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

All candidates are welcome. We’ll just be sure to call you a cab.

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.

Larry Mitchell
Redmond Prosecutor
P.O. Box 97010
Redmond, WA 98073-9710
c/o City Clerk
Cc: King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office

Dear Mr. Mitchell,

Is the City of Redmond picking up the tab by prosecuting Jane Hague for drunk driving?

I asked this question of someone who works in the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office and he thought perhaps so—that normally this kind of thing is done as a professional courtesy. (He wasn’t privy to the details in the Jane Hague case.)

Now…I am a big believer in Redmond being a good governmental citizen and helping out King County when necessary. Cooperation among regional and local governments strikes me as a very positive thing. I don’t mind if my neighbors and I occasionally pick up the tab to ensure criminals are brought to justice and there is fairness in the process.

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office turned the Hague case over to Redmond to avoid a conflict of interest in prosecuting King County Councilmember Hague. I mean, surely she has personal and political connections in the office. And I can sort-of buy that, even though Dan Satterberg, the Interim King County Prosecuting Attorney, claims to be non-partisan.

Here is what I don’t get. That very same Interim King County Prosecuting Attorney who handed the effort and expense of prosecuting Jane Hague over to us is jointly headlining a Republican fund raising event with Jane Hague this evening.

Yeah…suddenly I’m completely convinced that this is a genuine case with conflict of interest. At the same time, I can’t help feeling abused by it all. The City of Redmond is picking up the tab; so, instead of prosecuting Ms. Hague, Mr. Satterberg is joining Ms. Hague to raise money for Republicans!

It sure feels to me like the citizens of Redmond are, effectively, making a contribution to the King County Republican Party.

That is, unless, Mr. Satterberg’s office intends to fully reimburse Redmond for our expenses.

Yours,

Darryl

Wildfires in California, a “murder epidemic” in Philadelphia, a proposal to turn Hanford’s B reactor into a hot new tourist attraction… two wire stories and a feature dominate the Seattle Times front page today. Meanwhile, the P-I is less newsy but more local, filling the front of their dead-tree edition with features on Seattle’s condo wave, new migraine research, and the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s race (… partisan candidates running a partisan race for a partisan office…? Who’d a thunk?)

So apart from just getting everybody’s name right, how would I prioritize the front page on a typically slow Seattle Monday? Well, I could feature the Seahawks 33-6 win over the hapless St. Louis Rams. (In the news biz’s corollary to Intelligent Design, if God hadn’t intended Monday to be a slow news day, he wouldn’t have put football on Sundays.) Or I could dwell on a spree of bizarre deaths that seems to be plaguing our regional newswires. Nah.

Nope, given my druthers, if there isn’t any compelling local news to report, I’d try to focus on national headlines, but within a local context. You know, like…

Everybody Hates Hillary. At least, that seemed to be the consensus opinion at the Republican presidential debate last night, where the GOP hopefuls mentioned the Democratic frontrunner’s name 34 times, compared to twice for President Bush. Mike Crowley of the New Republic believes the Republicans did Hillary Clinton’s Democratic opponents “a big favor“, with the audience whooping it up every time a candidate (or FOX News “reporter”) mocked or derided her:

It’s hard to watch that spectacle and feel that Hillary doesn’t have a unique visceral effect on Republican voters likely to galvanize them in an general election. Which is exactly what Hillary’s primary rivals want you to believe.

Yeah, but then, this is the same audience that booed 70-percent of their fellow Americans for wanting to pull out of Iraq.

So is Hillary really the great GOP uniter…? Is she really the Democrat the Republicans want to face off against most? Or, as Digby contends…

She obviously scares the living hell out of Republicans, whose macho pretenders would rather band together, whimpering like a bunch frightened little boys in the dark, than take on each other. So they are preening for the easy applause from their Cro-Magnon audience. It’s a little bit pathetic.

It certainly is. And I expect Hillary will get an entirely different reception tonight in Seattle when she speaks before state Dems at their annual Maggie Awards. Every doubter I know who has seen Hillary speak these past few months, has been disabused of the notion that she just can’t win. I’ll be looking to see if local doubters have the same reaction tonight.

