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The panel is joined by Mike Lux of Open Left to discuss his new book The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came To Be. Some introspection about bloggers, journalists, and progressive politics happens.

Next, the panel collectively holds their nose and looks at the “situation” in California. Has Prop 13 lived up to its promise? What does the California situation tell us about the future in other states with pending TABOR-like legislation? Would a successful I-1033 turn Washington state into a dysfunctional disaster, à la California?

The conversation turns to pork. And how did your state’s Senators vote on the F-22s that both Obama and the Military didn’t want? At least we received money for ferry system infrastructure. Speaking of transportation infrastructure, Seattle’s light rail service started this week. Will people ride it and actually enjoy it? Or is there a telling (one-day) trend toward low ridership?

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Mike Lux of Open Left, and Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard

The show is 48:41, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_jul_21_2009.mp3]

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

Both Crosscut’s Skip Berger and HA’s Carl Ballard took advantage of light rail to explore South Seattle. Both got off at Othello Station, both walked around the surprisingly active and distinctive neighborhood (surprising, at least, to outsiders), and both stopped for a bite to eat at one of the many Asian restaurants that dot the area.

And both came away with the same impression of how light rail will open up the once hidden neighborhoods along its path to the rest of the city.  First Carl:

The point of this (admittedly overindulgent) post is that light rail opens up a piece of the city for those of us without roots there and who make most of our trips without a car. Sure, this is something I could do yesterday if I’d wanted to. But it’s much easier to just get on a train than it is to figure out the bus schedule or to find parking if I’d wanted to drive. And I know exactly how to get home: hop on one of the trains that come every few minutes.

And then Skip:

For Seattleites who rarely get down to this part of the Rainier Valley, I predict Othello become a destination, even a place for a quick lunch for downtown workers who need a break. You can get there, have lunch, and be back downtown in less than an hour. I got off here and popped into the Huong Viet Cafe and bought a delicious pork sandwich. If I worked downtown, I might do that regularly.

[…] That’s one of the intriguing social prospects of the light rail line: it makes visible parts of the city that are often ignored. The trek down MLK, passing the new housing development, the old junkyards, the heavy machinery, the chain-link fence neighborhoods with “beware of the dog” signs and cars parked in the yard, the immigrant enclaves, the strange ethnic churches, the decaying strip malls — it helps put a big chunk of Seattle onto the visible map, at the very least for the tens of thousands of folks who will be taking light rail to the airport and might never otherwise see this part of the city.

As for me, I had the opposite experience, embarking from Othello Station, and suddenly finding myself in the middle of a bustling downtown Seattle street scene…a trip I am likely to take more often, now freed from the irritation and inconvenience of traffic (by car or by bus) and the hassle and/or expense of downtown parking. And at either end of the line, local merchants will benefit from the traffic of folks like Skip, Carl and me.

I was tempted to describe our explorations as intra-city tourism, but in fact, it is much more than that. Tourism implies a visit from outside, whereas light rail will ultimately serve to tie our city (and our region) closer together in a way that freeways and buses never have. Light rail, through its speed, comfort, reliability and permanence contracts the landscape, changing the dimension by which we experience distance from space to time, much in the same way as a high-rise elevator: nobody thinks of the fifth and fifty-fifth floors as being separated by fifty flights of stairs, and nobody plans their travel within the building accordingly. Likewise, when downtown Seattle, or any other stop along the way is always, say, 20 minutes away—not sometimes less, sometimes much, much more, depending on traffic—the boundaries between our neighborhoods will begin to blur, not in distinctiveness, but in distance.

The debate over light rail has largely focused on whether or not it is an efficient means of moving commuters, and no doubt commuters will always comprise the bulk of its ridership, but its impact on our region will be much greater that which could be achieved simply by giving commuters a better bus. Because it changes the way we view our region and use our various neighborhoods, light rail will make Greater Seattle both larger and smaller at the same time, an apparent paradox future generations will come to take for granted.

Over at Publicola, Josh goes out of his way to say “Thank You Rob McKenna” for saving light rail from implosion during Sound Transit’s troubled early years:

[H]ad the crisis in 2000 gone undetected, stand up leaders like Joni Earl would never have been asked to step in. The project would have quietly failed, and the agency would have simply dissolved around 2003 or so. It took a loud crisis, to wake everyone up and get the project back on track.

