens county

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James Sulton, the executive director of the Higher Education Coordinating Board raises concerns over what would happen to GET, the state’s prepaid tuition program, if Washington’s universities are permitted to set undergraduate tuition rates themselves.

Sulton worries that higher-education costs could soar if universities set tuition and that, worst case, the GET program would have to bar new participants until its finances recovered.

The state is on the hook to make sure people who’ve already bought prepaid tuition get what they’re promised. The Higher Education Coordinating Board members have not discussed Sulton’s concerns, a spokesperson said.

Sulton notes that Ohio, Texas and Virginia had to close their prepaid tuition programs to new participants after universities were allowed to set tuition and substantially increased their prices.

Hmm. First a disclaimer. We bought our daughter 400 units of GET tuition credit back in 2002 at $42 a unit. So not only have we realized a nearly 10 percent annual return during a time of low interest rates, but we’re entirely immune to local tuition increases. (Indeed, if my daughter decides to go out of state, we actually benefit from local tuition increases. Go figure.)

That said, I have been a longtime supporter (here and here) of letting tuition at state universities rise closer to market rates, while reducing the flat, per student state subsidy and moving towards a financial aid model.

As with K-12 education, the state has been underfunding our colleges and universities for years, and as I see it we now have three choices. We can: A) increase state spending on higher education, thus maintaining quality and access while keeping tuition costs affordable, or B) maintain quality and access by rationing state funds by allowing tuition rates to rise towards the actual cost of education while subsidizing only those students who require financial aid, or C) continue down the road we’re on where we fail to increase the number of slots to meet growing demand, and allow overall quality to decline.

Option C should be downright unacceptable. Personally, I’d prefer a combination of options A and B. We do need to spend more on higher education. But we also need to spend our money more wisely, and it simply does not make any sense to subsidize the tuition of children from families who can afford to pay the full cost.

This is not just an issue of money; it’s an issue of access. Right now, because every student is subsidized, our limited financial resources results in a limited number of slots available to all students, which means many qualified students are being turned away from our four-year universities. But if those who could afford to pay full fare did, it would free up state funds to open more slots, thus increasing access for all.

I know talk about higher tuition rates raises fears about shutting out low and middle income students, but it doesn’t matter how affordable our universities are if you can’t get in… or they suck. Education is our state’s single most important economic investment, and quite simply, we get what we pay for. If we buy ourselves a second-rate university system, our children will inherit a second-rate economy.

I can’t stand the heat so I’m getting into a cool, air-conditioned studio 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: Hot enough for you? Sure feels like global warming. Is modern society to blame for our massive carbon emissions? Or perhaps “God has already started punishing us” for abandoning his ways? We’re gonna talk about the weather… and if that doesn’t get folks hot underneath the collar, perhaps we’ll spend a little time talking about the escalating war in Lebanon.

8PM: Is our democracy being undermined by greedy corporate interests? Political strategist, journalist and blogger David Sirota joins me to discuss his bestselling book HOSTILE TAKEOVER: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government — And How We take It Back. Sirota has served as a press secretary for Rep. Bernie Sanders, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and as a senior strategist to Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. He is a frequent contributor to several national publications and a twice-weekly guest on The Al Franken Show. Sirota will be speaking and signing books Thursday, July 27, 7:30 PM at Seattle’s Town Hall.

9PM: Has the Republican Party abandoned its libertarian base? Are small “l” libertarians abandoning the Republican Party? Joining me to answer that question is local blogger Lee Rosenberg (Blog Reload,) a self-described libertarian and the co-host of the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Huh? How can he be both? In a lengthy and oddly titled post, Lee explores the inherent contradictions of economic libertarian absolutism, and describes how an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party is driving social libertarians to support Democrats. Also, be sure to check out Glenn Greenwald’s controversial post: Libertarians and the Republican Party — Irreconcilable Differences.

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

I have a confession to make: I am a scofflaw.

Several days a week I take my dog to a small, lakeside park that has in recent years become an unofficial dog park. It is an oasis of sorts, where dogs and humans peacefully coexist in violation of Seattle city ordinances that threaten fines of from $50.00 to $500.00.

Throughout much of the year this small stretch of shoreline is virtually abandoned but for the occasional dog owner exercising his companion in Lake Washington’s frigid waters. But on hot Summer days like today, the beach is usually crowded with dogs and humans joyously escaping the heat together.

Except for a small designated area at Magnuson Park, the city bars dogs not just from patrolled beaches, but from all public shoreline, ostensibly for health reasons. Let’s face it, nobody wants to lay their beach blanket down by a mound of dog poop. But ironically, my secret, neighborhood beach is not only one of the dog friendliest in the city… it is also one of the cleanest.

Visit nearly any public beach in the city and you’ll likely find yourself dodging random piles of poop left by the thousands of geese that inhabit our shorelines. Hell, forget about the fines… I wouldn’t even take my dog to one of these beaches for the fear absolute knowledge that she would roll in the feces, cleverly masking her own distinct scent. (Um… she’s a dog.)

Our beaches can get pretty damn disgusting. As the Seattle Times notes today:

Beachgoers should not have to sit out the heat at home because of geese-polluted shorelines.

But this isn’t a concern at our little illicit dog beach. There is no goose poop because there are no geese. Our dogs make sure of that. Think of it as organic pest control.

As for the dog poop, well, most of us regulars are vigilant to the point of vigilanteism. The other day I witnessed a woman being angrily harangued for failing to pick up after her dog. When she claimed she didn’t have a bag, three of us quickly whipped out spares, and watched like hawks as sheepishly cleaned up the mess.

I’m also very mindful of dogless visitors, and usually ask permission to take my dog off-leash in their presence. I also never let my dog off-leash around small children unless they are also accompanied by a dog. Even a gentle dog can appear threatening to a child.

Us regulars all understand that we have a good thing going, and that it will only take a couple complaints before the city steps up enforcement and shuts us down. So we patrol the park ourselves, letting people know in no uncertain terms that it’s not a place for out of control dogs or careless owners. We try to follow the spirit of the ordinance if not its letter.

I’m sure there are some neighbors who would probably prefer that the leash laws were strictly enforced, but if we were to abandon this beach to the geese it would quickly become unusable. It’s one of those delicate balance things that makes city life both challenging and rewarding, and for me it is also a tiny microcosm of the natural tension between the rights of individuals and the needs of the community that dominates so much of politics.

Of course to my dog, it’s just a great place to chase a stick in the water.

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.