HorsesAss.Org

I hate making calls like this.

“Is this Denise Passinetti?” I asked the woman at the other end of the line. “The Denise Passinetti who served as Councilman Irons chief of staff?”

There was a long, awkward pause. “Yes…” she finally replied.

There was another awkward moment of silence, only this time, it came from me. I was calling to ask Passinetti about allegations that she had quit the councilman’s staff due to his abusive and harassing behavior, but since I had few details about the specifics, I was unsure exactly how uncomfortable this subject might be. I introduced myself, and struggled to put my question into words, but before I could finish, she cut me off.

“I think I know why you are calling,” she said.

Another uncomfortable pause. I guess I had hoped she would start offering up details. But she didn’t.

So I tried to reassure her and pressure her at the same time. I told her that she was not alone, that David Irons Jr. had reportedly turned his temper towards other council staffers, leaving angry, abusive voicemail messages, and exploding into screaming fits that sent at least one staffer running from the room in tears. But, I told her, none of the victims whom I had identified were willing to come forward, apparently fearful for their jobs, or concerned that such public allegations would disrupt the council’s unusually collegial work environment.

All I got in return was a long sigh. So I changed my tact. “I’m going to run with something,” I told her “and I don’t want to unfairly smear anybody. If I’m wrong about the reason you left your job, I want you to tell me.”

I had reached Passinetti on her cell phone, and she explained that she was waiting for an appointment, but she did want to talk, and that she would call back the next morning. I told her that I believed other reporters — real reporters — had her name as well. I meant it merely as a heads up, a warning that she might be getting more calls, but I guess she thought I was afraid I might lose my scoop, so she promised she would talk to me first. We hung up. At this point, she had neither specifically confirmed nor denied the allegations.

The next morning I awaited her call. It never came. I left several messages on her home and cell phone voicemail. No reply. Finally, a few days later she left a message on my voicemail. She said that she didn’t really want to talk about her time working for David Irons Jr., but that “my actions sort of speak for me.”

So in response to allegations that she quit her job due to Irons’ abusive behavior, all she would say on the record was this: “I was his chief of staff for a little over two years, and in this election I have maxed out my contributions to Ron Sims, and that’s who I’ll be voting for, for executive. So I’ll just let that speak for itself.”

Interpret our halting conversation as you will, but in context, and coming from a Republican staffer, I understood her refusal to deny the allegations as an unspoken confirmation of the underlying charge. I do not know exactly what kind of behavior caused Passinetti to leave her post, whether there was a specific incident or she merely tired of Irons’ temper. I do not know if he slammed doors or threw objects or screamed and yelled or worse… or if Passinetti may have been overly sensitive to the rude and intimidating tantrums of yet another high-strung, arrogant politician.

What I do know — or at least, reasonably believe to be true — is that Passinetti did indeed quit her job due to what she believed to be abusive and harassing behavior on the part of her boss. This is what she reportedly told others at the time. This is what she refused to deny to me.

And this depiction of a short-tempered, verbally abusive David Irons Jr. is one I’ve heard again and again from county staffers, from former Brigadoon officers and from Irons’ own family.

One of the reasons I found Janet C. Irons account of her own son’s abusive behavior so believable, is that while the details were shocking, they were totally consistent with what I had been hearing for months. As Gregory Roberts, writing in the Seattle P-I gingerly put it, Irons “has developed a reputation in some quarters as a sometimes short-tempered co-worker who’s not good at listening.” Indeed, I would reckon that there is not a single reporter who has closely covered the King County Council who has not heard tales of Irons’ angry and abusive temper… most recently an incident that occurred during the taping of his video voter guide, in which Irons unexpectedly exploded at young, female staffer… a tantrum so shocking in its context that it remained a topic of office scuttlebutt for weeks to follow.

According to multiple sources, Irons was accompanied to the studios of the Seattle Channel by a part-time county elections worker, whose job that day was to assure that the video met the county’s detailed ethical guidelines. County protocol prohibits candidates from displaying emblems of organizational affiliations, and so the elections worker asked Irons to remove his customary Rotary lapel pin… at which point he exploded in an abusive rage.

Those present were stunned by the suddenness and ferocity of the outburst, especially in such an inappropriate setting, and report that the woman who was the target of Irons’ rage was visibly shaken. While sources at the Seattle Channel refused to provide details or go on the record — citing the necessity to remain neutral observers if they are to achieve their primary function — they did confirm that an incident took place. Friends of the woman have also confirmed the general description of the events, but she herself has declined to be interviewed, and so I must honor her desire to remain anonymous.

Indeed, the reason I have sat on such damning charges as long as I have, is that nearly all my sources have insisted on remaining anonymous or off the record entirely, for with the exception of Passinetti’s subtle non-denial, I could not garner permission to use a single accuser’s name. Of course this is not surprising coming from central staff who must fear retribution from Irons should he be elected, and who cannot possibly perform their jobs effectively without maintaining the trust of his Republican colleagues… regardless of who holds the executive office.

Yet the accusations are numerous, explicit, consistent, come from multiple sources… and tell a story of a pattern of abusive behavior — almost exclusively targeted at female staffers — that Irons has displayed throughout his career on the council.

