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Last month I wrote about Attorney General Rob McKenna’s cynical effort to reinterpret Washington’s voter-approved minimum wage statute, so as to avoid an increase this year. And as predicted, this week L&I announced that it would ignore McKenna’s opinion, by raising the minimum wage another 12 cents an hour.

Labor & Industries spokeswoman Kim Contris said the state ultimately made the decision to raise the rate “based on how we believe a court would interpret the law.”

“We really wanted to correctly implement the law,” she said. “We recognize there could be confusion and additional cost if we made a mistake and the court overturned the decision.”

That’s right, the state ignored its own attorney’s opinion because they were concerned about the legal cost of following it. Huh. Perhaps the state should fire its attorney?

No doubt there are policy arguments to make in favor of keeping the minimum wage flat during a time of slow job growth and high unemployment — for example, the stupid, arrogant and profoundly anti-worker arguments made by the Columbian — but the problem for McKenna is that the legal arguments just weren’t there. The law is clear: L&I is instructed to adjust the minimum wage “by increasing the current year’s minimum wage rate by the rate of inflation,” and since inflation went up this year, however slightly, so will the minimum wage.

To ignore the plain meaning of the word “by” in the service of fabulating alternative formulas may be creative lawyering, but as L&I rightly determined, it wasn’t likely to hold up in court. Which in the end, not only calls into question McKenna’s abilities as an attorney, but as a politician as well.

I posted the results earlier today of the Washington Senate race based on KPLU’s news reports. At noon today, the KCTS/KPLU/Washington Poll top lines were released for public consumption.

In that all-important race between the single most powerful mom-in-tennis-shoe in the Senate & nation, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and the single most sought-after motivational speaker on the foreclosure profiteering seminar circuit, Dino Rossi (R), we find Sen. Murray leading 50% to 42%. This makes five polls in a row that has Murray in the lead.

This poll surveyed 500 people from October 5th to the 14th. Hence, it overlaps every one of the other five October polls. Here is summary of all the polls this month:

	Start	End	Samp.		%	%	%
Poll	date	date	size	MOE	Murray	Rossi	Diff
WA Poll	05-Oct	14-Oct	500	4.3	50	42	D+8
SurveyUSA	11-Oct	14-Oct	606	4.1	50	47	D+3
CNN/Time/OR	08-Oct	12-Oct	850	3.5	51	43	D+8
Elway	07-Oct	11-Oct	450	4.6	51	38	D+13
Fox	09-Oct	09-Oct	1000	3.0	47	46	D+1
Rasmussen	06-Oct	06-Oct	750	4.0	46	49	R+3

What does this poll tell us by itself? A Monte Carlo analysis using the observed sample size and percentages gives Murray 902,830 wins to Rossi’s 92,001 out of a million simulated elections. That is, the poll provides evidence that Murray would have a 90.8% probability of beating Rossi in an election held now.

But we can pool the results from all six of the polls shown in the table. This gives us a total of 4,156 “votes”, of which 3,890 of them go to either Rossi or Murray. Murray gets 48.9% to Rossi’s 44.7% (or, if we look at just the votes for Murray and Rossi, Murray is up 52.2% to 47.8%). A simulation analysis finds Murray beating Rossi with 975,049 wins to his 24,332 wins.

The new KCTS/KPLU/Washington Poll has added a bit more certainty to Murray’s lead. Yesterday, this same analysis using all but today’s poll gave Murray a 94.5% chance of winning. Today, with six polls, we find that Murray would have a 97.6% chance of beating Rossi in an election right now.

Finally, let me address a meme about this race that has been quite prevalent in the recent media. There is an idea the the polls are “all over the place.” Maybe. But not really. Let’s look at results of polls taken in September and October:

Since these polls are taken on a sample of the underlying voting population, there is some uncertainty about the results. The vertical bars on the poll results show the plausible range that the voting population could have, given the margin of error inherent in the poll. (Other problems can lead to biased estimates; the margin of error only incorporates uncertainty reflecting the size of the sample.) And even then, by chance, we expect the true value to lie outside of the plausible range in about one in twenty polls.

