Position No. 1:
Position No. 22:
Position No. 37
I wouldn’t know these candidates from Adam. And I wouldn’t know how to evaluate a judicial candidate for the most part. So I’m just going to vote what The Stranger tells me to vote in these races.
Bradshaw, Hill, and Rietschel. Other folks, sorry for not knowing your strengths. You might have been good.
Choices are:
Chopp isn’t a bad representative. But he could be doing so much more. As Speaker of the House, he could have used the super-majority the Democrats held to enact some amazing things. Instead, he’s held back for fear of losing the majority. In other words, don’t overstep. Well, that makes some sense. However, we elected Democrats for a reason. If they don’t do anything, what’s the point. He’s also enthralled by the B.I.A.W., an anathema to good business and good government in the state.
Kim Verde is worse. And she won’t even use her party’s name, Republican.
Hold my nose and vote for Chopp? Or skip this race? Does it matter, given that Chopp is popular?
Choices:
I rarely vote for or endorse candidates running unopposed. There doesn’t seem to be much point. However, I make an exception for Jamie Pedersen. His cause celebre is marriage equality. He’s been the leader in the legislature getting a domestic partner registry law passed, and then expanding it the following year. The stated plan is to add more and more of the rights and privileges associated with marriage to the domestic partner law, until it’s indistinguishable from marriage. Huzzah!
I vote twice for Jamie Pedersen.
Choices are:
This position is the watchdog for the insurance industry. Why anyone would think putting an insurance agent (Adams) in place as a watchdog for the industry is a mystery to me. John A. Adams believes in creative solutions
to expand insurance coverage. Coming from an agent, I suspect that means he wants to unfetter the industry so it could (in theory) offer all sorts of new insurance options at lower cost. Possibly. But the way insurance works, someone needs to hold their feet to the fire to pay up when disaster strikes. The idea that the free market will force them to honor their obligations is ludicrous. Consumers pay up front. Insurance companies can take the money and run. There’s just too much incentive to meet profit objectives by denying claims. You want someone independent of the industry like Kreidler to be the watchdog.
My choices are:
So here’s the thing, I’m note sure there’s anything seriously wrong with Washington State’s schools. I don’t know if they are being run well either. And if they are being run poorly, what can be done to fix them? I don’t think the education establishment has acquitted itself very well on it’s attempts to improve education. Both candidates are members of that establishment, from somewhat different perspectives. Whether or not we have the WASL in it’s current form I think is of little import, despite the arguments pro and con from teachers and whatnot. From my experience mentoring high school kids at Chief Sealth (one of the poorer performing and under-supplied schools in Seattle) the WASL is neither causing anyone’s downfall nor proving to be anyone’s savior. (I do wish the SPI would ban the gimmicks the Seattle Public Schools use to drop badly performing students from the official WASL statistics, but that’s not going to actually fix education.) And lastly, I don’t really know how much influence the Superintendent of Public Instruction really has on the individual school districts in the state.
So unless someone posts something really insightful here, I’ll not be voting in this race. I know I changed my mind on the Lt. Governor race, so maybe I will here too. But I’ll definitely need better arguments than either of the candidates’ web sites or the newspaper endorsements I’ve seen. Comment away, if you care.
My choices are:
An overly pro-business anti-environment Republican who has issues with harassing female interns, or a pro-environment rancher (agricultural credibility!). Goldmark all the way.
My choices are:
Rob McKenna has always struck me as a self-promoter more than a doer, and his prominent issues have tended to be standard law-and-order and protect business issues. He did a good job defending the top 2 primary when it went against the desire of his party organization. Of course, that’s his job. Now he wants to be lauded for doing his job as if it’s something special. Give him credit for not shirking that one area at least.
John Ladenburg promises to expand the enforcement activities of the attorney general to focus on the environment, consumer protection, and protecting rights. Huzzah! I’m glad McKenna liked to keep meth labs closed, but I’m of the opinion that meth labs are not our #1 law enforcement priority. And I think that pretty much any attorney general could and would prosecute meth manufacturers.
My vote is for John Ladenburg.
My choices are:
The state auditor’s position got a lot more interesting a couple of years ago with the passage of a performance audit initiative. After that, the state auditor could conduct performance audits (not just financial audits) of any government entity in the state. Liberals are hopping mad that Sonntag used the new powers too much, and conservatives are hopping mad that he hasn’t uncovered billions of dollars of government waste. McEntee is running on a platform of wishful thinking that there just has to be some $1 billion in wasteful spending in government in the state, and he’s gonna find it. He thinks he’ll find it in higher education. Sonntag certainly should audit them, but he’s not going to find a billion in savings, and you don’t start your job with the trickiest cases. Sonntag has done a good job. McEntee could probably capably run the office, but he promises more than he can deliver.
I vote for Sonntag.
My choices are:
The primary job for the state treasurer is managing the state’s money. My favorite candidate came in third in the primary. ChangMook Sohn was the state economist and would have brought to the table an economist’s outlook.
Left in the race is an administrator from the Treasurer’s office who has spent much of his career as a government treasurer and a former state representative who is an economist. One has a lot of experience with running treasuries in the state and knows the issues they face. The other possibly will have insight into the economy and will be able to make better investments of our money because of this. However, McIntire hasn’t been out there with an economics blog or frequent publication in the press about the economy, so I have no way to compare his insights with what actually happened. As a professor, perhaps he’s had some academic publications. This is the thing, quite a large majority of the public
economists (i.e., those who have been profligate with their opinions) completely missed or dismissed the housing bubble. I have no way to tell if McIntire is one of those people. What comes up when I search for articles written by him are micro-economics papers on the minimum wage and decisions on training. What I’m worried about is whether he falls into GroupThink like a lot of other economists have.
I kind of have to take a leap of faith here. I’m going to vote for McIntire on the guess that he has some insight, or at least can recognize it well from the people he employs if he wins. I think Allan Martin would be a capable administrative treasurer, and I would vote for him if times were good or McIntire had some indication of being a poor economist. I hope he stays on in the treasurer’s office under McIntire, should McIntire win. But if he doesn’t there are other folks with his background that could replace him.
So my vote will be for McIntire.
My choices are:
Jason Osgood’s positions on elections are all pretty solid. Policy-wise we wouldn’t have the issues with using bad election technology that other states have run in to, and which Washington has seen a few instances of. But he’s a one trick pony. The office of Secretary of State’s biggest area is state elections, but it has lots of other responsibilities. The Secretary of State (which is very unlike the federal Secretary of State) needs to be a solid manager to handle all the departments run out of the office. I know nothing about Osgood’s managerial experience, and his web site does not list any. It takes more than being right on an issue.
Sam Reed has been a capable Secretary of State. The state liberal web is pretty anti-Sam Reed because he (along with Rob McKenna) implemented the Top 2 primary. I, however, love the Top 2 primary, which was after all voted in place by initiative. His failing was apparently not fighting it enough. I say booyah! He hasn’t been as rigid as I would like to get verified paper trails in place for election technology, but pushing to have counties move to vote by mail moves more people to a paper trail than anything else will.
My vote is for Sam Reed.
See, I’m not a complete knee-jerk liberal Democrat.