HorsesAss.Org

But no… apparently he’s too busy making political appearances and campaigning for other politicians, to take a break from his well-deserved break from politics to actually comment on the most divisive issue in tomorrow’s election.

Way to show leadership, Dino.

I’ve been meaning to write about the Snohomish County Council race between Republican Jeff Sax and Democrat Dave Somers… but simply have run out of time. So instead I’ll point you towards Lynn at Evergreen Politics, which has the latest on Sax’s last minute, building industry funded smear campaign.

In a last minute attempt to prevent Somers from retaking this seat, Sax has mailed out and distributed at least six different last-minute pieces containing lies and more lies. They’ve also slapped “GAY endorsed” all over every large Somers sign in the district.

There are few races in which the differences between the candidates are as stark as this one. Dave Somers is a fisheries scientist and land-use analyst, with an established record as a former councilman of a reasoned, managed approach to Snohomish County’s explosive growth. He is endorsed by every major paper.

Jeff Sax on the other hand, is a pro-sprawl, building industry shill… a sitting councilman, currently under criminal investigation for leaking confidential documents, who was also caught building a house without a permit. Even a top Snohomish County Republican privately called Sax “an embarrassment to the party”… and for the GOP, that’s saying something.

Let’s just put it this way… if this were a lesser-of-two-evils race between Jeff Sax and David Irons Jr., I’d cast my ballot for Irons in a heartbeat.

UPDATE:
I’ve updated the post to include a picture of one of the vandalized signs. The Seattle Times has more about the vandalism (via Progressive Majority):

Snohomish County Council Democratic candidate Dave Somers awoke Sunday morning to the news that someone had appended black-and-white stickers to some of his campaign signs declaring, in big block letters, that he is “gay endorsed.”

When told what the signs said, Jim Donner, a volunteer for Somers’ Republican opponent, Jeff Sax, shot back: “Well, he is, isn’t he?” But he denied the Sax campaign’s involvement.

The small print on the signs attributed them to the liberal political group Progressive Majority, but Washington Progressive Majority director Dean Nielsen said his group had nothing to do with them. The group is supporting Somers’ candidacy.

So my question to the trolls who will defend this vandalism… if I were to paste “Fascist Endorsed” stickers to Sax signs, with the small print attribution “Paid for by the Building Industry Association of Washington”… that would be okay, right?

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Progressive Majority has more on last minute dirty tricks against progressive candidates:

Down in Clark County, the local Republican Party emailed 2,000 of its supporters to notify them that Steve Stuart [campaign website], Progressive Majority’s candidate for County Commissioner, had fallen on financial hard-times. In the very same email that GOP operatives claim they will not make Steve’s financial troubles a political issue in the race, they encourage their activists to contact their local news media about just this issue. It’s a political about-face and voters deserve better. Steve has huge community support in Clark County – this is just another example of smear tactics from a desperate campaign.

And out in Port Orchard, voters received a fake “Voter Guide” for City Council that compares conservative Jim Weatherill with Progressive Majority candidate Fred Chang [campaign website]. The hit piece stereotypes Chang for being Chinese-American as well as being gay, and notes that he’s endorsed by “ultra-liberal political organization, Progressive Majority Washington”. Weatherill claims he’s not involved, even though the mail disclaimer reads that it’s paid for by his campaign committee. Given that Fred won the primary with 48% to Weatherill’s 28%, the conservatives are pulling out their dirty tricks in the final stretch.

It’s time to tell GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance to stop the bullshit!

So… on each and every one of the 1,944 voter registration challenges, Lori Sotelo declared “under penalty of perjury” that she has “personal knowledge and belief that this person is not qualified to vote, or does not reside at the address given.”

Hmm. And yet, according to WA state GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance:

Although Sotelo’s name appeared on the challenge affidavits, Vance said, the list of voters to challenge was actually created by volunteers and interns cross-referencing storage unit addresses with voter registration rolls. Sotelo just signed on the dotted line, he said.

But wait… if Sotelo just signed on the dotted line, then she didn’t really have “personal knowledge and belief”, now did she? And if she didn’t really have “personal knowledge and belief”, then didn’t she just perjure herself… 1,944 times?

I’m not an attorney. So I’m just asking.