Many of the stories arise from when Irons was Vice-Chairman of the Growth Management and Unincorporated Areas Committee. During last year’s sometimes bitter negotiations over the Critical Areas Ordinance, Irons developed a reputation for leaving abusive voicemail tirades for several female staffers, often recorded during angry, late-night rages. One staffer remarked on the level of anger the councilman displayed, calling it “unpleasant and over the top,” while another described these messages as “scary” and “downright weird.” Yet another staffer reportedly transcribed a particularly harassing voicemail and passed it around the office. (A public records request searching for this and other communications won’t be fulfilled before November 8.)

But the incident most frequently cited involved a female central staffer, who was working alone with the councilman on some CAO related issue, when Irons suddenly became enraged, screaming with such fury that the staffer ran from the room in tears, refusing to return, and eventually sending a male co-worker back to retrieve her papers. According to very reliable sources, the incident prompted Councilman Dow Constantine, the chair of the committee, to intervene on the staffer’s behalf, establishing an unwritten protocol that Irons was never to be alone in a room with that staffer again. I asked Councilman Constantine’s office to confirm or deny the allegation, but he declined to comment through an aide.

When I interviewed Irons’ mother for my original story, she expressed genuine surprise that her son had not shown more of a temper during his tenure on the King County Council. “He sometimes goes bonkers,” she told me. Well, as it turns out, she knows her son very well, for not only are stories of his abusive outbursts rampant amongst council staff, he apparently displayed similar behavior at Brigadoon.com as well. A top Brigadoon executive described Irons as “explosive” and “temperamental”, saying his biggest complaint with his performance as COO was the abusive and angry way he often dealt with people.

Yes, Irons denies that he ever hit his mother (although he’s yet to join her in taking and passing a polygraph), but he’s never refuted the larger pattern of abusive behavior she alleges… a pattern that he apparently repeated during his years at Brigadoon and on the county council… a pattern he would surely repeat as King County executive. It is a lifelong pattern entirely consistent with the character testimony of Irons’ own parents, who consistently argue that their opposition to their son’s candidacy is not based on a single incident, but rather on their sincere conviction that he lacks the integrity, the experience, the intellect and the temperament to run a county government larger than that of thirteen states.

A couple weeks back I shared some tales of Irons’ council outbursts with a prominent local columnist, who questioned what was possibly newsworthy about an arrogant and verbally abusive politician? I agreed that yes, there are many elected officials on both sides of the aisle, who are… well… assholes.

That David Irons Jr. is an asshole, may not be news. But nonetheless, voters have a right to know.

Chew on your own cud for a bit, while you wait to see what I’m about to post.

Have you or anybody you know been disenfranchised by the WA State Republican Party? Download the list of all 1944 voters who have had their registration challenged, and look for yourself.

It took less than 24 hours of voter backlash before the GOP was forced to belatedly withdraw 140 of their challenges (PDF)… after these voters had already received notice that their votes would not count unless they attended an administrative hearing. That kind of sloppiness is already inexcusable when it comes to a citizen’s right to vote, but I betcha on closer examination we’ll find a helluva lot more “mistakes.”

As the GOP’s incredible fuckup has just illustrated, the process of cleaning the voter rolls has never been as simple as the Republicans have tried to make it out to be in their cynical and patently dishonest efforts disparage King County Records & Elections. And like all counties, King has never been nearly as hands off as the GOP’s lying press releases would lead you to believe. Indeed cleaning the ever changing voter rolls is a constant and time consuming process, especially in a county with over 1.1 million registrations, where thousands of voters are moving, marrying and dying every day.

According to a fact sheet produced by KCRE, the county routinely runs queries to screen out post office boxes, duplicate registrations and deceased voters. Since the last election:

• Over 9,500 duplicate registrations have been merged.
• Over 8,900 deceased have been removed from the voter rolls.
• Over 73,000 registrations have been put on inactive status.

And that doesn’t even begin to count the thousands of new and canceled registrations and address changes that are processed every month. Some of these transactions are initiated by voters, others through the routine operations at KCRE. For example, take this anecdote I recounted back in August:

As a case in point, a friend of mine recently bought a house in West Seattle. I was over there for dinner the other night, and she told me how that very day, she had called King County Elections to change her address… and was surprised to learn that she was already registered at her new house! When she inquired how, she was told that they had mailed her a voter registration card, but that it was returned to KC Elections with a forwarding address; so they updated her records and mailed her a new card. Indeed, the new card was in her mailbox that very same day.

Talk about service. Call to change your registration, immediately look in your mailbox, and there’s your new voter registration card.

Now that’s the type of positive headline you’re never going to read

According to sources, WA State Republican Party chair Chris Vance has already admitted that they will be forced to withdraw at least 170 of the over 1900 challenges that voters started to receive yesterday. But it is too fucking late.

Voters will not receive notice that their challenge has been withdrawn until after Tuesday’s election, but by then many will have chosen not to vote, just to avoid the hassle of an administrative hearing. The GOP will have achieved its goal: disenfranchising untold numbers of voters in predominantly Democratic precincts.

In an October 26 press release announcing the 1943 voter challenges, KC Republican chair Michael Young bragged, “If our volunteers can discover these problems, shouldn’t the professionals in their office be able to do the same?”