Everybody Hates Brown People. Ethnic cleansing proceeds apace in Prince William County Virginia, as fear of mass deportations has led thousands of Latino residents — legal and illegal alike — to pack up and leave. The brown flight comes in the wake of an anti-illegal immigration resolution passed this July by county supervisors, and then approved this Wednesday. Message sent. Message received.

“This is not something that only affects the undocumented,” [real estate] agent Rosie Vilchez said. “Because in the same family, it’s so common to have some people who are citizens, some people who are residents and some who are undocumented. And those with papers are going to do whatever is necessary to protect those without.”

Within hours of the board’s vote, Salvadoran-born Aracely Diaz instructed her real estate agent to put her townhouse on the market. […] “Even after they passed that July resolution, I had hope that [the supervisors] would change their minds,” said Diaz, 37, who has legal status but worries about relatives who do not.

Now, she noted bitterly, “I’ll be selling at a loss. But I don’t care. I no longer have any affection for this place that treats us this way. I just want to get out.”

Which of course, is the point… we want people like Diaz to leave. Sure, our immigration laws need to be either enforced or amended, but I doubt there would be this public uproar if we were talking about millions of undocumented white people pouring across the Canadian border. (Well, maybe French Canadians.)

Here in WA the anti-immigration fervor is wreaking its own selective havoc. While economic concerns leave migrant pickers largely unhassled in the apple orchards of Yakima (at least during harvest), Immigration agents make a show of arresting an 18-year-old Seattle girl on her way to school, and then shipping her back to Mexico, dashing the high school senior’s dreams of becoming a doctor. Yet another one of our state’s hardworking immigrants being officially terrorized in the name of our War on Terror. Aren’t you proud to be an American?

Everybody’s Gonna Die! Turkish troops are moving toward Iraq, Bush wants yet another $196 billion for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Vice President Dick Cheney warns that “we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon”… I suppose even if that means using nuclear weapons ourselves. Doesn’t all this ratcheting up the rhetoric about Iran remind you of 2002 when we were ratcheting up the rhetoric in preparation for invading Iraq? When Bush warns about “World War III,” is he really warning about Armageddon, or just cheering it on?

We’re all gonna die. Really.

Last June, former Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay went to Washington D.C. to provide eight hours of testimony to the Office of the Inspector General. The Inspector General was investigating the reasons why eight U.S. Attorneys were fired.

As with the Fitzgerald investigation, this investigation has been hampered by a (former) senior Bush administration official lying. And we may have another high-profile perjury and obstruction of justice case in the works:

An investigation might be finished as early as next month, and then the U.S. inspector general might recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday.

[…] McKay said he believes he and seven other U.S. attorneys were fired last December by Gonzales for political reasons, perhaps with former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove pulling strings.

Career prosecutors in his office and FBI agents agreed there was no reason to go forward with a federal investigation of the Gregoire-Rossi election, and issues associated with it were more properly addressed by state officials, McKay said.
[…]

Gonzales “lied about” reasons for the firings when questioned under oath in July by the Senate Judiciary Committee, McKay said.

The White House said McKay was fired for poor performance ratings of his office, but the former U.S. attorney said he and his office got exemplary reviews just three months before he was fired.

“The chief law enforcement officer for the United States should not lie under oath,” McKay told the bar association.

An interesting part of this story is the likely role played by the Washington State Republicans:

In the weeks following the 2004 gubernatorial race, [Washington State Republican Party Chair Chris] Vance said Republicans were “angry and frustrated.” Republican Dino Rossi held narrow leads after the initial count and the first recount, but Democrat Chris Gregoire won by 129 votes after a second recount. Vance wanted to deliver that message of frustration to McKay.
[…]

Vance said he talked about the governor’s race frequently with Glynda Becker, the western states’ contact in Karl Rove’s political office at the White House. Vance said he didn’t remember if McKay was discussed.

