Goldy

Talking Points Memo has picked up the story of Dino Rossi’s decision to continue headlining seminars teaching real estate speculators how to profit off of the foreclosure crisis. “It’s a strange strategy,” TPM points out, joining just about everybody else in scratching our collective head.

And NRSC spokesperson Brian Walsh’s response?

“Unless foreclosed properties are purchased don’t those properties stand vacant with no tax base coming into the local community, fewer families with roofs over their heads, and urban blight eventually resulting? Is that what the Democrats believe should happen? Or is their alternative policy that we resort to Communism, turn these properties into government housing and tell people where they should live?”

Really? He’s playing the commie card? That’s the best he can do? What a lazy douche-bag.

Oh, and by the way Brian, no, that’s not what happens when a property stands vacant. Somebody still owns the property, even if it’s the bank, and they still pay the property taxes. And as for urban blight, I’m not sure that’s much of a problem in the neighborhoods surrounding those $11 million waterfront homes Rossi is hawking.

No wonder the NRSC is getting it’s ass kicked this primary season.

Having never bought into the breadth, depth or staying power of the so-called Tea Party “movement,” particularly here in Washington state, I somewhat what agree with Eli Sanders’ assessment of the “Didier Bubble” over on Slog:

Now, I love the Didier story line as much as the next person—a tractor-driving, government-handout-slurping, Sarah-Palin-endorsed insurgent? irresistable!—but this idea that he’s about to become the favorite of the National Republican Senatorial Committee just doesn’t have anything to it.

That said, I’m open to being surprised, at least to the extent that Clint Didier could potentially create enough trouble for Dino Rossi that it seriously damages his prospects in November. And in that context, I’m particularly intrigued by Didier’s “impromtu” meeting with Sarah Palin last week, in which, according to PubliCola, the two discussed “a series of Didier fundraisers with Palin.”

Like many Alaskans, Palin has strong ties to Washington, and is frequently in-state visiting family, so it’s not surprising that she would take a special interest in our U.S. Senate election. Likewise, if Palin chooses to headline “a series of Didier fundraisers,” it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suppose that they might be able raise a substantial amount of money.

How much qualifies as substantial? I’d say a million or two, and while even that likely wouldn’t be enough to overcome Rossi’s substantial lead, it could potentially take an awfully big bite out of it, assuming the money is spent well. And by “spent well,” of course I mean relentlessly negative.

As Sanders writes, “If Didier were really a surging threat, would Rossi’s campaign be so studiously ignoring him?” Probably not, and if I were advising Rossi I’d tell him to focus solely on Sen. Murray too. But faced with a well-funded attack from Didier (and perhaps Nevada-style independent expenditures from the likes of the Tea Party Express and Club For Growth), that strategy would have to change.

No, I’m not all that impressed by either Didier or the folksy antics of our indigenous teabaggers. But I retain a profound respect for the transformative power of targeted political money.

Given Dino Rossi’s refusal to detail his stance on reproductive rights (or just about anything) I’ve taken to speculating recently on what an imaginary conversation on the subject with Rossi might sound like. I suppose I could’ve just tried asking Rossi directly, but given my past failures to get his campaign to respond to me through formal channels, I didn’t see much of a point.

Well, Josh at PubliCola did recently ask Rossi some Yes or No questions on choice, and surprisingly, Rossi provided answers. Not surprisingly, the answers were all “No.”

Specifically, Josh queried Rossi on seven pro-choice vs. pro-life votes Sen. Patty Murray took since 2000, and Rossi confirmed that in each case he would have voted the opposite. Plan B? No. Privately funded abortions at overseas military bases, for any reason? No. $100 million to reduce teen pregnancy through education and services? No.

You get the point.

Rossi nearly won in 2004 because the Gregoire campaign and the state Dems did not do a good enough job of shattering the moderate image he crafted for himself in that race. That’s how Republicans win statewide in Washington: by presenting a blank slate to voters on controversial issues in an effort to convince enough independents and soft-Dems that they’re a different kind of Republican. And every Republican running statewide (or King County wide) ever since Rossi’s near victory, has attempted the same tabula rossi strategy.

But the problem with refusing to define yourself — you know, Rossi’s “I’m not running on that issue” approach — is that you give your opponents the opportunity to define you for you. And unlike Gregoire circa 2004, that’s an opportunity I don’t expect the Murray camp to miss.

I just got my hands on the latest Elway Poll, and I gotta say, it has me feeling pretty damn smart. While the headlines generated by the top-line numbers don’t look so great for Sen. Patty Murray — Publicola, for example, reported that “Rossi Gains Ground on Murray in New Poll” — the details are much more copacetic.

