Search Results for: Reichert

In reporting on Rep. Dave Reichert’s pathetic fundraising quarter (only $236K in 4Q, trailing Darcy Burner $607K to $462K in the all important cash-on-hand number,) I quipped:

“You immediately understand why Reichert is so desperate to get a seat on the House Appropriations committee: trading earmarks for campaign contributions is his only chance of staying on a level playing field.“

Well just so you know it’s not just partisan speculation on my part, the Seattle Times’ Alicia Mundy, who at times appears infatuated with Auburn’s brawny ex-sheriff, picks up on this theme in a Letter from Washington headlined: “Earmarks tiff spells trouble for Reichert.”

He’s in a tough re-election race against Democrat Darcy Burner, and last week Reichert told CQ Today, a Capitol Hill newspaper, that he needs a seat on Appropriations “now,” and that less-vulnerable candidates can wait their turn.

But….

A seat on a secondary “pork” committee might open Reichert to opposition campaign ads claiming that he is an old-style earmarker, while giving him little chance to direct real money back home.

Yeah, well, but when you’re as desperate as Dave, you take what you can get; even trading earmarks to out-of-district companies in exchange for lump sum contributions is a helluva lot easier than doing call time with constituents. But the question for the GOP leadership is not how desperate Reichert is for campaign cash, but rather, is he actually capable of taking advantage of an Appropriation’s seat in the first place? Given his anemic fundraising efforts thus far, one has to wonder what kind of leverage he has with his leadership — has he actually threatened to retire if denied, and would he actually follow through?

In 2006 House Republicans were forced to defend 21 open seats, compared to only 12 for the Democrats, an unbalanced playing field that surely factored into the Dems retaking the House for the first time since the Gingrich revolution of 1994. But in 2008 the GOP’s field position is dramatically worse, a lopsided 28 to 5 disadvantage… and it’s only February 2. Could Reichert make it number 29? That’s what some local pols are wondering, and if so it would be another big blow to Republican efforts to stave off further losses, especially given the DCCC’s $29 million to negative $1 million cash advantage over the NRCC.

It is hard to imagine the personal advantage to Reichert from exiting now versus rolling the dice on even an underfunded campaign, but he wouldn’t be the first Republican incumbent to have squeaked by in 2006, only to bow out this cycle in the face of a strong repeat-challenger. Either way, we’ll know pretty damn soon; the GOP leadership will announce their choice for the open Appropriations seat sometime over the next week or so, by which time we will be about half-way through the current quarter. If Reichert fails to get the post, and his fundraising efforts have failed to improve, that would be the time to choose between slogging on or pursuing a lucrative lobbying career. I wouldn’t bet money on a Reichert retirement, but if it’s gonna happen this cycle, it’s gonna happen now.

Rep. Dave Reichert’s year-end fundraising report just showed up on the FEC website, and man is it pathetic: only $236,612 net contributions for the quarter and $462,828 cash-on-hand at the end of the year. Compare that to Darcy Burner’s $339,495 for the quarter and $607,144 cash-on-hand, and you immediately understand why Reichert is so desperate to get a seat on the House Appropriations committee: trading earmarks for campaign contributions is his only chance of staying on a level playing field.

Two-term incumbents just simply don’t get out-raised, and certainly not by this margin. If he doesn’t turn things around and quick, the NRCC might just be better off cutting their losses and letting him sink or swim on his own.

Syndicated columnist/GOP flagpole Robert Novak predicts Dave Reichert will win the Appropriations Derby:

The most likely winner of the Appropriations derby will be Rep. Dave Reichert, a former sheriff of King County, Wash., who has not distinguished himself during three years in Congress and gets only a 60 percent rating from the American Conservative Union. His sole qualification appears to be that he is the most endangered Republican House member in 2008 and needs to bring home the bacon to Seattle.