Democratic claims that Rove was running the Republican effort to ensure Rossi won weren’t true, Vance said, though he said the White House knew what was going on.

Becker recalled the phone calls from Vance and “every other Republican activist from Washington state” and said while McKay’s name might have come up she couldn’t remember the context.

Others who spoke to Becker about the governor’s race included Tony Williams, a one-time chief of staff to former Washington Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, who advised the Rossi campaign.

Following the 2004 election, frustrated and angry state Republicans complained to Karl Rove’s office that the U.S. Attorney wasn’t investigating—what they perceived to be—election fraud. They didn’t have evidence for election fraud, of course, but that didn’t stop them from claiming it…over and over and over again. In the world of politics, you can make somebody believe something by repeating it often enough; but, that dog don’t hunt when it comes to the world of evidence and logic in the justice system. Even so, the state Republicans launched a high-profile law suit in which, Dale Foreman opened the GOP case by claiming, “[t]his is a case of election fraud.” After six months of investigations and millions of dollars spent on each side, the lawsuit was dismissed. There was no election fraud.

One legacy of the GOP lawsuit is that the false allegations managed to shake voter confidence in our elections process. But the problem with exercising bad-faith political smears is that they can come back to bite you in the ass. So it is only fair to give the Washington state GOP a little bit of credit for the months of political mayhem surrounding Gonzogate.

An even bigger political flap will arise should Gonzales be prosecuted for lying. (And given that the trial could take years, I suspect George Bush will, before leaving office, simply pardon Gonzales.) This, too, will become part of the GOP legacy from the Washington state gubernatorial election contest.

Hey…karma is a bitch!

Dan Satterberg was recently quoted as saying “This office should be nonpartisan,” and that he considers entering the world of partisan politics a necessary evil.

Apparently, Mr. Satterberg found it so necessary to partake of that evil that he is jointly headlining a Republican fund raising event…with Jane Hague!

Uh-huh. When “evil partisanship” calls, Satterberg steps up to the plate! He sees no problem associating his good name with Jane Hague, a candidate who is deeply flawed and neck deep in scandal.

Call me cynical, but it sure looks to me like Dan Satterberg has become a Republican fund raising asset. And he hasn’t even been elected to office yet! Democrats who are tempted to vote for Dan because “he is a nice guy, and is really kind-of, sort-of non-partisan” are simply fooling themselves—Dan is now an official tool in the Republican fund-raising arsenal.

But maybe I am misreading this whole thing. Maybe Dan is appearing at the fund raiser in a “non-partisan” role. Maybe Satterberg and Hague will actually be doing some sort of public service announcement. You know, like a Good Cop bad Drunk routine, where Jane tosses back a few, Dan tries arresting her and Jane unleashes a verbal volley. But this version of the tragedy ends differently: Jane takes full responsibility for her abuse and her drunk driving.

Or maybe Dan and Jane will make a joint announcement that, in lieu of a drawn-out investigation and prolonged prosecution, Jane has voluntarily decided to refund portions of her past King County salary—you know, from the job she obtained after lying on her resume about having a college degree. It could happen, I suppose.

Yeah…maybe Dan really is non-partisan, in which case, any day now, I expect to see him headlining a fund raiser for Venus Velazquez.

Well, you knew it would happen sooner or later — a blogger running for public office — but I didn’t think it would happen across the mountains in Richland, WA.

Yep… you read that right. Complete with PDC filings (coming soon). I am officially running for Richland City Council. Butterflies in my stomach and all. Needless to say I didn’t sleep well last night.

I’m not a reluctant candidate. I always figured I would run for something besides ‘Internet loudmouth’ someday. But I wasn’t exactly expecting to announce a run for anything today!

That’s Jim McCabe, proprietor of McCranium, declaring his write-in campaign for Richland city council, after Mayor Bob Welch’s surprise announcement that he will be stepping down… shortly after his reelection. (Welch is running unopposed this November.)

I hope that when Jim becomes a powerful politician, he remembers us little folk. And buys us drinks.