UPDATE:
The scan of Sotelo’s affidavit was posted to The Stranger’s forum by one of the challenged voters. Credit where credit is due.

Irons Sr. is not only a self-made millionaire, he is a former Commander and Chief of Aviation for the U.S. Coast Guard — “a hero” (Jr.’s words) who personally flew hundreds of search and rescue missions… the kind of resume that normally earns admiration and respect in Republican circles. I have no reason to doubt his version of events, and so I am reposting it here.

This is David Irons, Sr. writing because I’m tired of my son lying about his mother. Junior admitted to me, within minutes of the assault, that he hit his mother and knocked her to the floor. When he later denied it, I suggested both Junior and his mother take polygraph tests. His mother took the test and proved the obvious, she was not influenced by a medical condition and Junior did hit her.

This is the second time I have challenged Junior to take a polygraph. The first was when he made a false police report about his nephew. His nephew took a polygraph and proved beyond any doubt that Junior was lying. But Junior refused to be tested then and I expect him to refuse again because he can ill afford to have the truth known.

Regarding Junior assaulting his mother, no one but he, our youngest daughter, my wife and I witnessed any specifics of the violent episode. We observed the torn up office and the telephone ripped from the wall while Junior remained at the office and his mother fled in terror. And Junior’s panic call to me to come to the office immediately.

Junior has changed his story about the assault incident several times. First he admitted he struck his mother and knocked her to the floor. Next he modified the story by saying his mother walked into his arm and fell down. Then he denied hitting her and said she had a hallucinatory diabetic “seizure” and fell down; it should be noted that diabetics do not suffer seizures as Junior describes. Now Junior is denying that the assault occurred, saying, “it just didn’t happen.”

But Junior’s abuses are displayed outside the family, too. He worked for us for almost 15 years and we learned after our business sold that Junior had been swearing and throwing tools at other employees. If we had known about it at the time, he would have been fired. When we asked the employees why we hadn’t been informed of his unacceptable conduct, the men said they were afraid to report him. Intimidation is a terrible hammer.

Now we learn from subsequent work sources that Junior hasn’t changed his spots. He is still abusive and his coworkers are still reluctant to report him. Abuses usually take place when and where no witnesses are available so it is hard for the abused to find relief.

As for Junior being endorsed by aunts, uncles and cousins; the people he references, with one exception, wouldn’t recognize him on the street and certainly don’t know him. He generated the family backing just like he invented the fabricated business experience and the phony education resume.

And when we refused to help Junior on a political venture that would cost his younger sister her job, he threatened that if we didn’t help him, we would never see his three children again. We didn’t believe he would do such an abusive thing to his children or to us, but he did. We haven’t been allowed to see his daughters for over five years.

Junior professes to be a family man but taking his children’s only grandparents away defies the image of a caring parent.

Dave Irons, Sr.

Irons Sr. has given us no reason to question his integrity, while his son’s inflated resumes are filled with documented lies. The only reason I can see to totally dismiss the father is that you don’t want to hear what he has to say about his son… whereas Jr. has earned our skepticism… at least.

Call it a he said / he said if you want, but I just think Sr. comes across as the more reliable “he.”

The Stranger drolly dubbed the fiasco “Fibby-gate”, but an astute reader pointed me towards an intriguing tidbit in the Mercer Island Reporter that suggests Fibby-gate may have closer connections to White House scandals than just a little amusing word play:

Island residents Linda Ayers and Lori Sotelo had a whirlwind four days last month when they visited Washington, D.C., after being invited there for a holiday reception by a friend who works for President George W. Bush.
…
The pair arrived in Washington on Dec. 12. The next day, they attended a briefing in the Executive Offices building with Bush’s chief strategist Karl Rove and Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

Of course it was KCGOP Vice-Chair Lori Sotelo who falsely declared “under penalty of perjury” that she had personal knowledge that her victims were illegally registered to vote. While I’m not necessarily suggesting that Rove himself had his fingers in the KCGOP’s botched voter intimidation effort, it is certainly the kind of dirty trick that bears a likeness to his handiwork, if not his actual fingerprints. Regardless, there can now be no question that Rove is a man who Sotelo knows, admires and emulates.