I’m not so sure, but either way it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. That the GOP leadership would even consider handing the assignment to such an undistinguished and unqualified member shows you just how scared they are of Darcy Burner’s challenge; I guess they figure Reichert will have to buy off WA-08 voters with pork if he’s to have a hope of saving his job. And with yet another vulnerable Republican choosing retirement over humiliating defeat, WA-08 could end up being the most competitive race in the nation.

From The Hill:

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s (R-Colo.) entrance into the contentious battle for the open Appropriations Committee seat pits the House campaign committee chairman against two of his most vulnerable members.

And who is the other “most vulnerable” member seeking to plump up his coffers via a lucrative seat on the Appropriations Committee? None other than our own “Desperate Dave” Reichert.

The NRCC spent $1.8 million to defend Musgrave and $2.3 million defending Reichert last cycle. Both members narrowly won reelection and are once again targets for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Musgrave defeated Democrat Angie Paccione 46 to 43 percent. Reichert faces a rematch in 2008 against his 2006 challenger, Democrat Darcy Burner, whom he defeated 51 to 49 percent.

And that $2.3 million doesn’t even include the god-knows-how-much RNC money Karl Rove spent directing 585,164 voter contacts into the 8th Congressional District, a stunning 41,666 on election day alone!

With Musgrave now in contention for the Appropriations seat, Reichert can pretty much kiss his chances goodbye. Both lay equal claim to the need to prop up a vulnerable incumbent, but Reichert’s call for geographical diversity is trumped by Musgrave’s: currently, no Colorado member sits on the 36-seat panel, whereas Washington is well represented on the Democratic side by appropriations-savvy Rep. Norm Dicks.

Which I suppose explains why Reichert is suddenly changing his tune. On Friday he anxiously told reporters that “I need a seat now. Those open seats for people who are in safe seats will come later.” But in the face of Musgrave’s equally desperate challenge, Reichert spokesman Mike Shields is now touting loftier objectives:

“[Reichert] is the person who will help the conference the most … Dave is for more transparency and accountability.”

Yeah… um… ’cause what could be more transparent than admitting on camera that he votes the way his party leadership tells him to vote, because “I have to do that over here … I have to be able to be very flexible in where I place my votes”…? And really, who should be held more accountable for Gary Ridgeway’s 18-year killing spree than the detective who dismissed him as suspect early in the investigation despite an eyewitness account?

“Transparent” and “accountable”… yeah, that’s Dave Reichert. And nothing could be more transparent than Reichert’s desperate effort to prop up his flagging campaign by securing himself a seat on the lucrative Appropriation’s Committee.

Congressional Quarterly (subscription only) reports on the six-way contest to fill an open Republican seat on the influential House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chair of the NRCC, argues that an assignment to the committee would help him raise more money for all his caucus members. But Rep. Dave Reichert’s interest in Appropriations is much more personal:

“I need a seat now,” said Reichert, who won his 2006 race with 51.5 percent of the vote. “Those open seats for people who are in safe seats will come later.”

I dunno Dave, that just comes across as sounding a little desperate. I wonder if that’s a preview of his 4Q07 fundraising totals?

One of two things is going on here: either Dave Reichert and his campaign staff are incompetent or they initiated a deliberate effort to mislead the public about their disastrous fundraising in recent months.”
— WA State Democratic Party Chair Dwight Pelz

You know, or both. Three months after President Bush came to town for what we were told at the time was a half million dollar fundraiser, we still can’t make heads or tales of Rep. Dave Reichert’s numbers, and so the WA State Dems filed an FEC complaint today alleging serious violations of federal election laws.

Proceeds from the $1,000 a head fundraiser were supposed to be placed in a special joint account, and then divided between the Reichert campaign and the WA State Republican Party, but most of the money appears to have been deposited directly into Reichert’s campaign account, a serious violation of federal law. One experienced campaign treasurer tells me he’s never seen such a sloppy FEC report, a report that has made it impossible to figure out exactly how much Reichert raised. Which may of course have been the point.

