What if they had an election…

…and our side won? Won a bunch. All over the place.

Like I said, yesterday was a good one for the good guys.

Key Republican issues and political strategies took hits from coast to coast. Voter suppression? Maine offered the first blow for liberty of the day, restoring the same-day voter registration that Republican legislators had taken from them. Mississippi, of all places, scored a hat trick of sorts, setting back the Republican anti-science, anti-choice and anti-woman agendas when they rejected Amendment 26, which would have granted "personhood" to embryos.

Republican ant-unionism was dealt a critical blow by Ohio voters, with 82 of 88 counties rejecting Gov. John Kasich's attack on public-sector workers right to organize and bargain collectively. Republican anti-immigrant champion Russell Pearse, President of the State Senate, was removed in a recall election after sponsoring legislation that provided a blueprint for devastation of agriculture in several states. (Another noteworthy Arizona outcome - both Tucson and Phoenix have Democratic Mayors for the first time in decades.)

Here in the upper left, voters approved stronger training and regulation requirements for home health care workers, took the state out of the retail liquor business (a probably good thing accomplished in a highly dubious fashion) and, so far, are rejecting Tim Eyman's effort to cripple our transportation infrastructure.

Our local elections have turned out to be a pretty status quo affair. Where the results are clear, they're clearly in favor of incumbents for the most part.

Sherril Huff will continue as King County Director of Elections with over 75% of the vote against a patently unqualified challenger. Port Commissioner Gael Tarleton has a margin of 33,000 votes over her opponent, but apparently won't be joined by fellow reformer Dean Willard, who trails incumbent Bill Bryant by a margin of 37% to 62%.

Here in Shoreline, that pro-incumbency trend holds, with City Councilmembers Chris Eggen and Doris McConnell having margins of over 60% after the second day of ballot counting. I'm afraid that means my friend Janet Way won't be returning to the Council, but the Janet I know is indefatigable, and it won't be long before she sets her eyes on a new target for her effective activism.

In the open seat for Shoreline City Council, Jesse Salomon is less than 500 votes behind former Planning Commissioner Robin McClelland, still too close to call in my view.

Our School Board incumbents, Mike Jacobs and Richard Potter, appear safe at this point.

After the Huff/Greene and Willard/Bryant races, the campaign that brought generated the most search engine interest according to my logs was for our local sewer service, the Ronald Wastewater District. Bob Ransom, a fixture in local politics for decades and a former School Board member and City Councilmember, took on longtime sewer commissioner Arne Lind, largely over the question of whether and how the city should absorb the district. Ransom says it's time, and that it can be done administratively. Lind is not so sure, and favors a public vote before any change is made. Ransom, with an overwhelming advantage in name recognition, is leading by a scant 311 votes in another race I won't be ready to call for a while.

So what happened where you are?

The hard part.

The choices for King County Elections and the Port Commission are almost comically easy. The choices for our local city council are more difficult. That's actually a good thing.

Like our big neighbor to the south, "non-partisan" government in Shoreline tends to produce uni-partisan government. Happily, the party in question is the Democratic Party. As a result, both sides of local races usually feature folks of generally liberal outlook, although most of the municipal issues they contend with in office don't hinge on ideological division. Friends and allies, personal and political, tend to pop up on the endorsement lists of all the candidates, a sign, I suppose, that we're still a pretty small and surprisingly stable city. Most political choices come down to keeping the bad guys out or getting the good guys in. Not so much in Shoreline, where the options are all, or nearly all, qualified, compassionate, public-spirited neighbors.

If they're all good, some are better, and that discernment is the hard part. These are fairly low profile, low budget campaigns, so there's not a flood of paid media. You have to read the voter's pamphlet, check endorsement lists and candidate evaluations, attend candidate forums and, perhaps most importantly, answer the doorbell when it rings. Shoe leather can still win elections here. In fact, like the presidential primary voters in New Hampshire, folks hereabouts like to vote for people they've met.

I haven't met Jesse Salomon, who's running for an open seat on the Council, because I wasn't home when he dropped by, but the Brilliant and Beautiful Bride of Upper Left answered the door and came away favorably impressed. That's about all the recommendation I need. Jesse is a neighborhood activist, a public defender and my choice for Position 6. I can see a political future beyond the city for him if he wants it, but while we have the chance to enjoy his talents locally, we should take it.