But the KCGOP’s obviously faulty list shows exactly why these sort of challenges should be left to the professionals and not the partisan “volunteers” who care little for how many legitimate voters they disenfranchise in the interest of a cheap publicity stunt… a stunt that has backfired, horribly… for less than one day after challenged voters started receiving notices, the KCGOP has already been forced to back track on nearly ten percent of its list.

This is not the same thing as the list-waving, McCarthyite grandstanding that took place during the election contest, after the fact, when everything would eventually be sorted out in a court of law. The Republicans’ actions have disenfranchised voters — intentionally — and there should be a price to pay at the polls… and I hope, in a massive, class action lawsuit.

UPDATE:
I’ve just been told that the GOP has dropped off a letter to KCRE, signed by Lori Sotelo, officially removing 140 names from their challenge list.

Expect more names to be removed… I’m hearing the apartment building in Belltown may not be the only one on the list.

I’ve been trying to track down the details of this story since late last night, but since The Stranger’s “Slog” has broken it first, here’s the link:

If this is real, this is an outrage. If the Rs of King County are knowingly, falsely challenging legit voter registrations in an effort to suppress Dem votes then they should be PUNISHED.

if this is the kind of “reform” that Republican David Irons intends to inflict on King County, then we’re in real trouble if he beats Ron Sims next Tuesday. Everyone in this apartment building whose registration was challenged should call a press conference, and this woman

I just found this quote from Friday’s Seattle P-I so amusing — and revealing — that I just had to share it before I headed off to bed:

Rick Schroeder said his support for Irons had nothing to do with policy issues relating to road building or construction.

“He’s a property-rights guy,” Schroeder said of Irons. “He doesn’t ramrod trails right through the back yard of people’s properties as Ron Sims does.”

Schroeder lives in Sammamish but is not, he said, one of the homeowners along the East Lake Sammamish Trail who protested the Sims-backed plan to reclaim the public right of way for the trail that they had encroached on.

Um… so by “a property-rights guy” Schroeder means supporting private landowners’ rights to public property.

What a putz.

For those with a taste for satire (and the intellect to appreciate it), I have just posted again to Jesus’ General, this time on the subject of Judge Walter Steed and his three wives.

Enjoy. (Or not.)

Well, credit where credit is due. Apparently, King County Councilman and executive-wannabe David Irons Jr. is such a commanding leader, that he’s managed to cajole his council staff into performing two distinct jobs on a single county paycheck.

A quick look at Irons’ campaign website finds that over half the press releases on his press page were written by council staffers, with links going directly back to his official council web page. And he’s sure kept his staffers on their heels during this busy campaign season: since officially announcing his candidacy for county executive on March 14, 2005, his staff has written 28 press releases, compared to only 19 during the same period last year, and only 16 in 2003, when he was running for reelection to the council.

Of course, both the King County Ethics Code and Washington State laws expressly prohibit the the use of public resources to support political campaigns, but it is hard not to conclude that Irons is in effect using county staff to produce campaign website content on the taxpayers’ dime.

Hmm. I suppose if I were a litigious prick like some right-wing bloggers I know, I might be tempted to file an ethics complaint. (Oops… I just did.)

While we’re on the subject of polling, here’s a little tidbit from a Gallup poll on Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito:

If it becomes clear Alito would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade, Americans would not want the Senate to confirm him, by 53% to 37%.

This nomination is outside the American mainstream. No wonder Democrats are already openly using the “F” word. (Filibuster.)

Some Democratic members of the group said Tuesday that it was premature to rule out a filibuster on Judge Alito’s nomination.

“It certainly is a possibility,” Senator Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat in the group, said.

“It may include some Republicans as well as Democrats,” Mr. Salazar said, criticizing the president for naming a man instead of a woman to succeed Justice O’Connor. “America deserves better than what we got here.”

Other moderate Democrats, including Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Mr. Pryor, said it was too early to rule out a filibuster.

I think Democrats sent an important message yesterday that they are not afraid to go nuclear. If the Democrats exercise their right to filibuster Alito, and the Republicans choose to respond with the nuclear option, the consequences are on the GOP’s head.

I try not to get too caught up in the polls, especially the cheap-ass, robo-call variety that KING-5 commissions from Survey USA. Any race close enough to be worth the effort of polling is almost certainly too far within the poll’s margin of error to let either side rest comfortably at night. And with a large majority of voters now casting ballots by mail, even an accurate two or three day snapshot of voter opinion is only marginally useful in predicting the outcome of a three-week election.

That said, I’d rather be up than down, and with a recent round of polling results being bandied about in the comment threads, I thought I’d take a moment to share a few comments of my own.

Some of you may have noticed an apparently stunning turnaround in the race between Ron Sims and David Irons for King County Executive. On 10/17 Irons led Sims 46% to 43%. Two weeks later Sims leads Irons 48% to 41%. Of course much of this movement is likely explained by the rather zaftig +/- 4.1% sampling error rate. But the pollsters do point out one statistically significant shift:

Most of the movement is among women voters. Women support Sims by 21 points today, compared to 3 points on 10/17/05.

Why would women suddenly flock to Sims? Hmm, I dunno… perhaps it’s because he never beat his mother?

