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Lots of people, myself included, thought that Gov. Gregoire would oppose Sound Transit going back to voters in ’08 if the Roads and Transit measure failed. We didn’t think Democrats would want to share the ballot with a big transportation measure.

Turns out I was wrong.

Gregoire has signaled that a ballot measure this fall has her OK, even if she has reservations about the area interest groups’ willingness to “saddle-up” for another campaign. Sound Transit chair Greg Nickels isn’t standing in the way, either. He’s cajoling his fellow board member to vote for a revised ST2 package, one that ditches light rail to Tacoma and puts that money into going east and north. It’s the kind of package that is aimed at the areas that vote “yes” on transit. It’s a good rebound package, something that could pass, on it’s own, this fall. Just when transit fans are stepping on the gas, some are riding the brake.

Namely, Ron Sims.

Yeah, that Ron Sims, the same Ron Sims who pledged, in ’07, that he’d fight to put a better transit-only package on the ballot this fall:

Is he willing to lead the fight and come back next year with a revised light rail package?

The answer was an unequivocal yes. “I’m into that. I’m back. I’m fully engaged. No question,” he said. “I don’t believe in letting waters stagnate. I want to come back with a package that reduces our impact on global warming that is less expensive. Yes. Light rail is a big part of that package. I will spend a lot of time and political capital on that.”

But Ron is willing to let the waters stagnate.

The most depressing thing is that he used to be one of Sound Transit’s biggest defenders. But ever since Sims left the post of Sound Transit chair, he’s shown his disdain for any public transportation investment that isn’t controlled by his office. Instead of light rail, Sims advocated for buses (or bus rapid transit). He even preempted Sound Transit’s bid for the ballot with a measure of his own.

“Transit Now,” an expansion of bus service paid for by a sales tax hike, took the place of light rail on the 2006 ballot. Like the dumbass liberal that I am, I voted for it, all the time thinking that this was just Sims’ opening salvo of transportation investment. It wasn’t, which makes Sims’ ’07 comments on light rail all the more vexing.

**********

The local blogosphere cut it’s teeth on the 2004 election battle, and a year later Goldy used the new medium to destroy the candidacy of Ron Sims’ opponent. I remember sitting in the audience as Ron debated Ken Hutcherson on the issue of gay marriage, and I was amazed at how Sims took him apart in a most dignified manner. When Sims, the bloggers, and the Stranger writers all went out for drinks afterwards, Ron put his arm around me and recalled specific blog posts I had written. The guy cared, and he impressed me in a way other local pols didn’t.

**********

As quoted in Erica’s great article about the board’s deliberations, several members are still undecided:

Opinion on the Eastside is reportedly more divided, with several representatives waiting to make up their minds. Redmond Mayor John Marchione, who took his seat on the Sound Transit board just two weeks ago, says he’s been busy “talking to other board members and constituents” about their concerns with the proposal. “I’m very cognizant of the economy and what it might do this year—bad economies don’t produce positive votes on tax increases.” Marchione says he’s “disappointed that light rail doesn’t reach all the way to Microsoft,” but adds, “it might be a political necessity. People want to build this system in smaller bites and they want to see some success” before moving forward. Fred Butler, the deputy council president of Issaquah, meanwhile, says he’s “not really prepared to say one way or another,” although if pressured, “I’d probably say I lean just a little bit more toward 2008. But I have certainly not made up my mind and probably will not do so until I have to, in late March.”

No plan is perfect. In fact, one board member’s perfect plan is somebody else’s nightmare. Light rail won’t get to Redmond without getting across the lake first. Light rail won’t get to Everett without going to Northgate (and 145th St) first. I understand guys like Marchione and Butler. They’re looking out for their constituents, but Sound Transit has a regional mission.

Larry Phillips, from the Stranger’s story:

The only outliers among the King County delegation are reportedly King County Council Member Julia Patterson (who did not return a call for comment) and King County Executive Ron Sims, who has not been attending Sound Transit meetings. “He’s waiting for the perfect plan,” Phillips says derisively. Sims did not return a call for comment.

It was Ron himself who once said:

“You cannot tell people sitting in congestion that we’ll have another year of planning”

Time will tell if this is one more thing Ron has changed his mind about.

