Goldy

I’m still on Other Coast Time, so I couldn’t help but drift off after writing up the 8:15 election results, but I think I dreamt last night that I awoke to find Greg Nickels with a comfortable lead in the Seattle mayor’s race, the later ballot drops having flipped the early numbers. I guess even my unconscious had trouble believing that Mayor Nickels might not survive the primary.

Of course, there wasn’t much in the way of late ballot drops as only the handful of ballots from the county’s three accessible voting centers were added in at 10 PM, and so the mayor really has found himself at the shortest end of a three-way statistical tie in a top-two primary. The mayor’s camp tells me they have some cause for optimism, as late polling showed Nickels doing better against Mallahan than the early vote, so with another 45% or so of ballots still outstanding there’s a good chance the mayor could catch him, but as I wrote last night, they’ve gotta be feeling kinda sad.

Winning a third term is awfully tough (a truism Gov. Gregoire should take to heart as she continues to raise money, presumably in preparation for 2012), even under the best conditions, and these weren’t the best conditions for Mayor Nickels, who despite managing our city into arguably one of the more stable financial situations of any major city, county or state government during this nearly unprecedented economic downturn, has faced brutal attacks on his management skills from a press that apparently believes that his response to a nearly unprecedented snow storm is a better measure of his managerial abilities.

Voters tire of you. And citizens have reason to be fatigued, considering the miserable city response to last December’s snowstorms.

[…] The anti-tunnel vote got a huge bump with support for McGinn, who wants to undo that decision. Welcome to Groundhog Day, as the city revisits the decision again and again. McGinn’s solution, surface transit, will jam our streets and overwhelm the freeway.

Yeah, well, I oppose the tunnel myself (at least, this tunnel, under this financing deal), but perhaps the Times might have thought about the potential consequences before nailing the mayor to the cross over a trumped up Frozen Watergate scandal. (I always find it a little irritating how the press plays such an active role in influencing elections, and then sits back and pretends to be a neutral observer after the fact. At least I’m honest about my activism.)

So as it stands now, we face the very real prospect of the man with the reputation for being one of the greenest mayors in America being unceremoniously shoved aside by an environmental activist. Really?

Don’t get me wrong, Mike McGinn and his supporters deserve a helluva lot of credit for running a grassroots campaign, and impressively so, whatever the final results. I’m eating a breakfast of not so tasty crow this morning for questioning the value of phone banking. And I certainly have my differences with the Nickels administration.

But it’s just hard to believe that a scandal-free mayor of a relatively well-managed city with few if any major problems compared to, say, the big city of my birth from where I’m typing my morning after observations, might potentially fail to make it through such an unimpressive, if crowded field of primary challengers.

How very Seattle of us.

King County Elections dropped the first batch of ballots shortly after 8PM, and… well… blow me down:

Mike McGinn	16810	26.56%
Joe Mallahan	16334	25.81%
Greg Nickels	15859	25.05%

That’s a three-way statistical tie in the Seattle mayor’s race with 17.3% of registered voters counted. Can’t get much more dramatic than that… except for, you know, the excruciating wait over the next week or so as the other half of the ballots slowly trickle in to elections headquarters. (KC Elections still projects a 33% final turnout.)

No doubt the McGinn camp is feeling awfully damn pleased with themselves right now about their grassroots efforts, while the mayor’s folks… well… I suppose they’re feeling kinda sad. As for Mallahan’s folks, well, I’m still not sure there are any Mallahan folks who aren’t actually on payroll.

As for the rest of the King County primary results, there aren’t many surprises. In the executive race, Susan Hutchison leads Dow Constantine 37% to 22%, while Ross Hunter, Fred Jarrett and Larry Phillips are battling it out for a distant third. Meanwhile in the Seattle City Council races it looks like Sally Bagshaw will face off against David Bloom, Nick Licata will go up against Jesse Israel, and Mike O’Brien will take on Robert Rosencrantz.

And of course, the Bag Fee initiative is failing, 58% to 42%.

More later.

When I get back to Seattle the first thing I’m gonna do is get me a handgun, and a license to carry it, and then I plan to start showing up at health care reform town halls.  Armed. You know, just in case.

After all, it is my constitutional right to protect myself, my family and my property, even if it means taking another person’s life in the process. So I invite all of you to show up armed at your next neighborhood town hall meeting and join me in teaching those pussies on the right what it’s like to be a real American.

I’m just sayin’….

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the friends they hang out with, and so when HA commenter I Got Nothin’ went trolling around Susan Hutchison’s Facebook page, he couldn’t help but notice her friend Orly Taitz.

