I hadn’t read this New York Times piece on the GOP takeover of the Washington State Senate until today. It’s pretty much a standard recap, but I hadn’t heard Tim Sheldon’s view that Jay Inslee doesn’t represent the state.
“Seattle-centric,” said Senator Tim Sheldon, a two-decade veteran lawmaker and Democrat from a district west of Olympia, summing up the combination of forces that alienated him: safe seats in Seattle, campaign money raised in safe seats but spread around, and a caucus that rewards and reinforces the safe-seat equation with powerful leadership posts. “They’re not representative of the state,” he said.
The fact that Gov.-elect Jay Inslee, a former Democratic congressman, will take office in January having won majorities in only eight liberal counties* while losing in the other 31 only bolstered the case for change, said Mr. Sheldon, who said he voted for Mr. Inslee’s opponent, Rob McKenna, the state’s attorney general and a Republican.
He lost the counties 8 to 31, but we don’t vote by county. We have human beings vote. And the human beings pretty easily supported Inslee. To imply that Jay Inslee is less representative of Washington because he didn’t do as well in Adams or Mason counties is the height arrogance.
Those of us who live in Seattle, in addition to funding the schools in Tim Sheldon’s district, in addition to funding social services in his district, have the right to vote. If Tim Sheldon is out of step with the state as a whole when we vote for governor, well, maybe that’s because the state is more Seattle centric than he is.
* Is Jefferson County really a “liberal county” and for that matter is Snohomish? I mean obviously, the counties that voted for Inslee tended to be more liberal than the counties that voted for McKenna. That’s almost the definition of a Democrat who runs for any office where the geography covers more than one county.
So how many counties voted for Gregoire? Probably about the same. If anything, in the first Gregoire v. Rossi race, fewer – and Gregoire (and Locke and Lowry before her) were from the Seattle area, too. Sheldon was around for all of those. And unlike them, Inslee started his career representing a red part of the state (Yakima).
This is just as nakedly idiotic as Rodney Tom’s “I created a bipartisan majority” bullshit. Both of them acted out of pure self-interest. The weak-assed justifications are for the rubes.
Tim Sheldon is many things, most of them evil, but he is definitely not an idiot. The “oppressive” Seattle/King County meme is dangerous to progress in this state.
He’s in safe seats (both as a Kommissar and State Senator).
The only way to take him out (short of a hot lead enema which would be richly satisfying Karma) is to run a credible R. He has never had such an opponent for obvious reasons. And “top two” makes even this a dicey bet.
Now that we have real atty general, another way to impact him would be to look closely at Tim’s business and land dealings under Doug Sutherland (CPL before Goldmark) and let the chips fall. Trust me, the man is a snake and there’s nasty shit going on on the west side of Hood Canal.
The WA Repubs will continue to be pissed off because their Boy Candidate got his scrawny moob ass kicked by someone who was far more qualified.
If we are lucky, Robbie will start a fight for control of the WA Repub Party and we can all sit back and watch. I vote for Moob v Vance v Wilbur v Carlson in a cage match that none of them will (politically) survive.
[oops wrong thread]
Jefferson County votes liberal because two-thirds of its population live in upscale retiree haven Port Townsend and the nearby aging hippie towns like Chimacum and Port Hadlock. The loggers in Forks can’t outvote that.
Tim Sheldon is tired of feeling marginalized by the fact that he’s on the margin. He whines about how unfair and anti-democratic things are that most of the votes and most of the money in the state are on the other side. Boo hoo.
As a “two-decade veteran lawmaker” it’s not “safe seats” that he’s really upset about, it’s that those safe seats go to people who oppose him, because their constituents oppose him, and his side is in the minority.
@6 If Sheldon started behaving like a Democrat he might find himself with the majority.
As for the so-called “liberal” counties running the state, just three counties — King, Pierce, and Snohomish — have over half of the state’s population and King County alone has over a third of the state’s population.
King County taxpayers subsidize roads, schools, and public services for the ingrates living in “red” counties. If they wanna secede and have their own state, let ’em go.