It turns out, Dave Reichert isn’t one of your typical House Republicans after all…

Although House Republicans currently face a tough national political environment, most of their vulnerable members enjoy a substantial lead in the money race over their Democratic challengers at this early point in the 2008 election cycle.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) financial filings for the third fiscal quarter of 2007, which ended Sept. 30, reveal that the 22 Republican House members in races ranked by CQ as “No Clear Favorite” or “Leans Republican” lead more than two to one in cumulative cash on hand versus their nearest Democrat opponent.

[…] The Republicans in these two categories that CQPolitics.com regards as competitive reported a total of $12.7 million cash on hand as compared with $5.2 million in total for the nearest challengers.

Of these 22 vulnerable Republican incumbents, only five currently trail their opponents in cash on hand, putting Reichert in such rare company as Ohio’s embattled Jean Schmidt (who trails not one, but three challengers,) and soon to be indicted John Doolittle of California. Reichert’s poor performance is even more remarkable when you consider that he was the only House member last quarter to benefit from a high-profile, high-dollar fundraiser with President Bush. Ouch.

Reichert spokesliar Mike Shields, the man behind the campaign’s Enron-style accounting, attempts to put a ridiculous spin on Reichert’s disappointing results, arguing that he’s just too busy being a congressman to do what congressmen notoriously do… raise money.

“That’s one of our challenges: Dave actually has a job,” Shields said. “He has to come serve the people, and he takes that very seriously.”

Yeah, right… unlike nearly every other member of Congress. But as CQ points out, incumbents are not only expected to hold a money advantage, it is absolutely critical for vulnerable Republicans given the current political environment.

The Republicans’ overall fundraising edge in these competitive districts, though expected for incumbents, is critical given that the party has few other advantages going into the election season. In addition to the weaknesses of individual candidates, Republican members as a whole also are saddled with the party baggage of an unpopular war and president. And they cannot count on a boost from the party’s fundraising committee for the chamber, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which badly trails its Democratic counterpart in money raised and cash on hand.

Shorter CQ: Reichert’s in deep doo-doo. The NRCC has to be putting together its budget with the expectation that Reichert, now a two-term incumbent, starts carrying his own weight. And with party resources scarce, Reichert just can’t rely on the same sort of huge infusion of party cash that put him over the top in 2006.

If Reichert can’t out-raise Darcy Burner in a quarter that included a presidential fundraiser, there can be only two explanations: he either has the wrong message, or he’s just not working hard enough. And in Reichert’s case, it is clearly both.

James L at the Swing State Project noticed something interesting:

MO-06 and WA-08: So get this. Despite being the beneficiary of a high-profile fundraiser hosted by Republican Lord & Savior George W. Bush, Dave Reichert was out-hustled by Democrat Darcy Burner. Compare Reichert’s haul with the total posted by Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican who received a fundraising visit from Dick Cheney. Graves raised a very impressive $500K+ for the quarter. I guess the President’s star power isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be anymore.

Reichert’s fundraising last quarter was damn anemic for an incumbent, not to mention an incumbent who had the President come to town to help.

Looking more closely at the FEC paperwork reveals how truly anemic the Bush fundraiser was. The FEC rules require that joint fundraisers, like the event held for the Washington State Republicans and Reichert, be handled independently of either group. The Bellevue Bush fundraiser was handled by an entity known as The Reichert Washington Victory Committee.

This FEC form 3x documents the donations and disbursements from the Bush fundraiser. What the form clearly shows is that the event only raised $135,025! That was $127,025 from individual contributions and another $8,000 from a political action committee.

A grand total of $127,025 in individual contributions at a Bush fundraiser in Bellevue, Washington??? That’s fucking pathetic! But…there you have it (maybe—see below).

Somehow or another, the media got the wrong estimate from this event. This KOMO report cites a slightly higher figure:

President Bush, deeply unpopular in Washington state, still raised more than $500,000 Monday for Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert and the state GOP, just hours after the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Where would the media get a figure like one-half a million? Perhaps it came from Reichert’s spokesperson, Mike Shields, who is quoted as claiming:

“It’s a huge cash injection before the actual election cycle begins,” Shields said. “An event doesn’t get much bigger than this. This is a huge help.”