Yeah sure, Murray’s lead has shrunk from 51-34 to 47-40 since Dino Rossi officially entered the race, and I’m sure she’s not happy to find herself under 50 percent regardless of the opponent. But if anybody should be discouraged by these results, it’s Rossi and his Republican supporters.

Although Murray is below 50%, this survey suggests that in order to win, Rossi would have to convince 85% of the undecided voters to vote for him. This would be a stretch, even though challengers typically receive a disproportionate share of the undecided voters. The assumption is that voters are familiar with the incumbent. If they were going to vote for the incumbent, they would know it already.

The problem for Rossi, as I’ve previously suggested, is that having already run high profile campaigns in 2004 and 2008, voters are already familiar with him too. In fact, as a candidate, voters are probably more familiar with Rossi than with Murray, thanks to the $20 million-plus spent on his behalf just two years ago. Elway confirms my intuition:

Because Rossi has run in 2 of the last 3 statewide elections, however, most voters will have formed an opinion about him prior to this campaign. He was recruited as the strongest candidate to face Murray based on his runs for Governor. Ironically, he may not benefit as much from being the non-incumbent as would be the case had he not run these races.

Six years of almost continuous campaigning, and yet here Rossi sits, in the wake of his post-announcement bounce, at a mere 40 percent.

This reminds me of the 2006 contest between Sen. Maria Cantwell and Mike McGavick. It was around this time in the campaign when the polling numbers narrowed, and pundits started talking about how this would be a close race. The problem for McGavick was that the only numbers that were moving were Cantwell’s, while he never managed to climb above the low 40’s. McGavick’s path toward fifty plus one was never very clear, and he ultimately never found one.

Rossi’s path is equally unsure, if for different reasons, and made all the more so by the fact that he polls best with those respondents least likely to vote.

As Elway explains, Murray leads Rossi 56-33 with “perfect voters” (those who have voted in all 4 of the previous primary and general elections) and 52-37 among “likely voters” (those who are 3 for 4), while Rossi leads 47-39 among “marginal voters”… those who have voted in 2 or fewer of the past 4 elections. This appears to create a bizarro world kinda scenario, where Republican victory might hinge on increasing voter turnout.

The other challenge facing Rossi is that according to Elway, more Washington voters would vote against a Tea Party candidate than for one, by a 5-to-3 margin. Once again echoing my earlier analysis, Elway observes that the Tea Party represents a bigger problem for Rossi than it does for Murray:

Tea Partiers are never going to vote for Murray anyway. Rossi will need Tea Party voters in November, but if he is too closely identified with them, he risks driving away more voters than he will attract.

Rock, meet hard place.

It wasn’t so long ago that Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum was the overwhelming favorite to win this year’s gubernatorial election, but now it looks like he might not even get out of the Republican primary:

It is a stunning shift for a seasoned politician who seemed to have a lock on the race just two months ago…Supporters fault McCollum’s TV message, his inability to connect with an angry electorate, fundraising shortcomings and a dated campaign style, emphasizing endorsements from establishment figures such as Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney at a time when voters feel alienated.

Sounds a bit like Washington AG Rob McKenna, who appears to have a lot in common with his Florida counterpart. Both are stiff, spectacled, Republican establishment type attorney generals with gubernatorial ambitions, and both have prominently placed themselves in opposition to health care reform, McCollum taking the lead on the lawsuit challenging it, and McKenna quickly signing on. McKenna and McCollum both kinda look alike, too.

So perhaps there’s a lesson for McKenna to learn from McCollum, who didn’t get much right-wing traction from his blatant teabagger pandering on health care reform. Perhaps if you empower the teabaggers by legitimizing them, they can come back and bite you in the ass? You know, especially if they learn you’ve risked a constitutional crisis in defense of broadening the powers of eminent domain?

McKenna is gonna have to make a decision about the Tea Party: he’s either with them or against them. And unless he’s with them 100 percent of the time, he sure can’t count on them being with him come election time.

The Association of Washington Businesses claims its board unanimously endorsed Tim Eyman’s anti-democratic I-1053 at its May 13 board meeting, but after a bit of digging, the folks over at the Washington State Labor Council can’t find a single AWB board member who admits to attending the meeting and endorsing the initiative.

Can this be true? Amid severe recession-related budget cuts to higher education, transportation and other state funding priorities strongly supported by many of our largest private employers, the AWB board voted UNANIMOUSLY for this starve-the-beast strategy to avoid taxes?

