Search Results for: Reichert

Public Policy Polling has released polling results in the 2012 Washington state gubernatorial race. Their press release gets right to the point:

McKenna, Inslee basically tied for WA Gov.

[…]The most likely match up for Governor of Washington next year looks like it would be a barn burner, with Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna starting out with just a 40-38 lead over Democratic Congressman Jay Inslee. With 23% of Democrats and only 13% of Republicans undecided at this point that looks like a sheer toss up.

The main reason McKenna is ahead of Inslee at this point is slightly higher name recognition.

(The same poll finds Inslee beating Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-08) handily, 42% to 36%.)

McKenna is the more recognized brand right now, with 60% of respondents having formed an opinion of him, whereas only 51% have formed an opinion on Inslee.

What I found interesting in the crosstabs is that, in a McKenna—Inslee match-up, groups likely to support Inslee have higher “uncertain” responses:

• Liberals 31%, conservatives 28%
• Women 25%, men 18%
• Democrats 23%, Republicans 13%
• 18-29 year olds 24%, about 13% for older voters

Thus it seems support for Inslee has the greater growth potential as name recognition improves.

I know…I shouldn’t pick on the pathetic. But I will anyway.

Two weeks ago, after an Elway poll came out with mixed news for Sen. Maria Cantwell, I did a preliminary assessment of Cantwell’s vulnerability to a Republican challenger. I didn’t find the minor weaknesses uncovered by the Elway poll overly concerning. The poll didn’t do head-to-head match-ups for a general election, but it did find 46% would vote to keep Cantwell in office, and 36% would vote to replace her—a result almost identical that at this point in the 2006 election cycle.  

My non-concern also reflected evidence from a much richer series of data from Survey USA’s regular tracking polls. They show Cantwell’s recent approval bouncing erratically from about 40% to 55%, with the most recent one at 49%.

Now Public Policy Polling has released a new poll that sheds more light on Cantwell’s lack of vulnerability. The poll finds her with 50% approval and 36 disapproval:

Cantwell is pretty universally well liked within her own party, at 80/7 with Democrats. She’s also on narrowly positive ground with independents at 44/40 and has a 17% approval rating with Republicans, which is a decent amount of crossover support (we generally found Patty Murray with a single digit approval with GOP voters over the course of last year’s campaign.)

The Republican who comes closest to Cantwell is an old favorite- Dino Rossi, who trails 53-40. Susan Hutchison and Dave Reichert do next best, both trailing by a 49-35 margin. Clint Didier trails 51-35 and Cathy McMorris Rodgers has the largest deficit at 50-31. Cantwell wins independent voters by 5-12 points in all of the match ups and picks up 8-9% of the Republican vote while only losing 2-5% of the Democratic vote.

Wow…a 17% approval with Republicans!

The head-to-head match-ups suggest that none of the Republican challengers can do any better against Cantwell than Mike McGavick’s dismal 39.9% result in 2006.

The bottom line:

Cantwell’s reasonably popular and the GOP doesn’t have anyone good to run against her.

This pretty much validates my statement from two weeks ago, “given the absence of a strong opponent on the horizon, I am simply unwilling to fret over a single Elway Poll….”

This new poll illuminates the state of the state Republicans: their candidate pool is nothing short of pathetic. There are almost no Republicans with any statewide appeal. Attorney General McKenna is about it, and he’s looking for opportunities elsewhere.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is facing re-election and a new Elway poll takes the pulse of the electorate. Josh at Publicola writes.

First the bad news for U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who’s up for reelection next year: A new Elway poll finds her “Job Performance” rating at 52 percent “negative” to 42 percent “positive.” (It was nearly the exact opposite in 2005, also a year out from reelection, when her numbers were 52 positive vs. 38 negative.)

The good news?

The GOP doesn’t have any promising challengers. In Elway’s imaginary open primary against a batch of Republicans including: U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert; former KIRO TV anchor Susan Hutchison; Tea Party activist Clint Didier; and Port Commissioner Bill Bryant—Cantwell wins big with 47 percent of the vote.