And who is Orly Taitz? Only the crazy queen bee of the “birther” movement, a woman who accuses mainstream journalists of being Brownshirts, and who compares the Obama administration to Nazi Germany.

But don’t you worry, Hutchison’s friendship with Taitz doesn’t make her a Republican. After all, Hutchison is also Facebook friends with Joe Mallahan, so that makes her about as nonpartisan as they come, right?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMUaca8wP9w[/youtube]

As I learned this week at Netroots Nation, some leaders lead through mere words, while some lead by example. For Drinking Liberally’s Justin Krebs, it’s definitely the latter.

There is no fundamental right to profit from selling private health insurance.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4jcdy4QZdQ[/youtube]

Jeffrey Feldman caught Rep. Jay Inslee in the hall yesterday at Netroots Nation, and I couldn’t help but eavesdrop as they talked about what we (that’s you and me) need to do to help pass real health care reform. Shorter Inslee: show up!

Thursday a federal court rejected a permit to build a 305 foot dock in an environmentally sensitive area on Maury Island, essentially halting Glacier Northwest’s controversial gravel and sand mine for years to come, and State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark deserves a huge “thank you” for helping to realize a key campaign promise:

Last year, the company gave $50,000 to a political action committee that supported former Republican State Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland’s re-election bid. Sutherland lost, but signed a lease for the project days before leaving office. His successor, Democrat Peter Goldmark, who’s campaigned on a promise to try and stop the project, immediately announced plans to more thoroughly scrutinize the lease. In early July, he ordered the company to do no work until it could prove to him Puget Sound would see no harm. Earlier this week, the company responded with a 17-page letter — and a promise that it still planned to start work next week.

Now, the project is on indefinite hold, and a protest scheduled for Saturday on Maury Island instead will become a victory party.

I started writing this post while sitting in the audience of a health care forum with Gov. Howard Dean at Netroots Nation (just reasoned, rational discusion, FYI… no angry, disruptive teabaggers thus far), and was feeling a little nostalgic at this particular turn of events.

It was at last year’s Netroots Nation that I celebrated my biggest blogging accomplishment of the year, my success at forcing the Seattle Times and other media outlets to front-page then-incumbent State Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland’s embarrassing sexual harassment scandal… a scandal I broke.

As a blogger, I know that I have made a difference over the past few years, but this was one of the few times that I could really quantify it. Despite being snugly in the pocket of mining and timber interests, Sutherland was a personable guy and a self-proclaimed moderate who appeared to be well liked by members of the press, and up until this point in the election cycle the Lands Commissioner race and the challenge from Goldmark had received very little media attention.

All that changed after the scandal, as journalists and voters started paying closer attention to both the candidates and the issues, with Goldmark eventually squeaking out a one percentage point victory… close enough for me to almost confidently say that my coverage likely helped swing the election.

Of course, one of the main issues in that election was the Maury Island gravel mine, and it’s tremendously gratifying to see Goldmark living up to his campaign promise to block it. This past legislative session notwithstanding, elections do matter, and thus what we all do to influence elections matters too. Yes, it’s hard to quantify, and so much easier just to be cynical, and no individual should pat themselves too hard on the back for the outcome of any election, as it’s the voters in the end who deserve most of the credit for making the right choice. But for those of us who devote ourselves to such things, there’s nothing wrong with a little self-congratulation if that’s what keeps us going.

How long that alone can keep me going, I don’t know.  But I might as well enjoy the moment.

President Bill Clinton delivered the opening keynote address in the Keystone State last night at Netroots Nation. It wasn’t as much a rousing barn burner as it was a frank come-to-Jesus, a bit defensive about his own record on hot button issues like health care reform and gays in the military, but absolutely blunt in telling the audience that we need to provide more support to President Obama than we did to Clinton if we expect real change.

If there’s a break in my day, perhaps I’ll post some audio and video clips. Perhaps.

Today is an absolutely jam packed agenda, starting with a health care reform town hall with Gov. Howard Dean, followed by the much anticipated Pennsylvania US Senate race face-off between Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak, and newly-Democratic incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, who’s gotta be given credit for stepping into the lion’s den.

Then I’ll be going to the state blogger caucus where I plan to bitch loudly about the dearth of panels aimed at state bloggers (by far the largest contingent of attendees), before heading off to an energy policy forum featuring Washington state’s own Denis Hayes and Rep. Jay Inslee.

After that… I dunno… maybe a nap?

Susan Hutchison is a Republican.

Back home in Washington State, Darcy Burner is a loser. Twice over. But you wouldn’t know it from the reception she’s getting here in Pittsburgh at Netroots Nation, where she was definitely the most popular person in the hotel bar last night, and where they just announced that she would be the closing keynote speaker at Netroots Nation.