Of course, assuming these numbers actually represent a real swing in broad public opinion, there are a lot factors that might have contributed to the shift. Still, one can’t help but wonder how much of an influence Mrs. Irons’ story might have had on women… most of whom love their mothers, and many of whom are mothers themselves. Physical abuse and verbal harassment of women at home and in the workplace is much more common than we might like to admit, and so many women found a mother’s description of her own son’s abusive behavior both believable and disturbing. Knowing little about the Republican candidate other than his parents’ character testimony, it is not surprising if voters reject the undefined Irons’ “anyone but Sims” campaign.

The truth is, negative campaigning works, a fact that Karl Rove has made a career of proving. Had Christine Gregoire spent a million dollars during the final weeks of the gubernatorial campaign defining her opponent, there never would have been an election contest. Had the eminently fair-minded Dave Ross abandoned the moral high ground and gone negative on Dave Reichert’s ass, we’d likely have one more Democrat in Congress. I respect Ron Sims for refusing to sling mud… but not so much that I was going to sit back and watch him lose an election while voters remained blissfully unaware of Irons’ explosive temper and his well documented history of showing it. (Not to mention his pathological lying and embarrassingly inflated resume.)

Would I rather talk about issues? Sure… Sims kicks Irons’ ass there too. But I’m comfortable that my mudslinging was truthful mudslinging, and that I didn’t do anything to Irons he wouldn’t have done to Sims… had Irons actually had any mud to sling. (Remember, this is the guy who sprung a closed FBI investigation on Brian Derdowski the night before the absentee ballots dropped. What goes around comes around.)

All that said, I have no idea if my efforts have had any impact on public opinion, and I’m certainly not relaxing now that the KING-5 poll shows Sims with a 7 point lead. This race could still go either way, and anybody who throws away their vote on a third party candidate that is neither qualified for office nor has a snowball’s chance of winning, risks putting King County’s $3.4 billion government in the hands of a lying, resume inflating, mother beating, tantrum tossing, tool throwing, unqualified Bush Republican. Third terms are extremely difficult to win for any executive office, and Sims would be struggling regardless of the opposition. Irons biggest backers, the gambling and building industries, want you to believe that you have the luxury of casting a protest vote. You don’t.

Irons is all but guaranteed a floor of about 35% of the vote; this represents the Will Baker Wing of the Republican Party… those who will vote for any candidate with an “R” next to his name, regardless of qualification or pulse. Then there are those single issue voters who will reject Sims on Sound Transit or the CAO or the nixed SWA deal… or who have totally bought into the GOP bullshit that KC Elections is corrupt and incompetent. (It is not.) This puts Irons’ floor firmly in the low to mid 40’s.

The Democrats have their own robotic voters, but they are much less reliable than those in the GOP, eroding the D’s natural numerical advantage. The result is that Sims too has a floor in the low to mid 40’s, leaving the election in the hands of undecideds and would-be Greens. While I can certainly envision Sims winning with greater than 50% of the vote, Irons squeaking by on a 45% to 44% margin is just as likely.

So while I find the latest polls somewhat encouraging, I feel far from reassured. And neither should you. If you don’t want Irons to be King County executive… vote for Sims.

KING-5 also commissioned polls on Initiatives 900, 901 and 912, which make one thing perfectly clear: I-901, which bans smoking in public places, is going to pass. Of course, we all knew that.

We’ve also always known that I-900, Tim Eyman’s superfluous performance audits initiative is a bit of a toss-up. It’s a rather complicated subject likely to confuse voters, and so there’s the natural instinct to vote no. But it is vaguely anti-government, and voters like that, so I still think it’s likely to manage a couple point victory. Still, it won’t come anywhere close to passing with a kind of mandate that could be understood to say anything about the mood of the electorate.

But it’s the numbers on I-912, the anti-transportation initiative, that has spurred the most interest. Survey USA shows I-912 failing, 44% to 50%, but as encouraging as this may be, I’d take these results with a large boulder of salt. Eyman’s own anti-tax initiatives have routinely polled 10 points lower than the final vote — I suppose some supporters are embarrassed to reveal themselves as selfish bastards — so I-912’s defeat is anything but a sure thing. But clearly, the initiative has not generated the overwhelming support some had predicted.

A look at the crosstabs are in fact fascinating, with I-912 supposedly drawing only 43% in Eastern WA… statistically comparable to the 42% support in Metro Seattle. I find both these numbers hard to believe, but in different directions.

I’ve always felt this was going to be a close vote, and if voters really understood the gas tax and what it pays for, I-912 would go down to defeat. But win or lose, if Republicans were looking for some voter backlash to slap in the face of Gov. Christine Gregoire and the Democrat controlled Legislature, this poll suggests I-912 won’t be it.

So there you have it… I find the recent round of polling interesting, encouraging… but ultimately, meaningless. With the exception of I-901, these races are all too close to call. So don’t throw away your vote.

I am guest blogging this week on one of my favorite blogs, Jesus’ General, and I can’t tell you what an honor it is to serve my country under the command of the inimitable Gen. JC Christian, Patriot.

And so I proudly direct you to my first post on The General’s site, regarding Judge Samuel Alito’s Amazon customer review of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Tonight I’m doing one of those dad-daughter things, so I will likely not be able to attend. But I understand that Port Authority candidate Rich Berkowitz will be there… so who needs me?