And that pretty much guarantees Cantwell a spot on the November ballot.

You may recall that Cantwell beat Mike McGavick 56.9% to 39.9% in 2006. Clearly, she can do a lot worse in 2012 and still come out on top. And as flawed as McGavick was, it is not clear that the Republicans have anyone better in the wings. Let’s explore some other polling results for Cantwell in order to better frame the Elway poll.

Survey USA has collected a series of polls from May 2005 until the last poll taken from 16-18 April 2011:

On May 10 of 2005, the first poll on the graph, Cantwell had an approval of 45% and a disapproval of 35%. The most recent poll has her at 49% approval to 40% disapproval. The spread is about the same, but her approval and disapproval are higher in the recent poll because there are fewer undecided folks now.

Clearly, after that May 2005 poll, Cantwell’s approval increased dramatically and stayed relatively high until the Summer of 2009. Since then Cantwell’s approval has been more volatile. Six of the last 20 polls since then show her with higher disapproval, but with an overall trend of a higher approval. And given the absence of a strong opponent on the horizon, I am simply unwilling to fret over a single Elway Poll….

A new King 5/SurveyUSA poll of the 2012 Washington state gubernatorial race has Attorney General Rob McKenna (R-WA) leading Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) by +7 (48% to 41%). A match-up with Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-08) has Reichert slightly ahead of Inslee, 46% to 44%.

The poll also matched up Gov. Christine Gregoire (D-WA). (Right…Like that’s gonna happen.) She’s down 12% to McKenna and 4% to Reichert.

The poll sampled 610 registered voters and has a margin of error of about 4%.

I decided to grease the gears and wind-up the ol’ calculating machine to tabulate some probabilistic outcomes from these poll data. I’ve posted these Monte Carlo analysis on HA for many years now, but in case you want more details, see that (somewhat outdated) FAQ. Here are results for the Inslee match-ups.

In the Inslee versus McKenna race, a million simulated elections has Inslee winning 95,892 times to McKenna’ s 898,897 wins. That is, if the election had been held yesterday, Inslee would have a 9.6% chance of winning, to McKenna’s 90.4% chance. Here is the distribution of outcomes:

That’s a lot of red.

Less so in the Inslee versus Reichert match-up. Inslee takes 350,198 of the simulated elections to Reichert’s 638,521. That is, Inslee would have about a 35.4% chance of beating Reichert in an election held now, based only on the evidence collected by the poll. Here is the distribution of outcomes:

So…is Washington going all Wisconsin on us? Are we going to get our own replay of the radical right-wing War on Workers, War on Women, War on Railroads, War on Health Care, and relaxation of child labor laws, seen in other states with newly elected Republican governors? It could be, but not really based on these polls. They are taken way, way too early to have any predictive power for an election held in a year and a half.

If there is any message here, it is that its never too early to start working for the candidate that most closely reflects your vision of what Washington should be.

The Republicans are sure waging a shit-load of wars against Americans.

Consider just last week. First the House Republicans:

…approved two resolutions that would amend the FY 2011 spending bill to block funding designated for Planned Parenthood and last year’s healthcare law. But House passage is largely symbolic, as the Senate did not pass either of the bills.

After that, House Republicans passed Rep. Ryan’s budget bill that privatizes Medicare, radically cuts the federal contribution to Medicaid, creates even more tax cuts for the rich and some corporations, and repeals health care reforms. The bill is DOA in the Senate, not to mention the Oval Office. And it should be DOA to most Americans.

One half the population ought to be outraged at the Republican’s War on Women. And add to that a lot non-women folk who like to fuck without making babies. Many of these non-women appreciate that Planned Parenthood provides help with that. In other words, a big chunk of young voting-age (or almost voting-age) Americans should be repulsed by these senseless political attacks on Planned Parenthood.

It is hard to imagine that senior citizens can be big fans of higher out-of-pocket insurance costs proposed in Ryan’s Medicare privatization bill to fund tax cuts for the rich. Some Seniors must find Rep. Dave Reichert’s War on AARP a little unsettling.

