King County will continue to be ground zero in the U.S. Senate race between Dino Rossi (R) and Sen. Patty Murray (D), with the count of all ballots possibly not being completed until Friday or next week.

After counts from around the state have all been posted mid-evening, the Rossi camp trails in the statewide count by 27,464 votes with hundreds of thousands of votes still uncounted, many of which are in King County, the bane of a Washington Republican candidate’s existence. Rossi’s path to victory must now traverse the county that Wikipedia calls Washington’s “major center for liberal politics and a bastion for the Democratic Party.”

(We in the Pacific Northwest know that as a euphemistic substitution for calling it what it is—a county dominated by a 21st-century Tammany Hall situated on the scenic shores of Puget Sound.)

Although Rossi’s cause was aided in the early afternoon by gains in Spokane County where he picked up a net gain of 3,262 votes, a predictable deluge from King County and small net losses in the Pierce and Snohomish County tallies erased those gains and extended Murray’s lead in the race. A late (and somewhat shocking) boost from Franklin County—a net gain for Rossi of 3,128 votes in a county where only about 12,000 total votes had been counted—brought the race back to within a two-point margin.

As of 10:30 p.m. tonight, with the live camera in the King County Elections ballot inspection room displaying only a half-illuminated and empty space, Murray’s lead stands at 50.84 percent to 49.16 for Rossi.

A communication sent out tonight from the Rossi campaign still contends that the race is too close to call pointing to low voter turnout in King County as a reason for optimism. Although the Democrat’s spin machine was chugging away from the break of dawn with tales of a voter surge, skepticism proves a worthy safeguard against swallowing the hype.

David Goldstein at Seattle liberal blog Horsesass.org may have been the first to report this morning about the tidal wave of ballots surging into King County Elections and bloating the number of ballots on hand but not yet counted to a point not expected by elections officials. But according to King County’s turnout projections for the race and statewide turnout statistics, the largest county in the state isn’t keeping pace.

The mailbags opened by election officials in King County were light by about 15,000 ballots from what was anticipated, falling 10 percent short of projections.

Another curious observation on Wednesday night was that numbers posted on the King County Elections website for mail ballot return stats failed to match the figures posted at the Secretary of State’s site. At 11:00 p.m., King County stated that a total of 686,792 ballots had been received to date out of 1,076,209 ballots issued. The state’s accounting showed a total of 595,673 ballots received (the sum of ballots counted and estimated ballots on hand but not processed) and a figure of 1,069,791 for the number of registered voters in the county.

An assumption that a larger number of ballots issued than registered voters indicates that more than 6,400 unregistered voters received ballots in King County would be hasty. Emails have been sent to the Secretary of State and King County Elections asking for an explanation of the discrepancy.

If there is a surge in King County, the ballots from late voters could contain the backlash from the odd claim made by Murray during the KOMO-TV debate that she helped write the increasingly unpopular healthcare bill. Visits from Pres. Barack Obama and Vice Pres. Joe Biden in the waning days of the campaign could also be a ticking time bomb as the final ballots reflect voter attitudes closer to day of the election.

King County will release its next batch of results on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. Pacific.

###

Two key races in Washington State appear headed to razor-thin finishes, but official results may not be certified until as far off as next week because of the nearly universal mail-in voting in the Evergreen State.

As of the latest reported count, Republican Dino Rossi currently trails incumbent Democratic Sen. Patty Murray by nearly 14,000 votes. Although the margin gives Murray a 0.98 percent edge In the race between incumbent Democrat Rick Larsen and Republican challenger John Koster in the 2nd Congressional District, the deadlock is nearly identical in scale but with Koster leading by 1,429 votes.

If the counting ending today in those contests, neither finish would trigger an automatic recount under state election law. But the predominantly mail-in voting process makes any effort to put a definite number on how many votes are still uncounted, conceivably leaving space for election abuse, and certainly leaving voters and candidates hanging.

Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed’s office—the authority that will ultimately certify this election as official—is as much in the dark as the rest of us about how much counting remains. In an email to Seattlepi.com, spokesman Dave Ammon explains the black box effect from widespread use of mail-in voting, saying, “No one knows how many ballots are left to count, since large volumes are in the mail and final return rate isn’t knowable.”