First the campaign claimed Reichert raised $500,000, then $230,000, and ultimately $185,000. The report itself claims the joint fundraiser raised only $135,000, but it is now unclear how much of that represents Reichert’s share. After all expenses are accounted for it is possible that Reichert may have actually lost money on the event, but we’ll never know for sure until the report is properly revised.

This is all the more embarrassing for Republicans considering the astounding success of the national netroots fund drive we held to help Democratic opponent Darcy Burner offset Reichert’s expected presidential windfall, raising $126,000 from over 3,400 contributors… over a weekend in August. Burner ultimately beat Reichert in Q3 in both dollars raised, and cash on hand; it is clear now that we kicked the president’s ass. No wonder no other Republican incumbent has dared to bring the president into town since the debacle in Bellevue.

On Friday, Dave Reichert campaign spokesman Mike Shields told Postman that they raised $340,800 for the 3rd quarter, beating Darcy Burner’s $306,784. Yesterday, after questions were raised about $47,100 in refunds, Shields insisted that the refunds would be repaid, and thus should be counted in the 3rd quarter. Well, he issued a press release this afternoon, and now… not so much.

“Late last week and earlier this week I made a mistake in representing the amount of money Friends of Dave Reichert (FDR) raised in the third quarter of 2007. FDR had to return some of the funds that were deposited in its account and I misunderstood the accounting surrounding those refunds.

“The correct numbers, as reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show the Reichert campaign raised $294,888 in the 3 rd quarter of 2007. So far this cycle the campaign has raised $766,703. The campaign has $339,460 cash on hand.”

Okay, now that we’ve cleared that up (I think,) maybe Shields can come clean and tell us exactly how much money was raised at that big Bush fundraiser? Was it a half-million bucks? Or a measly $127,025?

UPDATE:
Now that’s the headline I wanted to see! From the AP: “Reichert: Fundraising numbers wrong, Burner ahead.”

The truth will out.

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 Republicans breathed a sigh of relief last Friday when Dave Reichert announced he would lead Darcy Burner by about $36,000 in the 3Q money race, they better take a deep breath before reading his actual FEC report. For hidden in his $342,639 of total receipts, is a whopping $47,100 in refunded excess contributions… money he couldn’t legally receive.

Subtract those ill-gotten gains from his contribution totals, and Reichert actually trails Burner for the quarter, $295,539 to $306,784 — and that’s after Reichert’s high-roller funder with President Bush. And again, subtracting the refunds, Reichert only reported $171,134 in individual contributions. So, either our $123,000/3,200 donor netroots fundraiser actually raised more money than the President… or Reichert raised less than $49,000 in individual contributions on his lonesome.

Either way, the President of the United States got his ass kicked by a bunch of bloggers, but rather than acknowledge this simple reality, Reichert chose to cook the books. The bulk of the excess contributions were recorded on 9/30, the last day of the quarter (and then somehow refunded two days earlier.) This is the type of accounting that made Enron famous, allowing Reichert to inflate his quarterly results by simultaneously booking the $47,100 in excess contributions as both a receipt and an expenditure. And since Burner announced her totals early, Reichert’s accountants knew exactly how much they’d have to pad his numbers to convincingly beat her mark.

And for Reichert fans, the news only gets worse. Daniel Kirkdorffer has a thorough breakdown of the two campaigns relative performance, and it presents a stunning contrast:

More impressively, 89% of Burner’s contributions this election cycle came from individuals, while Reichert’s contributions from individuals made up only 57% of his totals, the rest, over $340,000, coming from PACs and campaign committees. Just about half of Burner’s contributions are unitemized, i.e. less than $200 a donation. Only 7% of Reichert’s contributions from individuals are categorized as unitemized. As much as anything that tells so much of the story regarding the breadth of Burner’s support and how much Reichert is having to rely on wealthier donors.

Yeah, you want a really amazing number? Over her two campaign cycles, Burner has raised money from over 22,000 unique contributors — more than some presidential candidates — a donor base she can go back to again and again over the next year. Meanwhile, a sizable chunk of Reichert’s contributions have come from individuals and PACs that have already maxed out. Indeed, unless he turns things around, Reichert faces the very real possibility of recording a quarter-to-quarter decline in cash on hand at the end of the next reporting period.