“Is this Denise Passinetti?” I asked the woman at the other end of the line. “The Denise Passinetti who served as Councilman Irons chief of staff?”

There was a long, awkward pause. “Yes…” she finally replied.

There was another awkward moment of silence, only this time, it came from me. I was calling to ask Passinetti about allegations that she had quit the councilman’s staff due to his abusive and harassing behavior, but since I had few details about the specifics, I was unsure exactly how uncomfortable this subject might be. I introduced myself, and struggled to put my question into words, but before I could finish, she cut me off.

“I think I know why you are calling,” she said.

Another uncomfortable pause. I guess I had hoped she would start offering up details. But she didn’t.

So I tried to reassure her and pressure her at the same time. I told her that she was not alone, that David Irons Jr. had reportedly turned his temper towards other council staffers, leaving angry, abusive voicemail messages, and exploding into screaming fits that sent at least one staffer running from the room in tears. But, I told her, none of the victims whom I had identified were willing to come forward, apparently fearful for their jobs, or concerned that such public allegations would disrupt the council’s unusually collegial work environment.

All I got in return was a long sigh. So I changed my tact. “I’m going to run with something,” I told her “and I don’t want to unfairly smear anybody. If I’m wrong about the reason you left your job, I want you to tell me.”

I had reached Passinetti on her cell phone, and she explained that she was waiting for an appointment, but she did want to talk, and that she would call back the next morning. I told her that I believed other reporters — real reporters — had her name as well. I meant it merely as a heads up, a warning that she might be getting more calls, but I guess she thought I was afraid I might lose my scoop, so she promised she would talk to me first. We hung up. At this point, she had neither specifically confirmed nor denied the allegations.

The next morning I awaited her call. It never came. I left several messages on her home and cell phone voicemail. No reply. Finally, a few days later she left a message on my voicemail. She said that she didn’t really want to talk about her time working for David Irons Jr., but that “my actions sort of speak for me.”

So in response to allegations that she quit her job due to Irons’ abusive behavior, all she would say on the record was this: “I was his chief of staff for a little over two years, and in this election I have maxed out my contributions to Ron Sims, and that’s who I’ll be voting for, for executive. So I’ll just let that speak for itself.”

Interpret our halting conversation as you will, but in context, and coming from a Republican staffer, I understood her refusal to deny the allegations as an unspoken confirmation of the underlying charge. I do not know exactly what kind of behavior caused Passinetti to leave her post, whether there was a specific incident or she merely tired of Irons’ temper. I do not know if he slammed doors or threw objects or screamed and yelled or worse… or if Passinetti may have been overly sensitive to the rude and intimidating tantrums of yet another high-strung, arrogant politician.

What I do know — or at least, reasonably believe to be true — is that Passinetti did indeed quit her job due to what she believed to be abusive and harassing behavior on the part of her boss. This is what she reportedly told others at the time. This is what she refused to deny to me.

And this depiction of a short-tempered, verbally abusive David Irons Jr. is one I’ve heard again and again from county staffers, from former Brigadoon officers and from Irons’ own family.

One of the reasons I found Janet C. Irons account of her own son’s abusive behavior so believable, is that while the details were shocking, they were totally consistent with what I had been hearing for months. As Gregory Roberts, writing in the Seattle P-I gingerly put it, Irons “has developed a reputation in some quarters as a sometimes short-tempered co-worker who’s not good at listening.” Indeed, I would reckon that there is not a single reporter who has closely covered the King County Council who has not heard tales of Irons’ angry and abusive temper… most recently an incident that occurred during the taping of his video voter guide, in which Irons unexpectedly exploded at young, female staffer… a tantrum so shocking in its context that it remained a topic of office scuttlebutt for weeks to follow.

According to multiple sources, Irons was accompanied to the studios of the Seattle Channel by a part-time county elections worker, whose job that day was to assure that the video met the county’s detailed ethical guidelines. County protocol prohibits candidates from displaying emblems of organizational affiliations, and so the elections worker asked Irons to remove his customary Rotary lapel pin… at which point he exploded in an abusive rage.