Looking at the recent polls, it seems the last five polls mostly overlap, suggesting that the truth lies somewhere near a 54% Murray, 46% Rossi result. We also see this in early September. From mid-September to early October, Murray appears to do significantly worse.

Remember the discussion with the Elway poll last Tuesday? Elway was compelled to justify his noticeably higher numbers for Murray, and suggested that there was a difference between robopolls and live-interview polls. (Of course, if we consider the plausible range, the Elway poll fits right in.) The polls released since Tuesday support Elway’s suggestion.

Elway did not offer a hypothesis why robopolls would turn in different results than the live-interview polls, but I did. Via Goldy:

As Darryl suggested the other night at Drinking Liberally, what if the enthusiasm gap we’ve all been hearing about is largely manifested in who is or is not willing to give up ten minutes to interact with an automated poll? I know I’ve hung up on a couple robo-polls this year, but find it harder to do so with a real live person. Interesting hypothesis.

This looks right for all the recent polling. We see that the three live-interview polls (Elway, WA poll, and CNN) all post numbers on the high side and the robopolls (SUSA, Rasmussen and FOX News) all come in on the low side. That big dip in the middle is formed from six robopolls taken in a row. In fact, Rasmussen and FAUX News both use the same company—Pulse Opinion Research–to do their polling. It may not be chance that FOX New and Rasmussen both give Murray her worse performance in this series. And this would explain the question I posed in August, “What the hell happened to Survey USA?”

The robopoll/live interview/enthusiasm gap hypothesis was offered Tuesday before the three most recent polls were released, and I am now pretty confident that this is what is happening in the Murray—Rossi race here in Washington.

I am less confident about other House and Senate races nationally, but if it can happen here, it might well be happening elsewhere. I think there is a fair possibility that robopolls will systematically underestimate the performance of Democrats nationwide, which will make for a pretty darned interesting election night!

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

When Dino Rossi was asked about his stance on abortion during his first gubernatorial campaign back in 2004, he blithely quipped that “I’m not running for Supreme Court,” and everybody laughed and gave him a pass.

In 2008, during his second shot at Chris Gregoire, he pretty much offered the same non-denial denial in response to charges he was anti-choice, and once again reporters and editorialists pretty much shrugged.

And in 2010, sensing the Republican primary electorate shifting even further to the far right, Rossi grudgingly acknowledged that he opposes legal abortion except “maybe” in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at stake… but repeatedly emphasized that he’s “not running on that issue” in refusing to discuss it further.

So the question is, with the election only weeks away, and Rossi this time running for the U.S. Senate at a time when the Supreme Court is a mere pubic-hair-on-a-coke-can away from overturning Roe v. Wade, will our local media call Rossi on his obfuscation, and finally explain in detail where he stands on abortion and other women’s health care issues?

We may find out today at 3PM, when Gov. Gregoire and Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards hold a joint press at the Women’s University Club of Seattle to “highlight what’s at stake for women’s health care this election, including where the candidates stand.” If the cameras and reporters show up, and feature their comments on the evening news and in tomorrow’s papers, then we’ll know that the local news media is finally taking women’s issues seriously. But if they don’t, well, it’s another free ride for Dino Rossi on a position I’m sure he holds genuinely, but which separates him from a large majority of Washington voters.

To be clear, this isn’t just another press conference. This is the governor, for chrissakes, taking time out of her day to take questions from reporters. And since she’s not running for anything, likely every again, you just know this press conference is mostly about Rossi.

That’s news. But only if, you know, the press decides to report it.

The record is clear. Rossi opposes abortion, opposes funding to reduce teen pregnancy and opposes access to emergency contraception. He’s voted to oppose requiring insurance prescription plans to include contraception, and twice voted to deny family planning services through Medicaid. In 1992, he even spoke in favor of re-instituting “homes for unwed mothers” as an alternative to abortion. Most reporters know that.

But the fact that the latest SurveyUSA poll shows Rossi still earning 29% support from self-described pro-choice voters, is clear evidence that the public isn’t nearly as well informed.

This is an opportunity for our media to make up for six years of looking the other way. I’ll be interested to see if they take advantage of it.

