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Washington isn’t a state with a reputation for achieving consensus, but if there’s one thing on which nearly all the political insiders agree, it’s that the $16.5 billion Sound Transit/RTID Roads & Transit package that’s headed to the ballot this coming November is as good as dead.

I’ve heard it from Democrats and Republicans, from liberals and conservatives, from package supporters and package opponents. I’ve heard it from politicians I trust, and from politicians I emphatically don’t trust. And everybody agrees that the package is just too big and too expensive for our skeptical electorate to approve at the polls.

But… um… I guess I should’ve asked some actual voters, because a new poll shows quite solid support for the package, both before and after respondents are informed of the details.

61% of respondents supported the package when presented on an “uninformed basis” with no persuasive messaging:

“A transportation package has been proposed that would increase the sales tax by 6/10 of 1%, and the car license tab by 8/10 of 1%. It would fund $16.5 Billion dollars in road, highway, and mass transit improvements in Pierce, King, and Snohomish Counties”.

When respondents were informed of the package’s costs, but not its elements, support dropped to 49%:

“This package will cost the typical household $150 in additional sales tax each year, plus $80 in license tab tax for every $10,000 of your car’s value.”

Not surprising. But then once voters are informed of the major components of the package, support rebounds to 63%, and remains at this level after positive (66%) and then negative (61%) messaging is presented. (FYI, the poll was conducted by Moore Information and EMC Research, April 1-4, and consisted of 800 registered voters with a 3.5 percent margin of error.)

The imminent, inevitable failure of the Roads & Transit package has become a rallying cry for supporters of creating a new regional transportation commission. “We’ve got to do something to restore the confidence of voters,” I’ve been told on more than one occasion. But if these poll numbers are even remotely accurate, it looks like a substantial majority of voters are confident enough in our current transportation planning to spend $16.5 billion expanding light rail and making other critical transportation improvements.

So much for the common wisdom.

Yesterday, after the nationwide pet food recall expanded to include dog biscuits produced by Sunshine Mills under several brands, the FDA assured reporters that it believed the recall was complete.

The FDA knows of no other pet product companies planning recalls, agency officials told reporters.

“Other than that, I think, you know, the public should feel secure in purchasing pet foods that are not subject to the recall,” Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, told reporters.

Whoops.

Itchmo’s got the latest, including the news that Xuzhou Anying exports 10,000 metric tons of wheat gluten a year. 972 tracked down, only 9,028 left to go. Meanwhile, Pet Connection readers now report 3,242 dogs and cats suspected of dying due to contaminated food.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, has his priorities in order:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

“I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way,” Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.

Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing.

Oh, goodness! It’s based on his upbringing! Well, of course then! You know what, my folks brought me up to believe that if a man or woman is willing to shoulder a rifle, to stand post, to wear the uniform, well… it doesn’t much matter who they sleep with.

Here’s my favorite bit:

The newspaper said Pace did not address concerns raised by a 2005 government audit that showed some 10,000 troops, including more than 50 specialists in Arabic, have been discharged because of the policy. [emphasis mine]

These guys, I tell you. It’s like they want to lose the war.

UPDATE (–Goldy):
Gen. Pace’s statements are ripe for ridicule, but Will missed an opportunity to zero in on the most ridiculous statement of them all:

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral,

I can’t seem to find “Thou shall not take it up the ass” anywhere in the Ten Commandments, but I’m surprised Gen. Pace missed this particular moral proscription: “Thou shall not kill.”

Hmm. Homosexuality is immoral, but apparently, the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in a preemptive war of aggression is not. A soldier openly loving another man… that is a sin. But a soldier unavoidably inflicting “collateral damage” — killing men, women and children — that is not.

I fully understand that the Seventh Commandment is only a prohibition against illegal killing, and that the morality of war is a complicated and nuanced subject. But I find it ironic that a man whose job it is to turn teenage boys into killers would claim to possess such moral clarity on issues of human sexuality.

Last week I publicly fretted that Governor Chris Gregoire might eventually paint herself into a rhetorical corner via public comments over replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct. I worried that the Governor’s increasingly adamant insistence that a rebuild is the only viable option could put her in the unenviable position of either defying the will of the voters, or appearing to cave to big, bad Seattle just as she prepares to head into what could be a tough reelection campaign. But in an exclusive interview with Lynn Allen of Evergreen Politics, the Governor has allayed my concerns.

[Is there] any way the surface and transit option would be entertained by the state?

Gregoire: Absolutely. We did entertain it earlier but couldn’t make it work. We have a set of criteria we have to meet. We have to maintain safety. We have to meet capacity for both moving freight and people in that corridor.

We’re not accommodating increases in capacity if we either rebuild the viaduct or build a new tunnel. There won’t be an increase in today’s capacity. It’s now somewhere in the neighborhood of 110,000 per day.

So, no matter what we do, we still have to maximize transit and surface. No matter what happens, there has to be a comprehensive transit component. We will need to be able to increase the capacity for moving the increase in population we are expecting.

Then, too, what we decide to do has to be fiscally responsible and friendly to urban design.

That’s why we’re working with Ron Sims. The state is saying, “Show me what you’re talking about here”. We’d like to see what the possibilities are.