Not Boeing.  Company spokeswoman Susan Bradley says the company has no position on I-1053 and had no representative at AWB’s May 13 board meeting in Spokane.

And not Microsoft.  Government Affairs Director Delee Shoemaker, an AWB board member, reports that the company will not take a position on I-1053 at least until it qualifies for the ballot. She adds that she wasn’t at the May 13 meeting either.

And the list goes on: Weyerhaeuser, Avista Corp., Ben Bridge Jewelers, US Bank… nobody would admit to even attending the meeting. In fact, of the AWB board members who responded to WSLC’s inquiries, only one, Safeway Director of Public Affairs Cherie Myers, expressed support for the initiative. But… “I was not there to vote,” Myers told the WSLC.

Huh. Reminds me of a lyric from Les Miserables:

Phantom faces at the window.
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

The bulk of the board members WSLC contacted wouldn’t respond to inquiries, but there’s a reason why local businesses might be reluctant to embrace I-1053 despite the business community’s natural knee-jerk support for anything that makes it harder to raise their taxes: as WSLC explains, the Californiafication of Washington government simply isn’t good for our state’s business climate:

Our biggest private-sector employers report that one of their greatest challenges is the insufficient number of skilled workers available. Microsoft regularly argues that more H-1B visas are needed to meet its demand for engineers. Boeing’s aging workforce — of both machinists and engineers — is considered a looming crisis.

This problem has been exacerbated by the recession. Plummeting state revenue has resulted in college and university budgets being slashed; University of Washington reports that its state funding was cut by one-third in the past 15 months. College instructors are being laid off, departments eliminated, class sizes sharply increased, and double-digit tuition hikes imposed. And all this is happening as Boeing laments its demand for engineers consistently exceeds the state’s production by a two-to-one ratio, a supply gap that is widening as its aging work force retires in droves.

WSLC includes a list of companies that have refused to respond, and it wouldn’t hurt if they heard from their customers that we don’t particularly enjoy doing business with companies that spend their profits ensuring that a one-third minority of the Legislature has veto power over our state budgets. At the very least, they need to know that they can’t continue to hide behind their empty chairs.

With time running out to appeal the use of eminent domain against Common School Trust lands in Okanogan County, the contentious face-off between Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Attorney General Rob McKenna is about to come to a head.

Either McKenna blinks, and accedes to Goldmark’s lawful request for legal representation, a concession that could come as early as today, or he plunges our state into a constitutional crisis by forcing Goldmark to take unprecedented legal actions that could ultimately lead to a Supreme Court showdown, and potential disbarment proceedings against McKenna.

And no, I’m not being hyperbolic.

“I am deeply disappointed that Attorney General Rob McKenna has denied my request to appoint a Special Assistant Attorney General that would allow DNR to appeal the use of eminent domain against the Common School Trust in Okanogan County.

As Commissioner of Public Lands, I have a fiduciary responsibility to defend the trust. It is puzzling that our Attorney General will not allow his client’s argument to be heard in court when he already supported trying it in a lower court.

While I am unsure what changed his mind, I hope he changes his mind again and appoints a Special Assistant Attorney General.

It is uncertain if there is a precedent for denying a request for a Special Assistant Attorney General to an agency headed by an independently elected official.”

Don’t be distracted by the measured wording of Goldmark’s press release; this is clearly a threat, and a clear indication that Goldmark has no intention of backing down in the face of his “fiduciary responsibility to defend the trust.” Just as the RCW mandates that McKenna must provide legal representation to Goldmark, the RCW also bars Goldmark from retaining outside counsel. Within days, both of these statutes may be violated, leading to a messy court fight over a court fight.

As a partisan blogger already focusing on the 2012 gubernatorial contest, I’d personally prefer that McKenna maintain his arrogant, illegal and unethical stance. It would be a dramatic, political misstep… but I’m not betting on it. My best guess is that McKenna will momentarily back away from the dark side and assign a Special Assistant Attorney General to DNR, while publicly criticizing Goldmark for ignoring his legal advice. That would be the smart political move, and up until recently, McKenna has proven to be a smart politician.

But if he doesn’t… well… Katie bar the door. So far the media has largely ignored this dispute — I guess they just can’t be bothered to wrap their minds around such complicated legal issues.  But they won’t be able to ignore what comes next.

Darryl neglected to put up his usual Drinking Liberally post — perhaps he’s drunk or something — so I guess it falls to me. Anyway, please join us (but not Darryl) for an evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Stop by even earlier and enjoy some dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 325 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

There are 178 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, but according to the National Republican Congressional Committee only nine of those seats are vulnerable. And once again, one of those vulnerable seats belongs to our very own Rep. Dave Reichert.