Ammon is right. Pinning down the point at which all ballots are like chasing a rainbow. The process forces intelligent observers to resort to pin-the-tail-in-the-winner election day guesswork. From the same article Seattlepi.com’s Chris Grygiel:

Exact numbers are tricky to come by, but we’ll take a stab. Prior to the election, the secretary of state estimated that about 60 percent of the total vote would be tallied Nov. 2. That would leave about 572,000 ballots remaining. King County officials say there could be about 350,000 votes still to count from the state’s largest county, which Murray was winning by more than a 60 percent margin.

Grygiel should not be faulted for taking a “stab” at a total number of ballots remaining—they’re not using a methodology much different than what the campaigns and election officials are using, and his logic has no faults. Guesstimates are all observers have, but it should concern voters that accountability for an exact count boils down to best guesses and statistics (which, by definition are not exact) of how many ballots were actually cast.

The sort of imprecision that is inherent in mail-in voting would not be tolerated by a shop owner closing out their register for the day. Should it be tolerated in a process of voting that ultimately affects movements of billions, nay trillions, of dollars?

Polling place voting, despite being slightly more costly to administer, contains multiple safeguards to prevent abuse. Voters are checked off the rolls as they present identification to receive ballots in precincts they are eligible to vote in. Codes from ballot stubs are assigned to a specific voter on the roll. Ballots are handed directly to the counting official, and the entire process is conducted in the plain view of the local community and subject to bipartisan observation and inspection. At the end of the night, the number of ballots issued is compared with ballots counted, this reconciliation performed at the polling place and before officials submit their counts to be included with the large tally. Any discrepancies trigger a series of firewall measures to ensure that all ballots were counted and no additional ballots were given out.

In the current system, the only numbers that can be known for certain is the number of ballots mailed to voters and the number of ballots received by county elections offices, but ballots received is not equivalent to ballots cast by voters.

For now, Washington will have to endure another waiting game of indefinite length, not knowing when the very last ballot will be tallied.

###

Most often, it’s the patronizing tone of the emails emanating from both of the national party machines that cause me to hit the delete button as soon as they land in my inbox. For some reason, I took a moment to read one that came tonight from First Lady Michelle Obama and got a chuckle not from its predictably uninspired copywriting, but from what Mrs. Obama forgot to say.

The email sent by Organizing for America specifically asked me to schedule a little GOTV time for Democrats, to “make a difference in tight races across the country,” directing me to a staging location in my home town of Bothell, Wash.

Michelle “Let Them Eat Rice Cakes” Obama then passes along some pillow talk impressions of her husband’s experience on the recent taxpayer-subsidized campaign swing.

“When Barack got back from a recent campaign swing, he couldn’t stop talking about how every supporter he met was fired up.

From amazing crowds at his rallies with great candidates like Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer to meeting some of the OFA volunteers who are part of this effort, he couldn’t be prouder of what you’re doing.”

And… Patty Murray, the Senator from the Great State of Washington? The one Obama said he had to have as a partner in Washington? (No one is exactly sure which Washington he meant.) The one he snarled Seattle-area traffic for not once, but twice, this election season? Apparently Murray made such an impression she didn’t even warrant a mention in a direct appeal to key Democratic voters, although neither did any of the other Democrats running for their Congress-lovin’ lives – Reps. Jay Inslee, Adam Smith, and Rick Larsen.

I’m sure many Washingtonians look forward to the day when they can forget about Patty Murray, too. With a lot of hard work, that day may come next Tuesday.

###

[Cross-posted by author from Red County.]

Suzan DelBene wants your vote, but in the past six years the former vice president of marketing for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile division has been pretty stingy about casting her own ballots. To say DelBene – who is running as a challenger against Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington’s Eight Congressional District – is a political newcomer is a massive understatement. In nine elections within the past six years, DelBene has failed to vote.

If DelBene was not passionate enough about political issues to register even her own opinion at the polls, why should voters feel she cares much about the issues now? According to the eighth district voters who learned about DelBene’s record for the first time when interviewed in this video, her lack of participation raises serious concerns. Shock and disappointment seem to be the most common reaction, but take a look for yourself.

Please, don’t be greedy. Share this video with others.

###

[Cross-posted by author from Red County.]

It’s the Friday before Election Day 2010 and polling updates in the Washington U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Patty Murray and Republican challenger Dino Rossi continue to stream in.