As HA co-blogger Will points out, Gov. Gregoire appears to contradict herself in her use of the word “capacity” — but that’s the sort of verbal nitpicking I choose to reserve for Republicans. Taken as a whole, and in the context of the entire debate, the Governor is clearly leaving the door open to a surface solution. And I tend to agree with David Postman that this interview is entirely consistent with her prior statements, representing at most a clarification rather than a shift in position.

The Governor has repeatedly drawn a line in the sand, demanding that any Viaduct replacement must maintain capacity, a criterion some have supposed to rule out a surface alternative. But the key to accepting the surface option as both a transportation and political compromise rests on how we define the word “capacity.” WSDOT’s Environmental Impact Statement describes the purpose of the project as one that “maintains or improves mobility and accessibility for people and goods” — language the Governor clearly echoes in talking to Lynn about capacity.

As I wrote last week:

Hard-nosed rebuild supporters have mocked King County Executive Ron Sims as some kind of enviro-whacko hippie for stating that we should be focused on moving people, not cars — but that’s exactly the stated purpose put forth in the EIS. And that’s exactly the language the Governor needs, to join former tunnel supporters in support of a surface compromise.

It’s not a matter of redefining the word capacity — “mobility” was always the definition from the start, and accepting an alternative that improves mobility, while perhaps decreasing vehicle capacity, is perfectly consistent with Gov. Gregoire’s line in the sand.

That is what the Governor essentially told Lynn — she is focused on moving “freight and people,” and she is willing to work with Ron Sims “to see what the possibilities are.” I had been concerned that in championing a rebuild Gov. Gregoire might eventually paint herself into a corner, but by her own words, she has clearly reiterated that she is willing to consider a surface option, if she can be convinced that it maintains mobility. I can’t see how one can read this any other way. And no, it doesn’t represent a shift in position.

No doubt a rebuild overwhelmingly remains Gov. Gregoire’s preferred option. But if in the wake of a No/No March 13 vote Mayor Nickels can abandon the tunnel he’s championed, and campaign for a surface option without losing face (and the smart money is on exactly that,) then surely the Governor can give surface proponents the opportunity to persuade her that they can develop an alternative that meets the criteria set forth in the EIS.

And once Seattle voters speak, and the political food fight comes to an end, that’s exactly what I expect the Governor to do.

Lynn Allen gets an interview with Governor Gregoire. Here’s the Governor’s answer concerning the “surface plus transit” option:

We did entertain it earlier but couldn’t make it work. We have a set of criteria we have to meet. We have to maintain safety. We have to meet capacity for both moving freight and people in that corridor.

We’re not accommodating increases in capacity if we either rebuild the viaduct or build a new tunnel. There won’t be an increase in today’s capacity. It’s now somewhere in the neighborhood of 110,000 per day.

Gregoire says she wants to move “both freight and people.” She then cites the number of cars that use the corridor, not the number of people. I don’t know if Governor Gregoire knows the difference between moving cars and moving people, or why that’s important. Also, I have no clue how she can say that “we’re not accommodating increases in capacity” by rebuilding a viaduct or a tunnel. I don’t believe the facts bear this out.

Read the whole interview (thankfully, it’s not all about the viaduct).

As consumers struggled to cope with rising prices at the pump, the oil industry pulled in a record $101 billion in profits last year — about $11.6 million an hour — and according to Barb Flye of the Washington Tax Fairness Coalition, taxpayers are picking up the tab… twice.

“Individuals have to dig deeper to fill the gas tank and heat their homes, and collectively, all taxpayers will be covering the higher gas and heating costs for a host of publicly-funded services and institutions,” Flye said. “We’re paying more for heat at public schools and colleges, hospitals and nursing homes, courts and other government buildings, not to mention the higher cost of running school buses and public transit.”

This has prompted state Rep. Steve Conway to introduce HB 2128 a tax hike on excess oil industry profits. The bill would put a 3% B&O tax surcharge on gross receipts of companies with a refining capacity in excess of 10,000 barrels a year, whenever retail gas prices exceed $1.75 a gallon. The Washington Tax Fairness Coalition will be holding a press event at noon today in Olympia, in support of HB 2128.

Speculate all you want about Seattle developer Martin Selig’s $10,000 contribution to the No Tunnel Pro-Rebuild Alliance, but from what I hear, political payback is likely a factor. Selig is still pissed off at Mayor Greg Nickels for forcing him to pay his electric bill, and nothing would please him more than to fuck with the Mayor’s Viaduct plans in return.

Notorious for his ethical ambivalence, Selig’s standard business practice seems to be predicated on the assumption that fighting long past-due bills costs far less than the profit to be earned from investing the money elsewhere. Back in 2004 it took a strongly worded shut-off notice sent to Selig’s tenants to force him to pay a $950,000 Seattle City Light bill, but unsuspecting vendors, contractors and partners who lack such leverage are apparently forced to accept pennies on the dollar, or pursue their accounts receivable in court.

And yet Selig, routinely unable to to pay his own bills, somehow managed to scrape up $927,000 in spare change to spend on an initiative to repeal the estate tax, and hundreds of thousands of dollars more killing the Monorail.

Already the Pro-Rebuild Alliance’s largest donor, you can be certain Selig is willing to spend plenty more to assure that a massive, double-decker freeway continues to run through Seattle’s waterfront. And to finance his civic participation, you can be sure that some contractor or vendor somewhere is going to be stiffed this month by Martin Selig.