Over on Slog, I do a little myth-busting, pointing out that despite all the credit Dino Rossi gets for balancing the state budget in 2003, he really didn’t do much budget writing at all. In fact, according to contemporaneous news reports at the time:

The Republican budget has much in common with the all-cuts plan that Democratic Gov. Gary Locke unveiled in December. In fact, Rossi opened a press briefing yesterday with a PowerPoint presentation titled: “Following the Governor’s Lead.”

The truth is, Rossi wrote the 2003-2005 state budget much in the same way that Dave Reichert caught the Green River Killer, in that he didn’t. Though just like with Reichert’s claim to fame, that hasn’t stopped the media from parroting Rossi’s revisionist narrative unchallenged.

The Tacoma News Tribune now makes the fourth major paper to endorse Democratic Sen. Patty Murray over Republican challenger and foreclosure speculator Dino Rossi:

Murray has made a political career out of defying expectations. She’s grown into a formidable lawmaker who has proven she can both help lead the Democratic Party and work across the aisle when needed. To turn her out now, when she is at the height of her ability to fight for important state, regional and local projects, would be foolish.

Foolish indeed. Which is why none of these endorsements comes as much of a surprise.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvm0cWgHp6A&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Yup, Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie are spending millions of dollars in secret, undisclosed money, some of it from wealthy foreign donors, to run misleading attack ads against Democrats nationwide. And much of that dirty money is being spent right here in Washington state against Sen. Patty Murray.

And Dino Rossi accuses Murray of being a captive of the other Washington?

Of course, all this is made possible by the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, which overturned a century of established precedent by essentially ruling that money has more free speech rights than speech itself. And the secrecy is aided by the Senate Republicans refusing to let the DISCLOSE Act come to the floor for a vote… a bill that Sen. Murray has strongly supported, and which Rossi would oppose. The result has been to dramatically expand the destructive and undemocratic influence of wealthy special interests:

“We have allowed these 527s to run wild, unfettered, unregulated, not subject to the same rules and regulations as the national parties. And I think that’s been incredibly unhealthy.”
— Republican strategist Ed Gillespie

Yup, that’s the same Ed Gillespie who is working with Rove to fund and run these secretly financed ads on behalf of Dino Rossi. But then, it’s hard to be a Republican these days without also being a shameless hypocrite.

Apparently, I’ve offended the delicate sensibilities of the TNT’s Patrick O’Callahan, who thinks my posts on Dave Reichert’s brain are “vile.”

A rather vile post on the thestranger.com two weeks ago, “What’s wrong with Reichert’s brain?,” speculated that the head injury U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert suffered last February had more or less left the 8th District Republican a confused punch-drunk unfit for Congress.

The author, David Goldstein, cut-and-pasted excerpts from a UCLA medical website into lurid accounts of Reichert’s injury and theorized that the congressman had an atrophied brain – “Which leaves me wondering if the 8th CD is on the verge of re-electing a congressman with an… um… intellectual disability.”

Uh-huh. You know what some people might also find kinda “vile” Patrick, especially coming from the editorial page editor of an almost-major daily newspaper? Completely mischaracterizing somebody else’s words. For example, far from describing Reichert as “a confused punch-drunk unfit for Congress,” I merely quoted Reichert’s own “lurid account” of his injury, cited the medical literature, and then posited this rather measured conclusion:

Thus it is not unreasonable to expect that a brain trauma as severe as that described by Reichert, in a man of his age, and untreated for so long, could very well have resulted in some degree of permanent neurological impairment.

To be honest, Reichert has always struck me as “a confused punch-drunk unfit for Congress,” even before his injury, but those are O’Callahan’s pithy words, not mine.

Of course, it’s not really my words that O’Callahan and others find vile, but rather, the subject matter. What offends O’Callahan is that I would dare speak publicly what his colleagues have been whispering quietly for some time. So in my own defense, I’d like to suggest the following analogy:

Let’s say the Mariners were about to sign a particularly sought after free agent pitcher who, one of the TNT’s sportswriters discovers, had failed to disclose the severity of an injury to the elbow on his throwing arm, suffered during a freak, off-season gardening accident. Would it be vile to report on the details of this injury, and to speculate whether he may have suffered any long term or permanent damage?