The Seattle Times is having a live, online chat today at 1 PM with the candidates for King County executive — the incumbent Ron Sims, and his overmatched challenger David Irons — and they have provided an online form where you can pose your own questions.

Hmm. Well, if you can’t think of anything to ask Irons, here’s a few suggestions:

Q: “Have you ever left an angry message on the voicemail of a female employee, which could have been or was perceived as threatening or abusive? Did anyone ever talk to you about this behavior, and if so, who?”

Q: “Have written or unwritten protocols ever been set up at the Council for your interaction with any female council staff member(s) due to your abusive behavior? When and by whom?”

Q: “Has anyone, whether in the private or public sector, ever left her job because of angry, threatening phone messages and/or harrassment by you?”

Just thought voters might be curious to hear the answers.

UPDATE: Irons chickens out!

Irons, who was scheduled to participate, has canceled.

Hmm. I wonder why?

In touting his qualifications to manage King County’s $3.4 billion budget, David Irons Jr. likes to talk up his “25 years of successful small business experience,” even bragging to Northwest News that he “formed three start-up companies.”

Thus it was with some disappointment that I found the Seattle Times’ profile of Irons’ business background to contain nary a word explaining, um, exactly what it was he actually did at any of these “start-ups”… you know, his responsibilities, duties, accomplishments… the actual executive experience that allegedly prepares him to manage a county government larger than that of thirteen states.

Well, there’s apparently a good reason why the Times’ failed to detail Irons’ day-to-day management responsibilities at All Points Cable TV, Brigadoon.com and CCPI… according to sources at all three companies, Irons didn’t really have any. Indeed, a close examination of his resume reveals that far from the “25 years of executive experience” he claimed on Up Front with Robert Mak, Irons really only has maybe 3 or 4 years to his credit… and even that is suspect.

Let’s start with his parent’s company, All Points Cable TV. In a 1997 resume, Irons made some truly impressive claims:

Wow. That’s quite some resume. On paper, this guy sounds like a can-do, jack of all trades. Of course, a 1999 resume from his first Council run was slightly less effusive:

But under the scrutiny of a high-profile campaign, Irons’ 2005 website is cautiously more concise, reducing his tenure at the family company to a single bullet point: “VP & co-owner All Points Cable TV – 1982 to 1995.”

Okay, let’s forget for a moment the question of whether Irons actually lied on his resume, for this isn’t really about lying on his resume, no matter how much of a lie his resume apparently is. This is about what he actually did at All Points Cable TV (as opposed to the lies on his resume), and whether it gave him any of the vaunted management experience Irons claims to possess. For example, I mentioned to his sister Di that “VP & co-owner” made it sound like her brother had a significant role running the place… and she actually laughed. “David…?” she chuckled, “he fixed the trucks.”

Hmm. That seemed odd.

So when I talked to Irons’ mother, I made a point of reading to her the rather effusive prose on her son’s 1997 resume, and… well… she laughed. “99 percent of what he wrote, there’s not one bit of truth to it,” Janet C. Irons told me. According to his mother, David occasionally went out on construction jobs, but mostly worked alone in the garage, maintaining vehicles and equipment. He was “an excellent mechanic” his mother told me, but didn’t get along very well with people.

I didn’t talk directly with Irons’ father, but the Times reporter did. And what did David Sr. have to say about his son’s role at the company?

David Irons Sr., while acknowledging that his son had the title of vice president, said he was a co-owner only in the sense that he held company stock. He said his son’s role was limited mostly to construction work and maintaining the company’s trucks. “He did a lot of welding,” Irons Sr. said.

A lot of welding. Uh-huh. Perhaps that’s Irons’ plan to fix the Viaduct should I-912 pass?

The real owners of All Points Cable TV, Irons’ own parents, insist that during his 13-year tenure, he was not involved with the management and operations of the company… at all… and that he didn’t even have an office. (On the radio last week, Irons’ mom referred to her son as a “grease monkey.” ) And Irons has presented absolutely no evidence to the contrary.

Furthermore, the timeline makes it indisputably clear that Irons could not possibly have “formed” the start-up as he claimed; his parents started the company in the late 1970’s while David Jr. was still up in Alaska working on the pipeline — you know… welding. The Irons did not bring their son into the family business until 1982, and didn’t start compensating him with stock until several years after that.

But once again, this is not really about Irons’ completely bogus resume, and how he bogusly lied on it. This is about whether his tenure at the family business gave him any of the management experience he boastfully touts. And the answer must be no, for even at its height the company never employed more than a dozen people, none of whom reported to David Jr… a fact he has never disputed.

Thus from the 25 years of successful small business experience and 3 startups Irons claims to have formed, we must subtract 13 and 1 respectively… so we’re down to 12 years and 2 startups. Still, not too shabby, but not at all what Irons claims.