I first heard about Gov. Gregoire’s viaduct “punt” last Friday following the big wind storm right as I was in the middle of a two-hour commute from Redmond to U-Dub. (Yeah…I know I should have stayed home, but I didn’t really have a choice.) Normally, my commute is 25 minutes by car or an hour by bus. On Friday, however, the SR520 floating bridge was shut down to repair wind damage. At about the one hour mark, crawling along at under 10 mph on I-405, I was contemplating the many ways my quality of life would decline if the SR520 bridge decided to sink. And then the news broke about Gregoire’s statement.

Frankly, I was irritated by another delay in replacing a failing piece of critical infrastructure. Gregiore had her chance to be The Decider™ and she decided to punt. Or so I thought from the media account.

After the sting of a painful commute faded, I looked into Gregoire’s statement and it became clear to me that she had, in fact, made nearly all of the important decisions. She decided that all options were out except the tunnel and the rebuild. Essentially, Gregoire validated (politically and practically) the engineering, environmental, and fiscal analyses found in DOT’s Supplemental Draft, Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) that rejected all but these two options. And eliminating the fringe options is a good decision.

The DEIS dealt with each fringe option in turn. I’ll only mention the so-called no-replacement option because, I believe, Goldy disagrees with me on it. The DEIS finds that the no-replacement option isn’t viable:

• Replacing the viaduct with a four-lane surface street would substantially increase congestion for most of the day and part of the evening on I-5 through downtown Seattle, downtown streets, and Alaskan Way. These congested conditions are predicted to occur even if improvements were made to downtown streets and transit ridership substantially increased.
• I-5 through Seattle doesn’t have room for additional trips since it’s already congested through much of the day and into the evening. However, under the No Replacement concept, many trips that currently use the viaduct would shift to I-5, causing it to become even more congested.
• Downtown street traffic would increase by 30 percent, though traffic increases to specific areas like Pioneer Square and the waterfront could exceed 30 percent.
• With a four-lane roadway, traffic on Alaskan Way would quadruple to 35,000 to 56,000 vehicles per day compared to about 10,000 vehicles today. This traffic would make it difficult for patrons to get to waterfront businesses and would create more conflicts between vehicles and the many bicyclists and pedestrians that use Alaskan Way.
• Neighborhoods west of I-5 (Ballard, Queen Anne, Magnolia, and West Seattle) would have less direct connections to and through downtown; therefore, travel times for trips to and through downtown would increase for drivers from these areas.

A four-lane Alaskan Way would create more congestion on I-5 and downtown streets than the Surface Alternative evaluated in the Draft EIS. The project partners dropped the Surface Alternative because it didn’t meet the AWV Project’s purpose, which is to “maintain or improve mobility, accessibility, and traffic safety for people and goods along the existing Alaskan Way Viaduct Corridor.”

More congestion, longer trip times, and greater susceptibility to accidents, construction, and events? No thanks. The no-replacement option would make a trip to (or through) downtown Seattle less desirable than a field trip through a rendering plant. If anything, it’s a plan to slowly strangle downtown Seattle.

I’m also not convinced by reports that other cities have removed capacity with minimal long term effects. Such decisions are generally not made randomly—there is engineering judgment that precedes such a drastic move. With I-5 at capacity and downtown already too congested at peak times, the engineering judgment suggests that the Seattle waterfront is not a good candidate for capacity reduction.

Gregoire made another important decision. She decided that the decision between the tunnel option and the rebuild option would come down to a vote of the people. But not just any people. She put it up to a vote by the people who would gain the greatest benefit. Oh…and the people who would have to pay the price difference for a tunnel.

The Seattle Times editorial board refers to this as Gregoire’s pragmatic punt.

Effectively, Gregoire is saying, “we will go with the rebuild option because the State has an obligation to replace an important and failing part of the highway infrastructure and, by the way, Seattle, if you want a tunnel instead let us know (soon!) and, if so, include your credit card number.”

What some consider a “punt” is really an offer of an upgrade option for Seattle.

The tunnel upgrade option for Seattle is good politics, too. If the voters decide to spend a couple billion of their own dollars for the tunnel, who can deny them? Or if the voters cheap-out and decide that a rebuilt monstrosity along the waterfront is good enough, then…well, then let them lie in their own noise pollution.

This morning on KUOW’s Weekday, Joni Balter and Joel Connelly had a mini-debate over the Governor’s decision. Balter considered the decision strategically sound. Why? Because Gregoire knows that House Speaker Frank Chopp will do everything he can legislatively to kill the tunnel. And Mayor Nickels will interfere with any attempt to implement the rebuild option. As Balter points out, there is one power higher than Gregoire, and that is the voters.

Joel Connelly, on the other hand, felt that Gregoire offered a shanked punt. We pay her to be The Decider™, and she ought to decide. In case you haven’t figured it out, I find Balter’s arguments more compelling.

Clearly, Gregoire favors the rebuild option; she probably expects Seattle to fail in coming up with either the public support or the funding for a tunnel. The ball is now in Nickels’ court to both build public support and convert his fantasy funding plan into something grounded in reality.