Yeah…nice spin, Mike. The truth is a little less “big.” The FEC form shows the loot was mostly split three ways. The Washington State Republican Party got $26,166.73, Friends of Reichert took $35,754.80, and the big winner was the Hyatt Regency, Bellevue that earned $63,146.88 for hosting the fundraiser.

While Reichert was busy raising $35,755, Darcy Burner raised $125,000 from over 3,200 donors. In other words, Darcy Burner kicked both Reichert’s and Bush’s asses.

But these figures are only as good as the accountant filling out the FEC paperwork. We learned yesterday that there was a strange $47,100 refund in the FEC filing for Friends of Dave Reichert this quarter. Mike Shields offered a perfectly opaque explanation to the AP:

Shields said the difference – some $47,000 in refunds to donors – was an accounting technicality that sprang from the Bush fundraiser.

Those refunds had to be issued because of mistakes in dividing the Bush money between Reichert’s re-election campaign and the state Republican Party, which shared the more than $500,000 raised by the president.

The refunded contributions will be repaid, so Reichert is counting those contributions toward his third quarter total, Shields said.

Putting two and two together, it appears that Friends of Dave Reichert illegally processed some of the contributions that were all supposed to be handled by The Reichert Washington Victory Committee. If so, and if the money goes back to The Reichert Washington Victory Committee, it means that the Bush fundraiser only brought in $182,125. That’s still a far cry from the half million being hawked to the press.

Oh…and if The Reichert Washington Victory Committee takes the refunded money and returns it in full, it means Dave Reichert only took in about $84,000 from the event.

Darcy Burner still kicked his ass!

(Thanks to N in Seattle and Daniel Kirkdorffer for their help in untangling Reichert’s mess)

If you were driving through Bellevue this morning and noticed firefighters waving signs for city council candidate Keri Andrews, get used to it: the firefighters plan to be out there every day between now and the election.

Why the passion and effort behind Andrews and her race against two-term incumbent Phil Noble? Chronic under-staffing has made Bellevue response times some of the worst in the nation, putting lives at risk and threatening the department’s accreditation. And that could mean huge premium bumps for residents and businesses should the insurance industry lower Bellevue’s Public Protection Classification.

“We are very concerned about our ability to provide a timely response to fire and medical emergencies,” Bruce Ansell, president of Bellevue’s firefighters union, said, “If the people of Bellevue really understood how serious this problem is, they would be asking the City Manager some very pointed questions.”

But rather than fixing the problem the city council keeps lowering the bar. In 2001 the council rejected the national standard of 5 minutes or less for emergency response time as too stringent, adopting instead a target of 6 minutes, 90% of the time… a goal they have not met since 1997. Now, in preparation for review of its accreditation, the city is setting a standard of 8 minutes, 80-percent of the time… almost twice as long as Seattle’s average response time of 4 minutes, 19 seconds.

If Bellevue voters want to continue electing conservative, anti-tax councilmembers like Noble, they could pay with their lives. Or they could elect a progressive like Andrews and get the kind of public service they demand.

My posting has been a little sparse as of late. Why? I don’t think I ever really announced it, but as of the end of September, I’m a full time student at Seattle Central Community College. I have one year to go until I can transfer to UW. I’m excited to be back, but the workload is more than I was prepared for.

With full time school and a very interesting part time gig, I’ll be super busy for the near future. Some things I will be looking out for:

Roads and Transit. The latest polling puts the measure at the mid fifties, which is decent, but not great. I get the sense that Seattle’s great civic tradition of screwing the pooch on transportation will pay us yet another visit this fall. Already, the whispers of “vote this down, we’ll come back with something next year” can be read in the blogosphere.

If this this is voted down, I’ll tell you what is coming:

Last January, a commission led by former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice and telecommunications billionaire John Stanton called for a new agency of members who would plan and finance road and transit projects for central Puget Sound. The new Puget Sound Regional Transportation Commission would take functions from the Puget Sound Regional Council, the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID), and Sound Transit.