And while the press (and I’m proud to have played a role ) deserves some of the credit for spotlighting the agency’s financial disasters, it was dissident Sound Transit board member Rob McKenna (the others were party line cheer leaders) who nudged the press to take the closer look. He already had taken a closer look—and his spread sheets were more than compelling. […] I’d say Rob McKenna (ironically, given that his agenda was to bring the project down) was one of the most important Sound Transit board members there has been.

Yeah, well, I suppose, maybe, but it’s worth pointing out that just because McKenna worked as hard as he could to discredit Sound Transit and its early leadership, doesn’t mean that’s its management woes wouldn’t have otherwise been uncovered and corrected. I mean, its not like Sound Transit didn’t (and doesn’t) still have plenty of powerful enemies without him.

So while it sure is amusing to give McKenna ironic credit for unintentionally saving the rail line he tried to destroy, in truth, he was merely a conduit and public voice for a cabal of anti-rail partisans (you think he actually compiled those spreadsheets himself?), so I think Josh overstates his case.

At least when it comes to Sound Transit Phase I.

Phase II on the other hand, and the East Link extension that will comprise the bulk of the project… now that will be McKenna’s bastard child without a doubt. For if not for McKenna’s insistence on mandating the onerous “subarea equity” provisions into Sound Transit’s financing scheme, the agency would never have had the revenue stream available to make East Link light rail possible.

At McKenna’s insistence the Sound Transit taxing district was divided into five subareas, with an equity provision requiring that taxes raised in each subarea be spent on projects directly benefiting its residents. With the bulk of the Central Link line running through Seattle, revenues generated in the North King subarea have already been fully bonded for years to come to pay for construction, maintenance and operation of the recently opened line.

But the relatively minor improvements thus far constructed on the Eastside—mostly park and rides, bus ramps and expanded bus service—have been much less capital intensive. This leaves oodles of East King subarea Phase I tax revenue still coming in, unencumbered by existing debt, and available to bond a billion or two of the several billion dollars needed to cross I-90 and build out through Bellevue to Redmond in Phase II’s East Link plan.

Subarea equity was meant to cripple Sound Transit, and it has; financial constraints are one of the reasons it takes Sound Transit so long to complete construction. Indeed, without the billion or so of federal grants—money McKenna went to DC to lobby to block—the existing line and the University District extension might not have been possible.

But now that Sound Transit has survived to open the first segment and convince voters to expand its revenues to pay for Phase II, the subarea equity provision has come back to bite the anti-rail schemers in the ass, enabling Sound Transit to deliver to voters a much more ambitious East Link line than Phase II revenues alone could afford. That is, through the magic of subarea equity, East King Phase I taxing authority is now subsidizing Phase II construction.

So, yeah, thank you Rob McKenna, for making East Link possible… and so much more difficult for you and your anti-rail buddies to kill off.

It’s a good thing for Susan Hutchison that she’s expected to breeze through the August primary into the general election for King County Executive, for as Richard Pope reveals in the comment threads, it looks like she probably couldn’t count on herself to deliver a crucial vote:

Someone should make an issue of Susan Hutchison’s voting record. Susan S. Hutchison (DOB: 03/24/1954) failed to vote in the August or September primary elections in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007. […] She didn’t vote in the presidential primaries in 2000 and 2008 either…

Eh… who bothers to vote in odd-year primaries anyway, what with only those peripheral local races on the ballot?

UPDATE:
Richard points out that the other four county executive candidates all have perfect general and primary voting records from 2000 through 2008.

More people are starting to notice that we’ve had a very big problem in our City Attorney’s office [emphasis in the original]:

The executive committee had recommended a sole endorsement of incumbent City Attorney Tom Carr. But a delegate from the stagehands’ union reportedly stood up, and said that Carr’s involvement in Operation Sobering Thought, a bar and nightclub sting, “really hurt our members and he was too punitive,” said one of the delegates, on the condition of anonymity. Several delegates spoke against Carr, according to another man exiting onto the street, who said, “They think Carr could have been more fiscally responsible” and “he has cost the city a lot of money for his decisions.” The man added, “In the past, delegates spoke up for Carr, but they didn’t like what he has done his last years in office.” Several other members spoke in favor of Carr’s challenger Pete Holmes. Carr didn’t get a sufficient number of votes for an endorsement; in fact, Carr’s was the only executive recommendation that the group didn’t ratify. The executive committee may recommend dual endorsement—or a sole endorsement of Holmes—after the primary election.

Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey stopped by Drinking Liberally last night, and I immediately groused about how a dearth of irritating editorials in recent weeks has reduced me to dumpster diving over at Crosscut. Ramsey explained that he’d just returned from vacation, and that my complaint would be remedied in the morning with an editorial he penned on trade.

He didn’t disappoint: “Anti-trade bill that would hurt Washington state trade jobs should be stopped.”

At the risk of destroying his credibility with his co-workers, I have to admit that Ramsey is my favorite Times editorial writer (though as I explained to him last night, “it’s a pretty low bar”), largely because I find his columns both readable and consistent. The latter quality I attribute to his passionate libertarianism, a passion clearly on display in today’s editorial:

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act makes private commerce subject to the moral imperialism of advocates who do not conduct trade and don’t care about it.

Under the bill, if a foreign trading partner’s government doesn’t have “adequate labor and environmental regulations” — the adequacy determined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government hasn’t “taken effective steps to combat and prevent private and public corruption” — the effectiveness defined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government doesn’t have “transparency” and “due process of law” to suit American tastes, the trade can be stopped.

Uh-huh. Passion… check. Consistency… check. Facts… not so much.

Putting aside his efforts to dismiss those of us who care about human rights and environmental protection as mere “busybodies” (you know, “busybodies” like the Pope), Ramsey’s passionate hyperbole substantially misrepresents a bill that doesn’t actually include the authority to “stop” anything. Rather, the stated purpose of the TRADE Act is to review existing trade agreements, draw up standards on which to base future agreements and renegotiations, and provide greater Congressional oversight of the process, its main provisions consisting of:

• Require a comprehensive review of existing trade agreements with an emphasis on economic results, enforcement and compliance and an analysis of non-tariff provisions in trade agreements.
• Spell out standards for labor and environmental protections, food and product safety, national security exceptions and remedies that must be included in new trade pacts.
• Set requirements regarding public services, farm policy, investment, government procurement and affordable medicines and compare them with components of current trade agreements.
• Require the president to submit renegotiation plans for current trade pacts prior to negotiating new agreements and prior to congressional consideration of pending agreements.
• Create a committee made up of the chairs and ranking members of each committee whose jurisdiction is affected by trade agreements to review the president’s plan for renegotiations.
• Restore congressional oversight of trade agreements.

All existing trade treaties remain in force, and this bill provides no authority to modify or “stop” them. As for future agreements, the language within the bill is far from anti-trade or heavy handed, for example, Section 4, Subsection D:

(D) provide that failures to meet the labor standards required by the trade agreement shall be subject to effective dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms and penalties that are included in the core text of the trade agreement…

In truth, the “busybodies” Ramsey refers to are members of Congress, and even if they were to determine that a particular trading partner was, say, violating fundamental human rights (defined in the act as “the rights enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights”), they still wouldn’t have the power to unilaterally “stop” the trade as Ramsey implies. Rather, under future treaties, our government’s recourse would be to pursue “effective dispute resolution.”

Hardly a draconian, anti-trade provision.

Ramsey is right that Washington is perhaps the most trade dependent state in the nation, which makes trade a sensitive subject for members of both parties. And if anybody doubts the extent to which “free traders” like Ramsey control the debate in this state, look no further than the fact that none of our state’s House delegation are among the 110 U.S. representatives who co-sponsored the TRADE Act… not even typically reliable progressives like Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee.

But Ramsey does a disservice to our state and to his readers when he reduces a 44-page bill into a 229-word, knee-jerk screed against trade restrictions of any kind:

The idea behind this bill is that commerce is bad and is making workers in America poor. Tell that to workers assembling aircraft, writing software, or moving containers on the docks.

Yeah, well, tell that to the tens of thousands of Washington workers who have seen their jobs shipped overseas to low-wage nations with lax environmental, workplace and product safety standards, and often no right to organize at all.

I appreciate that Ramsey’s objections to this bill are consistent with his steadfast libertarianism; in fact, I almost respect it. But rather than foster informed public debate on this issue, his intent appears to be to quash it, and I expect better than that from my favorite Seattle Times editorial board member.