The DEIS prices the tunnel at between $3.6 and $4.3 billion, and the elevated rebuild from $2.5 to $2.9 billion. Funding for the rebuild is almost in place, as there is now $2.45 billion committed to the project, including $2.2 billion from the State, $0.24 billion from the Feds, and $0.016 billion from Seattle.

The tunnel option would likely draw an additional $500 million from Seattle and $200 million from the Port of Seattle. Other potential funding sources include a local improvement district (actually, this was proposed by Goldy) that could provide $250 million, a regional ballot measure (i.e. new taxes), additional Army Corps of Engineers funding for the seawall part of the project, and additional Federal highway and emergency relief funding.

In the long run, the tunnel option offers significant advantages. Most importantly, it will remake the downtown Seattle waterfront. Have you ever walked from the Pike Place Market to the waterfront? Man…talk about an unpleasant experience! A tunnel would …

…dramatically decrease noise levels by about 12 A-weighted decibels (dBA) along the waterfront. This would sound like cutting the noise level by more than half. Noise along the central section of the project corridor is currently loud and would not change much if the Elevated Structure Alternative is built.

The way I see it, the tunnel option is a long term investment, and one that will be appreciated by generations of Seattleites. I can imagine thirty years from now, two lovers will be strolling down to the waterfront, hand in hand. Under one scenario they’ll excitedly discuss their future life together as they take in the pleasant views. Under the other scenario, one will bellow at the other , “I can’t believe they built a fucking freeway through the waterfront!”

So I hope Seattle goes for the option…who knows what kind of difference it could make. I’m just sayin’.

There seems to be a lot of confusion over the vote count in WA-08 — even the utltra-reliable Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo got it wrong — so let’s clarify a few things.

First, WA-08 spans King and Pierce Counties; over the past two elections about 81 percent of the votes have come from King, about 19 percent from Pierce. Currently Darcy Burner is leading in King County by about 0.75 percent, and losing Pierce by about 13 percent. Dave Reichert has been holding about a 2,700 vote lead.

Second, when the King and Pierce County results pages say 100% of precincts have reported, they are only referring to the poll votes, which will account for only around 20 percent of the total votes cast. The vast majority of votes were cast by mail.

Things don’t get any easier from there. Pierce reports that it has 65,000 ballots left to count, and King reports 189,000, but as we learned in 2004, these are only estimates and could even now be off by the tens of thousands, while thousands more ballots are still arriving every day. To further complicate the math, we have no idea how many of the remaining ballots actually fall within the boundaries of WA-08. In 2004 WA-08 accounted for about 30 percent of all King County ballots and about 20 percent of those cast in Pierce — but the absentee ballots are counted in no particular order, so it is quite possible that WA-08 is significantly over or under represented in the current count.

So how many ballots are really left to count? Who knows? If you assume that ballots counted thus far have been evenly distributed geographically, and you go by the ballots left to count reports, there should be about 57,000 WA-08 ballots left to count in King and about 13,000 in Pierce… but that just strikes me as way too low. This would produce a total turnout in WA-08 of about 223,000, compared to 336,499 in 2004 (a presidential election year and an open seat) and 203,335 in 2002 (a year when popular incumbent Jennifer Dunn faced no serious competition.) I find it hard to believe that turnout would be closer to 2002 than to 2004. But who knows?

And then there are the provisional ballots. Probably numbering in excess of 10,000 in King County alone. Just like in recounts, provisionals tend to favor Democrats, because let’s face it… on average, we simply have more trouble voting. These will be the last ballots to be counted, and could produce a several hundred vote surge for Burner at the very end.

So here’s my not very bold guess: only 40 to 60 percent of ballots have already been counted. That leaves plenty of room for Burner to erase a 2,700 vote deficit.

The civil war in Iraq continues to escalate, with American soldiers caught in the middle. A bomb tore through a crowded Baghdad market yesterday, killing at least 31 and injuring 51 others. At the same time, a marine fighting in Iraq’s Anbar province became the 100th US serviceman killed in October, the highest monthly death toll since President Bush famously announced “mission accomplished.”

Meanwhile, $133 million worth of weaponry has gone missing — nearly 4 percent of the pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other arms the Pentagon has supplied Iraqi security forces. Not that we could track these arms if we wanted, considering that the Defense Department has registered the serial numbers of only 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided — less than 3 percent.

Both these wire stories appeared somewhere in today’s Seattle Times, but apparently neither was important enough to warrant a mention on the op-ed page of the our state’s largest newspaper. Instead, our fair city’s solemn guardians of public discourse chose to dedicate scarce column inches to yet another one-sided, partisan attack: “Denounce the ad, Darcy Burner.”

Compare that to the Seattle P-I, who on the very same morning chose to editorialize on trivial matters… you know… like the escalating violence in Iraq.

The president can’t be held directly responsible because he’s not up for election again. Short of impeachment and history’s harsh judgment, he won’t pay the price for a foreign policy folly that has made the world a more dangerous place.

But those who continue to aid and abet him in this disastrous policy are up for election, in just over a week, and voters across the country can and should hold them accountable.

Unless, of course, we want to stay the course.

As the P-I editorialists point out, in this election, “War is the issue“… an issue their colleagues at the Times seem determined to avoid until after election day. Because the Times knows that if voters do follow the P-I‘s advice, Dave Reichert will lose.