If the Reichert camp isn’t nervous yet, they better stop believing their own math.

The headline on Postman’s blog was “Reichert bests Burner, a bit, in latest money totals,” but a closer look at the numbers doesn’t bode so well for the incumbent. According to Postman, Dave Reichert will report raising $340,800 from July through September, compared to $304,901 for Democratic challenger Darcy Burner. So yeah, Reichert raised a bit more than Burner in the third quarter.

According to Postman, Reichert also leads Burner in total dollars raised Year To Date (YTD), $830,440 to $518,630, but of course, the whole point of raising money now is to spend it later, and despite Reichert’s presidential fundraiser, Burner still leads $370,228 to $339,400 in the all important category of Cash On Hand (COH).

That puts Burner in a pretty damn good position heading into an election year against one of the GOP’s most vulnerable incumbents. How good a position? Well, a quick comparison of the numbers this cycle to those at the same point in the previous cycle is quite stunning.

	Reichert:	Burner:
Oct. 2005, YTD:	$937,829	$105,156
Oct. 2005, COH:	$455,120	$43,952
Oct. 2007, YTD:	$830,440	$518,630
Oct. 2007, COH:	$339,400	$370,228

In October of 2005, Reichert led Burner by a substantial ten-to-one margin, with over $455,000 in the bank (both went on to raise about $3.1 million each,) but this time around Reichert’s fundraising is noticeably down while Burner’s — fueled by her $123,000/3,200 donor netroots fundraiser — is way up, actually giving her a $31K lead in the number that really matters, Cash On Hand… and that’s after Reichert brought President Bush into the district for a high-donor fundraiser. And note, the YTD numbers represent “net receipts”; if you only look at contributions and subtract out Reichert’s $64,000 2Q “committee transfer,” Reichert’s fundraising is running about 20-percent below last cycle’s efforts.

It’s harder to raise money when you are in the minority, as Reichert is discovering, but it still ought to be easier as an incumbent than as a challenger, especially this early in the contest. If the Reichert folks were as pleased with their candidate’s anemic showing as they claimed to Postman, I’m guessing they wouldn’t have buried their announcement on a Friday afternoon.

Of course, I’m just some crazy blogger… one of those wacky, out-of-touch, far-left-of-center, internet agitators who threatens to destroy the Democratic Party’s credibility with mainstream Americans. So when we in the “nutroots” argue that Darcy Burner is in a better position to defeat Dave Reichert in 2008 than she was in the so-called “Blue Wave” election of 2006, you can be sure that the inside-the-beltway professionals will run as fast as they can in the opposite direction…

WASHINGTON — Darcy Burner is becoming a hot commodity in D.C.

Burner, the likely 2008 Democratic opponent of U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Auburn, was one of seven candidates hosted at a special fundraiser by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) at Johnny’s Half Shell, a block from the Capitol.

Wow. Burner is a “hot commodity”… one of the DCCC’s top challengers. Who’d a thunk?

One of the other top-seven Democratic challengers is Dan Maffei, who like Burner, was a first time candidate in 2006, yet came from nowhere to draw within a few points of defeating Republican incumbent Jim Walsh.

Walsh, a former supporter of the war in Iraq, made news last month when he changed his mind and called for redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq, after a two-day trip to Baghdad.

Sitting with Walsh on that trip was Reichert, who did not alter his position. Burner is against the war.

“Burner is against the war.” How many more Americans must die before political expediency forces Reichert to switch positions?

Meanwhile, Reichert finally says something I agree with:

“Republicans should head for the hills.”

Man, I’m looking forward to 2008.

21st Century Democrats will release a new poll later today, showing Democrat Darcy Burner with a 44% to 39% lead over Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington’s highly competitive 8th Congressional District. 17% of voters remain undecided.