On to Brigadoon…

On all of his resumes, Irons claims to have served as Chief Operating Officer of Brigadoon.com from 1995 to 1997… which I suppose he credits for 3 of his 25 12 years of successful small business experience, and 1 of his 3 2 vaunted startups. In fact, while I couldn’t pinpoint his actual start date, it appears his entire tenure at Brigadoon was only about 15 months, less than a year of which he served as COO. Furthermore, it was far from “successful”, unless of course, you measure success by how many millions of dollars your company ends up owing investors, vendors and employees when it finally goes belly-up… in which case Brigadoon could be described as an enviable triumph of free market capitalism.

So, how did a grease monkey like David Jr. end up as COO of a multimillion dollar dot.com bust like Brigadoon? The same way the cussing, wrench-throwing welder earned himself the title of “VP” at a local, cable TV company: daddy.

After the sale of his cable business, David Sr. had a few million dollars burning a hole in his pocket, and what better way to multiply his fortune than to invest in a company with the brilliant business plan of giving away free internet service to schools in a risky gambit to dominate a saturated dial-up market on the cusp of being decimated by broadband? (Yeah, yeah, I know… I have the benefit of hindsight… but I’m on a roll here, so bear with me.) As nutty as the entire Irons clan might now seem, David Sr. was a fairly well known and respected Eastside figure back then. A self-made millionaire and a former US Coast Guard Commander and Chief of Aviation — who Jr. himself used to refer to as “a hero” — David Sr. could not only bring a desperately needed cash infusion into the ambitious company, but also provide the credibility necessary to lure in other investors.

And so when Brigadoon’s predecessor started into negotiations with David Sr. in the latter half of 1995, one of the first things they did was offer a sales/marketing position to his recently unemployed son, David Jr…. despite the fact that the marketing department had few if any trucks to maintain. (On the other hand, there weren’t many loose wrenches lying around either, so it was a relatively safe hire.) And so at the age of 43, David Jr. finally got his first office. Or… maybe it was cubicle. Either way, it wasn’t in a garage. Um… I don’t think.

By February of 1996, David Sr. had invested over $400,000 and loaned Brigadoon an additional $100,000, controlling 23% of the outstanding shares, and earning himself a seat on the Board. Shortly thereafter, David Jr. was promoted to COO, a meteoric rise for a mediocre man, who up until that point barely had any experience managing his own anger, let alone a staff.

At this point the Irons family and my sources at Brigadoon tell starkly different tales of what was really happening at the company, but from both accounts one gets a pretty clear picture of COO David Jr.’s initial role: he was a mole installed to protect the family’s interests. Irons’ parents claim that they soon discovered Brigadoon to be under-capitalized, vastly mismanaged, and rife with illegal and ethically questionable accounting and stock maneuvers. However, my Brigadoon sources cite frequent, harassing letters from the Irons’ attorney-daughter Janet A. as evidence that the family was merely flinging trumped up accusations in an effort to seize control of the company. By June 5, 1996, after weeks of negotiating and angry letter writing, Brigadoon bought out David Sr.’s stake in the company… but as noted in a timeline provided by the Irons family: “DWI Jr. remains an officer.”

It was a month later that David Jr. sent a letter to Brigadoon’s board, which the Times’ article attempted to spin into a noble display of business ethics.

By July 1996, David Irons was just about fed up with Brigadoon.com, the Internet startup where he was chief operating officer.

He typed a letter to the board of directors, warning of “irregularities” including questionable stock sales and “manipulation of numbers” to boost the company’s image for investors.

Unless the company hired a securities expert to correct the problems, Irons feared, he could be held personally liable. Though he wanted to stay, Irons wrote, “my family and my personal integrity must come first.” He’d resign if the problems were not fixed.

Let’s be clear. By July 1996, David Jr. had only been COO for a few months, and not only didn’t he “type the letter”, he didn’t even compose it. As an accompanying cover letter explains, this letter, like all those associated with the Irons-Brigadoon disputes, was written by attorney-daughter Janet A., and in such context appears to be more of a mild blackmail note than an effort to genuinely fix problems at the company. Indeed, the letter closes with the following threat:

I will keep the contents of this letter confidential if the Board acts, however it is bound to become a topic of discussion within the company if I am forced to resign on August 15. I desperately hope that will not be necessary.

The letter alleges serious irregularities and securities violations “too numerous to list in their entirety”… but apparently not so serious or numerous that he ever bothered to notify authorities or warn other investors. In fact, David Jr. stayed on at Brigadoon, despite the alleged irregularities, profligate spending and shaky finances until February 1997… at which time he exited with the plum rights to one of the company’s only profitable assets.

How did David Jr. manage this little business coup?

In a July 2000 expose of the financial chaos that was Brigadoon, the Times mentions a little episode that David Jr. likes to spin into a tale of his own selfless, Christmas spirit:

Before Christmas 1996, Hansen promised employees they’d be paid, but he failed to follow through when an investor backed out. Irons said he was furious and put $50,000 on his credit card to make payroll.

But the truth behind this incident is much more Dickensian than David Jr. lets on, for it was good old-fashioned greed rather than holiday goodwill that prompted Jr. to whip out his credit card. COO David Jr. was intimately aware of the company’s precarious financial straights, and as Randy Fink, a former vice president at Brigadoon put it, this was an opportunity to “get out of there with some skin.” David Jr. had the company over a barrel, and so he collateralized his $50,000 emergency loan with the rights to one of Brigadoon’s only profitable assets: the convention center contracts that now form the basis of David Jr.’s current company, CCPI. When merely two months later David Jr. called in the loan, he knew that Brigadoon could not pay… and so he resigned as COO in February 1997, taking with him the lucrative contracts, and most of the employees from the business unit that served them. That, and $100,000 from his parents, put him in business on his own.