While Dino Rossi and his fellow Republicans travel the state bemoaning our hostile business climate and out-of-control government, Gov. Christine Gregoire’s administration keeps racking up top grades from impartial national observers. First Forbes Magazine (hardly a bastion of liberal propaganda) lauds Washington as “the big story” of its annual Top States for Business survey, documenting our rise from 12th to 5th place under Gov. Gregoire’s leadership, and now the Pew Center on the States grades Washington an A- for performance in its 2008 State Management Report Card… the top score awarded this year, shared by only Virginia and Utah. (Hat tip Andrew.)

How are those campaign themes working out for you, Dino?

Washington receives an A- or higher in three of four categories; only in Infrastructure does our state drop to a B+, and that less than stellar mark is largely due to a decades long deficit in public investment that the Gregoire administration is only beginning to turn around. And like the Forbes survey, the Pew report not only shows top performance, but progress under the current administration, with Washington improving from a B+ the last time the survey was conducted back in 2005:

Washington has been a consistent leader in results-based governance. It was ahead of nearly all other states in controlling spending by keeping track of where investments were and were not paying off. Under Governor Christine Gregoire, Washington’s government has, if anything, moved further ahead on this front.

Of course, Rossi’s dire warnings of administrative mismanagement and looming crisis are just the usual political bluster; after three years of ducking questions on nearly every contentious issue that has confronted our state, Rossi has little option but to attack Gov. Gregoire’s leadership. But as empty and misleading as the Republicans’ anti-Gregoire rhetoric has been, we can’t assume it won’t ultimately resonate with voters, for I’m guessing the governor’s top grades likely come as a surprise even to some of her most ardent supporters.

No doubt a lot of the blame for this public perception gap falls on the governor herself, for as good an administrator and negotiator as she’s proven to be, she’s not always been the best communicator. (Recent communications staff changes look awfully promising, but Gov. Gregoire could still learn some lessons in self-promotion from Attorney General Rob McKenna.) Whenever I have the opportunity to speak to top Democratic elected and party officials I always tell them that if the public doesn’t understand their accomplishments — if voters don’t appreciate the value they’re getting for their tax dollars — it’s because these officials are doing a crappy job of telling their story. 99 percent of political life is exceedingly dull, and the bureaucratic process is duller still, so crafting a narrative that reaches beyond the occasional crisis or partisan food fight yet still manages to shape the public debate, requires both creativity and relentlessness on the part of public officials and their staff.

Yet I couldn’t touch on this topic without also blaming our local press, for it is, in the end, their job to inform and educate the public on what is really happening in Olympia and the impact it has on families throughout the state, an assignment they routinely fail when it comes to reporting on our government’s successes. Oh, I’m not blaming the rank and file political reporters; I think they generally do a pretty good job with what limited resources they have… and it’s not their fault that “State Government Program Operates Smoothly” doesn’t exactly make for a compelling headline. Their job is to tell a story too, and crisis, corruption and mismanagement, when it occurs, makes for a helluva a better read than a tedious tale of government doing what, in fact, it is supposed to do.

No, I blame the editorial boards, for not only failing to place our government’s flaws in their proper context, but for occasionally, maliciously doing the exact opposite. Of course the op/ed pages are the place for publishers and editors to express their opinions, but the gatekeepers of the Fourth Estate have public obligations that should run deeper than those of a mere blogger. As purveyors of a journalistic paradigm that aspires toward impartiality and objectivity, editorial writers and columnists have a unique responsibility to reassert a sense of proportion unavoidably lost in the daily rush of headlines. I don’t expect newspapers to attempt to balance the bad news with good news — that would be pointless and boring — but if they are to strenuously avoid editorializing within their news reporting, then they have an obligation to balance the news on their editorial pages by providing a little context. At least, they should have this obligation if they expect to be taken seriously.

Take for example Kate Riley’s column today in the Seattle Times, “When it comes to open government, a sledgehammer is sorely needed“, a dire headline if there ever was one. According to Riley our public disclosure laws have “utterly eroded,” and much of the blame falls on Gov. Gregoire who has allegedly “slapped open-government advocates in the face.” Uh-huh. And what does the Pew report say on this subject in comparing Washington to the 49 other states?

Bottom line: No state in the nation is better at developing and sharing information than Washington.