Those present were stunned by the suddenness and ferocity of the outburst, especially in such an inappropriate setting, and report that the woman who was the target of Irons’ rage was visibly shaken. While sources at the Seattle Channel refused to provide details or go on the record — citing the necessity to remain neutral observers if they are to achieve their primary function — they did confirm that an incident took place. Friends of the woman have also confirmed the general description of the events, but she herself has declined to be interviewed, and so I must honor her desire to remain anonymous.

Indeed, the reason I have sat on such damning charges as long as I have, is that nearly all my sources have insisted on remaining anonymous or off the record entirely, for with the exception of Passinetti’s subtle non-denial, I could not garner permission to use a single accuser’s name. Of course this is not surprising coming from central staff who must fear retribution from Irons should he be elected, and who cannot possibly perform their jobs effectively without maintaining the trust of his Republican colleagues… regardless of who holds the executive office.

Yet the accusations are numerous, explicit, consistent, come from multiple sources… and tell a story of a pattern of abusive behavior — almost exclusively targeted at female staffers — that Irons has displayed throughout his career on the council.

Many of the stories arise from when Irons was Vice-Chairman of the Growth Management and Unincorporated Areas Committee. During last year’s sometimes bitter negotiations over the Critical Areas Ordinance, Irons developed a reputation for leaving abusive voicemail tirades for several female staffers, often recorded during angry, late-night rages. One staffer remarked on the level of anger the councilman displayed, calling it “unpleasant and over the top,” while another described these messages as “scary” and “downright weird.” Yet another staffer reportedly transcribed a particularly harassing voicemail and passed it around the office. (A public records request searching for this and other communications won’t be fulfilled before November 8.)

But the incident most frequently cited involved a female central staffer, who was working alone with the councilman on some CAO related issue, when Irons suddenly became enraged, screaming with such fury that the staffer ran from the room in tears, refusing to return, and eventually sending a male co-worker back to retrieve her papers. According to very reliable sources, the incident prompted Councilman Dow Constantine, the chair of the committee, to intervene on the staffer’s behalf, establishing an unwritten protocol that Irons was never to be alone in a room with that staffer again. I asked Councilman Constantine’s office to confirm or deny the allegation, but he declined to comment through an aide.

When I interviewed Irons’ mother for my original story, she expressed genuine surprise that her son had not shown more of a temper during his tenure on the King County Council. “He sometimes goes bonkers,” she told me. Well, as it turns out, she knows her son very well, for not only are stories of his abusive outbursts rampant amongst council staff, he apparently displayed similar behavior at Brigadoon.com as well. A top Brigadoon executive described Irons as “explosive” and “temperamental”, saying his biggest complaint with his performance as COO was the abusive and angry way he often dealt with people.

Yes, Irons denies that he ever hit his mother (although he’s yet to join her in taking and passing a polygraph), but he’s never refuted the larger pattern of abusive behavior she alleges… a pattern that he apparently repeated during his years at Brigadoon and on the county council… a pattern he would surely repeat as King County executive. It is a lifelong pattern entirely consistent with the character testimony of Irons’ own parents, who consistently argue that their opposition to their son’s candidacy is not based on a single incident, but rather on their sincere conviction that he lacks the integrity, the experience, the intellect and the temperament to run a county government larger than that of thirteen states.

A couple weeks back I shared some tales of Irons’ council outbursts with a prominent local columnist, who questioned what was possibly newsworthy about an arrogant and verbally abusive politician? I agreed that yes, there are many elected officials on both sides of the aisle, who are… well… assholes.

That David Irons Jr. is an asshole, may not be news. But nonetheless, voters have a right to know.

It took less than 24 hours of voter backlash before the GOP was forced to belatedly withdraw 140 of their challenges (PDF)… after these voters had already received notice that their votes would not count unless they attended an administrative hearing. That kind of sloppiness is already inexcusable when it comes to a citizen’s right to vote, but I betcha on closer examination we’ll find a helluva lot more “mistakes.”

As the GOP’s incredible fuckup has just illustrated, the process of cleaning the voter rolls has never been as simple as the Republicans have tried to make it out to be in their cynical and patently dishonest efforts disparage King County Records & Elections. And like all counties, King has never been nearly as hands off as the GOP’s lying press releases would lead you to believe. Indeed cleaning the ever changing voter rolls is a constant and time consuming process, especially in a county with over 1.1 million registrations, where thousands of voters are moving, marrying and dying every day.