That’s quite an accomplishment for Reichert, in a district that has never voted for a Democrat, and that under Jennifer Dunn’s tenure was a consistent cash cow for the NRCC, rather than the bottomless GOP money pit it’s proven in recent years. That’s just gotta be an irritant to NRCC retention chair Mike Rodgers, who is counting on his incumbents to be financially independent as Republicans go on the offensive in 2010.

“Our goal is not just to get every one of them to win… but to get everyone one of them to win with no help from the NRCC,” he said.

Fat chance there, at least when it comes to Reichert.

It is still unclear how much of the electoral mood this year is anti-Democratic, or more generically, anti-incumbent. But if it’s the latter, and the NRCC leaves Reichert to his own devices — and bank account — I wouldn’t rule out a surprise this November.

According to Josh at Publicola, real estate speculator Dino Rossi is kicking Sen. Patty Murray’s ass… you know, on Facebook:

In two weeks since declaring his candidacy, Dino Rossi boasts that he’s drawn 25,275 Facebook fans to his Facebook page.  And his punch line: Sen. Patty Murray only has 11,796 fans.

Actually, it’s been almost three weeks since he officially declared his candidacy, and while Rossi is still boasting about his Facebook prowess, it’s at least curious to note that he’s no longer publicly crowing about his fundraising totals. Rossi made a bit of a splash by announcing that he raised $600,000 in his first week of campaigning while attracting more than 20,000 Facebook fans. But this Facebook momentum clearly trailed off over the subsequent 12 days; does his silence on the money front indicate that his fundraising efforts have followed a similar curve?

You know, low hanging fruit and all that.

I don’t doubt that Rossi will raise a ton of money between now and the election; I just don’t yet see signs that his support is any broader or deeper than it was in 2008.

I suppose I should take some satisfaction in the Wright family’s revised proposal for their Chihuly-themed gallery/gift-shop/catering-space in the old Fun Forest site:

As part of the deal, the Wright family proposes spending $2 million to fund and maintain an “Art Playground” somewhere else on the Seattle Center campus. They would invite local artists to design playground equipment inspired by Seattle Center or the 1962 World’s Fair that was held there. They would select four or five winners, build their designs and maintain the structures for 20 years, according to the proposal.

If that’s not a concession to my calls for a Really Kick-Ass Playground, I don’t know what is, and it’s certainly a smart PR move. The Wrights get their for-profit, paid-admission extension to their Space Needle catering facility, and the city gets a new playground… you know… somewhere else. Not that $2 million buys you an awful lot of playground these days, but it’s a concession nonetheless.

Still, my general response to this and the other Fun Forest proposals can be summed up in three words: What’s the rush?

There is a lot to criticize about the way the Seattle Center first introduced the Chihuly proposal as an all but done deal, and then went about hurriedly soliciting additional proposals in response to the initial public uproar, but the most significant problem with the process is the way that it institutionalizes the frame that the Fun Forest redevelopment is something that absolutely has to happen now.

Yes, I know they’d like to have something in place by the Center’s 5oth anniversary in 2012, but it’s hard to justify such a major, long term development for the sake of a symbolic gesture. Likewise, Center staff have argued that they need the income from the property to help subsidize other attractions, but we’re hardly talking about a massive infusion of cash. The new Chihuly proposal promises at least $350,000 a year rent, but the local, family-run business currently operating amusements on the site has repeatedly offered to pay $250,000 a year on a year-to-year lease.

An additional $100,000 a year in rent… that’s all the Center would sacrifice for the sake of giving the city some breathing room to really think through whether yet another private, paid-admission “museum” is the best use of a couple acres of scarce public park land. Yeah, times are tough right now, and revenue is hard to come by, but that makes this exactly the wrong time to rush through this decision.

The Wrights had a year or more to work behind closed doors to come up with their initial proposal, and then still had to go back to the drawing board to respond to public outcry, yet their competitors for the Fun Forest space only had a few weeks to start from scratch. That’s hardly a fair or efficient process, and if, as expected, the Chihuly project is the ultimate winner, this whole exercise can’t help but come of as anything but a sham.

So my advice to the Seattle Center and the City Council is that this is one case where the “Seattle Way” is the best way toward determining the best use of scarce in-city open space. There’s no rush to clear cut this last remaining swath of the Fun Forest, and no compelling reason to push through this privatization of public land at the depths of an economic crisis. If the Chihuly proposal makes sense now, it will still make sense a year from now; in fact, given another year of feedback and push-back, the proposal might even get better.