I don’t disagree with Riley that the Legislature needs to act to address the potentially frivolous use of attorney-client privilege as an end-run around our public disclosure laws (though her column might have been more useful had it come before this session’s legislative cut-offs,) but the tone and tenor of her piece suggest a system that has fallen into complete disrepair at the hands of a secretive governor. It is, through its utter lack of context, a mean spirited and misleading column, perhaps appropriate to the pages of a partisan blog, but unworthy of the weight of credibility assumed the pages of our state’s largest newspaper. The Times will run few articles trumpeting the everyday successes of our public disclosure laws, and understandably so. But the least they can do when criticizing our government’s failures on their op/ed page is to present those failures within the proper context of its established record of success.

That the majority of Washingtonians don’t understand how well managed our state government is compared to other states is a failure of our local press. But grading on a national curve, I guess I have to bump their report card up to a C.

Lebanon

The Saudi Arabian embassy in Beirut has called on its nationals to leave Lebanon a day after a US warship was positioned off the country’s coast.

The embassy on Saturday sent SMS messages to Saudis living in Lebanon urging them to leave the country as soon as possible, Al Jazeera’s correspondent said.

Gaza

Israel vowed to press its campaign against militants in the Gaza Strip on Sunday despite an international outcry over the deadly onslaught that prompted even the moderate Palestinian leadership to cut off all peace talks.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to continue the ground and air operation that has killed 71 Palestinians since Saturday following the death of one Israeli civilian last week and earned the Jewish state international condemnation for disproportionate use of force.

Iraq

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said in Baghdad on Sunday that the “Iranian and Iraqi nations will always stand by each other.”

In a news conference with his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani, Ahmadinejad called his landmark visit to Iraq “a new page in the history of the relations between the two countries and cooperation in the region.”

The Iranian president arrived in Baghdad on Sunday morning and was received by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.

Talabani, who grinned broadly and eagerly shook Ahmadinejad’s hand, called the visit “historic”, AFP reported.

Throughout this decade, we’ve been led to believe that the first two stories are examples of freedom being on the march, while the third example is a setback. In reality, they’re all setbacks, with the third story being the indication of the failure of the approach used in the first two.

Dino Rossi wasn’t a very good legislator:

In 1997-98 – He sponsored 19 bills and he got 1 passed.

In 1999-2000 – He sponsored 14 bills and got 2 passed.

The 2 he got passed? Senate Resolution 8683 which “applauded the dedication and work of all SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives) members.”

And the other was Resolution 8720, which recognized the “We the People Program.”

In 2001-2002 – He was 2/18. Rossi introduced 18 bills got 1 passed. One of those bills was another recognition for the “We the People Program.”

In 2003-2004 – He was 5/32. But two of those bills that passed had to do with the operating budget… you know, when he was “Following The Governor’s Lead”? So really he was 3 for 32 that year.

So in total what is Rossi’s legislative success rate? What does he have to show for seven years in Olympia? What track record to we have to go on when he says he is going to shake things up? Eighty-three bills introduced and seven that passed.

That is an 8% success rate. Pretty good for the football coach at the “Secondary School for Hemophiliacs,” but not so great for a legislator.

I’m filling in for Dave Ross this morning (and for the next 9 days) on News/Talk 710-KIRO. Here’s the show as it’s shaping up:

9AM: Does God hate “soft” men?
If so, I’m in trouble. Valerie Tarico, a Seattle psychologist and former fundamentalist Christian will join us by phone to tell what kind of preaching she’s heard in her survey of local churches. We’ve got a call out to Rev. Ken Hutcherson, hoping he can come on the show and explain to us his controversial take on gender roles: “If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.” Because… um… Jesus loves you.

10AM: Is a “virtual” fence a real solution?
A $20 million, 28-mile, Boeing built “virtual fence” is ready for service along the US/Mexico border near Nogales, Arizona, and the Minutemen outraged, saying “virtual fencing is virtually useless. Minuteman National Executive Director Al Garza joins me by phone to make his argument for a double-layered physical barrier along our entire Southern border.

11AM: Ralph Nader is running! (Who cares?)
Ralph Nader announced yesterday that he is running for president, surprising absolutely nobody. The man credit by some with playing spoiler and throwing the election George W. Bush, claims that he is to “shift the power from the few to the many,” but netroots activists like me remain dubious. 100,000 Washington voters cast their ballot for Ralph Nader back in 2000, and one of them was former Seattle City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck; he joins us to give us his current opinion of Nader and his candidacy.