Chris Eggen is running for re-election, and I'm supporting him again. I got to know Chris as a workhorse in the local Democratic Party, and he's been a workhorse on the Council. He deserves another term.

I admit to a general bias in favor of incumbents, absent some egregious reason for removal. There's no such reason with the incumbent in Position 4, but I'm supporting the challenger, Janet Way, just the same.

You can learn a lot about a politician from a campaign, and a lot more from the way they conduct themselves in office after they win. Sometimes you learn the most of all, though, after they lose. When Janet lost her re-election bid in the last cycle, she didn't retreat an inch from her energetic activism on behalf of environmental, cultural and historic preservation. She started a blog that's become the go-to source for local information about those issues and the sustainability-based economic growth and development that she champions (and some terrific wildlife photography!). She's continued to listen, to learn, and to teach in turn. She'll be an advocate for ideas and concerns that are too seldom part of Council discussions these days.

I'm voting for Janet, Chris and Jesse. If you're hereabouts, I hope you do, too.

There's always an election somewhere…

…and hereabouts we'll be electing a variety of boards, commissions and councils this year. It's filing week, and so far the biggest wrinkle seems to be a challenge to Seattle Port Commissioner Gael Tarleton, who has already racked up an impressive list of Democratic Party endorsements, including the County Central Committee, from Michael Wolfe, executive director of Washington Ceasefire and an officer of the 37th District Democrats.

Three council seats will be on the ballot in my fair city. So far, incumbent Chris Eggen is unchallenged, while former Councilmember Janet Way has filed to challenge incumbent Doris McConnell. The third seat is open, with Councilmember Terry Scott stepping away, and a two way race between former city Planning Commissioner Robin McClelland and attorney Jesse Solomon, who is a public defender representing indigent clients, is shaping up. Way and Solomon have already secured the endorsement of the local Democratic organization.

It's something of a surprise to me that the three Shoreline School District seats that will appear on the ballot have so far drawn only one candidate between them, but filing doesn't close for a few hours and I'm sure the roster will fill out by then.

Any local filing news of note in your locality?

A timely reminder…

…from Shoreline Area News.

Monday, January 11 is the deadline for registering to vote online or by mail for the February 9 special election. It also is the deadline for registered Washington voters to change their registration addresses.

Here in Shoreline there are three school funding measures on the ballot, along with a county-wide library levy. Your ballot may look different from mine, depending on your locality, but there will be something important on it no matter where you are.

Remember, you can't remember to vote if you don't remember to register.

Exercising the Franchise (Home, Sweet Home Edition Part 1)

Before I comment on the candidates for Shoreline City Council, a few words about my town an its politics.

As a general rule, I've got little to no use for the notion of "non-partisan" elections. The candidates in any election, regardless of their ballot identification (or lack thereof) are, as in the King County Executive race, partisans, and the lack of party ID on the ballot robs voters of useful information about their general approach to governance that that information can provide. At the county level, it provides cover for conservative politicians. There is not corresponding advantage to counter that lack of information.

In one party towns like Shoreline, though, it has some marginal value as a way to forward two viable candidates to the general election ballot. In my town, "viable" is a synonym for "Democratic" when party ID is involved. After all, this city hasn't elected a Republican running on the ticket since Patty Murray made her move from the school board to the state Senate during the previous century. We've had a few contentious primaries, but nary a significant general election on a partisan basis for a long time.

Since our city was incorporated we've put a few closet Republicans on the City Council via non-partisan elections, but even those have tended to be of a type that Washingtonians know as "Dan Evans Republicans" and that our national politics once featured under the general heading "Rockefeller Republicans." Those moderate to liberal R's are long gone from the national scene, but there are still a few scattered about here. While they cling to their Republican identity out of tradition and nostalgia, they're often cross ballot voters who frequently show up on Democratic endorsement lists. That's not much of an issue this year, though. Of the eight candidates vying for the four open council positions this year, six have told me eye to eye that they are, in fact, Democrats, and a seventh is running with the local Democratic Party endorsement, meaning she's told the 32nd District Endorsement Committee and membership that she's a Democrat.