Saturday night’s closing keynote will be headlined by Darcy Burner, director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. After three days of strategizing around progressive change, Burner will close out the convention with a message on how we make that a reality after everyone has left Pittsburgh. She believes activists must strike a balance between applying sophisticated pressure on their elected leaders and amplifying their efforts to create space for progressive policy.

Opening keynote: President Bill Clinton. Closing keynote: Darcy Burner. That should provide a little perspective.

Darcy may have lost her race last November, but in her new job as director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, she’s playing a much bigger role in the health care debate than the winner, Dave Reichert.

It’s no Grand Central, but Philadelphia’s refurbished 30th Street Station, is pretty damn grand in itself, a relic from the heyday of rail travel in America, and a damn sight less seedy and more inviting than it was in the days of my youth. It also seemed to be more crowded too, with a bustling lunchtime rush filling the new food court. (Well, new to me.)

The station is also more conveniently located than I remembered, as I discovered when I walked across the river to score myself a Philadelphia style soft pretzel from one of the many street cart vendors, only to find myself standing outside a Trader Joes. After stocking up on a few snacks and beverages for the long ride to Pittsburgh, I walked back to the station and had myself a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee.

At this point I’m more than halfway through the seven and half hour ride, having just traversed the famous horseshoe curve, and one of the biggest surprises of the trip is how well my Internet access has held up via the AT&T 3G network on my iPhone… and hence my ability to surf and post. Sure, there have been plenty of areas of no service, especially here in what us East Coasters call “mountains,” but anybody expecting to get work done with a similar hookup won’t be too disappointed. And unlike the train cars on the Amtrak Cascades line, there are power outlets at every seat.

As for the rest of the trip, it’s been pretty much what I expected: smooth, quiet ride, plenty of leg room, and the ability to take a walk down the aisle whenever the mood strikes me. Another surprise, though I guess it shouldn’t have been, is the number of freight trains we’ve passed on this trip, many of them laden with coal. Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian may make only a single round trip between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia a day, but for those of us looking forward to a passenger rail revival, it should be encouraging to realize that freight rail never died.

And oh yeah… so far, the train is exactly on time.

Traveling on my own rail adventure today, I was amused by the headline in this morning’s Seattle Times, “Link’s ticket system confounds riders“, which included the following teaser on the front page of their website:

Sound Transit’s unfamiliar payment system is forcing thousands of riders to make an extra effort to pay, yet deliberate fare dodging appears to be low.

Oh no! Faced with an unfamiliar payment system on a brand new light rail line, riders are making an extra effort to pay! Meanwhile, there appears to be little deliberate fare dodging!

Um… and the problem is?

I’m off on my rail adventure from Atlantic City, NJ to Pittsburgh, PA as I head out to Netroots Nation, and I’ve already come across a couple of glitches that might frustrate the casual traveller. Apparently, NJ Transit’s website doesn’t see fit to advertise directions to its Atlantic City Station, or even a street address. Meanwhile, Atlantic City doesn’t exactly provide adequate road signage.

Oh, if you want to get to the new outlet mall, that’s clearly marked. But the entrance to the rail terminal tucked into a corner of the new convention center across the street… not so much.

The other glitch, NJ Transit’s website warned me of in advance, so it is more a temporary inconvenience than a surprise.  See, it turns out, when you build rail infrastructure, you occasionally have to spend some time and money maintaining it.  And that’s exactly what they’re doing to the tracks between Hammonton, NJ and Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station.

The result? An earlier start than I would’ve liked to make sure I arrive in time for my connection, and the fact that I’m writing this post from a (gasp) shuttle bus on the Atlantic City Expressway.

More later…

UPDATE:

The shuttle bus between Hammonton and Philadelphia was uneventful. Crowded, cramped, and briefly stuck in traffic, but uneventful. The train/bus got us in about 20 minutes later than the train alone was scheduled. Not too bad… but it was a bus.

Oh, and FYI, the fare between Atlantic City and Philadelphia was $8.00. Not a bad deal.

As a kid, I used to think it weird that 30th Street Station was actually outside of Center City Philadelphia… you know, all the way across the Schuylkill River. But since I moved away over two decades ago, Center City seems to have grown larger, and walking distances shorter.

I just came in from the beach to find my inbox filled with emails from Mayor Nickels and Mike McGinn.  According to McGinn, Nickels is a liar who makes false promises, while Nickels accuses McGinn of lying about Nickels being a liar. And this just in, according to McGinn, Nickels is lying about McGinn lying about Nickels being a liar.

Or something like that. Rather than actually reading the emails, I decided to have a beer and help my daughter play Bananagrams. (We kicked her older cousins’ collective ass.) So there.