The Rice-Stanton report [2.5 MB PDF] concluded that there are 128 agencies who manage aspects of transportation in the four-county area. “Our current system of transportation governance delivers inadequate results and will need fundamental systemic change to meet our region’s transportation needs in the future,” they declared.

Sound Transit and others fought the proposal, which passed in the state Senate but died in the House.

If ST2/RTID doesn’t pass, the punishment will not be doled out equally. Sound Transit, an organization with no friends in Olympia, will get the lion share of the blame. The Rice/Stanton plan will likely pass both the Senate and the House. (Some ask, “why would Democrats shitcan Sound Transit?” Remember, we’re not talking about regular Democrats. We’re talking about Olympia Democrats. This blogger was once told the story of a Sound Transit community meeting in north Seattle, where state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson showed up in a t-shirt that read “Mag-Lev Mama.” That’s how out to lunch they are on this issue.)

If Rice/Stanton passes, Sound Transit will be folded into a larger agency which will, in all likelihood, be governed by an elected board. Seattle, home to transit loving liberals, will have its political clout diluted by the new governance scheme. A transit board member in, say, Gig Harbor will have the right to veto transit funding in Seattle. And that, ladies and gentlemen (and Sen. Ed Murray), is bullshit.

Don’t forget that even if Prop 1 goes down this fall, roads will still get built. Why? Gov. Gregoire won’t allow 520 to plunge into Lake Washington. Expansion of the south portion of 405 is popular on the Eastside (and already partially funded), and with traffic congestion statistics showing this stretch of road to be the most congested in the state, it will be an easy call for legislators. Roads spending, unlike light rail, has sometimes be handled by the legislature without a vote of the people. Initiative 912 notwithstanding, two gas tax increases came out of Olympia without public votes. This could very well happen again, but this time to fund the projects that RTID funds.

The “Let’s Wait ‘Til Next Year” crowd sometimes cites Sound Transit’s success at the ballot box in 1996 as proof that light rail can do a quick turnaround to be approved by voters. What they don’t tell you is that Sound Transit’s failed measure in 1995 was paired down significantly to gain approval in 1996. The package in ’95 included light rail north to Lynnwood, south to Tacoma, and east across the lake to Bellevue. The package voters approved in 1996 was much smaller in scope. In fact, Sound Transit 2 greatly resembles the original Sound Move of 1995. Even with the much-publicized blunders made by Sound Transit during the 90’s, approval of the original Sound Move plan would have put the region in a great position today.

People who want more high capacity transit are rolling the dice by voting “no” on Prop 1. Don’t assume you’ll get another chance to vote for visionary transit investment like this in the near future.

The Bush administration announced this week that federal budget deficit declined this year, and for the third year in a row.

Jack Cafferty examines the claims and points out, “They’re lying!”

Bonus factoid:

There has been more debt accumulated during the administration of President Bush than during all of the previous presidents combined.

(This and some 70 other media clips from the past week are now posted at Hominid Views.)

Via Slog, Newsweek reports on a very bizarre incident in Iraq:

The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.

“I’ve found you can do pretty much anything you want if you do it with a smile on your face. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you do it with a smile on your face.”
— Dino Rossi, September 11, 2007

Looks like Dino Rossi has set up yet another sleazy front group to shill his non-campaign. Check this one out…

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

Last week Gen. Wesley Clark dropped in unannounced… this week, who knows? The folks from Simple Majority will be there telling us why we should all vote Yes on 4204, and writer, pundit, activist Ari Melber (formerly of Seattle, now of The Nation) plans to drop by to slum with us bloggers in the political backwater he left behind.

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.

Campaigning as a Republican in a 2-to-1 Democratic district, I suppose Dan Satterberg thought it clever to make non-partisanship the central theme of his campaign for King County Prosecuting Attorney, but I’m thinking he probably should have read his Lakoff first. For the more Satterberg protests that the office should be non-partisan, the more he raises the issue, thus automatically reminding voters that this is, after all, a partisan race between a Republican and a Democrat. Don’t think of an elephant, and all that.