The KING-TV/SurveyUSA poll released Friday morning has the race absolutely deadlocked, 47 percent breaking equally to Murray and Rossi, with six percent of respondents undecided.

SurveyUSA polled 678 likely and actual voters between Oct. 24th and 27th and reports a margin of error of ±3.8 percent. They also asked respondents whether or not they had already voted in the largely mail-in election. Of votes already cast, Rossi holds a two-point advantage; Murray has an identical edge among those who guaranteed they will be casting a vote between now and Tuesday evening. Although SurveyUSA interprets this as a wash, the break between those who already voted versus those who promise to do it by Election Day is 54 to 46.

If Rossi truly has a two point spread among the larger bloc of voters who have already cast ballots, and Murray is just waiting for her two points to come in on the smaller batch of maybe votes, I don’t read the poll the same way SurveyUSA does. My guess is that Murray’s campaign won’t put much stock on it either, and will be working hard to get out the vote in every way they can right up until (and possibly beyond) November 2nd.

The SurveyUSA results follow yesterday’s Rasmussen release that showed Rossi leading by a single point, 47-46. Rasmussen found that only two percent of voters remained undecided compared with three percent in the previous poll, a shift that must be worrisome for Murray. Historical trends typically give the advantage among undecideds in tight races to the challenger, and Murray’s 16 years in the Senate certain locks her out of posing as an outsider on her way to the finish line.

Another interesting observation from SurveyUSA’s crosstabs is how tremendous shifts toward Rossi within key demographics. Although Murray’s highwater mark among women in SurveyUSA’s polling during this election cycle was a 17-point advantage, that margin has shrunk to only six percent despite an emphasis in negative ads paid for by Murray and independent groups to portray Rossi as a threat on “women’s issues.”

The Real Clear Politics average of four polls gives Murray a slim 0.5 percent edge, but that calculation includes a pair of two-week-old polls from McClatchy and a Democrat-leaning polls done by Public Policy Polling.

Handicapped, this race is going down to the wire just as promised. It’s just how we do things in this part of the country.

###

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is facing an Election Eve crisis concerning ethics complaints over requests made to California teachers to enlist students as volunteers in her close race against Republican challenger Carly Fiorina.

The condensed version: Powerful Democratic incumbent Senator leverages influence with public employees, hurdles ethical and legal barriers as only a woman of the people can, and appropriates harnesses public resources in their campaign for re-election. After re-election, go back to the beginning and repeat as needed.

Jonathan Strong writing this morning at The Daily Caller illuminates:

In a close election race against former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina, California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer is facing new ethics complaints over asking teachers to send their students to work for her campaign.

In an Oct. 27 letter to California education authorities, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA), a non-profit group urging lower taxes, said, “In abject ignorance of California state law, the political campaign of Senator Barbara Boxer has openly solicited teachers employed by [Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)] to urge their students to volunteer for her campaign.” …

HJTA’s letter cites a portion of California law governing teachers’ conduct which makes it illegal for teachers to solicit political support of students, including donations and volunteer work.

Being conscripted into the army of the damned and delusional that is the Boxer campaign should qualify for at least an honorable mention from the Guinness World Record folks as the scariest field trip, ever.

If the scenario seems vaguely familiar to Washington State voters, it’s because investigation has already uncovered a similar “outreach” program between Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-Wash.) campaign and employees working in the state’s unemployment system. Murray, rather than pulling students away from their homework, sought to convince unemployed veterans that their time would be better spent knocking on doors for her than seeking employment in desperate economic times.

Documents previously obtained through a public records request confirmed that on August 12th a veterans representative with WorkSource – the client services arm of Washington’s Employment Security Department – used her access to a list of approximately 300 veterans to make a direct appeal to former servicemen and women to pound the pavement for Murray. The email suggested that veterans could “walk and knock” in advance of the primary election, “[s]pecifically for Patty Murray” who the state worker said “has done a lot for the Veterans of our community.”

Shortly after the message went out, replies began to roll in to the worker and superiors. Many of the responses expressed shock at having received a tacit endorsement of a candidate for office from a supposedly neutral agency of the government. Within hours, news of the issue went quickly up the ladder, eliciting the attention of the southwest Washington area director of Employment Security.