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

Over on Slog, Josh writes about outgoing state Sen. Brian Weinstein and his quest to pass his Home Buyer’s Bill of Rights before he retires at the end on this session. Some had suggested Sen. Weinstein was using his Senate committee to hold hostage a condo conversion bill recently passed by the House; Sen. Weinstein, a consumer protection champion, denies the two are related, telling Josh “I expect to pass it.”

He also said he had a good meeting with House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43, Capitol Hill) about the homeowners’ rights bill. Last year, Weinstein accused Chopp of caving to the BIAW by snuffing Weinstein’s homeowner bill.

He didn’t say Chopp promised to move the bill forward, but he did say: “It was a good discussion. He asked good questions and it was a good meeting. Last year at this time, the bill was dead.”

Oh to be a fly on the wall at that meeting. Sen. Weinstein has a well deserved reputation as a tough negotiator, but what kind of leverage can a retiring senator hold over our famously risk-averse House Speaker?

Well, the buzz amongst the consumer protection community is that Sen. Weinstein has been quietly talking about possibly unretiring should his bill fail to get through the Legislature this session… potentially creating a very messy Democratic primary battle between an incumbent senator and newly minted Democrat, Rep. Fred Jarrett.

Did Sen. Weinstein make this threat to Speaker Chopp? I’ve got no idea, but it certainly would be a doozy. Sen. Weinstein, for all his merits, can be a bit abrasive, and I’ve heard that our amiable Speaker doesn’t like him all that much — so buying Weinstein a one-way ticket out of Olympia might be well worth the price of the bill to both Chopp and the BIAW. And the last thing Speaker Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown want at this late stage in the game is to have their neatly arranged 41st LD races thrown into disarray. The Democrat seeking to replace Jarrett in the House, Renton’s Marcie Maxwell, is no sure thing, and a Godzilla versus Mothra battle for the Senate seat would surely draw money and resources out of the House race.

The easiest way to avoid this mess is to pass Sen. Weinstein’s bill, which merely gives buyers of new construction a minimum legal warranty on the biggest purchase they’ll ever make in their lives. (Two years on materials and workmanship, ten years on structural defects.) And what’s so wrong about that?

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Stop on by for some hoppy beer and hopped up conversation.

I won’t be there tonight, but Open Left’s Matt Stoller apparently will, so there will be more than enough blogger mojo to make up for my absence.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

At one point during my first full day as a Republican yesterday, I was overcome by doubt. I had publicly announced my support for Mike Huckabee, but I realized that I didn’t have a good reason—as a Republican—to support him.

I mean, as a Democrat I’d have every reason to support Huckabee as the Republican Nominee. All national polls show him losing to both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. My own analyses of state head-to-head polls suggest that Clinton and Obama would beat Huckabee.

Now that I am a Republican I really should have some positive reasons to support the Huckster. So I examined his positions on many issues and realized I disagreed with almost all of them:

• I find Huckabee’s positions on homosexuality antediluvian. I disagree with his opposition to civil unions, same-sex marriage, and adoption by same-sex couples. I disagree with the harebrained idea of a constitutional amendment defining “marriage” as a union between one man and one woman.
• I am fundamentally opposed to Huckabee’s stance on abortion. In fact, I have voted for Republicans before over this very issue. While living in Pennsylvania in 1998, I voted for Sen. Arlen Specter instead of his “pro-life” Democratic opponent Bill Lloyd.
• I cannot agree with Mike’s opposition to embryonic stem cell research.
• I think Huckabee is a idiot for refusing to accept the findings of modern evolutionary theory (hell…even the Catholic Church has recognized for some 30 years that biological evolution is real and is not incompatible with Christianity).
• I don’t agree with Huckabee at all on education—charter schools, display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, or “character education” in public schools. Give me a fucking break!
• Huckabee’s promise to replace the income tax with a national sales tax is utterly ludicrous.
• I don’t agree with Huckabee’s anti-gun control stance.
• I oppose Huckabee’s opposition to a government-mandated universal health care system. And I think his ideas for isolating AIDS patients is fucked-up!
• On immigration I cannot figure out where the Huckster stands—it looks like he is all over the place.
• I find the Chuck Norris thing really, really creepy.
• Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister. Even though I was baptized at age nine as an American Baptist (and later became a Lutheran), Southern Baptists frighten me. They strike me as having a high proportion of radical extremists in their midst….
• Finally, I think Huckabee’s ideas of changing the Constitution to be more God-friendly reveal a radical extremist side to the man that I find scary.