@7:
Roger, you’re a little bit off about King County. It’s only 28.7% of the state’s population, 30.0% of registered voters. You’re correct, however, about King/Pierce/Snohomish, which total 51.2% of the population and 52.0% of the electorate.
Snohomish is only as “liberal” as the state as a whole. It has been Washington’s bellwether county for a number of years. For instance, Inslee got 51.5% statewide, 51.2% in Snohomish; Maria was at 60.5% overall, 60.5% in Snohomish; Peter Goldmark won with 58.7% statewide, 58.2% in Snohomish.
(And Pierce is less liberal than the state as a whole … McKenna won there with 51.5%.)
“both as a Kommissar and State Senator”
The asshat pulls down over $73K/yr for the commissioner gig.
Why don’t you city folk charter a bus to take you and your elected representatives on a tour of the rural areas of your state to see just how well those “rubes” are doing under Seattle-centric lawmaking? Put on your Eddie Bauer hiking boots and walk a mile in THEIR shoes!
@5:
The loggers in Forks can’t outvote the east side of Jefferson County for a damn good reason – they aren’t in Jefferson County. Forks is in Clallam County.
OK, we’re part-time (very part-time) “residents” of Jefferson County, having bought a timeshare at Kala Point seven years ago. (We paid the princely sum of $64 in property taxes this year.) The politics there are, to say the least, chaotic. The “retirees” in Port Townsend are mostly Microsoftees in their 40’s and 50’s, who are always on a vendetta to close the Port Townsend Paper mill (yeah the same one featured in “An Officer and a Gentleman”) because…well, it smells bad. No matter that it’s the single largest employer in the county, and no matter that it wants to upgrade its on-site power plant, which runs on bark, slash and other stuff that comes in which can’t be used to make product, to pump about 25 carbon-neutral megawatts back into the local power grid. Meanwhile, the local merchants have formed an organization called “The End Of The Tunnel” for mutual support in the aftermath of the Great Meltdown and combination of the Hood Canal bridge closure a couple years ago and the “ferry fiasco” in which the state let the “steel electrics” deteriorate until they had to be pulled from service and –then!– embarked on a project to build their replacements.
One of the positive things to come out of all that is that the Jefferson County Hospital, which had been downgraded to an urgent-care clinic, got a big boost and looks like it’s going to continue as a full-service facility going forward. This is no doubt great comfort to the victims of the inevitable accidents in the mill, logging sites, boatyards and highways in the county.
Meanwhile, in City Hall and the County Courthouse, there continues to be practiced an archetypical brand of small-town dirty politics. So it’s a constant struggle between the long-time residents, the developers looking for a big score in the next upturn and business owners too naiive to know when the only to way to get what you need is to grease the appropriate palms.
Yeah, my bad, on the location if Forks. Sorry, should have said “loggers south of Forks”.
It’s actually more Democratic out there as the very small population on the Jefferson County coastal strip includes a couple of small communities with a significant Native American population that is heavily organized by their tribal communities to vote Democratic.
I also note that two of the counties Inslee won were Grays Harbor and Pacific, winning both by only a few hundred votes each.
Washington is not alone with this large red county and many small red county split. Oregon, Colorado, and soon, Texas are examples of this feature.
It will be one of the most interesting political science issues of the next 25 years as states end up with one or two rich, blue urban areasdominating their state politics.
It is more Democratic out here, with Kevin Van De Wege, Steve Tharinger and Jim Hargrove representing the 24th District in the State legislature and a Port Angeles native representing us in the House (BTW, another PA native just missed out on making the general election for California’s 2nd CD).
But I think that you’re missing something about the Peninsula in general, and overestimating Jefferson County’s importance. Our district is a lot more than Jefferson County (2010 census pop. 29,872), which has less than half the population of Clallam County (pop. 71,404). The remainder of the 24th LD includes parts of Grays Harbor County (pop. 72,797), with Hoquiam, Ocean Shores and most of northern GHC in the 24th, while Aberdeen, the south coast of Grays Harbor and the eastern part of the county is in a separate district, and the northeast corner of GHC is in Judas Sheldon’s district.