That’s why instead of addressing issues that voters truly care about, the Times editorialists are busy focusing on inside horse race bullshit, and rhetorical legerdemain like demanding Burner pull an accurate ad that she did not run.

Deconstruction anyone? Let’s see…

But there is one TV ad benefiting Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner that is beyond the pale, not because of what it says but because it violates a copyright of TVW, Washington’s public-affairs network.

Oh my. In an age when Karl Rove takes a war hero who left three limbs on the battlefield, and morphs him into Osama bin Laden, it’s an alleged copyright violation that the Times finds “beyond the pale.” How shocking.

But the thing is, the DCCC ad doesn’t violate anybody’s copyright. Reichert spoke for about 20 minutes that day, and by any legal definition the few seconds excerpted by the DCCC constitutes “fair use.” I myself have posted to HA longer clips from Reichert’s speech, and I’ve yet to receive any cease and desist orders from TVW. And if I did, I wouldn’t comply.

To argue that the DCCC has violated TVW’s copyright would be like arguing that I have violated the Seattle Times‘ copyright by block-quoting the paragraph above. If that truly represents Times publisher Frank Blethen’s expert interpretation of the “fair use doctrine” then I challenge the Times to sue me now, because I promise you Frank, I’m going to violate your copyright again. And again and again and again. In fact, you know what Frank..? I’m going to violate you again right now:

Burner should denounce the ad and call for its removal.

Take it like a man Frank, and get used to it… because in this new media landscape of excerpts and aggregation, you’re my bitch.

As to the Times‘ admonition that Burner should call on the DCCC to pull the ad, well, either their editorialists are getting their election law advice from the same quack advising them on fair use, or… they’re simply being disingenuous with their readers. (I’m guessing the latter.) Burner can’t call on the DCCC to pull the ad; that would be illegal. The FEC strictly prohibits coordination between campaigns and organizations engaging in independent expenditures, because otherwise the expenditure wouldn’t be, um… independent.

Like their feigned outrage over nonexistent copyright violations, the call for Burner to pull the ad is a red herring. As is the Times‘ tangential reference to the fact that the Burner campaign had ordered a copy of the tape months ago, as the video has been freely available on the internet to all comers since it first aired in May. (I linked to it way back on June 1.)

In fact, the entire editorial is nothing more than an elaborate (if poorly constructed) straw man argument intended to distract from the simple, devastating truth behind the DCCC’s ad: Dave Reichert publicly admitted that the Republican leadership tells him when to vote against them.

The Times refutes this, accusing the DCCC of taking the quote out of context:

The TV ad depicts Reichert at a meeting saying GOP leadership comes to him and tells him how to vote, and he’ll take the vote.

It omits his next line: “There are some times when I say, ‘No, I won’t.’ “

But what the Times omits is the five minutes of rambling preamble in which Reichert puts the disputed quote entirely in context:

I’ll tell you that back in Washington there are lots of games played and I just want to give you, we talk about freedom and we talk about America and we talk about the dream. The dream has to include everybody and there has to be compromise and we can’t have, I’ve been to district meetings in my district where people have said, “why in the world should I vote for you. It’s just like voting for a democrat for crying out loud.” I am going to vote libertarian and I said, “you know what sir, that would be a huge mistake and here’s why.” I’ve tried to explain to this person how things work a little bit back in Washington D.C. and why certain votes have to be taken. Sometimes the leadership comes to me and says “Dave we want you to vote a certain way” and they know I can do that over here. Another district isn’t a problem but over here I have to be very flexible of where I placed my votes. The big picture here is to keep the seat, keep the majority, and keep the country moving forward with republican ideals. Especially on the budget and protecting our troops who’re protecting this country and how that will be responsible with taxpayer dollars. That’s the big picture. Not the vote I place on ANWAR that you may not agree with or the vote that I placed on protecting salmon. You have to be flexible. So when the leadership comes to me and says , Dave you have to vote over here because we want to protect you and keep this majority, I do it. There are sometimes when I say no I won’t. There are sometimes when things come to the floor like Schiavo. I was one of five republicans that voted with the Democrats on Schiavo because that was the right thing to do.

Yes, Reichert broke with the GOP leadership on the Schiavo vote. He’d personally been through a wrenching end-of-life decision in his own family, and so he says he voted his conscience. (It didn’t hurt that he also voted with his district.) But that’s the only vote of conscience he cites.

Taken in the context of the entire speech, Reichert makes it absolutely clear that conservative Republicans should ignore his handful of moderate votes on things like the environment because “certain votes have to be taken” in order to “keep the seat.” Reichert bluntly (and stupidly) told the audience that the leadership tells him when to vote against them, and that is exactly what his audience of Republican elected officials understood him to say. How do I know? Two of them told me. State Rep. Toby Nixon (R-45) called the confession “shocking,” but went on to explain…

To be clear, by saying “it was shocking” I was expressing the surprise I felt at the time that Rep. Reichert was so open and frank about being approached in this manner, not at the fact that it happened. It is, in fact, quite common for majority party leadership to go to freshman members of their party and provide such guidance, in order to provide cover for those freshmen in their first re-election campaign when they are most vulnerable to challenge. It happens quite frequently in the Washington State House of Representatives, too.

Surely, the Times editorialists understand this. They read my blog. They’ve seen Nixon’s quote. They know how the political game is played.