No, of course not. We pay pitchers to hurl balls, so an elbow injury would be rather relevant.

Congressmen, on the other hand, we pay to make decisions. To deliberate. To negotiate. To, dare I say, debate.

In other words, we hire our congressmen to use their brains, in the same way we hire pitchers to use their arms.

Dave Reichert, by his own admission, suffered a severe brain trauma — much, much, much more severe than he or his staff at first let on — and while it may be an uncomfortable and sensitive subject to broach, it is completely and utterly relevant to the job he is seeking. And that, I assume, is why both Politico and the Seattle Times eventually picked up the story.

No, if there’s anything “vile” about this incident, it’s the way some local journalists, out of politeness or civility or whatnot, have been complicit in Reichert’s effort to hide his condition from voters.

In yesterday’s editorial endorsement of Patty Murray, the Everett Herald does its best to say nice things about Dino Rossi, but just can’t get past the doctrinaire Republican campaign he’s been running:

Rossi’s uncompromising approaches on taxes, immigration and health-care reform strike us as too rigid to be effective.

What the Herald describes as “rigid” others have ascribed to a veer to the right, presumably in response to Clint Didier and the overhyped Tea Party fad, but that’s a meme I just don’t buy. For one, it’s hard to veer to a position you already hold, and Rossi has always been a far-right-wing candidate on many major issues. But more significantly, a veer to the right just doesn’t make sense as an electoral strategy in a state that, let’s face it, is solidly Democratic, even if by somewhat modest margins.

Some GOPers may not have noticed, but Washington state voters haven’t gone for the Republican candidate in a U.S. Senate race since 1994, in a presidential contest since 1984, and in a gubernatorial race since 1980. The margins aren’t always huge, but the outcome is clear: Washington is a solidly Democratic state.

And the logical conclusion from these results? In order to win in Washington, statewide Republican candidates need to win a significant portion of Democratic voters. And therein lies Rossi’s major weakness: Democratic voters just don’t like him.

Of course, Rossi almost won in 2004, running an all-things-to-all-people tabula rossi campaign against an overconfident Chris Gregoire who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pull the trigger on the barrage of last-minute attack ads that would have propelled her to a (relatively) comfortable victory. But the same swing Democrats who almost carried him into the governors mansion in 2004, knew Rossi better by 2008, and Gov. Gregoire went on to win reelection by a more typical Democratic margin.

And in 2010, Democrats know Rossi even better, a prejudice that would take a substantial GOP turnout advantage, and/or a near sweep of true independents, to overcome. And while Rossi’s certainly right that he stands a better chance of election in a non-presidential year, when Democratic turnout is inevitably lighter, he’d be foolish to think he could win this race without any Democratic support at all.

And it’s hard to see many Democratic voters — self-identified or not — casting their ballots for such a “rigid” Republican.

Some of you might have noticed that my posting has been a bit sparse on HA this past week, and no, it’s not due to the handful of posts I’ve funneled over to Slog. No, my time has mostly been consumed by a short term contract I took because I really believe in the project, and, well, I just plain needed the money. Which is kinda a longish way of getting the  obligatory disclaimer out of the way at the top of the post.

The project I’m working on is Progressive Kick’s $125,000 Win Big by Thinking Small matching contribution program, in which, through Oct. 10, we will match dollar-for-dollar all contributions made through our ActBlue page to select legislative candidates in six states: NC, MI, OH, OR, PA and WI. That’s a $125,000 to raise an additional $125,000… a quarter of a million dollars total to spend in local races.

From the candidates’ perspective, this is a great opportunity to incentivize supporters to give (or give again) by doubling their money. Kind of a no brainer. And some candidates have made good use of this opportunity, like Nick Kahl in Oregon’s HD-49 race, who has already raised $4,684 (plus another $4,684 in matching contributions) in a little over a week. But from the national perspective, there’s a lot more at stake.

The criteria for being included in the Win Big by Thinking Small program were simple: you must be a truly progressive candidate in a close but winnable race, in a state where congressional redistricting is at stake… and it’s that latter prerequisite that, despite my pleading, excluded Washington legislative candidates from consideration. For even if control of the state House and/or Senate were to change hands, our nonpartisan redistricting system makes the process almost entirely immune to partisan gerrymandering. Yet another thing Washington does better than most other states.