In fact, there are only a small number of issues that I agree with Mike on. I pondered my political paradox. And then I fretted…and I fretted some more, and I….

Then, in the midst of my fretting, it struck me!

I don’t have to use rational positions, logic, consistency, or ethics at all. I’m a Republican now!

Being a Republican means never having to say you’re sorry for eschewing logic, rationality, consistency or ethics in a political context. As a Republican, all I need is a positive emotional response to Huckabee—some emotional bond….

That’s me (ca. 1984) and Mike. You see, we share the common bond of the bass. That’s the only connection I need.

So if you are a bass player or a guitar player, or play any instrument at all, you, too, can get behind Mike Huckabee this primary season. Maybe you like Chuck Norris movies…that’s a good reason, too.

And if you liked what a saxophone player from Hope, Arkansas did for America, just imagine what a Bass player from Hope could do!

Vote Mike!

“Most people know me as a football player, but I was also in social studies class.”

Introducing Brock Olivo, former University of Missouri football star, and newly minted Republican candidate for Missouri’s 9th Congressional District. Really.

During the last campaign cycle, local Republicans took to criticizing their opponents’ support from Progressive Majority as evidence of some sinister, out of district plot, but really, their most important contribution to any campaign is the kind of hands on candidate training that helps you avoid coming off as a total blathering doofus… like you know, Brock Olivo. (I think Camp Wellstone just found themselves a new training video on how not to conduct an interview.)

Speaking of which, Progressive Majority is bringing Wellstone Action’s Advanced Candidate and Campaign Management School to Federal Way, April 25-27, and a few spots are still available. Click here for more info.

Whenever we post anything on the race between Darcy Burner and Dave Reichert for WA’s 8th CD, my comment thread fills up, almost without exception, with nasty trolls belittling Burner and her chances this November. But yesterday’s posts were different. Only one comment out of 50 was even remotely trollish, and even at that expressed an uncharacteristic air of resignation…

So I’m going to have to endure at least 2 years of Dumbass Darcy. Yuck.

Now perhaps our trolls are just hopeless romantics, and as such were too busy serenading their sweethearts on Valentines Day to spew their usual bile into the threads. Nah… that can’t be it. No, I’m guessing that despite their rabid readership of this blog they claim to hate, and their obvious dislike of all things both Darcy and Democratic, that air of resignation is real — for even the whackiest of wingnuts can occasionally sense reality creeping up on them, and man, reality doesn’t look too good for the folks on the other side right now.

The typical defense of Reichert has always been an attack on Burner, but the trolls seem to be losing the heart even for that… and why shouldn’t they, as Reichert’s vulnerabilities as a candidate continue to be exposed outside the careful coddling of a Republican majority? But even more discouraging to local R’s must be the dawning realization that Burner isn’t a one hit wonder, and that her 2008 campaign is gonna be at least as competitive as her come from nowhere challenge in 2006.

Reichert’s fundraising numbers suck; he’s lazy and arrogant and unaccustomed to putting the kind of work into campaigning expected in swing districts, even of incumbents. We all know that. But Burner continues to impress, establishing herself as one of only a handful of Democratic challengers to achieve superstar status amongst both netroots activists like me, and the DC establishment.

“Dumbass Darcy”…? Not so much. Indeed according to Congressional Quarterly, Burner has made the list of Top Ten challengers from either party in both total receipts ($874,000 for 7th place) and cash on hand ($607,000 for 5th place.) And she’s one of only four Democrats to make it onto both lists. And, she’s done all that while garnering over 88% of her money from individual contributors (compared to only 59% for Reichert.)

It’s gonna be a tough reelection for Reichert… and even the trolls are starting to admit it.

Joel:

One feature of the four-year political struggle between Gov. Chris Gregoire and almost-Gov. Dino Rossi has been an abundance of suspect and self-serving opinion surveys.