The poor, the disabled? I cannot believe they enjoyed being screwed by the Republicans.

All this comes on top of prior alienation. African Americans? Pretty much lost to the G.O.P. already. Hispanics? There was a small blip in increased support in 2010, but still down about 22% on average. And union members? Yeah…like they’re going to forgive and forget the War on Workers playing out in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Maine, Michigan, etc. The LGBT communities? Not really big supporters.

Republicans have lost the old, the young, the poor and disadvantaged, women, workers, and the nation’s largest minority groups. So who’s left?

Rich White Guys. That’s who.

Oh…yeah. Corporations, too.

But Republicans are not going to be voted out of office en masse. Even if a huge majority of Americans would be financially hurt by G.O.P. legislation, and even if they are morally opposed to the extremist agenda of the current crop of batshit crazy Republicans, Americans will still vote against their economic self-interest and moral principles. The Republicans will offer to rape them; they will assent.

Why? Some people are not paying attention. And other people are easily swayed. There is almost no harm that can be proposed or undertaken by Republicans that cannot be undone with enough money in the weeks leading up to an election.

Apparently Republicans have done this calculation, and they have concluded that the money infused by Rich White Guys and Wealthy Corporations over the next few elections will overcome the losses incurred by their all-out assault on most Americans.

Have they erred in their calculations?

It appears that – contrary to popular belief – Dave Reichert does things in Washington:

AARP lobbied for the new health care law and now it stands to profit, Republican lawmakers charged Wednesday as they called for the IRS to investigate whether the powerful interest group representing older Americans should be stripped of its federal tax exemption.

Three veteran GOP representatives released a report that estimates the seniors lobby could make an additional $1 billion over 10 years on health insurance plans whose sales are expected to pick up under the new law. They also questioned seven-figure compensation for some AARP executives.

“Based on the available evidence, substantial questions remain about whether AARP should maintain its tax-exempt status,” said the report, released by Reps. Wally Herger of California, Charles Boustany of Louisiana and Dave Reichert of Washington.

As Sarge in Seattle points out:

By definition, AARP makes no profit, and has no shareholders to distribute profits to. What it does have is a lot of money to promote the interests of its members, lobby Congress, and fund various charitable organizations.

AARP is big, and the CEO makes a lot of money. But it is neither an insurance company nor a for profit organization. Congressman Sander Levin of Michigan called this for what it is; a “witch hunt”.

That’s all true, but it avoids the most unseemly thing about Reichert’s attempt to “go Full ACORN” on the AARP. Insurance companies – whose practices should be far more of a concern to the American public – make profits and pay out salaries that completely dwarf what anyone at the AARP makes, yet are ignored by Reichert and his cronies. These companies also got what they wanted with the Affordable Care Act.

If Dave Reichert actually cared about how much money non-profits like the AARP are able to finagle for themselves in a system where the government will soon force citizens to buy private coverage without a public alternative, he’d be advocating for the one big structural change that could undercut all the profiteering – a public option. But he’s not concerned about those structural issues, only the non-profits who gain from them. His constituency isn’t the middle class family in Auburn who struggles to find adequate health care coverage – he could give a fuck about them. His constituency is the insurance company who doesn’t like the fact that the AARP has been able to use their trusted name to rake in lots of money in the health care market.

It’s entirely possible that the AARP will get roasted for their actions here, but with Dave Reichert and the House Republicans driving the bus until 2013, the situation for America’s families is only going to get worse.

UPDATE: Curtis Cartier at the Weekly writes:

AARP functions in two distinct ways–one, as a lobbying group, dedicated to advancing causes for seniors; two, as a kind of “branding organization” that offers to lend its name to certain products (namely insurance plans) for a cost.

It’s these dual roles that Republicans believe should disqualify the group from tax exemptions.

Sort of like how they are also calling for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lose its tax-exempt status for supporting the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, which stands to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to its corporations through their ability to anonymously contribute to political campaigns, right?

Wait, I’m being told that Republicans have made no such demands.

[In a fit of nostalgia (and laziness), I’m marking my remaining days here on HA by posting links to some of my favorite and most influential posts. If you have favorites you’d like to see, please let me know.]