But that’s not the case most everyplace else. And that’s why a relatively small investment in electing progressive legislators now, could produce exponential returns over the coming decade:

“The average winner of a competitive House race in 2008 spent $2 million, while a noncompetitive seat can be defended for far less than half that amount. Moving, say, 20 districts from competitive to out-of-reach could save a party $100 million or more over the course of a decade.”
— GOP strategist, Karl Rove

Don’t trust Karl Rove? Read the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s dissertation on “The Economic$ of Redi$tricting,” and The New York Times on “How to Tilt an Election Through Redistricting.”

Of course, electing true progressives at the local level is also the key to building a progressive bench — these are the ranks from which future Democratic stars will rise — so this alone makes Progressive Kick’s matching contribution program worthy of your support. But with redistricting upon us, and our nation as divided as ever along partisan lines, nothing less than control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake.

So if you’re looking to double your money and double your impact, please give today.

Given the circumstances it’s hard to imagine they could have done otherwise, but the Tacoma News Tribune endorsed incumbent Democratic state Rep. Dawn Morrell today in her 25th Legislative District race, citing her influence and independence. But they also spent a couple paragraphs taking a whack at Republican nominee Hans Zeiger and his “wacko commentary.”

Zeiger, 25 and working on a graduate degree, doesn’t have enough seasoning or life experience for the Legislature. He also hasn’t put enough years and mileage between him and some wacko Internet commentary he authored all too recently as a college student.

Zeiger’s comments – which included attacks on the Girl Scouts and a suggestion that Baptists worship a dubious deity – should be a cautionary tale for young people accustomed to spouting off on the Web. Diamonds are forever; so are embarrassing rants cached on Google.

Exactly. Old men like me have the right to dismiss far past embarrassments as “youthful indiscretions,” 25-year-old kids like Zeiger, do not.

Try again in a decade, Hans. In the meanwhile, you need to get about to proving you really have moved into the mainstream, instead of just saying it.

Meet Dino Rossi’s newest campaign consultant:  John Carlson.

From: Dino Rossi
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 5:08 PM
To: Carlson, John
Subject: In case your staff didn’t pass it on to you.

John,

We are going after Patty every day and it has resulted in many articles on Iraq, Lobbyists  ……

We have a media plan in place that’s working.  We are ahead in poll after poll.  She spent millions in the primary and 54% told her she shouldn’t get 6 more years to raise our taxes…..  We spent $150,000 on air in the primary.  Most people are not going to pay attention until after labor day anyway.

Why don’t you call me if you have questions.  We are giving you plenty to talk about with the press releases below but it looks like you are not getting them.

Thanks for your help.

Dino

[Press Release links appended]

From: “Carlson, John”
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 18:47:17 -0700
To: Dino Rossi
Subject: RE: In case your staff didn’t pass it on to you.

Hi Dino,

Some context.

Yesterday I had intended to talk about your campaign for the first 20 minutes of the show.  I mentioned how well the Scott Brown event went, then played the Murray “Dino DC fundraiser” ad and pointed out that she was trying to make you look like the DC establishment while she was battling the insiders to fight for our families.  I said your campaign should aggressively respond to this BS, not least because she has had dozens of DC fundraisers over the years and was taking four times more PAC money than you.

Kaboom.

The lines absolutely caught fire.  Emails had been trickling in since before the primary from people saying that you lacked “fire in the belly” or “passion”, but I wrote them off as Didier supporters.   But yesterday the response that poured in wasn’t coming primarily from Didiots.  They are Rossi supporters who watched the Ds mislead voters by sliming you in 2008 and were going right back to that playbook.   They don’t want it to happen again.  And neither do I.

What started as an extended commentary from me became two hours of listener “venting”, a number of emails, all of which said essentially the same thing, and more calls today.   Not one of them was trying to get you to talk up abortion or any other social issue, but all wanted your campaign to take a tougher line on Murray.   Their thinking is that if the Ds can get away with tossing mud today, they’ll throw more next week, and more the week after that.   But if the tactic backfires, then maybe they’ll think twice.