Earlier today, Goldy discussed the race for Seattle City Attorney and incumbent Tom Carr’s attempts to misrepresent his opponent’s qualifications for the office. Pete Holmes initially became Carr’s opponent in this race after he became so infuriated by his attempts to deal with him from his position as the attorney on the citizen’s police oversight board that he decided to challenge him. Here’s the latest polling on the race:

The results show a nearly 3:1 lead for Tom Carr, but 70% of the electorate remains undecided. Women and voters 35-49 both have an undecided count over 70%. It’s over 80% for Republicans. Of decided voters, Carr still maintains a margin of nearly 4:1 amongst respondents 50-64 and over 4:1 with those 65 and older.

The vast majority of voters just aren’t paying attention to this race. But they should be. Tom Carr has been the City Attorney for Seattle for the past eight years and has repeatedly shown himself to be overzealous in pursuit of nanny state crusades and completely out of touch with the voters of the city. Dominic Holden recently provided a recap of his horrendous track record:

– Tom Carr fought against I-75, the initiative to make marijuana law enforcement the lowest priority of Seattle Police.

– Since the passage of I-75, Carr has actually prosecuted a higher percentage of the pot cases referred to his office.

– After a citywide sweep called Operation Sobering Thought, Carr tried to send 27 bar employees to jail for up to a year for various offenses such as serving minors (none of them were successfully prosecuted).

– Carr used city resources to unsuccessfully appeal – all the way up to federal court – a free speech case against a balloon artist who claimed he didn’t need a permit to do his thing at Seattle Center, and has threatened to waste even more money appealing it to the Supreme Court.

– He aggressively impounded the cars of people with unpaid parking tickets until the state Supreme Court ruled that he was breaking the law. The fiasco later cost the city $1.3 million in a class-action lawsuit.

– He once briefly attempted to threaten several Seattle Times reporters with jail time if they didn’t reveal their confidential sources.

As Dominic mentioned, the office of City Attorney in most other places is not an elected official. While it feels nice to have direct influence over the person who does this job, what tends to happen instead is that political creatures like Carr can hold onto an office because voters tend to have too little bandwidth to follow these smaller races. But this one’s too important for that now, and Seattle really can’t afford another four years of this.

As Erica reported yesterday over at Publicola, the whisper campaign regarding Seattle City Attorney candidate Pete Holmes is no longer a whisper, with both incumbent Tom Carr and his campaign manager Cindi Laws now publicly and repeatedly challenging Holmes’ eligibility for the office.

Today, Carr reiterated that view. “The charter provision says that you have to be both active [with the bar] and engaged in the practice of law in Seattle,” Carr said this morning. “He has not been practicing law—taking on clients, giving advice, doing the things that lawyers do.”

Well, here is what the City Charter says about the qualifications for the office of City Attorney:

The City Attorney shall be an attorney of the Supreme Court of the State, and have been in the practice of his or her profession in The City of Seattle for at least four years next prior to his or her election.

And here is what the Washington State Bar Association says about Holmes’ status as an active attorney:

Clearly, Holmes has been an “attorney of the Supreme Court of the State” since 1986 (five years longer than Carr, by the way), so that part of the requirement seems beyond dispute. As for the requirement that the City Attorney have been in the practice of law in Seattle for at least four years prior to the election, here’s what Holmes told me via email:

My Washington bar license has always been on “active” status. After 16 years in the private sector, City Council appointed me as the lawyer member of the OPA Review Board in 2002 (which expressly requires a WSBA member in good standing), where I practiced my profession in public service until the last quarter of 2008. I’ve been in private practice at Crocker Kuno PLLC since the first quarter of 2009. I was fully authorized to practice law during my OPARB tenure; I just didn’t accept private, fee-paying clients—and presumably Carr hasn’t either since 2002.

Now, I’m no attorney (much to my mother’s chagrin), but I don’t read anything in the City Charter that says anything about taking on private clients. If Holmes has been an active member of the Bar, and such membership was a requirement of his appointment to the OPA Review Board, then that sure sounds like practicing law to me, for why require an active attorney if not to benefit from his legal advice? And how, in this sense, is Holmes legal service to the city really any different from Carr’s legal service, except by volume?

But all this niggling, legalist nitpicking is really beside the point, for if Carr truly believed that Holmes was technically ineligible to run for the office of City Attorney, the appropriate course of action would have been not a whisper campaign, but rather a legal challenge to his eligibility under RCW 29A.68.011, alleging that Holmes’ name “is about to be wrongfully placed upon the ballots,” and to be filed in King County Superior Court “no later than the second Friday following the closing of the filing period for nominations for such office“… a deadline long since passed.

I mean, Carr is the sitting City Attorney for chrisakes. I assume he knows this stuff.