So please, let’s take the time to do this thing right.

Missed Dino Rossi at this weekend’s state Republican convention? Then join him June 15, 6:30PM at Bellevue Maggiano’s Restaurant, where he’ll talk about the most pressing question facing our nation: “Is now the time to buy a waterfront home?”

Really. In the middle of a supposedly hotly contested U.S. Senate campaign, Rossi is still giving investment seminars on how to profit off the real estate market collapse at the heart of our current crappy economy. Weird.

UPDATE:
And just take a look at the rest of the brochure with the $11 million homes and the low mortgage rates. No question Rossi is a man of the people. Very wealthy people.

On Friday I warned my friends in the media that they were missing the big story in the escalating dispute between Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Attorney General Rob McKenna. And after a sunny weekend and no further headlines, I feel compelled to raise the alert one more time.

Hey media… you’re missing a big story!

At issue here is more than just whether Okanogan PUD should be allowed to build transmission lines through state Common School Trust lands, or even the legal question of whether a political subdivision can unilaterally take state lands via eminent domain. (I’ve been advised by experts in the field that case law in WA and other states is very clear that such authority is not presumed; more on that later.)

No, the big story is AG McKenna’s refusal to comply with his statutory obligation to provide the legal representation Commissioner Goldmark has lawfully requested… an action — or rather, inaction — whose precedent threatens to dramatically expand the scope and authority of the Attorney General’s Office, essentially giving the AG veto power over the policy decisions of state legislators, executives and even The People acting through the initiative and referenda process.

As I’ve previously stated, the relevant statute is unambiguous:

RCW 43.12.075
Duty of attorney general — Commissioner may represent state.
It shall be the duty of the attorney general, to institute, or defend, any action or proceeding to which the state, or the commissioner or the board, is or may be a party, or in which the interests of the state are involved, in any court of this state, or any other state, or of the United States, or in any department of the United States, or before any board or tribunal, when requested so to do by the commissioner, or the board, or upon the attorney general’s own initiative.

“It shall be the duty of the attorney general” to defend DNR “when requested so to do by the commissioner.” The word “shall” is understood to mean that the AG’s duty is mandatory; there’s no other way of reading this provision.

McKenna’s spokesman, former right-wing talk radio host Dan Sytman argues that “usually, when we’re working with clients and we explain the legal reasoning, they defer to our expertise… generally they’ll defer to us on legal matters, just as we defer to them on policy matters.” Okay, maybe usually. But his client’s deference is not a statutory requirement, whereas the AG’s duty to defend his client is.

And by refusing to fulfill this statutory duty, McKenna most certainly is intruding into DNR’s business on matters of policy.

The risk is clear. If the AG is given discretion as to which laws and policies to defend, then he essentially holds veto power over any law or policy subject to a legal challenge. For example, should the BIAW sue to overturn storm water regulations, a suit against which the AG subsequently refuses to defend, these regulations will be overturned. Likewise, already on the record with an opinion that an income tax is unconstitutional, McKenna might choose not to adequately defend I-1098 from the inevitable legal challenge should it be passed by voters.

That is why neither the Constitution nor the RCW gives the Attorney General such broad discretion. Rob McKenna is our state’s attorney, and according to RCW 43.10.040, that means “the state and all officials, departments, boards, commissions and agencies of the state” are clients who he is legally and ethically obligated to represent. Outside of an obviously frivolous claim, McKenna simply has no choice but to honor a client’s lawful request for representation. And as I will show in subsequent posts, DNR’s claim is far from frivolous.

What we have here is the makings of a constitutional crisis… a dispute that, assuming neither Goldmark nor McKenna back down, will generate headlines for months to come, and that could possibly haunt McKenna throughout his 2012 gubernatorial campaign.

Like I said… this could be a big, big story. The only question remaining is whether media scrutiny will force McKenna to do his job, or whether McKenna’s refusal to do his job will ultimately force media scrutiny.

I just wanted to let Pacific NW natives know that in other regions of the nation, weather forecasters are actually able to somewhat reliably forecast the weather more than, say, 12 hours in advance. You know, like if they tell us on Friday to expect a week of relentless sunshine, the forecast on Monday won’t generally flip to clouds and rain.

I’m not blaming Cliff Mass and his cohorts; it’s apparently more difficult to make five-day forecasts here during much of the year than it is most anywhere else. But damn is it frustrating.

Genesis 6:6-7
The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

Discuss.