According to a fact sheet produced by KCRE, the county routinely runs queries to screen out post office boxes, duplicate registrations and deceased voters. Since the last election:

• Over 9,500 duplicate registrations have been merged.
• Over 8,900 deceased have been removed from the voter rolls.
• Over 73,000 registrations have been put on inactive status.

And that doesn’t even begin to count the thousands of new and canceled registrations and address changes that are processed every month. Some of these transactions are initiated by voters, others through the routine operations at KCRE. For example, take this anecdote I recounted back in August:

As a case in point, a friend of mine recently bought a house in West Seattle. I was over there for dinner the other night, and she told me how that very day, she had called King County Elections to change her address… and was surprised to learn that she was already registered at her new house! When she inquired how, she was told that they had mailed her a voter registration card, but that it was returned to KC Elections with a forwarding address; so they updated her records and mailed her a new card. Indeed, the new card was in her mailbox that very same day.

Talk about service. Call to change your registration, immediately look in your mailbox, and there’s your new voter registration card.

Now that’s the type of positive headline you’re never going to read

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Voters will not receive notice that their challenge has been withdrawn until after Tuesday’s election, but by then many will have chosen not to vote, just to avoid the hassle of an administrative hearing. The GOP will have achieved its goal: disenfranchising untold numbers of voters in predominantly Democratic precincts.

In an October 26 press release announcing the 1943 voter challenges, KC Republican chair Michael Young bragged, “If our volunteers can discover these problems, shouldn’t the professionals in their office be able to do the same?”

But the KCGOP’s obviously faulty list shows exactly why these sort of challenges should be left to the professionals and not the partisan “volunteers” who care little for how many legitimate voters they disenfranchise in the interest of a cheap publicity stunt… a stunt that has backfired, horribly… for less than one day after challenged voters started receiving notices, the KCGOP has already been forced to back track on nearly ten percent of its list.

This is not the same thing as the list-waving, McCarthyite grandstanding that took place during the election contest, after the fact, when everything would eventually be sorted out in a court of law. The Republicans’ actions have disenfranchised voters — intentionally — and there should be a price to pay at the polls… and I hope, in a massive, class action lawsuit.

UPDATE:
I’ve just been told that the GOP has dropped off a letter to KCRE, signed by Lori Sotelo, officially removing 140 names from their challenge list.

Expect more names to be removed… I’m hearing the apartment building in Belltown may not be the only one on the list.

If this is real, this is an outrage. If the Rs of King County are knowingly, falsely challenging legit voter registrations in an effort to suppress Dem votes then they should be PUNISHED.

if this is the kind of “reform” that Republican David Irons intends to inflict on King County, then we’re in real trouble if he beats Ron Sims next Tuesday. Everyone in this apartment building whose registration was challenged should call a press conference, and this woman

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Rick Schroeder said his support for Irons had nothing to do with policy issues relating to road building or construction.

“He’s a property-rights guy,” Schroeder said of Irons. “He doesn’t ramrod trails right through the back yard of people’s properties as Ron Sims does.”

Schroeder lives in Sammamish but is not, he said, one of the homeowners along the East Lake Sammamish Trail who protested the Sims-backed plan to reclaim the public right of way for the trail that they had encroached on.

Um… so by “a property-rights guy” Schroeder means supporting private landowners’ rights to public property.

What a putz.

Enjoy. (Or not.)

A quick look at Irons’ campaign website finds that over half the press releases on his press page were written by council staffers, with links going directly back to his official council web page. And he’s sure kept his staffers on their heels during this busy campaign season: since officially announcing his candidacy for county executive on March 14, 2005, his staff has written 28 press releases, compared to only 19 during the same period last year, and only 16 in 2003, when he was running for reelection to the council.

Of course, both the King County Ethics Code and Washington State laws expressly prohibit the the use of public resources to support political campaigns, but it is hard not to conclude that Irons is in effect using county staff to produce campaign website content on the taxpayers’ dime.

Hmm. I suppose if I were a litigious prick like some right-wing bloggers I know, I might be tempted to file an ethics complaint. (Oops… I just did.)