FOR EXAMPLE:  How about an ad stating that Patty’s deliberate misstatements reveal how “desperate she’s become to stay in Washington, DC.”?  Voters across the board don’t like politicians who want to stay in Washington, DC.   Tie all of her attacks on you to that motive.  Not just to be in the senate, but to be “in DC” where she continues to drift out of touch.

Anyway, that’s the background on what touched all of this off.  I called you yesterday to tell you, but it went straight to voice mail.

I realize there is a difference between the KVI audience and the state at large (as I tell people, KVI is the primary, KOMO is the general).   But please realize that what your campaign heard these past couple days was coming from people who dearly want to see you win.  And with the exception of Terri, no one wants you to win more than me.  Well, OK, maybe the kids…….

JC

First of all, let me just state for the record that I genuinely like and respect John Carlson. He’s always been incredibly gracious and helpful to me, and I tremendously enjoy our conversations both on and off the air. But… if I were Rossi, I’m not sure I’d be taking campaign advice from a guy who garnered only 39 percent of the vote against Gary Locke, for chrisakes, let alone from the crowd wisdom of the callers at KVI.

And yet, just a couple weeks after Carlson suggests “an ad stating that Patty’s deliberate misstatements reveal how ‘desperate she’s become to stay in Washington, DC.’,” that’s pretty much the ad Rossi runs:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_1TDR_Cddc[/youtube]

As much as I generally like it when candidates talk for themselves, Rossi’s eye-on-the-interviewer/shit-eating-smirk demeanor does little to persuade voters that he’s got that “fire in the belly.” Furthermore, while a challenger’s goal is generally to make the election a referendum on the incumbent, Rossi’s first-person kvetching just comes off as narcissistic and defensive — you know, it’s all kinda about him. Which I suppose might even be okay, if so many voters didn’t already dislike him.

And while I know this is an extraordinarily negative year, in which challengers and incumbents alike must go extraordinarily negative in order to survive, Rossi still needs to persuade and collect about 80 percent of the undecided vote, and these are the folks who don’t trust either party. So at some point, Rossi’s gonna have to actually come out for something, other than, you know, just repealing Wall Street reform and rolling back reproductive rights.

TANGENTIAL ASIDE:
One other concern, Dino: you might want to look into who the hell on your staff was so indiscrete as to let this private correspondence ultimately fall into my hands, as I can assure you it didn’t come from Mr. 39 Percent.

And John, when Dino confidently assures you on Sept. 2 that he’s “ahead in poll after poll,” you might want to ask him for a look at his internals. I’m just sayin’.

UPDATE:
In the comment thread, John Carlson defends/explains his use of the term “Didiots”…

25. John Carlson spews:

“Didiots” does not refer to Clint’s voters, gang. It refers to the few of his supporters who refused to support Rossi after he won the primary because he’s not “pure” enough. Think of them the way liberals thought of Ralph Nader after the presidential race of 2000.

09/21/2010 AT 5:26 AM

Of course, for the moment, by that definition, the “Didiots” still include Clint Didier himself.  Still, I can empathize. In fact, that’s exactly my take on the better-than-thou Naderites who arguably cost Al Gore the election in 2000.

So in the spirit of conservative talk radio and all it stands for, I suppose it would be wrong of us to hyperbolize or decontextualize John’s statement for mere rhetorical effect or political gain.

As Cienna reports over on Slog, the panel tasked with reviewing proposals for redeveloping the Seattle Center’s Fun Forest has recommended a Chihuly Museum as the best use of the 1.6 acre site.

(Sigh.)

The whole selection process was of course a sham intended to mollify opponents of the for-profit glass tchotchke gallery, gift shop and catering hall with the semblance of public input, so that all involved could pat themselves on the back that the Seattle Way was appropriately honored. And like trained monkeys, we all scampered into the public meetings and rode our unicycles on command.

As I wrote back in August:

Last night hundreds of people gathered again to voice our opinions about the best public use of the Fun Forest site at the Seattle Center, and once again we couldn’t help but get the vibe that we were just being humored. Oh, the committee and the Chihuly gift-shop/catering-hall folks at least tried to make a better show of it this time as compared to the insulting propaganda-fest of the first public meeting, but it was still just a show. I didn’t talk to anybody who believed  a decision hasn’t already been made.