“He took advantage of a situation there and obviously feathered his bed at the expense of the Brigadoon shareholders,” Fink said. “It was one of the last major assets that was available and he ended up with it.

Brian Nelson, Brigadoon’s former general counsel is even more blunt in his assessment, characterizing the transaction as “loansharking” terms. “David was an officer, and he had a fiduciary responsibility to do what was best for all the shareholders, not just himself,” Nelson told me. “This deal did not appear to meet those obligations.”

The incident raises a number of unsettling questions in addition to that of whether David Jr., as COO, violated his fiduciary responsibility to shareholders… the most obvious being whether he received better treatment than Brigadoon’s many other creditors — most of whom came away with nothing — and if so… why? One can only speculate, but it seems reasonable to wonder if the spectacularly one-sided deal that put the company’s last major asset in the hands of an unhappy ex-COO had anything to do with his threatening letter from July 1996? Whatever the merits of the family’s allegations, Brigadoon saw fit to first buy out David Sr.’s shares (plus interest), and then eventually buy out David Jr. as well, giving him a sweetheart of a deal that apparently satisfied him enough to keep him quiet on his charges of wrongdoing.

And while Brigadoon wasn’t forced into bankruptcy until a little more than a year after David Jr.’s departure, it is also fair to question his claim that he had no role in the company’s failure. Surely, the loss of the lucrative convention center business must have exacerbated Brigadoon’s faltering bottom line. And if we are to believe that David Jr.’s own mismanagement didn’t contribute to the company’s well documented problems, one must ask… what exactly is it that Jr. did there during his brief tenure anyway?

Well, don’t look to his resume for answers, for according to Nelson and others, David Jr.’s Brigadoon blurb is just as self-aggrandizing as his fantastic tales of his years at All Points Cable TV. For example, the 1997 resume specifically names a number of corporations and organizations in which David Jr. claims “personal negotiation of Internet service contracts”… claims refuted by some of the people who actually did the negotiation. David Jr. did in fact attend some of these meetings, but according to one source, he was told to “sit in the corner and keep his mouth shout.”

So how thin is David Jr.’s Brigadoon resume? Well, one of my favorite bullet points is particularly telling:

Publications; Determined time-line to profitability was beyond resources of company and crafted elimination of department and reallocation of staff;

Um… so… in talking about his role in the Publications Department, he’s actually filling space on his resume by telling us what he didn’t do. (And by the way, the department he eliminated and staff he reallocated…? It consisted of a single person.)

The problem for David Jr. is that when it comes to Brigadoon, he tries to have it both ways. He wants to point to his brief tenure as COO as evidence of his management prowess, yet he refuses to take responsibility for any of the company’s problems. He tries to claim that the company slipped into bankruptcy only after he left, yet in internal documents and interviews with reporters he paints a picture of a company that was dramatically mismanaged and financially shaky from the day he arrived to the day he left. It may in fact be true that apart from stealing away one of Brigadoon’s only profitable assets, David Jr. did not contribute directly to the company’s eventual failure… but it is hard to argue that he did anything to help prevent it either. Far from fixing the company’s problems like the hands-on, can-do executive he pretends to be, David Jr. simply up and quit.

Former Brigadoon employees and officers describe him as anything from a “dangerous mole” to a “harmless figurehead”, and while some avoided him as a “bully”, others seemed to genuinely like him. But nobody, on or off the record, could recount to me a single accomplishment… which I suppose explains why the Times’ profile is equally thin in reporting his actual role at the company, beyond his title.

In fact, Irons held the title of COO for less than year, at a company that in no way could be described as “successful.” By his own account, he was not a founder, and did not “form” the startup. He was just a manager, hired and promoted at his father’s behest, with no prior qualifications to recommend him for the position, and no pertinent educational preparation. (It’s not like he was one of those snotty, newly-minted MBAs that started to infest the dot.com world during the mid 90’s… he never even graduated from college.) Finally, it is not at all clear what, if anything, David Jr. actually did at Brigadoon during his very brief tenure, other than sign his name to all those threatening letters penned by his sister Janet.

So from his alleged 25 12 years of successful small business experience, and 3 2 startups he supposedly formed, we must subtract 3 and 1 respectively, for a new total of 9 years of “executive experience” and 1 remaining startup. That brings us to CCPI, a company that rents temporary internet access to exhibitors displaying at Seattle’s WA State Convention Center, and several other venues.

I could only find a single CCPI employee willing to speak to me, and very off the the record, so I can’t really add much new information to what little has already been written about the company in the mainstream press. But I can tie up a few loose strings.

As has previously been noted, CCPI was not your typical “startup”, having essentially sprung fully formed from Zeus’s head at the time David Jr. left Brigadoon, convention center contracts and staffers in hand. Thus, with CCPI, David Jr. didn’t so much “form a startup” as he did purchase a fully functional business unit, and then slap a new name on it.

