Word on the street, and from multiple sources, is that former Western Wireless CEO John Stanton has been telling folks he’ll raise a million dollar “independent” expenditure on behalf of closeted-Republican Susan Hutchison in this November’s race for King County Executive.
In addition to Stanton, you can expect the usual Republican suspects to pony up (Kemper Freeman, Skip Rowley, the various McCaws, et al). And don’t be surprised to see a big chunk of change from the normally apolitical Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi, who has long had a strangely close relationship with the former KIRO-7 anchor.
I’m one of those who strongly believes that demographics and party alignment strongly favors Dow Constantine in the race, but I’m also one who believes in the power of money to sway votes, especially in the face of our weakened political media. So as bizarrely unqualified and out of step with mainstream King County values as Hutchison really is, we can’t afford to be complacent, especially with R-71 potentially bringing conservative voters out to the polls in force.
She can certainly count on me for $100. Constantine is the county-wide version of Darcy Burner.
@1: You’re too fucking stupid to live. Seriously. You’re dissing someone with actual experience in a county elected office with someone whose only two qualifications are that she was a newscaster and that she served on some philanthropic boards?
Uggh. At least Darcy Burner had a grasp of relevant issues.
Since it is widely known that she is not competent to hold the position, one wonders why such highly placed individuals are willing to bankroll her run for it?
I’m sure Republicans won’t vote for her because they only vote for people with experience — like Dave Reichert.
“Charles Simonyi … has long had a strangely close relationship with the former KIRO-7 anchor.”
If she gets elected, he’ll have to go to her office to lick her toes, instead of the other way around.
@1 Don’t think for one minute you’ll be able to make it up with food stamps! If you give a month’s pay to a political campaign you’ll just have to go hungry!
According to Wikipedia, Simonyi dated Martha Stewart for 15 years, then dumped her and married a 28-year-old Swedish millionaire’s daughter last year at age 60. I suspect this guy likes sex.
Can we ever get off the Darcy Burner obsession? She’s not a candidate any more, and she lives in DC.
She isn’t relevant to this post or the KCE race.
Well, the good news is labor is likely to pull out all of the stops for Constantine. Hopefully he’ll have more than enough to make sure all of the voters know Hutchison is both an unqualified airhead, and an extremely conservative Republican.
It’s always nice to see Republicans throw good money after bad.
@7: She’s relevant as a case of rank Republican hypocrisy with respect to qualifications of candidates for office.
Goldy, are Democrats going to spend on behalf of Dow Constantine?
…they better!
The Republican squeeze play is on. Republicans in Olympia and King County are hitting up typical campaign donors and corporate budgets to support Hutchinson.
The message: Hutchinson is the new Dino Rossi (the key to a GOP comeback in the state).
Hutchinson might want to get ahead of this and finally come out of the closet to have any credibility at all.
Stanton only gives to Republican candidates, with one exception: he and his wife maxed out for Ed Murray when Murray was shilling Stanton’s regional government train wreck.
If Simonyi really wants to help Hutch, he should crawl out of his mansion and go on the stump in her behalf. He, more than anyone else, can speak to her abilities and experience as an administrator.
If Goldy were a good journalist, the title of this post would have been:
“Republicans are going to spend on behalf of Hutchison, and Democrats are going to spend on behalf of Constantine.”
There’s a lot of money to be made from a pro-development county executive, so of course the funding is coming out.
Can anyone tell me what those rich guys stand to gain from an airhead doing a chimp-style FUBAR on King County?
Troll,
LOL…and again you demonstrate that you don’t understand the difference between a blog and a newspaper.
Ask your mommy…she can explain it….
The key points here are that Hutchison has claimed to be non-partisan. Her claims are belied by the following facts:
1. Her affiliation with many republican donors
2. Her endorsments are almost all republican
3. Her board position on the Disovery Institute
The fact that she lied to her employer to play hooky actually endears her to me…that is something faily normal. But to then bring a lawsuit and claim they hired a younger asian woman and that she couldn’t “do the work” they asked her to do just makes her look vindictive, whiney and stupid.
@18
Excuse me, Darryl, if I’m not mistaken, Goldy in the past has claimed be one of the leading political journalists in America.
So yeah, I am saying his headline is poor journalism. Some would even say it’s a form of yellow journalism.
Let me ask you, do you think his headline is unethical?
What a nightmare. The Satterberg strategy again, with money, name recognition, and party laundering.
The unsuitability and nuttiness of the candidate only adds to make it a classic.
Troll @ 20,
“Excuse me, Darryl, if I’m not mistaken, Goldy in the past has claimed be one of the leading political journalists in America.”