04/25/2008: Goldy’s Adventures in Muniland

I crashed the Municipal League’s 2008 Civic Awards last night at the Olympic Sculpture Park, where my friend and colleague David Postman was being honored for “Governmental News Reporting of the Year.” Knowing that Postman’s bosses at the Seattle Times had forbade him from accepting the award in person so as not to compromise his impartiality—and unencumbered by these (or any) ethical burdens of my own—I realized that there must be an unused name tag at the registration table with at least half my name on it… and sure enough I managed to sign in as Postman, no questions asked.

His “Honoree” name tag firmly pinned to my lapel and a surfeit of free drink tickets in hand, I strolled into the PACCAR Pavilion determined to do Postman proud by mingling with our city’s power elite on his behalf. As it turned out, I would need the drink tickets.

I don’t do nearly enough straight satire here on HA, but this was certainly one of my best. Read the whole thing.

A couple folks have asked me recently if I’ve heard anything about Rep. Dave Reichert stepping down. A couple other folks have asked me if I’ve heard anything about Reichert challenging Sen. Maria Cantwell in 2012. Unless Reichert’s head injury is giving him more trouble than he admits, the latter seems more likely, but it has me thinking that perhaps the two rumors might be conflated.

What does seem clear is that WA-08 will very likely become a bit bluer in 2012, losing a chunk of its Republican-leaning southern part of the district, as WA-10 inevitably squeezes its northern neighbors from the south. So it might not be a bad time for Reichert to make an honorable exit.

Speaking of 2012, if you thought this year’s election was intriguing, just wait for the fun we have in store, when a depleted political bench vies for a smorgasbord of tantalizing open seats over the next few years.

Let’s start at the top, where every indication is that Gov. Chris Gregoire will most definitely not run for a third term, setting up the long anticipated showdown between Democratic Rep. Jay Inslee and Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna. Other incumbents considering abandoning their offices for a shot at the governor’s mansion include Democratic state Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, and nominally Democratic State Auditor Brian Sonntag, but Inslee and McKenna are just about sure things.

That of course leaves their seats open, which at this point has the AG’s race looking like a runoff between two King County Council members, Democrat Bob Ferguson and Republican Reagan Dunn, the winner of which leaves his seat open for the taking. As for Inslee’s 1st CD seat, depending on its boundaries after redistricting, that might be an attractive target for Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon, and any number of legislative and council incumbents of both parties.

And speaking of congressional seats, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect at least one or two more to come open in 2012. No doubt 74-year-old Rep. Jim McDermott (WA-07) was rejuvenated by a stint in the majority these past four years, but nobody would be surprised to hear him announce his retirement… an announcement that itself could open up more than a few legislative seats amongst the horde of Congressional wannabes. Meanwhile, Rep. Dave Reichert very well may find his Auburn home outside the borders of a redrawn 8th CD, perhaps pulling Dunn from an AG run, and/or perhaps setting off further musical chairs down ticket. And don’t forget the newly created WA-10.

So in 2012 alone we could see competitive races for open seats for Governor, Attorney General, State Auditor, WA-01, WA-07, WA-08 and WA-10, not to mention a half dozen or so legislative seats opening up due to incumbents looking to advance. And this in turn will likely open up some council and/or executive seats for 2013. Throw US Sen. Maria Cantwell and President Barack Obama into the 2012 mix, and it’s gonna be a heck of a few years.

King County Councilman Reagan Dunn is running for Washington State Attorney General in 2012 (unless, possibly, redistricting or Reichert’s retirement leaves an open seat in WA-08). So what kind of bold leadership can we expect from Dunn? Not much.

During the first two weeks of October, Suzan DelBene invested another $1.35 million of her own money into her 8th CD race, bring her total contributions and loans to $2.4 million. The press may not be paying attention, but she obviously believes she has a shot at knocking off Reichert.

More on Slog.

I’ll be on KOMO-1000 this morning at about 9:35, talking with John Carlson about my feature in this week’s Stranger on Dave Reichert’s Brain. No doubt John will attempt to defend Reichert.