No, instead Carr and Laws appear to be raising questions about Holmes’ technical qualifications merely as an underhanded means of raising questions about Holmes’ professional qualifications for the office. “Hey look… this guy is such a crappy lawyer he doesn’t understand the law enough to realize he isn’t even eligible to run for the office!” That seems to be the message coming out of the Carr campaign.

What this sort of cynical, political maneuvering says about Carr’s own professionalism, I’ll leave up to you.

The podcast makes another surprise return from its summer vacation, giving Goldy and his panel of bloggers a chance to attack the political issues of our day over beer and nachos. The panel takes delight in the splendidly bewildering surrender of Gov. Sarah Palin. After a brief sojourn into rumors about imminent indictments, the panel delves into the big question of whether Palin has spoiled herself politically.

[14:01] It was a big day as Senator Elect Al Franken shortened his title to just Senator Al Franken. Goldy finds in this great hope for foul-mouthed politicos everywhere. The panel wonders when the sobered former satirist will again be able to get his humor back on.

[24:01] Finally, the panel examines Initiative 1033 that would limit future state spending to inflation plus population growth. Two major flaws of the initiative are discussed—the downward ratchet from economic dips and use of the wrong inflation index. If passed, will I-1033 cause Washington State to follow in the dreadful fiscal footsteps of California? A raucous debate ensues over whether angry scare tactics are the right approach for fighting the initiative.

Goldy was joined by Group News Blog publisher Jesse Wendel, Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, and Horses Ass’ Will Kelly-Kamp.

The show is 47:04, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_jul_7_2009.mp3]

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

Victoria Jackson, who made a career out of acting stupid on SNL, serves up something that is rather hard to characterize.

Obama legally kills babies and now he can legally kill Grandmas!

Hitler did this. He killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn’t like. Hitler also controlled the media. (Where’s the public debate between scientists on “Climate Change/Global Warming?”) Hitler had the VW bug invented as the state car. What will O’s nationalized car be? So… kill off the weak. That’s the plan. Tax the workers to death. Erase the middle class. Sounds like the evil governments we studied in high school long ago. The evil governments were : kings, oligarchies, facist, socialist, and communist. Now it’s called the Obama Administration. Sounds like candy or a rock band.

Believe it or not, the piece gets better (or worse, depending of course on your point of view and mood) from there, as Jackson goes on to harass an innocent Burbank gift shop owner with wingnut ramblings, then wonders why she is met with silence.

I wonder if Jackson and Dennis Miller hang around Burbank together, worrying about nationalized cars? The burdens these folks carry, I tell you. My heart aches for Jackson, who is certainly old enough to be a grandma and is clearly rather frightened by it all. She should get out of her comfort zone and drive over to Malibu or something.

(I saw it here.)

As Erica points out over at Publicola, the Seattle Times has a habit of not exactly telling the entire story when it comes to light rail safety.

The Seattle Times’ version of the story: Sound Transit train “T-bones” car, injuring its driver, in “the third incident involving a test train in Rainier Valley” (a fact that’s mentioned twice in the brief story).

Not mentioned: The fact that the driver made an illegal left turn; the fact that he drove directly into the path of an oncoming train; and the fact that police gave him a ticket for running a red light. By omitting major facts about the collision, the Times makes it sound as if the train somehow jumped the tracks and attacked the car—a take that’s right in line with the Times’ongoing series of alarmist stories and op/eds about the supposed danger of light rail trains.

All of which raises an interesting question:

A medical marijuana dispensary is now operating in Spokane:

After years of buying marijuana illegally, Judy now has a doctor’s note that says marijuana is a proper medication to ease her pain.

She buys her supply from a shop called Change. It opened two months ago and is run by Christopher Stevens, Noah Zarate and Scott Shupe.

People smoke and buy marijuana at the Northwest Boulevard store, and police know about it. The owners wrote a letter to Spokane police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick about their business; her reply stated that her officers are committed to enforcing local, state and federal laws.

Stevens, a candidate for Spokane City Council, took her reply to mean police would not interfere with the business.

I hope Stevens is correct and that the police will leave them alone. Unfortunately, that may not be the case.

Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor John Grasso handles most medical marijuana-related crimes. Police often consult him before pursuing a case, he said.

Grasso thinks dispensaries operating in Spokane, including Change, on Northwest Boulevard, are illegal because they provide marijuana to more than one person.

But it will take a police investigation to trigger prosecution, he said.