At last comes a poll, albeit with a few weeks under its belt, that surprised its takers.

[…]

In a trial heat, the incumbent Democrat had 43 percent, her Republican challenger received 41 percent, and 16 percent were undecided. The poll was based on interviews with 588 likely general election voters. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Joel quotes a poll that was commissioned back in November, but an Elway poll done much more recently shows the race to not be as close:

Seattle public opinion researcher Stuart Elway has released a good-news, bad-news poll on this year’s gubernatorial election rematch between Democratic incumbent Chris Gregoire and Republican challenger Dino Rossi.

[…]

The good news for Gregoire is that while she defeated Rossi by only 133 votes in the 2004 election, she now has a 13-percentage-point lead over him in voter preference. Only 35 percent of the respondents said they definitely or probably are inclined to vote for Rossi. Eighteen percent said they were undecided.

I’m not knocking Joel. I think the newspapers, to a degree, have a bias in favor of making this race closer than it really is. I’m not saying it’s a shoo-in for Chris Gregoire, but I think local media flacks are going to go out of their way to frame this thing positively for Rossi.

Looking back at ’06, Joel went out of his way to pitch Mike McGavick as an “Evans Republican”, or at least in a much more favorable light. He’s doing the same for Dino:

Republicans used to be big-time greens, passing the state’s first package of environmental laws. They helped forge the Washington wilderness bill and legislation protecting the Columbia Gorge. Lately, however, the party has demanded repeal of the Growth Management Act.

Rossi might do well to get with tradition.

Republicans haven’t been leaders on enviro-issues for decades. Guys like Rossi, totally in league with the looney tune base of his party, doesn’t think global warming is even a big deal:

Q: “Where are you on global warming?”

Rossi: (scoffs) “Where am I on global warming? The uh, I mean it’s clear that the earth, the earth is warming. That is clear, I mean, I think if we were to count how many feet of ice we were under many, many, tens and hundreds of millions of years ago – right where we are standing, right here – the earth has been warming and it will continue to warm. Apparently we’ve hit, we’ve hit the same temperature that it, that it had increased to in about, oh, twelve hundred AD I think it was. So, I mean, it was warmer then too. Uh, there are cycles.

There are things that we can do obviously to, to make sure that the environment is clean. That the air is clean, that the water’s clean, all those sorts of things that need to be done.

I think you also need to make sure that you look at the real science of this too and make sure that it makes sense. And so, uh, well-uh I-uh there’s still a lot of debate going on this, we see it out there and there’s going to be a big debate coming up in the next two, three years. Because there are, you know, I’ve listened to other scientists who disagree with, you know, I know – why are people even bothering about long term planning if Al Gore says the world is going to end in ten years or fifteen years – but there are a lot of scientists that disagree. So, I mean, we’ll see how this debate goes, but I don’t think anyone should panic at this point.” [Rossi at Port Orchard Chamber, 3/08/2007]

The guy’s a lightweight on all sorts of issues, especially the environment. While I understand Joel’s impulse to give Dino an out, it ain’t going to happen. “Evans Republicanism” is as dead as Julius Caesar, and Rossi has absolutely no inclination to run under that banner in ’08.

On Friday, the day before the caucuses here, former Mike McGavick staffer Timothy Goddard gave this as one of the reasons why the Republican base should STFU and just support McCain:

Point two–A McCain loss will embarass the Washington State Republican Party

Particularly when McCain coasts to an easy victory in the primary on the 19th. It will demonstrate that the local party activists and caucus-goers are woefully out of touch with the Washington State Republicans who actually supply the votes. Remember those? They’re important. Now, it may be true that we activists are out of touch, and if it is, we need to figure out how we can rectify that situation. But personally, I’d rather it were not pointed out in such blatant fashion.

Because of the timing of our caucus and primary, and that of recent political events, we’re a party uniquely positioned to embarrass itself. That’s one opportunity I sincerely hope to avoid taking. Our party needs to gain influence over the voters of this state, both friendly and otherwise, and caucusing for Huckabee will diminish it, instead.