The problem is, as much as the committee will ultimately claim that this was a fair and open process, there’s nothing fair or open about taking a year and a half to secretly negotiate the details of the Chihuly proposal, and then publishing an RFP tailored to the same while giving everybody else just six weeks to respond. And so yeah, I kinda resented being there last night playing the role of “Man in Auditorium” in the Seattle Center’s unintentional amateur production of Our Town.

And like most bad theater, it’s not hard to predict how this play ends.

Yup, a complete and total sham.

That said, I suppose I should take a little satisfaction in helping to pressure the Space Needle folks to add to the proposal $1 million for an “artist-designed playground,” plus $50,000 a year for maintenance. But a million bucks doesn’t buy you a lot of playground these days, so it strikes me as an awfully cheap price in exchange for building an 8-foot wall around a couple acres of scarce, in-city park space.

Ah well, money talks, and all that.

As I briefly mentioned earlier today, we got a new Rasmussen Poll in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Dino Rossi (R). The poll shows Murray leading Rossi 51% to 46%. The poll surveyed 750 likely voters on the 14th of September.

With this new poll, we have now had seven polls taken (and released to the public) over the past month:

	Start	End			%	%	%
Poll	date	date	Size	MOE	D	R	Diff
Rasmussen	14-Sep	14-Sep	750	4.0	51	46	D+5.0
CNN Time OR	10-Sep	14-Sep	906	3.0	53	44	D+9.0
Elway	09-Sep	12-Sep	500	4.5	50	41	D+9.0
Rasmussen	31-Aug	31-Aug	750	4.0	46	48	R+2.0
DSCC	28-Aug	31-Aug	968	—	50	45	D+5.0
SurveyUSA	18-Aug	19-Aug	618	4.0	45	52	R+7.0
Rasmussen	18-Aug	18-Aug	750	4.0	48	44	D+4.0

In what follows, I’ll ignore the DSCC poll. Not that I have any reason to doubt the poll. Rather, the poll was specifically released because the results favored Murray, thus clearly violating a statistical assumption used for the analysis.

Murray leads in four of the remaining six polls. As usual, I’ll begin with a Monte Carlo simulation analysis of the most recent poll (FAQ). Taking just the new Rasmussen polls there were 728 respondents who went for Murray or Rossi. Following a million simulated elections, Murray tallies 835,577 wins to Rossi’s 158,253 wins.

The evidence offered by this most recent poll suggests that Murray would have an 84.1% chance of beating Rossi if an election had occurred two days ago. Here is the distribution of outcomes from the simulated elections:

With three polls released over three days, we might as well combine all of ’em. Of the total of 2,156 individuals sampled, 2,061 go for Rossi or Murray. Murray gets 51.6% and Rossi gets 44.0% of the “votes.” The simulation analysis gives Murray 994,327 wins to Rossi’s 5,404 wins.

Thus, these three polls offer evidence that Murray would have a 99.5% chance of beating Rossi in an election held over that past week.

Rossi does a little better if we combine the last month of polls (all but the DSCC poll in the table). Now we end up with a sample of 4,274 respondents, of which 4056 are for Murray or Rossi. The raw percentages are 49.0% Murray and 45.9% Rossi. The Monte Carlo analysis gives Murray 933,103 wins to Rossi’s 65,250 wins.

If the past month of polling is representative of Washington state voters, the evidence suggests that Murray would win an election held now with a 93.5% probability.

Going back a month or two things did not look nearly so rosy for Murray. This is clear from a graph of the polling in this race:

See that dip that occurs over the summer? When the early September Rasmussen poll came out showing Rossi leading Murray 48% to 46%, I offered a theory:

There is another reason I am not (yet) too concerned. August 31 is still in the “dog days of summer” around here. In my many years of following polling in Washington state, I’ve learned that Washingtonians become very negative in the summer, only to perk right back up in the fall. I can’t really explain it…I’ve just observed it in approval numbers. Murray probably gets the worst of if from the summer malaise. That is, Murray doesn’t really have to worry about close results like these for another month….