The robo-poll of 509 registered voters was commissioned by 21st Century Democrats (who endorsed Burner in July) and was conducted on August 28, the day after President George Bush came to Bellevue, WA to raise money for Reichert. 85% of Democrats support Burner and 82% of Republicans support support Reichert, but independents break decidedly toward Burner by a 40% to 24% margin.

President Bush remains exceedingly unpopular in the district, with only 30% of respondents rating his job performance as good or excellent. 96% of Democrats and 83% of independents rate the president’s job performance as fair or poor, along with a substantial 36% of Republicans.

Yes it’s early, and yes this is an internal poll from a partisan ally. But it shows that Burner’s message of fighting to bring the occupation of Iraq to a responsible close is resonating not only with Democrats, but with unaffiliated voters as well.

UPDATE:
21st Century Democrats has issued a statement:

“Darcy’s Burner’s phenomenal success in using the web to reach voters with her message about ending rather than extending the war is clearly resonating with Democrats and Independents in the district,” said Mark Lotwis, executive director of 21st Century Democrats. “These poll results and Sen. Rodney Tom’s decision yesterday to drop out of the primary race and enthusiastically endorse Burner demonstrate that Burner’s courageous and principled leadership on progressive issues is not just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.”

A few days ago I’d heard from somebody in the Darcy Burner camp that Dave Reichert was preparing to introduce legislation this coming week, adding 26,000 acres along the Pratt River to the Alpine Wilderness Area. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, but it also sounds pretty damn cynical considering Reichert’s poor record on environmental issues, and his lockstep support of President Bush’s anti-wilderness policies. I’d meant to post preemptively, but Reichert’s staff beat me to it, feeding the story to the Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly.

The curmudgeonly Connelly was the perfect choice: a nature enthusiast and wilderness advocate who longs for the days when the Republican notion of doing the “right” thing spoke more to rectitude of judgment than ideological correctness, Connelly holds an almost messianic faith in the second coming of moderate bipartisanship. Connelly also has a history of rewarding even the most reprobate Republicans for small steps toward the middle, and Reichert’s folks guessed right that their outreach to him might generate a little positive press. Which makes my failure to preempt Reichert’s announcement, putting it in its appropriate context, all the more disappointing.

For at the same time Reichert makes hay over his move to designate these 26,000 acres as protected wilderness, he refuses to oppose Bush administration rules that would open all two million acres of Washington’s remaining roadless national forest land — and 58.5 million acres nationwide — to road-building, logging, mining and other commercial development.

Rep. Jay Inslee and Sen. Maria Cantwell have introduced bipartisan legislation that would do exactly that, reinstating by law the Clinton-era “roadless rule” that the Bush administration summarily revoked. The House version of the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act has already secured 140 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. But noticeably absent from this list of supporters is the suddenly “green” Dave Reichert.

Connelly kvelled that Reichert “took a bold step to embrace a Republican tradition that has lately been sinking out of sight.” Oy. So after rinsing the vomit out of my mouth, I asked Burner for comment. In response, the campaign sent the following statement:

“My family and I live in modest home outside of Carnation because we enjoy being close to the land. I grew up in rural areas, so a connection to open country is something I feel deep in my bones. Growing up, my dad spent several summers as a park ranger at Mt. Rainier National Park. We lived near the park while he worked to protect those areas so visitors from across the state could come and appreciate the great outdoors.

“I remain committed to conservation and to protecting our environment. Our pristine open spaces are disappearing before our eyes as the Bush administration guts the strong wilderness conservation protections established during the Clinton years. If we do not act now to reverse this situation, much of our wilderness will be lost forever.

“That is why I strongly support HR 2516, Senator Maria Cantwell’s and Rep. Jay Inslee’s Roadless Area Protection Act. Fifty-nine million acres of wilderness across the country are at risk – including 2 million acres in Washington State (accounting for more than a fifth of our National Forests here) – because of rule changes imposed by the Bush administration that amount to a giveaway of public lands to loggers, oil companies and the mining industry. Unfortunately, these are changes that Congressman Reichert seems to support, since he is notably absent as one of the 144 co-sponsors – including a number of Republicans – of this important legislation.