Employment Security spokeswoman Sheryl Hutchison has stated to the press the employee’s actions constituted a violation of the law. To its credit, Employment Security promptly referred the matter over to the State Executive Ethics Board for an investigation that is now underway, but no action has been taken to conclude what party was soliciting the employee to break the law. Other documents reveal, though, that such a solicitation did, either explicitly or implicitly, occur.

During the frenzy of damage control, the WorkSource employee responded to complaints from inflamed vets and to questions from superiors. Those emails contain the clues that the government worker was not acting as a lone wolf political operative.

While apologizing to one veteran, she confides to being “asked to contact Veterans,” and in another email to her manager writes, “When I met with the local reps yesterday they asked if we could get the word out about their events, specifically to Veterans.”

Who is referred to in the phrase “local reps” remains unclear. Conceivably, they could be as innocuous as representatives of the company that services the vending machines in the break room. More likely, it may refer to union representatives (the worker was in constant communication with her union rep during the time the email campaign was underway) or representatives of the Murray campaign.

Repeated inquiries made to the Murray campaign for clarity on their involvement or lack thereof have not been responded to, leaving space for speculation that the impulse to use veteran-friendly affinity groups in southwestern Washington – even if it involved unethical tactics – intersected with legitimate political incentives.

Vancouver is a center of political gravity in the 3rd Congressional District, a swing territory that also has a sizable ex-military population. Primary polling in the Washington 3rd – a seat left open by the retirement of Rep. Brian Baird (D) – was routinely showing the two Republicans in the race eating up a large percentage of votes compared to the lone Democrat. In a close statewide race, shoring up support in places like the 3rd District could be critical.

The latest Rasmussen poll in the Washington Senate race has Republican challenger Dino Rossi leading by a single point, with two percent of likely voters still undecided.

###

[Cross-posted by author from Red County.]

As Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission prepares for a Thursday hearing to discuss whether Lisa MacLean – principal of the Seattle-based political consulting firm Moxie Media – orchestrated dirty tricks to eliminate a conservative Democrat in a state legislative race, links between Moxie, MacLean, and Sen. Patty Murray’s campaign are bound to solicit attention.

MacLean’s Moxie Media was laying low in the hotly-contested U.S. Senate race between Murray and Republican challenger Dino Rossi when their name popped up on an independent expenditure report filed with the Federal Election Commission by Planned Parenthood Votes! Washington. The pro-choice PAC has targeted Rossi for an $85,000 Moxie-created direct mail attack as part of the final push to Election Day and cut the check on the same day that news of Moxie diva MacLean’s serious troubles with the PDC broke in local outlets.

MacLean is also associated with Murray’s own negative ads aimed at Rossi, but via a peculiar route. In 2008, MacLean was part of the Evergreen Progress political action committee’s Rossi attack squad, a group that created anti-Rossi spots for that year’s gubernatorial race. Those ads were stripped down for parts and retrofitted by the Murray campaign for use in a race that observers have long felt will be a photo finish.

(As an aside, The Seattle Times has called the ads “false” and “grossly malicious.”)

Looking at the images included in this post that show clips from the 2008 and 2010 ads side by side, it’s easy to see that the content comes from a common source. Put simply, if “before” and “after” photos in diet pill ads documented a similar lack of change, sales would plummet.

Questions still remain about how People for Patty Murray obtained several minutes of video footage and photos – “voter” testimonials and background photography – that are nearly identical to the content of Evergreen Progress’ 2008 spots. A review of the filings by Evergreen Progress and People for Patty Murray with the PDC and FEC failed to find any reciprocal transactions, although examination of expenditure filings by both groups solve the mystery of whether the ads share a common lineage.

In 2008, Evergreen Progress paid Washington, D.C. media firm Struble Eichenbaum for editing and production of the anti-Rossi television spots. Struble Eichenbaum was the only vendor paid for video work during the time Evergreen Progress was putting out its attack ads against Rossi. Media Strategies of Colorado made the ad buys in Washington’s key markets to make sure every voter would get a seat for the mud bath.

Evergreen Progress was also paying MNP Partners – the shop Lisa MacLean ran along with Christian Sinderman – to handle direct mail opposition to Rossi.

Now, fast forward to 2010.