I’m such a pessimist…it only took a couple of weeks.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

Former Tacoma News Tribune political reporter (and avid Philadelphia Eagles fan) Ken Vogel reports for Politico on the sudden plethora of political events scheduled for this 9/11 compared to recent years.

Some, like dueling New York City rallies over the proposed Burlington Coat Factory Mosque, are specifically timed to commemorate the day, while others, like Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s Razorbacks tailgate party just treat the date like any other Saturday. But one event in particular stands out for its willingness to cheapen the memory of the attack by expropriating it for political gain:

Washington GOP Senate nominee Dino Rossi’s speech at a Tacoma-area Republican women’s club fundraiser dubbed “Let’s Roll on to Victory” (a take on the exhortation of a passenger on a doomed flight who fought back the hijackers during the 2001 attacks)…

Diana Landahl, president of the Gig Harbor (Wash.) Republican club that is holding the “Let’s Roll on to Victory” fundraiser, said “it was kind of coincidental that we ended up on 9/11, but once we realized it, we decided to make note of this.”

Landahl told Politico that “people seem to be forgetting what happened to us on 9/11,” and of course, what better way to keep this memory fresh than to hold a closed-door, high-donor, political fundraiser at a private residence behind the closed gates of the exclusive Canterwood Golf & Country Club?

When Todd Beamer yelled “Let’s roll!” as he and his fellow passengers heroically stormed the cockpit of United Flight 93 in a suicide mission that ultimately ended in ashes in a field in Pennsylvania, I’m sure this is exactly what he had in mind. Hell, perhaps next year, Rossi should celebrate the day by making the phrase a theme of one of his real estate seminars, as in: “Let’s Roll on to Profits in the Lucrative Foreclosure Market!”

Admittedly, I’m not that sentimental a guy, and I don’t really expect candidates to forever take the day off, especially this close to such a contentious election. But let’s be honest: had it been Patty Murray who shamelessly scheduled a “Let’s roll”-themed fundraiser on 9/11, Rossi’s people would have been all over her for cheapening both a national tragedy and the personal suffering of the victims and their families. And no doubt our local media would have obliged by covering the “controversy.”

But Rossi, well, we all hold him to a lower standard, so don’t expect to see his thoughtless fit of poor taste mentioned on the 11 o’clock news.

NY Times

The $83 million local taxpayers still owe on the Kingdome, ten years after it was demolished, gets a mention in today’s New York Times article on the extraordinary bad deal publicly financed stadiums turn out to be, but that’s nothing compared to the most Giant boondoggle of them all:

It’s the gift that keeps on taking. The old Giants Stadium, demolished to make way for New Meadowlands Stadium, still carries about $110 million in debt, or nearly $13 for every New Jersey resident, even though it is now a parking lot.

And that’s just the debt on Giants Stadium alone. Three and a half decades after workers first broke ground, New Jersey taxpayers still owe $266 million on the entire Meadowlands project.

So I guess we got off relatively easy with the Kingdome. How many years we taxpayers will be paying off the bonds on Safeco and Qwest fields after they’ve been abandoned or demolished, now that’s another question. And what more useful or productive purposes we might have put that money to, rather than padding the pockets of billionaires, well, we can only speculate at this time when city, county and state governments are facing unprecedented deficits.

As the NY Times article concludes:

With more than four decades of evidence to back them up, economists almost uniformly agree that publicly financed stadiums rarely pay for themselves. The notable successes like Camden Yards in Baltimore often involve dedicated taxes or large infusions of private money. Even then, using one tax to finance a stadium can often steer spending away from other, perhaps worthier, projects.

“Stadiums are sold as enormous draws for events, but the economics are clear that they aren’t helping,” said Andrew Moylan, the director of government affairs at the National Taxpayers Union. “It’s another way to add insult to injury for taxpayers.”

An interesting side note, the new $1.6 billion dollar Meadowlands Stadium both the Jets and the Giants will inaugurate this fall, was built entirely with private money, so it can be done. By comparison, taxpayers picked up the cost for 71% of Paul Allen’s Qwest Field. Go figure.