“Now I hear that Congressman Reichert, who is not even sure yet that global warming exists, intends to begin portraying himself as going ‘green.’ He is telling the press that he would like to consider designating 26,000 acres of federal land of the Pratt River Valley a wilderness area. Many in the environmental community would like to see this area conserved and so would I. So I applaud Congressman Reichert for taking a small step in the direction of wilderness conservation.

“But I would also hope that he would join so many of his colleagues in co-sponsoring the bipartisan Cantwell-Inslee legislation. Otherwise, his willingness to consider protecting one small area while threatening 2 million acres elsewhere in the state is the equivalent of focusing on a tree while losing sight of the fact that the forest is being chopped down around you.

“Moreover, I believe strongly that we can not forget to take care of what we already have. Congress must adequately fund the Parks Service so the horrible damage the winter storms did to Mt Rainier National Park can be put on a fast track for repair and restoration. When I am elected, the voters of the 8th District can be sure that conserving our untouched public lands, not just in one location but all across the state, will be one of my top priorities. I will move quickly to ensure that the environmental health of our entire region is preserved and enhanced.”

So before other reporters, columnists and editorialists gush over a minority congressman’s attempt to immunize himself on environmental issues by announcing plans to protect 26,000 acres (a bill he is powerless to push through on his own,) I hope they ask Reichert the hard question of whether he will or will not join Inslee and Cantwell in opposing President Bush, and reinstating roadless rules that would protect 58.5 million acres of pristine forest from commercial development.

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
Joel Connelly will be my guest tonight in the 8PM hour on “The David Goldstein Show.”

Eric Earling offers up what passes for “insight” over at (u)SP:

Darcy Burner’s campaign actually did a pretty good job of hiding how liberal she actually is during the 2006 cycle. If you paid close attention to her campaign rhetoric and some interviews you could catch the fact she fits right into the netroots. But her campaign did a good job of keeping her on message, for what that was worth. What will happen now that it’s to her advantage to proclaim her liberal, progressive bona fides in order to win a primary?

In 2006 Reichert ran on his own record and against her lack of experience as well as against her position on taxes (one of the few topics about which she actually spilled the liberal beans). What happens when she proudly proclaims her position on health care, foreign affairs, etc. to secure her left flank in the primary season? What kind of ammunition will that provide for November 2008?

See, this is exactly why Republicans consistently lose races on the Eastside and statewide — because they have absolutely no idea where the political center is anymore. Eric’s pal Stefan likes to dismiss bloggers like me as the “nutroots,” as if repeatedly calling us crazy automatically makes it so, and while Eric, to his credit, avoids the puerile pun, he seems to have bought into Stefan’s definition. The right has so relentlessly demonized the word “liberal” over the past couple decades that they have no idea what it means anymore.

Consider Eric’s example of a perceived political minefield facing Burner in the 2008 cycle on the issues of “health care” and “foreign affairs.” Burner wants to bring our troops home, whereas Reichert continues to support the president’s failed policies in Iraq. Just last night Reichert backed the president again by voting nay on a bill that would extend health insurance to children of the working poor. And Burner…?

“Let me be absolutely clear: I would have voted differently. In Congress I will fight to provide health care for all Americans, particularly our children. Not only is expanding the Children’s Health Program the right thing to do, funding most of the increase through a hike in the cigarette tax is something that I know the people of the 8th Congressional District would support.”

Tell me, on these two major issues, which candidate is out of step with the district?

On Iraq, health care, reproductive rights, climate change, gay rights, protecting our wilderness, domestic wiretapping and any number of other hot button issues, Burner finds herself smack dab in the mainstream of 8th CD voters. There’s a reason why the Reichert campaign and their surrogates focused almost entirely on dismissing Burner as just some ditzy girl — if voters had voted on the issues, Burner would have won by a comfortable margin.

Next time Eric wants to provide a little insight into the 8th CD race, he might want to base his analysis on something other than outdated assumptions.