Murray’s campaign has paid $133,000 to Struble Eichenbaum and $3.5 million to Media Strategies in the current cycle for media consulting, while running its own ads attacking Rossi.

Former Murray chief of staff Rick Desimone was also instrumental in designing the ’08 blitzkrieg against Rossi. Desimone’s firm McBee Strategies received $105,000 in consulting fees from Evergreen Progress while Desimone also acted as the PAC’s chairman.

Desimone may have been the mastermind directing the creation of the Evergreen Progress ads, or it may have been MacLean at Moxie, a savvy political insider whose role in campaigns is known to exceed the scope of a simple vendor doing direct mail piece work.

Now, MacLean has birthed another mailer for the purpose of distorting Rossi’s record on abortion. Same players, same enemy, different avatar.

As was tweeted by this blogger, the persistence of these figures over the course of Rossi’s political career creates the appearance that Murray is not a distinct political figure, but a convenient horse to be saddled and ridden by a progressive cabal focused only on preventing Rossi from getting into office.

In 2008, Democratic tacticians knew Gov. Chris Gregoire would need to benefit from a massive diversion from her own troubles, a questionable sweetheart deal with Washington’s Native American tribes that was negotiated by her office shortly before an flood of contributions from the tribes came rushing in to fill the Democrat’s war chest.

Flash to 2010, when Murray’s significant weaknesses on earmarks and her inattention to key economic concerns such as Boeing’s gradual retreat from Washington State and a worsening agricultural trade war with Mexico that is hurting farmers on the eastern side of the state.

In addition to giving the impression that Murray lacks her own identity as anything but a host for a left-wing anti-Republican strategy, the choice to take this approach exemplifies why Democrats are likely to lose big this November.

The electorate has changed since 2008, but instead of adapting Democrats like Murray and her consultants have chosen to keep singing from the same old progressive hymnal. The decision to stick to the golden oldies – the haunting ballad of Republicans standing betwixt voters and federal pork – is tone-deaf to the widespread anti-big government sentiment that shows up in polls among moderates, independents, Tea Party voters, and conservative Republicans.

Pathetically, the Democrats can’t even put their own stamp on being out of touch and unoriginal. Republicans made the same monumental miscalculation in 2006 and 2008, one that we can hope will have similar results for Murray and other Democrats in 2010 and 2012.

###

While it may not be Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the unfolding story of a plot hatched by Democratic political consultant Lisa MacLean of Moxie Media and a confederation of labor unions and progressive interest groups to prevent a more conservative Democrat from making it through the August primary lacks neither drama nor intrigue.

Incumbent Democratic State Sen. Jean Berkey in Washington’s 38th legislative district (Everett) must have known she had crossed the Rubicon by voting in favor of furloughing state workers. She may have even perceived the threat from her left, but the idea that Democratic operatives and donors would conspire to support a candidate from the right in order to eliminate her must have been too far-fetched to be considered reasonable. Yet, that is exactly what happened.

Josh Feit at the Publicola blog wrote following Berkey’s third place finish in a top two primary:

Unions had vowed to take out Berkey in the primary this year after Berkey voted for state worker furloughs and, as banking committee chair, killed a move to repeal a $50 million loophole for big banks. …

In a squeeze play, Moxie Media, the Democratic consultant that did the ads against Berkey and for Harper also did mailers for the Republican in the race, Rod Rieger.

Et tu, Moxie?

MacLean is in the crosshairs of the Public Disclosure Commission and reportedly is hastily trying to reach a settlement to pay fines and avoid an injunction from doing business that could result from a hearing scheduled for Thursday.

###

Last week, The Washington Post took the brave step to report on a story that has been news for months. At issue has been circumstantial evidence that the White House and political appointees at the Justice Department are enforcing a doctrine of selective enforcement of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, making decisions to file cases not based on merit but on the basis of the race of the defendant.

In its investigation of the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members stemming from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008, the Post found significant evidence of that an explicit policy of selective enforcement exists at Justice. The latest details add to an unfolding story that has received diligent journalistic attention from Quin Hillyer at The Washington Times and American Spectator, but has been repeatedly kicked to the curb even by the Post’s own staff.