Those November contests are somewhat problematic for partisans like myself, since one of the basic parameters I usually rely on to make general election decisions is absent. It also sets up something of a civil war between local Democrats that can spill over when it's time to regroup around candidates in partisan elections. The battle lines seem to be drawn largely between the membership of the 32nd District Democrats organization and Democrats who are, by choice or de facto exclusion, not members. That de facto exclusion seems to be centered less around traditional Democratic issues and values and more around adherence to the agenda of the local Chamber of Commerce, which has been adopted by the organization to a degree that many local Democrats (including myself) are not very comfortable with (my discomfort began the night I asked aloud why a cooler at a Democratic victory party was full of stuff on the AFL-CIO Do Not Patronize list and was shushed lest some of the conservative Chamber members present take offence at my defense of organized labor. It was just the first of several similar experiences.)

That background is the setting for some of the most interesting and contentious races on my personal ballot. I'm a past chair of the 32nd and have represented the organization on the State and County Central Committees, so dissenting from their endorsements isn't something I take lightly. On the other hand, I've been away for awhile, unable to participate in the regular business of the organization because of work and family commitments, and its taken on a somewhat different shape and character during my absence than it had during my years of regular participation and leadership. Commenting on these races is somewhat problematic for me, since I have friends and allies on both sides of the divide, but over the next day or two I'm going to give it my best shot while trying to give the least offence.

Wish me luck. I hope you'll find it interesting wherever you are.

If you're not local...

...enough to care what I have to say about Shoreline city elections (and that's most all of you, I'd imagine) and you live in Washington, it's time to mark that ballot and get it in the mail. I'll cover the very local to me stuff when I can wrap my head around it, but the state ballot measures, King County Executive and Port Commission races are too important to all of us for most of y'all to delay any longer.

We get mail…

…results. King County's done another number drop. Things don't look any brighter for the third place incumbents, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and Shoreline Councilmember Janet Way. Winds of change...

In the County Exec race, Susan Hutchinson's percentages are dropping steadily if not precipitously as they seek the natural level of the Republican base in King County, which, despite her protestations of non-partisanship, she has somehow consolidated. At just shy of 35%, I'm guessing she's just about there. Dow Constantine has benefited from recent returns, and between his rise and Hutchinson's fall, the gap is under 10%. Given that Dow shared the ballot with three other actively campaigning Democratic elected officials, his level of primary support is impressive, as, I expect, his margin of victory will be in November.

The big news in this race, though, is that Goodspaceguy isn't in last place. Go, Good'! Space is the place.

Oh yeah, there was an election yesterday.

Well, sort of. Because of the county's shift to an all-mail ballot, wasn't so much 'election day' as 'postal deadline day.' As a result, we not only lack clear outcomes in a number of races, we don't know how many people have voted or where the votes that have been counted come from, so a couple of key data points that traditional post-election analysis is based on are missing.

Although ballots continue to arrive and only about half of the predicted 33% turnout has been counted, there are some safe projection. Congratulations are due to Dow Constantine, who's been given the opportunity to defeat stealth Republican Susan Hutchinson in the race for King County Executive. Although Hutchinson has tried to exploit the new non-partisan character of county elections by denying her ideological roots, she's left a substantial paper trail in the form of checks written exclusively on behalf of Republican candidates. I've known Dow for years and had the chance to work with him and watch him work quite a bit during my days as a state and county committeeman and district chair. He built his base in West Seattle the old fashioned way, with hard work and shoe leather, and that work ethic, and his strong record as a reform-minded public servant should serve him well going forward.

I don't live in Seattle, but the big city makes waves we feel out here in the hinterlands, so I've followed the race for mayor of Seattle with some interest. Unfortunately, I can't say much about it today. There are three clear front runners with less than a point and a half separating them. The incumbent, Greg Nickels, is running third by about 400 votes, but that could change with this afternoon's count. Even if he makes up the gap, though, about 75% of the votes counted were cast by people looking for a new mayor. Third terms are hard to come by.