The factors in this equation haven’t changed. Either patients are going to spend their money in a safe environment with their money going towards local entrepreneurs and the local tax base or they’re going to spend their money on the black market with their money going towards organized crime groups – usually from Mexico – who have the resources to set up massive farms throughout the state and are willing to shoot it out with the police if necessary to protect their profits.

Spokane police appear to be doing the smart thing for now and looking the other way. These things sometimes change very quickly and unexpectedly though. The risk of opening up an actual dispensary in the state has been great enough that not even Seattle has any operating out in the open yet. As a result, authorized patients either grow for themselves or find someone to grow for them. Robbers or overzealous police actions sometimes wipe out a patient’s supply for weeks or even months.

Allowing and regulating dispensaries like Change is the solution to this problem. The Obama Administration opened the door for doing this by saying that they wouldn’t interfere with state dispensary laws. Three states now allow them – California, New Mexico, and Rhode Island (Rhode Island’s House recently overrode the Governor’s veto with a unanimous vote). For Olympia to leave dispensaries like Change operating in semi-legal limbo is just another failure in a long line of legislative failures on this issue.

UPDATE: A Seattle-based dispensary operator will be interviewed on KUOW today at noon.

Write a post that puts the mayoral aspirations of Jan Drago or Joe Mallahan in a less than flattering light, and I hear crickets chirping in the comment threads; maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, nobody seems to really care. But dare to critique Mike McGinn and his campaign, or even just diss his electoral prospects, and man, it’s Katie bar the door, my threads and email overflowing with lengthy defenses of the environmental and community activist cum politician, along with an occasional attack on my own credibility and/or motives.

You gotta appreciate the passion. From the public and private polls I’ve seen thus far, McGinn doesn’t appear to enjoy broad support, but unlike the rest of the field, what support he has sure does run deep. Compare that to Mayor Greg Nickels, whose campaign slogan at the moment appears to be “I’m Not So Bad!”

This passionate support for McGinn—and in a similar vein, City Council candidate and fellow Sierra clubby Mike O’Brien—is on display in the thread from last Friday, a post in which I suggested the two Mikes were having trouble garnishing sole endorsements from environmental groups and leaders due to lingering resentment over Sierra Club’s failure to work and play well with others.

Plenty of folks took issue with both my analysis and my facts, and you can read their complaints for yourself. (That, by the way, is what these comment threads are really for, believe it or not… not the usual poop-flinging that tends characterize HA.) But I also heard directly from the two Mikes themselves, and there’s no doubt their personal passion more than matches that of their supporters.

O’Brien called me at home Saturday morning, and we had a long, pleasant, chatty and occasionally tangential conversation (I tend to be chatty and tangential, so no surprise there) on a wide ranging number of issues. Mostly O’Brien called to staunchly defend the Sierra Club and its reputation in the broader environmental community… so much so, that at some point I paused to remind him that as a candidate for office, he should probably spend some time actually promoting himself. (He also used the best excuse ever for getting off the phone with me:  “I gotta go, my neighbor’s house is on fire.”)

O’Brien wanted to set the record straight that Sierra Club opposed the Roads & Transit measure all the way, never made any promises to support it, and wasn’t alone in their opposition. He also touted Sierra Club’s hard work and determination to get a transit-only measure on the 2008 ballot, and ultimately passed, and pointed to their close cooperation with other environmental organizations as evidence of Sierra’s good working relationship.

All that may be true, but, as I pointed out, there were many in the broader environmental coalition who voiced a sense of betrayal at the time, and there are lingering recriminations today. These hard feelings may or may not be deserved, but they exist nonetheless, and that was really all that post was about.

For his part, McGinn defended himself, his campaign and the Sierra Club in a rather lengthy and pointed email. He too took umbrage at the notion that Sierra Club broke any promises on Roads & Transit, and defended its standing in the broader coalition. But he seemed most irritated by a prior post in which I admittedly cast aspersions on his dedication to campaigning. I wrote:

Successfully running for office, especially against an entrenched incumbent, is a near full time job, yet the last couple times I saw McGinn, he was just out riding his bike.  Not doorbelling, not fundraising, not working the crowd, just out enjoying the sunshine and riding his bike.  Good for him, I suppose. It’s a healthy passtime. But with that kinda political work ethic, I don’t think that’s a buzz you hear coming from his campaign, Craig, but rather the hiss of the air slowly escaping from McGinn’s political tires.