Of course, the other problem with this meme is that it just isn’t true, and before the editorial boards buy into this inviting notion that a politician can somehow be apolitical, I hope they first read their own editorials… such as the following Seattle P-I op-ed editorial from back in December of 2005. (The emphasis is mine.)

Voting Disputes: Maleng turns it up

King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng is right in saying that it’s time for political parties to “lower their voices” over disputed voter registrations. So why raise his own voice on the issue?

Maleng is a respected public official, but he is a partisan politician. The Republican Party has tried to criminalize election issues by alleging that nearly 2,000 voters violated the law by registering at mailboxes and mini-storage units.

Of the roughly 200 of those challenged voters who cast ballots in the Nov. 8 election, the King County Canvassing Board this week rejected the challenges on 141 of them.

Dan Satterberg, Maleng’s chief of staff and one of three members of the Canvassing Board, voted to accept the challenges but was outvoted 2-1 by Elections Director Dean Logan and Democratic County Councilman Dow Constantine.

Maleng says the board took a “strict construction” view, with which he, like Satterberg, disagrees. Maleng wants to push the point by calling for Attorney General Rob McKenna and Secretary of State Sam Reed to issue opinions on the matter.

The state is already on the way to solving many voter registration issues with next year’s use of a statewide voter database.

If the laws or lines of authority are unclear, the fix is legislation, not executive fiat.

Maleng has actually turned the partisan volume not down, but up.

How partisan were Maleng and Satterberg in support of the KCGOP’s bogus voter registration challenges? While they publicly criticized the Democrats on the Canvassing Board for taking a “strict construction” view, it must be noted that the Board’s legal interpretation was actually adopted on the advise of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office itself. In a series of memos and emails to the Canvassing Board, Janine Joly — the Sr. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney assigned by Maleng and Satterberg to advise King County Elections — addressed the legal issues in depth, laying out the grounds for dismissing insufficient challenges:

“The challenger’s failure to allege an actual address either in her challenge form or at the hearing is a fatal flaw and should invalidate the challenge. Any other decision would be contrary to the plain language of the statute even if it appears from the other evidence provided that the challenged voter is not registered at a valid residence address.”

Can you get much more partisan than attacking Democrats for following the legal advice given by the attorney you assigned to advise them in the first place?

Don’t get me wrong, I liked and respected Norm Maleng, and I believe he generally carried out his duties in a professional, fair and nonpartisan manner. But as the P-I editorial makes clear, it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that Maleng was not a political animal, or that he never used his office to turn up “the partisan volume.” And despite his protestations to high-minded editorialists, this is exactly the partisan legacy that Satterberg promised to continue when speaking to fellow Republicans at a Mercer Island GOTV drive back in August:

“I am a Republican office holder in King County. There aren’t many of us – well, actually there aren’t any of us around. We’ve been lucky enough to have a Republican in the King County Prosecutor’s Office for 60 years, and my fear is that there is a little pressure on me if we lose it that it is going to be 60 more years before we get another one.

[…] You’re going to walk up long driveways and knock on doors and there are going to be dogs barking. I just want to warn you about the dogs — they can be dangerous but I would ask you be polite. This is King County so many of them are registered voters.”
[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/satterberg1.mp3]

The crowd laughed in approval because, you know… we Democrats, we’re all a bunch of cheats and crooks, and KCRE is just laughably corrupt and incompetent. Yeah, that’s the sort of non-partisanship we can expect from Satterberg, should he be elected.

The fact is, the PAO is a partisan office and always has been, and while Satterberg could have run as a Democrat or an independent, he didn’t. Satterberg chose to run as a Republican because that is the party that best reflects his values — values that will inform his prosecutorial judgment, and values that will guide him to use the prestige and influence of his office to help elect more Republicans. That is the nature of politics.

Dan Satterberg is an elephant, and to suggest otherwise, as Satterberg frequently does, is simply disingenuous.