And yet they continue to defend Reichert’s cynically manufactured image as a “conscience-driven independent,” because they also understand that his reelection hopes pivot on his ability to separate himself in the eyes of voters from President Bush, the Republican leadership and their failed policies at home and abroad.

That is what this latest anti-Burner editorial is all about. The DCCC ad is devastatingly effective because it uses Reichert’s own words to debunk his myth of independence. It also shows up the Times‘ stubborn defense of Reichert’s fictional independence as either stupid or dishonest. (Again, I’m guessing the latter.)

Indeed, the Times incessant Burning-bashing is almost comical in its logic. When Reichert’s media folks aren’t making up quotes out of whole cloth, they rely on single-word quotations like an ad for a bad movie… and yet it’s the Democrats who the Times accuses of lifting quotes out of context. And while Reichert has run a relentlessly negative and at times sexist campaign, it is Burner who Times editorialist Kate Riley accuses of “conjuring rage.” (Curiously, in her unsigned editorial endorsing Reichert, Riley criticizes Burner for her lack of public service, yet apparently believes she’s more than qualified to represent the voters of the 4th CD. Go figure.)

Yes, Burner has attempted to define her opponent through strongly worded TV spots, but then, so has Reichert. No wonder so many readers, bloggers and journalists have found it absolutely impossible to take seriously the Times‘ one-sided, I’m-rubber-you’re-glue, reality-distorted portrayal of this race.

The truth is, the Times doesn’t want their readers to take this race seriously, because if they seriously discussed the issues at stake — the issues that matter most to local voters — Reichert would lose. That’s why instead of editorializing on the Bush administration’s failed policy in Iraq — a policy Reichert has given every indication he would continue to support — the Times has instead chosen to focus on a bullshit, manufactured, campaign ad dispute that voters couldn’t care less about.

Reichert said what he said: he votes the way the leadership tells him to vote. And that is why he’s going to lose this election.

UPDATE:
Per Another TJ’s suggestion:

Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark has outraised first term Republican incumbent Rep. Cathy McMorris for the second reporting period in a row, reporting over $300,000 raised during July and August compared to McMorris’s $161,000. Over the past five months Goldmark has now outraised McMorris nearly two-to-one, $510,000 to a paltry $286,000.

Goldmark is catching fire. The more money he raises the more people he reaches… and the more money he raises. At this point his biggest obstacle to an upset victory in November is no longer demographics or even an entrenched incumbent… it’s time.

Meanwhile the Spokane media is entirely missing one of the biggest political stories of the year, and it’s happening in their own backyard. McMorris won by a 60 – 40 margin two years ago against a well financed opponent, and yet Congressional Quarterly recently upgraded the race to the precarious “leans Republican” category. Reports from the campaign trail tell of enthusiastic crowds and easy converts amongst usually diehard Republicans, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the evening news or reading the Spokesman-Review because they’ve all but ignored the race. Yet with virtually zero press coverage Goldmark signs are popping up like wheat stalks throughout the economically struggling 5th Congressional District.

There’s gonna be an awful lot of red faces in the Spokane media come November if Goldmark merely makes this close, let alone wins.

Goldmark is a farmer and rancher with a gut-level understanding of the agricultural crisis that is decimating his district… indeed, that appears to be his primary motivation for jumping into politics. He brings to this race the same kind of mix of red state authenticity and economic populism that has made Brian Schweitzer and Jon Tester Democratic superstars in nearby Montana… and the same type of opportunity for Democrats to win back a seat that most Republicans take for granted.

If it were possible in this day and age for a Congressional candidate to triumph on word of mouth alone, Goldmark would win in a landslide. But let’s not put this thesis to the test. All Goldmark needs to fight this campaign on an even footing is another half million dollars between now and November. That’s chump change when control of the House may lie in the balance. So please give now.

Last night on my radio show I spent some time laying into Mike!™ McGavick (Joel might call it poisonous partisanship) for lending his campaign $2 million before paying back SAFECO shareholders the $1.275 million no-interest loan they gave him to lure him into the CEO’s office.

Here’s the deal for those who missed it.

Essentially, SAFECO gave Mike!™ what amounts to a free mortgage to help him buy his $4.5 million home in the gated Highlands community. According to SAFECO’s own proxy statements this free mortgage has already saved Mike!™ (and thus, cost shareholders) $541,386.25. Better yet for Mike!™, since this represents dollars saved not dollars earned, this indirect form of compensation was entirely tax free.

Loans like this became illegal in 2002, one year after Mike!™ cut his deal, under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that passed in the wake of the Enron, Tyco, Adelphia Cable and Worldcom scandals that rocked corporate America.

But none of this is really the point. Legal or not, we all know that Mike!™ was lavishly compensated during his years as SAFECO CEO, and we all expected a substantial portion of his $28 million golden parachute — negotiated after announcing his resignation — to be invested in his US Senate campaign. And given his obvious willingness to take as much compensation from SAFECO shareholders as humanly possible to extract, nobody really expected Mike!™ to pay back early a no interest loan.

But I think it is fair, if McGavick is going to take credit for turning SAFECO around, that voters be made aware of exactly how much money McGavick “earned” and under what circumstances. And I also think it fair that voters should hear from the employees and policyholders who were asked to tighten their belts (or who lost their jobs and policies entirely) while Mike!™ and his top executives were enriching themselves.