Former keeper of the Post’s “Right Now” blog, Dave Weigel, was openly dismissive of the questions being asked by other journalists. Weigel blogged from an April 2010 hearing on the matter by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission characterizing it as having “far more heat than light.” Later, writing in The Atlantic he suggested that Fox News reporting on the controversy was “minstrelsy, with a fringe moron set up like a bowling pin for Hannity to knock down.”

Despite Weigel’s disapproval, the Philadelphia event has become an indelible visual meme, an image of two African-American men – Maruse Heath and Jerry Jackson – standing in front of the polls, clad in black paramilitary uniforms one of whom brandishes a nightstick, both of whom level menacing gazes at the college student filming their actions. The moment encapsulates the accounts of multiple eyewitnesses who attest that the two men cast racial epithets at white passersby and created a climate of intimidation where many people would come to cast ballots in the presidential election.

When President Obama took office in early 2009, the case against Jackson, Heath and the NBPP was already a going concern at the Justice Department. Voting rights section chief Christopher Coates, who had been hired during the Clinton years after working with the American Civil Liberties Union, made the decision to file charges in the matter knowing that it would create dissent within his department. Neither Heath, nor Jackson, nor Malik Shabazz, the chairman of the NBPP and named defendant in the Justice Department’s case, offered any defense and in early April of 2009 the Philadelphia court hearing the case opened the door for Justice Department attorneys to file a motion for default judgment. But in mid-May, the department elected to dismiss all of the charges except those against Heath, but asking for a narrower injunction on Heath’s polling place visits than was previously requested.

Although assistant attorney general for civil rights Thomas E. Perez told the Washington Post that there was no political involvement in the decision to dismiss, facts place his claim under serious doubt.

A timeline of White House meetings (meticulously documented from White House visitor logs by The Washington Times) attended by high-ranking Obama administration officials, attorneys lobbying for the defendants, and political appointees in the Justice Department civil rights division’s chain of communication, is hard to dismiss.

Put simply, while the defendants in the case were too busy to even appear in court to address the charges against them, the White House was the scene of heavy lobbying efforts on their behalf. Although no evidence yet exists of a quid pro quo, an odor reeks from the affair not unlike the Jersey shore at low tide and bears little resemblance to a sequence of events in which the White House was not taking an active role in affecting the dismissal of the case.

According to the Post’s Friday article, the coup de grâce was delivered after the case’s dismissal. Career attorneys in the voting section received word from on high that cases pertaining to key voting rights laws would not be filed unless minorities were the alleged victims.

A new supervisor, Julie Fernandes, arrived to oversee the voting section, and Coates testified that she told attorneys at a September 2009 lunch that the Obama administration was interested in filing cases – under a key voting rights section – only on behalf of minorities.

“Everyone in the room understood exactly what she meant,” Coates said. “No more cases like the Ike Brown or New Black Panther Party cases.”

Fernandes declined to comment through a department spokeswoman.

Selective enforcement is often an unfortunate by-product of resource-starved divisions of prosecutors, the result of triaging cases with regard to the impact they have on society. But the decision to provide unequal protection from polling place intimidation strikes at the very foundation of society itself.

A policy that determines that some Americans have civil rights with regard to this most critical of political actions while others do not, well, there nothing civil about that at all.

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[Cross-posted by author from Red County.]

Promoted from diaries.  Also: wow.  – Moe Lane

If you have been getting an annoying sense of déjà vu while watching the air blitz in the U.S. Senate race, it may be because you’ve seen it all before. I’m not referring to Republican challenger Dino Rossi’s previous campaigns for elected office, but instead to a remarkable amount of video and interview footage from Sen. Patty Murray’s attack ads against Rossi that bear a striking resemblance to images from ads against Rossi that aired in 2008. Only the ads that aired in ’08 were in support of Gov. Chris Gregoire and paid for by one-time SEIU and AFL-CIO darling, the Evergreen Progress political action committee.

Although this may just seem like another example of Hollywood rubbing off on Democrat wannabes – in this case, their stubborn refusal to come up with original content – the ads have the potential to inflame serious ethics issues for Murray’s campaign with little more than a week until Election Day.

Comparing the ads side by side, it wouldn’t require the intuitive skill of forensic pathologist to conclude they came from the same block of commercially-produced video.

The video capture images below compare two sets of virtually identical ads – on the right, Evergreen Progress from 2008; on the left, the ’10 Patty Murray remix.

Read More →