Having neither the technical expertise nor the managerial experience to operate a “high-tech” company, David Jr. has reportedly been a hands off CEO since the company’s founding, leaving the day to day operations in the hands of the managers who ran the business unit for Brigadoon… perhaps the wisest executive decision Jr. has made during his 25 12 9 years of “successful small business experience.” CCPI employees consider David Jr. to be an “absentee owner”, rarely seeing him at the company’s Bremerton offices… a long commute from his Sammamish home. And David Jr. himself has admitted to reporters that he has spent no more than 4 to 6 hours a week on the business since choosing to run for County Council in 1999.

Instead, David Jr. claims that he is responsible for the company’s “vision”, telling the Times that he’s learned a lesson from the high-flying, nose-diving Brigadoon, preferring a slow growth strategy for CCPI that may not be sexy, but is guaranteed to last. To which I respond with one cautionary word of free consulting advice: “WiMAX.”

Unlike David Jr., I have actually formed a technology startup with nothing but an idea, some credit cards, and a foolish dream, and thus I’ve had the opportunity to be personally reamed by vendors like CCPI while exhibiting at various convention centers around the nation. When an ethernet cable and three days of spotty internet service costs more than a year of residential DSL, you can be sure that exhibitors are searching for an alternative. So far, CCPI has resisted the trend to move its convention centers from hardwired ethernet to wireless WiFI networking, and over the next few years, as broadband WiMAX networks become established nationwide, CCPI’s business model will go the way of the dinosaurs… just like Brigadoon’s dial-up market.

So much for the vision thing.

Still, despite hiring a former pizza salesman with no technical experience to run his company in his absence, CCPI has managed to stay in business since 1997… so I suppose David Jr. deserves a little credit for that. So lets charitably give him two years of successful executive experience from 1997 to 1999, plus maybe half a year of experience for his 5-hour work-weeks since then.

So if you’re hiring David Irons Jr. based on his claim of 25 years of successful executive experience, here’s a more realistic assessment of his resume:

All Points Cable TV: 0 years of executive experience
Brigadoon.com: less than 1 year of unsuccessful executive experience
CCPI: 2.5 years of successful executive experience. (Maybe.)

As to the number of startups he’s formed, I’d say the answer is none… though I suppose an argument could be made that CCPI vaguely fits the description. But however you add up the numbers, there is no doubt that Irons has vastly less executive experience than he boastfully claims on any of his resumes.

Irons likes to point out that by comparison, Ron Sims has no private sector experience… but what Sims does have is nine years as executive of one of the largest county governments in the nation, managing a $3.4 billion budget while earning triple-A ratings from all three top credit agencies, even as many other municipal governments around the state teeter on the edge of insolvency.

While the Seattle Times may have failed to sufficiently dissect Irons’ resume for its readers, there’s a reason why its normally Republican-leaning, strongly pro-business editorial board enthusiastically endorses Ron Sims, and soundly rejects the candidacy of his overmatched opponent. Of David Irons Jr. they write: “his resume and leadership skills pale in comparison.”

And that’s putting it charitably.

So-called “mainstream” Republicans should have no doubts about the absolute control the far religious right now holds in their party. After caving to right wing pressure and forcing Harriet Miers to withdraw her nomination, President Bush has quickly come back with the nominee they wanted all along, Judge Samuel Alito.

President Bush today named appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.

Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House’s short list for the high court. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.

Some Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), have threatened to oppose Alito, however. Immediately after the announcement, the liberal activist organization People for the American Way announced the launch of a “massive national effort” to prevent Alito’s confirmation.

This is a judge who is clearly on the record against abortion, most notoriously for having written a dissenting opinion supporting a Pennsylvania law that would have required women to notify their husbands before obtaining an abortion. His opinion was directly rebuffed by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who he would replace.

The case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the appeals court decision, disagreed with Alito and used the case to reaffirm its support for Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision legalizing abortion.

On the spousal notification provision, O’Connor wrote for the court that it did indeed constitute an obstacle. The “spousal notification requirement is . . . likely to prevent a significant number of women from obtaining an abortion,” she wrote.

“It does not merely make abortions a little more difficult or expensive to obtain; for many women, it will impose a substantial obstacle. We must not blind ourselves to the fact that the significant number of women who fear for their safety and the safety of their children are likely to be deterred from procuring an abortion as surely as if the Commonwealth had outlawed abortion in all cases,” she said.

Plus, it “embodies a view of marriage consonant with the common law status of married women, but repugnant to our present understanding of marriage and of the nature of the rights secured by the Constitution. Women do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when they marry, ” she said.

“The Constitution protects all individuals, male or female, married or unmarried, from the abuse of governmental power, even where that power is employed for the supposed benefit of a member of the individual’s family.”

We’ll learn more about Alito in the coming days, but what we know now isn’t promising. We cannot allow the religious right to pack the bench with justices that would permit the nation to slide down a path towards The Handmaiden’s Tale. The President serves all Americans, not just those extremists who control his party, and he has an obligation to appoint justices who are not only qualified, but who reflect the beliefs and philosophies of the American people. If the Bush administration insists on playing a winner takes all game with the Supreme Court, then Democrats should adopt the same adversarial attitude.

If Alito proves unacceptable, the Democrats must filibuster.