Soon it will be Christmas Eve, that one night of the year when politicos young and old lay their heads down to dream of the treasure that may await in stockings hung with care. But some on the American political scene have been a little nicer than others and Santa Claus has been making notes all year before deciding how to best distribute the wealth. | Read More »
Seattle once set a gleaming example of how all-politics talk radio could be successful on AM radio. In the span of just one year Washington state’s largest media market has seen the format’s potential to affect state and local politics made impotent, leaving conservative communicators to wonder where the new pathways will develop to balance a crowd of moderate and liberal voices discussing state, local | Read More »
Is a compromise on extending the tax cuts enacted under Pres. Bush in the offing? After a weekend of politicking, it seems that Democrats are willing to deal and Republicans are in the driver seat. Buzz has been overheard that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) may be pulling strings for a procedural vote early during this coming week, perhaps on a compromise amendment yet | Read More »
While Wikileaks founder Julian Assange continues to simultaneously evade the law enforcement agencies of Sweden and common sense, the justifications for his actions still pour forth each day. The latest communication from his anarchist clearinghouse of secret material came via the Wikileaks Twitter account: “Kennedy on why WikiLeaks matters (Youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces.” Assange is no longer only communicating with snitches and traitors in the realm of | Read More »
In geological terms, the West Coast of the United States is something like a jigsaw puzzle, a stressed arrangement of smaller pieces under constant tension, a crisscrossing complex of fractures that has lethal potential for millions. For civic leaders, it offers a decision of elegant simplicity: prepare or perish. The Left Coast’s political landscape is just as treacherous as the terrestrial one, particularly (as this | Read More »
For the second year in a row, social conservatives are riling over the inclusion of gay conservatives at the highly visible Conservative Political Action Conference scheduled to be held this coming February in the nation’s capital. As reported Tuesday afternoon on Ben Smith’s blog at Politico.com, The American Principles Project uninvited itself this morning from the paramount annual gathering of conservatives, and cited irreconcilable differences | Read More »
Recent developments have set the fires of speculation about Washington State’s 2012 gubernatorial race ablaze. Although not official, current governor Chris Gregoire’s rumored choice not to run for a third term has focused attention to Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-1) as the likely Democratic contender for the open seat. A decision by Inslee to vie for the governor’s office would leave a comfortable Democratic district vulnerable | Read More »
As Republicans in Washington State assess the fallout from last Tuesday’s elections, upturning the state party hierarchy is becoming an outlet for a very real sense that opportunities for GOP gains were missed because of a lack of a ground game. By telephone this morning, Kirby Wilbur informed me that he would be running for chair of the State Republican Party, and that he had | Read More »
If last Tuesday’s election was a key moment in American history, a surge of political evolution, Washington State – frequently credited as a citadel of innovation – now has the distinction of being a throwback. Of the groups responsible for empowering Washington voters to continue clinging to their buggy whips, the Washington State Republican Party and chairman Luke Esser must accept a large share of | Read More »
Dino Rossi has conceded the Washington U.S. Senate race to opponent and incumbent Sen. Patty Murray (D). Although Rossi continued to pick up votes from many counties from today’s results, those gains were obliterated by a net gain for Murray of more than 25,000 votes in the Democratic stronghold of King County. Those votes also broke harder for Murray than in previous days’ counts, a | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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. | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
Democrats are hitting the panic button in Washington State as the race between Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican challenger Dino Rossi narrows down to the nail-biter many of us knew it would be. How much is Murray’s eleventh-hour 911 call to Pres. Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice Pres. Joe Biden costing taxpayers? After already receiving two visits from the executive branch’s | Read More »
If 2010 does not wind up being the Year of the Republican in Washington State, it will almost certainly be the Year of the Befuddled Pollster. The challenge Washington State has presented to opinion takers and campaigners was significant enough to warrant a lengthy post on The New York Times Five Thirty-Eight blog earlier this week. The inconvenient thing about Washington State, however, is that | Read More »
The sordid details are crystallizing from this weekend’s apparent attempt by a group of male Central Washington University students to pull off a drug-assisted mass “date rape” at a home in Roslyn, Wash, a small town on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains only a two-hour drive from Bellevue, Wash. Although CWU has indicated it will take decisive action against those involved, for many | Read More »
The newest Fox News poll of the U.S. Senate race in Washington State finds Republican challenger Dino Rossi leading incumbent Sen. Patty Murray (D) by one point, 47-46. The weekly tracking poll – taken October 9th by Pulse Opinion from 1,000 likely voters and having a margin of error of three points – offers more reasons to believe that momentum is shifting to Rossi as | Read More »
Imagine for a moment the following pitch being made to a room of television programming executives. They were the pin-up girls of the 1980’s, now they’re wives of Hollywood’s entertainment industry elite. Now, they’re headed to Washington, D.C. to use their assets and save the world. Their target: Politicians and officials who control the policies and dollars of the federal government. Their mission: To win | Read More »
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