Oh???? I’d be interested in seeing your source on that. Although, it is hardly relevant.
“So yeah, I am saying his headline is poor journalism.”
Well…if Goldy uses such a headline on a newspaper, you might have a shot at making a point. But he didn’t. He used the headline on his blog.
“Some would even say it’s a form of yellow journalism.”
ROTFLMAO!!!! Really Troll (*wipes tears from eyes*), ask your mommy about the difference between a blog and a newspaper.
“Let me ask you, do you think his headline is unethical?”
Unethical????? What the fuck? What planet are you from?
Or is that just a big 4-syllable word that you are trying to learn?
Oh…wait…you call yourself “Troll”…so you weren’t serious anyway, were you? But thanks for the laugh anyway.
re 7: Let’s all do what the Sarge tells us to. He is, after all, the Sarge — even if his wife’s the Captain.
The front page of today’s New York Times states that the economy is, in fact, a zero-sum game (just like checkers! LOL).
That means if you give more to the rich, then they have more and everyone else has less. How could conservatives so abandon common sense that they believe exactly the opposite?
Simple — because there are two types of authoritarian personalities – the authoritarians and those who kiss their asses.
Open your eyes, Republican voters, that’s the puckered little anus’ of the wealthy you’ve been kissing these past 30 years.
It will be interesting if they can convince enough fools to vote this Hutchison train wreck into office. Then you can either hold on to your wallet or try to figure a way to get on the gravy train — cause they are going to cut human sevices and start buliding roads.
@21:
I don’t think Satterberg is an appropriate comparison. At least he was qualified for the office and a lawyer and a prosecutor.
Hutchison is not nearly as qualified and the prosecutor has a great deal more ethical constraints on partisanship.
For instance, I would gladly vote for some republicans such as Mike McKay, because he has shown impartiality in the office.
“Can anyone tell me what those rich guys stand to gain from an airhead doing a chimp-style FUBAR on King County?”
Permission, probably to do development in places where it would otherwise never be allowed.
Correctnotright @ 19 said:
“The fact that she lied to her employer to play hooky actually endears her to me…that is something faily normal….”
Actually, I didn’t care much one way or another about her until I heard that story, and then that really ticked me off. If she were in a normal office job where 90% of the work can wait until she returns to the office, then that’s no big deal. But she wasn’t in that type of job. She took a news anchor position knowing that SOMEBODY was going to have to be sitting in front of that camera at the appropriate hour, holiday or weekend or not. She drew the duty. By calling in “sick”, she forced somebody who probably already had holiday plans with their family to cancel those plans so they could fill in for her. That’s an incredibly irresponsible attitude with respect to her employer, but also an arrogant and selfish attitude with respect to her co-workers.
Keep your eye on the ball. Don’t worry about the R-71 effect. Worry about the I-1033 effect.
It seems to me that this has been the modus-operendi of the Republican party over the past ten years or so. First, get somebody who doesn’t have a lot of gravitas or independent qualifications, but is easily manipulated on ideological grounds, into the public position. George Bush, Micheal Brown, Dino Rossi all make great examples. They owe their position to those who “made them”, so it makes them more pliable and easily enfluenced while they force through the real agenda. They owe everything to the real powers behind the Republican Party (large financial and corporate intersts), so they will cooperate in every way.
So George Bush gets tax cuts pushed through, a war with Iraq which is hugly profitable to some companies, regulatory inaction when the financial industry goes bonkers, and bailouts for the bankers when the house of cards collapse (but no relief for homeowners). When bad things happen, the candidate is easily discarded, and another “face” installed in their place. I think Bush finally caught on to what was happening in the last six months or so of his Presidency, and hence the increasing distance between Bush and Cheney. But by then it was too late, and he was powerless to change course even if he had wanted to.
And of course the saga of “Brownie” is well known by now – he was totally unqualified for the job, and was put in charge of FEMA because they knew he wouldn’t object as it was being dismantled and it’s services out-sourced to companies such as Haliburton subsidiaries (or other contractors performing services for Homeland Security).
Dino Rossi also lacked qualifications or “gravitas”, but fortunately he never took state-wide office so we didn’t have to suffer from the results. The same with Sarah Palin.
So now it’s Susan Hutchinson.
Demokid at #2 rants: “… You’re dissing someone with actual experience in a county elected office…”
Glad you noted his work in the County. Now we know who to blame for all the fuckups the county has suffered through.
I think some of you are being entirely too harsh on Susan. She’s at least as smart, if not smarter, than Sarah Palin, and look what she’s done to advance the Republican Party!
King County is already FUBAR! Dow=McCain. Hutchison=Obama