I went to a Democratic caucus on Saturday. It was chaotic and even frustrating at times, but one thing that I can’t complain about was whether or not it was democratic (in the small ‘d’ sense). It most certainly was. The initial presidential preferences were tallied, the amount of delegates chosen were based strictly upon the amount of support there was for each candidate. As I slowly heard what had been happening at the Republican caucuses, I noticed that things weren’t happening the same way. I think Timothy Killian is correct in his explanation here:

The rules of the Washington State Republican Party Caucus states that “there is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates.” In other words, unlike most other caucuses wherein delegates are tied in some formal way to the preferences of caucus attendees, each individual precinct was free to determine their delegate in any manner they chose. (See here).

As a result, a given precincts presidential preferences could break out this way:

Huckabee: 10
McCain: 8
Paul: 3
But, their delegates, which are unrelated to the above preferences, could break out this way:

Huckabee: 1
McCain: 2
Paul: 1

Pudge’s post at Sound Politics that Goldy references below seems to confirm this. Unlike the Democratic caucuses where the delegates were apportioned by support, at the Republican caucuses (from the link above):

There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates. The participants at each Precinct Caucus alone determine if presidential preference is to be a factor in such choice and, if so, how it is to be applied.

In other words, the mathematical formula that Democrats used to determine delegate apportionment doesn’t seem to exist on the Republican side. If you look at the overall results, it looks like most of the Republican caucuses sent delegates who more-or-less represented the voters of their precinct, but there are definitely more than a few cases where Republican caucusers are claiming that they were “shut out” of the process:

Kim Davis, for example, said she felt like proper procedures weren’t followed at her precinct.

Davis, 47, a Huckabee supporter, said caucus-goers at her table were not given the opportunity to make the case for their candidate nor to vote on who among them would get to be delegates.

“Several McCain supporters just decided for the table and filled out the form,” she said. “I got bamboozled.”

The social conservatives in the Republican Party have long been bamboozled by the corporate bigwigs who actually run it, but it’s interesting to watch the bamboozlement happen at the grass roots level.

I’m definitely arriving at the same conclusion as Killian:

In summation, it may very well be that Huckabee won Washington State. Or maybe McCain won. At this point, we have no way of knowing. What we do know is this: Luke Esser is willfully mispresenting the results of the Washington State Republican Caucuses.

The entire media world has now reported that John McCain was the winner in Washington, but that result is not based on the actual results of the caucus preferences.

I invite the media to more closely scrutinize this.

I second that.

UPDATE: From commenter ‘rhp6033’ in the thread below (and I apologize for sending Christmasghost towards another mental breakdown there…), King5’s Robert Mak is looking into irregularities in the Snohomish County vote:

One Snohomish County caucus chairman told KING 5 that the delegate preferences are “dramatically different” than the attendee counts.

The Snohomish County Republican Party does not have the delegate preferences from many of its caucuses and is working to obtain them.

What with Washington State Republican Party Chair Luke Esser making boneheaded comments to reporters that he’s going to try to get as “close as we can to 100 percent” in the vote count, he doesn’t need much help making himself the butt of national jokes, but… well… we here at HA are always happy to lend a hand.

Over the last few years we’ve collected a treasure trove of Esserteria to amuse our friends and enrage our enemies, some of which is already gracing the pages of the widely read TPM Muckraker:

Esser wrote in the University of Washington’s paper that he was praying for rain, because that would drive Democratic-voting “shiftless deadbeats” away from the polls. He explained, “Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.”

In this 1980’s era column Esser bemoaned the loss of “successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.)” while wistfully recalling the days of Nixonian tricksterism:

We all remember those great political traditions — whistle-stop tours, kissing babies, voter fraud, dirty tricks, and voting a straight Republican ticket. […] Like any sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents, enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the polls as possible.

Yeah sure, Esser was attempting to be funny, but many a truth is said in jest, and the column displays a degree of ruthless mean-spiritedness that has reared its head throughout his political career. You know, like the misleading TV ad Esser apparently commissioned, attacking Gov. Gregoire for of all things, Washington’s presidential caucus! “Gov. Gregoire and her party don’t want you voting on Feb. 5!” the storyboard proclaims, “What are Gregoire and the Democrats so afraid of?”

Um… A) Gregoire had absolutely nothing to do with the 178 members of the WSDCC choosing to allocate delegates via caucus rather than primary; and B) What is Esser so afraid of that he had to halt the counting if his party’s own messy caucus so that he could unilaterally declare McCain the winner just in time to make the Sunday morning headlines?