Last night I heard from a couple of former SAFECO employees who described how the corporate culture changed with Mike!™ at the helm… we learned of the jobs that were outsourced and the benefits that were slashed under his leadership. We learned how SAFECO’s egalitarian bonus policy — where all employees once received the same percentage bonus based on profits — was dramatically rewritten so that top executives would receive by far the lion’s share. And we learned how SAFECO’s charitable matching program shrunk from $10,000 per employee per year to a mere $1,000.

Whether or not you can justify these changes I think it says something about Mike!™’s view on wealth and class in America, and who he believes deserves the bulk of the reward from our nation’s economic growth. However much credit he may or may not deserve for SAFECO’s turnaround (he came in at the bottom of both a down cycle in the insurance industry and a crash in the stock market,) there is no doubt that during his tenure he enacted policies that favored the highly paid executives at the top over the average employee.

And there’s one other important point I want to make. Much of the collapse of public confidence in the Republican controlled Congress is due to the culture of corruption that has permeated the other Washington. Voters are simply sick and tired of the revolving door in which highly placed congressional staffers leave the Capitol to instantly become highly paid corporate lobbyists.

Which is the exact career path Mike!™ followed to obtain his riches.

Mike!™ was Sen. Slade Gorton’s campaign manager, and then his chief of staff, before cashing in on his political access to become a high priced insurance industry lobbyist. This was the path he took to SAFECO’s executive suites, and that is the undisputed truth. And now that he’s “earned” his millions, Mike!™ wants to head back to the Capitol, this time as a US Senator, so that he can write the laws that regulate his corporate benefactors.

When critics decry the revolving door of power and money that is corrupting our government, they are describing Mike!™ McGavick’s career. I know it might strike some as negative campaigning to point this out, but I think that with this knowledge in hand voters can make a more informed decision come November.

[NOTE: Read the update below. It appears I was mostly wrong. My bad, but I own it.]

When Rep. Dave Reichert reported about $100,000 in illegal, excess contributions a couple weeks back, did he think nobody would notice?

I was skimming through Reichert’s quarterly FEC report, when I came upon something quite odd. The campaign contribution limit for House races this cycle is an aggregate $2,100 from individuals and $5,000 from PACs for each the primary and the general elections. And yet I found contribution after contribution in excess of those amounts.

In all, I found 47 individual contributions in excess of the $2,100 individual limit — as much as $4,700 each — and most of these individuals had given excess contributions for both the primary and the general elections. In addition, I found 9 PAC contributions apparently in excess of the $5,000 aggregate limit, including notable WA state business leaders like Microsoft, Boeing and Weyerhaeuser.

Add it all up and Reichert’s haul of excess contributions totals over $97,000. And that’s just from donors who contributed during the previous quarter… I’ve yet to go back to earlier reports to see if other donors had already exceeded their aggregate limit as well.

Of course, Reichert didn’t just solicit all this extra cash and figure the FEC wouldn’t notice. The PDFs of his itemized receipts include the following notation:

Limit Increased Due to Opponent’s
Spending (2 U.S.C. 441a(i)(441a-1)

Oh. So there’s an explanation. No biggie, I guess. Until you look up 441a-1 and find that this explanation is a load of shit.

What Reichert is referring to is something called the “Millionaires’ Amendment,” which allows candidates to exceed the normal contribution limits, under certain circumstances, when an opponent spends personal funds in excess of an established threshold. The FEC publishes a brochure, which clearly explains the provisions:

The provisions of the Millionaires’ Amendment may, in certain circumstances, increase the contribution limits for House and Senate candidates facing opponents who spend personal funds in excess of certain threshold amounts. […] For House candidates, the threshold amount is $350,000. 11 CFR 400.9(b). House candidates whose opponent’s personal spending exceeds that threshold may trigger increased limits.

Um… last time I checked, Darcy Burner had spent less than $47,000 of her own money to jumpstart her campaign — nowhere near the $350,000 threshold. And in any case, at the time Reichert started soliciting his excess contributions, Burner hadn’t yet reported $350,000 in total contributions, from any source.

And of course, the contribution limit increase doesn’t just come automatically; there is a process. Candidates are required to estimate in their Statement of Candidacy the amount of personal funds in excess of the threshold they intend to expend, and Burner’s statement estimates exactly $0.00. Furthermore, candidates are required to send a copy of Form 10 to both the FEC and their opponents within 24-hours of exceeding the threshold; of course, Burner has never filed such a form, because she’s more than $300,000 shy of the mark.

And finally…

An opposing candidate’s campaign-related expenditures from personal funds in excess of the triggering threshold do not automatically result in increased contribution limits. The Millionaires’ Amendment also takes into account fundraising by the campaigns. Campaigns must use the “opposition personal funds amount” formula to determine whether an opposing candidate has spent sufficient personal funds in comparison to the amounts raised by the campaigns to trigger increased contribution limits

A candidate with a significant fundraising advantage over a self-financed opponent might not receive an increased contribution limit. In this way, the regulations avoid giving increased contribution limits to candidates whose campaigns have a significant fundraising advantage over their opponents.