Here in Shoreline only one city council race drew the three candidates required to trigger a primary. Incumbent Janet Way is 134 votes short of the second place finish she needs to advance to the general. Of course, my ballot, mailed Monday, hasn't been counted, and I voted for Janet. Will Hall and Patty Hale are both attractive candidates, for different reasons, it was my appreciation of Janet's work as a grassroots Democratic activist, before and since her election to the council, that tipped the balance for me. We'll have to see if the missing half of the projected votes tip the balance for her.

The Seattle bag fee initiative failed. (Chemical industry) Money talks. Not much news there.

So stuff happened, and some stuff is still happening. Just the same, an all-mail, non-partisan election seems as emotionally incomplete as it is statistically inconclusive. Andrew's right...

"Nonpartisan" elections and our ridiculous statewide "top two" primary have succeeded in reducing voter choice and removing information about candidates from our ballots. These changes are not good for democracy, and ultimately, to protect the public interest, they need to be repealed.

We should toss the all-mail ballot while we're at it. I miss my polling place.

Walkin' in a winter wonderland.

• I coulda' called in snowbound, I suppose, but the perfect tavern's a neighborhood joint, and the neighbors need their beer and burgers, so I made the five mile treck over hill and dale to open the joint. Would have climbed aboard a bus if one had come by, but it didn't, so I didn't. What I did do was drag my camera along, so here's a little illustrated travelogue (you can, of course, click 'em bigger)...
  
  Public art. The addition of caps and scarves was both neighborly and timely...
  
  

Ronald Bog's usually home to a couple of kinds of geese and a few kinds of ducks...



Right now, though, it's crow country...



A bit of blue somewhere over the penninsula...



Beautiful downtown Richmond Beach...



The restaurant at the end of the universe...

So, we had an election.

A good one for Democrats, generally. Kos has a nice wrap of of the national gains, from Virginia to Kentucky, Ohio to Mississippi and beyond. Closer to home, there's some gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over a mixed outcome in which the Republicans retained the only partisan race on the local ballot and both the most progressive and the most regressive ballot measures scored victories. Even more locally, it looks like the change needed on my local city council and school board is on its way.

I share the general dismay at Bill Sherman's defeat by Republican Dan Satterberg for King County Prosecuting Attorney. It's what happens, I suppose, when only 25% of King County voters bothered to register an opinion. Shockingly, we weren't the worst. Pierce County came in at 23.5% turnout, and Snohomish County rounded out the dismal performance on the eastern shore of the Sound in a virtual tie with King. That's a lot of folks missing between Everett and Tacoma. Folks we need in order to win.

It wasn't all bad, turnout wise. Out in the hinterlands, the numbers creep up through the 30s, 40s, 50s, up to a peak of 62% in Wahkiahum County. Of course, out in the hinterlands, folks tend to favor those Tim Eyman budget gimmicks and that school levy super majority stuff. Happily, they don't trust insurance companies any more than they do the guvmint, so R-67 was safe, but a 40 or 50% turnout in the Puget Sound region, hardly a lofty goal, would have put a stop to 960 and elected Bill Sherman. Still, the Republican's latest attempt to befuddle the electorate, this time with a nominee with the same last name as Democratic Assessor Scott Noble, was foiled by alert voters and the County Council maintains the status quo with a continuing Democratic majority. (The absence of meaningful challenges in the Council races (sorry, Mr. Pope) no doubt contributed to the low turnout.)

I don't share the dismay of some of my liberal compatriots over the demise of County Proposition 1, the roads and transit proposal. I was genuinely on the fence in the closing days, and ultimately voted against it, despite a barrage of over-sized, multi-folded, full color glossy propaganda filling my mailbox that seemed to provide too much assurance with too little information. Are we back to square one? Maybe that's where we belong.

In the Port Commission races, one of the progressive choices, Gael Tarleton, seems to have secured victory, while the other, Alec Fisken, is on the ropes, hoping for signs of life in the late mail ballots. Locally, the Shoreline School Board gets a shot of new blood with the election of Carl's pal Maren Norton, local high school grad who became student body president at Stanford before law school. Looks like a rising star. The City Council, meanwhile, gets a flock of new faces, which I was hoping for, and who I voted for.

Of course, even in the states that look great from afar, I'm sure local Democrats are suffering over the proverbial ones that got away. Meanwhile, there's a lot of work to do to gin up excitement and turnout for '08. A really terrific Presidential nominee would help. I have a suggestion, of course…