Why do I assume Esser showed favoritism toward McCain? Well you certainly wouldn’t expect a push for Mitt Romney from the guy who once disparaged the B.Y.U. football team as “those polygamists.” And it’s not so out of character to expect a touch of ethical flexibility from a double dipper who saw nothing wrong with collecting paychecks from the WSRP and the Office of the Attorney General at the same time.

And of course, no Luke Esser tribute would be complete without a reread of my classic essay, “Luke Esser Fucks Pigs“, a post Dan Savage lauded as “the funniest thing Goldy’s ever done.” (And unlike Esser’s college try at humor, my satire was not only funny, it actually attempted to make a point.)

And not only has Gov. Christine Gregoire endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, she just rearranged her schedule: she will be at Key Arena at noon today, standing on stage beside him.

I’m not sure about the value of endorsements, but I suppose in terms of local ones, that’s about as dramatic as they come here in WA just a day before the Democratic caucus. (That’s also, by the way, one more super delegate for Obama, countering Rep. Norm Dicks’ endorsement of Clinton.)

UPDATE:

Gov. Gregoire’s statement on Presidential endorsement

SEATTLE – Democrats in Washington state and across the country are fortunate to have the opportunity to select between two outstanding candidates, either of whom would be a great president. I have decided to endorse Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.

We must restore hope in America. We must put an end to politics of division – by gender, race, and faith. I know Washingtonians are tired of these divisions. They want us to tackle the tough challenges we face, and get result that make their lives better.

Barack Obama has a unique ability to reach across all the artificial divides and divisions to move our nation forward. At a time of great division in our country, we need a leader who will unite us. Barack Obama is that kind of leader.

I was inspired to pursue a career in public service by John F. Kennedy. His presidency heralded the arrival of a new generation of Americans to lead our nation. Like President Kennedy, Barack Obama is inspiring a new generation of young people to get involved. If elected, I believe he will lead us all – young and old, “blue and red” – to create a positive change in our communities, this nation and the world.

The most important issue to me is health care. When liberals denounce the Iraq occupation, and demand that our troops be brought home, I nod in agreement.

But when Gov. Gregoire extends WA Basic Health to cover more people, or when presidential candidates talk about just how they’ll cover the 45 million uninsured, I pay attention. It’s not that I don’t care about the war, or think it’s less important. I don’t. But the inequality of our health care “system” has been a war in and of itself. It’s a war that has cost our government billions, has put millions of Americans needlessly into debt, and has caused angst and heartache at the kitchen tables of so many.

It’s between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. How are their health care plans different?

Both plans require that private insurers offer policies to everyone, regardless of medical history. Both also allow people to buy into government-offered insurance instead.

And both plans seek to make insurance affordable to lower-income Americans. The Clinton plan is, however, more explicit about affordability, promising to limit insurance costs as a percentage of family income. And it also seems to include more funds for subsidies.

But the big difference is mandates: the Clinton plan requires that everyone have insurance; the Obama plan doesn’t.

But what’s wrong with Obama’s plan?

Mr. Obama claims that people will buy insurance if it becomes affordable. Unfortunately, the evidence says otherwise.

After all, we already have programs that make health insurance free or very cheap to many low-income Americans, without requiring that they sign up. And many of those eligible fail, for whatever reason, to enroll.

An Obama-type plan would also face the problem of healthy people who decide to take their chances or don’t sign up until they develop medical problems, thereby raising premiums for everyone else.

Every person needs health care, and mandating it is the only way to get it done. What Obama is offering is a system that is signifigantly flawed, right out of the gate.

Krugman continues:

But while it’s easy to see how the Clinton plan could end up being eviscerated, it’s hard to see how the hole in the Obama plan can be repaired. Why? Because Mr. Obama’s campaigning on the health care issue has sabotaged his own prospects.

You see, the Obama campaign has demonized the idea of mandates — most recently in a scare-tactics mailer sent to voters that bears a striking resemblance to the “Harry and Louise” ads run by the insurance lobby in 1993, ads that helped undermine our last chance at getting universal health care.

Obama’s political sensibility is so fucked up that I bet he doesn’t understand the nature of the health care debate. It is going to be a knock down, drag out fight, and if Obama’s health care plan isn’t ready to go in Day 1, then he’s going to get hosed.