And McGinn responds:

The second factual error related to the statement I am “just out riding my bike” as proof that I don’t have a political work ethic. The one day you actually referenced that you saw me I was not “just our riding my bike.”  I was biking back from the West Seattle Water Taxi to my house.  I had spent the day at the Alki Summer Streets with four volunteers handing out campaign materials and talking to voters, as well as talking to folks on the Water Ferry on the ride out and back. My daughter had a scheduled soccer game at the Interbay field, which I was hoping to catch the end of.  I did not see her play, her game was already over.  Which was too bad, since the long days of campaigning and weekend events have cut my time with my kids down to very little. Maybe you should ask them how many hours I am working.  They tease me about the short amount of time between getting home and then getting on the computer or phone.

In either case, a quick phone call to me would have prevented those errors, or at least gave you more info for your column to compare to “the scuttlebutt” other people are telling you.  Other things you state are opinion, but opinions usually come after looking at the facts.  And if you ever want to learn about what my campaign is doing, feel free to give me a call.  I am happy to take a few minutes from campaign work if it helps provide some context and depth for your reporting.

Ouch. To be honest, I really only used the anecdote of McGinn on his bike as an opportunity to set up my buzz versus hiss quip. Ah well, sometimes I guess I let my snark get the best of me, so… um… sorry.

McGinn goes on to talk about issues and endorsements and issues—mostly his opposition to the deep bore tunnel, a position we both share—and again, passionately so. Which brings me back to my main point.

I love passionate politics; it’s something we don’t see enough of around here, and it’s something the two Mike’s clearly share. And if they can translate their own passion, and that of their core supporters into a broader campaign, then they’ll both stand a good chance at winning in November.

I haven’t paid enough attention to the city council races to know if O’Brien is anywhere near that point, but I just don’t see it happening for McGinn. Part of it his anemic fundraising; money isn’t everything in politics, but it is the primary means of getting your message out to the broader electorate in a citywide race, and McGinn doesn’t have nearly enough of it. And part of it is certainly the inherent challenge of an environmentalist going up against an incumbent who is perceived to be strong on environmental issues.

But even those two weaknesses aside, I just haven’t seen an effective message coming from McGinn (or for that matter, any of the mayoral challengers). Passion yes, message no. And that doesn’t make for a winning campaign.

A couple weeks ago I challenged Rep. Dave Reichert to prove me wrong about my cynicism over his self-proclaimed moderation, by taking the lead on climate change legislation:

Indeed, not only does Reichert have the chance to cast one of the only Republican votes for this legislation, he has the unparalleled opportunity to be the lone Republican getting out in front of this bill and leading the way. He and his handlers must know that climate change legislation has overwhelming support in his district—a pro-environment, hydro-powered district less economically dependent on fossil fuels than nearly any in the nation—so if he really wants to prove his moderation and independence (not to mention his legislative competence), now’s the time to show a little leadership and help shepherd this important piece of legislation through Congress.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Well, Reichert never took the lead on this legislation, but he was one of only 8 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote for it, so credit where credit is due, I guess. Still, he followed his usual pattern of voting with his party on procedural votes (here, here and here) before flipping sides on final passage, and as CQ points out, this vote on its on own doesn’t much qualify as a profile in courage:

Most of the 52 House members who didn’t side with their party on Friday’s climate change vote represent congressional districts that backed the presidential nominee of the opposite party in last year’s election.

A lot of these members will face competitive races in 2010, and no doubt they will be brandishing this against-the-grain vote as evidence of their political independence.

He certainly will. But whether Reichert’s independence is driven by conscience or expedience remains to be seen.

Over on Publicola, Josh bashes his head against a poll:

A new survey USA poll has some surprising results: The bag fee isn’t a lost cause. In fact, it’s slightly ahead.

Asked: “Would you vote ‘Yes’ to add a .20 fee on disposable shopping bags?” 47 percent said they would. It’s almost a dead heat. 46 percent said ‘No.’

Um, hate to dis Josh on this one (well, actually it’s fun to dis Josh), but those are terrible numbers for the Yes camp. Measures like this tend to break toward the No side. Indeed, if I were running the Yes campaign I wouldn’t feel comfortable with anything less than a fifteen point margin at this point in the process… you know, before the chemical industry floods the airwaves and stuffs our mailboxes with their propaganda.

So actually, if these numbers can be trusted, the bag fee is starting to look like a lost cause.