In the meanwhile, for a second opinion on just how serious a chronic subdural hematoma can be, you might want to check out this recent case study in the New York Times.

Adam Nagourney in the New York Times was not paying much attention the first time California voters fought back against the drug war:

Washington has generally looked the other way as a growing medical marijuana industry has prospered here and in 14 other states and the District of Columbia, but Mr. Holder’s position — revealed in a letter this week to nine former chiefs of the Drug Enforcement Administration that was made public on Friday — made explicit that legalizing marijuana for recreational use would bring a whole new level of scrutiny from Washington.

To say that the Federal Government has “generally looked the other way” as medical marijuana has been introduced in over a dozen states is a fairly big misreading of the history. Previous to Obama, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations aggresively targeted medical marijuana providers in all states where it was legal. Under Obama, the DOJ publicly promised that they’d leave the states alone, but they haven’t lived up to that pledge. Even Congress has been unable to pass legislation that would’ve made it impossible to use federal resources to undermine state medical marijuana laws (side note: both Rick Larsen and Dave Reichert voted to continue to have the feds come into Washington to undermine our medical marijuana laws).

It’s worth pointing this out because Nagourney makes it sound as if this time it’ll be different. It won’t. As Dan Riffle points out in this post, the Federal Government would be powerless to overturn a successful vote in California to remove the state-level penalties on marijuana (even if whack-job Scientology-promoting sheriffs believe that they make the laws). Their only option is the enforce the law themselves, something that they have neither the manpower – or the political will – to accomplish.

Even so, it’s hard to know exactly how it will play out if Proposition 19 passes. Just because the Federal Government doesn’t appear to have much of a leg to stand on doesn’t mean that they’ll back down. It will certainly trigger some kind of a fight, but just as with medical marijuana, the will of the people and the forces of the market will eventually outlast it. But that’s still only part of what we’ll see if this domino falls.

What I think will be more interesting is to see what occurs outside of our borders. One of the particularly egregious aspects of our drug war is how effectively we’ve been able to force other countries to keep their marijuana laws in line with ours. In the recent ACLU forum, Rick Steves provided his perspective on this, noting that some countries enforce their marijuana laws solely to retain favored trade status with the U.S. If the U.S. isn’t able to maintain that level of control over one of its own states, it’s likely to change the perspective of those outside the U.S. looking in.

I did a lot of online fundraising for Darcy Burner over the last two cycles, and as proud and amazed as I was over the hundreds of thousands of dollars I helped raise for her, I was consistently disappointed by my failure to help her in my main capacity as a blogger: moving and shaping headlines.

Yeah, sure, the local blogosphere was instrumental in creating buzz around Darcy’s campaign in the spring of 2006, when nobody else was taking the 8th CD race seriously, but when push came to shove, I was never able to have the kinda impact I’ve had in countless other races. If anything, my fundraising efforts on her behalf were counterproductive in terms of my ability to influence media coverage. I don’t want to sound too narcissistic, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the Seattle Times’ over-the-top animosity toward Darcy might not have been at least partially directed at her enthusiastic supporters in the Netroots.

And so for that and other reasons, I’ve backed away a bit from activism over the past couple years, and focused more on the journalism side of what I do, pretty much abstaining from doing any candidate fundraising at all. Until now.

Seattle’s own Joan McCarter just announced on Daily Kos that Suzan DelBene has been added to their Orange to Blue ActBlue page… a testament to just how close the WA-08 race once again is. Of course, it’s also a testament to DelBene’s qualifications for office, and Reichert’s lack thereof, but she wouldn’t have been added at this late stage if there wasn’t reason to believe that the race is winnable.

I know the rest of the local media don’t believe it — they won’t believe it, because it fucks up their narrative of Democrats in crisis — but WA-08 has suddenly become one of the Democrats’ best shots at knocking off a Republican incumbent in an otherwise Republican-leaning year. Which would make a DelBene victory all the more sweet.

So please, give what you can, and help put WA-08 back in the hands of a competent representative.

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

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

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