Reichert has outraised Burner $1.4 million to $540,000 thus far… so I’m not sure the limit increase would have been triggered even if Burner had hit the threshold.

I’m no FEC expert, so maybe I’m missing something obvious here… but it’s hard to believe that the Reichert campaign itself actually believes that it qualifies for increased contribution limits under the Millionaires’ Amendment. So what could possibly explain this discrepancy?

Well, I suppose it could just be a mistake. Because donors don’t always understand the limits, campaigns inadvertently receive excess contributions all the time, and there’s a mechanism in place for returning them in a timely matter without penalty. But 56 contributions totaling nearly $100,000 in a single quarter? What’s the chance of that?

And, oh yeah… the vast majority of these excess contributions were recorded in the final couple weeks of the quarter, while all nine of the excess PAC contributions were recorded on March 31… the very last of the reporting period.

Coincidence? I think not.

Here’s what I think happened. The Reichert campaign got spooked by what they correctly perceived to be a late quarter fundraising surge by Burner, and so they booked tens of thousands of dollars in excess contributions during the final days — knowing that they would eventually have to refund the money — simply to make the fundraising gap look less embarrassing. The goal was to prevent Burner from gaining the credibility and momentum she had earned.

It didn’t work.

A few weeks back the WA State GOP took another shot at stemming Burner’s momentum by supposedly filing an FEC complaint against her campaign. According to the official GOP press release:

Diane Tebelius, Washington State GOP chairman, asked the FEC to look into alleged violations of federal campaign reporting laws including receipt of excessive contributions and failure to properly report disbursements.

This complaint paints a picture of a campaign that is unable to comply with federal election rules and regulations. Earlier this year Burner pledged to adhere to the highest ethical standards if elected to Congress. This latest revelation makes that pledge sound hollow. “Darcy Burner makes a mockery of her own pledge with her inability or unwillingness to follow even the most basic campaign finance rules,” commented Chairman Tebelius.

The GOP’s complaint was trivial and frivolous, centering on a video, legally produced by a volunteer. But if Tebelius wants to mock Burner for failing to report volunteer work she wasn’t required to report, what can we say about Reichert? His campaign not only failed to comply with federal election rules and regulations, it flouted them, apparently and intentionally soliciting nearly $100,000 in excess contributions, simply to gain a PR advantage.

Reichert wasn’t merely gaming the system… he was lying. And it gives us a good idea of what we can expect from his campaign from here on out.

UPDATE:
As it turns out, it looks like I may have misunderstood the “Election Cycle to Date” field to refer to the election cycle to date, per election. Take a look at this section of the form, and you can see my confusion:

Hmm. Others have suggested this field may actually represent the aggregate across both elections, and looking at the way the numbers add up, I’m leaning in that direction. My bad.

So… the amount of the excess contributions may be much less than I had assumed. Two individuals who have contributed totals of $4,700 and $4,600 respectively (over the combined limit of $2,100) plus two PACs, Microsoft and Boeing, who have contributed an aggregate of $15,000 and $11,000 respective (over the combined limit of $10,000).

I guess I was so caught up in the bogus reference to the Millionaires’ Amendment, that I didn’t see the forest for the trees.

Sure, it’s embarrassing to get things like this wrong, but I’m man enough to admit it. So rather than delete the post, I’m leaving it up here for all to see my mistake and my correction. If anything, this is a great example of the self-correcting feature of blogging, when practiced honestly. This is a kind of open-source journalism, and any time I truly make a mistake, my readers are there to correct me and set the record straight.

Yeah, sure… when I talk up Darcy Burner, you can dismiss that as partisan puffery. But when Roll Call says “Reichert May Face Tough Challenge From Neophyte,” um, well… you can bet the R’s are more than a little bit nervous.

While McMorris, whose district sits safely east of the Cascade Mountains in strong GOP territory, likely will coast back to Congress, Reichert may have to fight tooth-and-nail to become a sophomore.

Reichert represents a classic swing suburban district outside of Seattle that is becoming more Democratic. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) took the 8th district with 51 percent of the vote in 2004, compared to President Bush’s 48 percent, and Reichert won with just 52 percent last time.

“The 8th is a swing, Democratic district,” concedes Reichert’s political consultant Bruce Boram. “Any Democratic opponent who runs against Reichert starts at 43 percent [of the vote].”

Add that more than 60 percent of 8th district voters currently believe the country is on the wrong track, according to recent polls, that the popularity of Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress are at all-time lows and that the district “is definitely trending in the Democrats’ favor,” and “it’s an environment where you have to take that seriously,” Boram added.

The factors Boram ticks off combine to make a potent electoral cocktail, but what could make it a double for Reichert is money.

Democrat Darcy Burner surprised national Democrats, Republicans and probably Reichert by outraising him 2-1 in the first quarter of this year.

She still trails him in overall cash on hand, but she dramatically narrowed the ratio with a stellar three-month period that saw her bring in $140,000 in the last 10 days of March.

Boram said Reichert likely began April with more than $700,000 while Burner had $355,000 in the bank.

Burner gave her campaign $25,000 and loaned it $10,000 but is not expected to seriously self-fund.

“Darcy Burner has done a phenomenal job establishing herself as an aggressive candidate for change right out of the gate,” said Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “She’s really demonstrated she’s going to make a run at this seat.”

She certainly has.