Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[bgwah]

Hutchison polled about 5-7 behind what the polls said she would get in the primary... I could see her getting 40-42%.

Well at least I nailed one prediction, even if I wrecked it later.

[bgwah]

I can understand disliking Brad Owen, but I think shooting his son is a little extreme?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010238814_webdoubleshoot09.html

[Meeker]

I can understand disliking Brad Owen, but I think shooting his son is a little extreme?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010238814_webdoubleshoot09.html

One of the comments on The News Tribune's website is rather hilarious considering the context:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Ogre Mage]

Constantine now destroying Hutchison 59-41 (lolz).

I shouldn't brag, but this is what I posed back in June:

My prediction is that Hutchison will win the primary with flying colors and then she will lose badly in the general election.  Name recognition is a powerful advantage, particularly in a multi-candidate field.  Having multiple candidates in the race gives her more cover to duck specific questions about her record, which is what she has been doing.  She has only shown up to one or two candidate forums and appears to be running scared.

In the general election, there won't be anywhere to hide.

As an aside, the KC Executive race is illustrative of why I think the decision to make county races "nonpartisan" was a sham. 

[Stranger Than Fiction]

I can understand disliking Brad Owen, but I think shooting his son is a little extreme?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010238814_webdoubleshoot09.html

Pretty disturbing news.  As an aside, are Brad Owen and Brian Sonntag considered DINOs for Washington State?  I don't know much about Owens but I recall seeing Sonntag at a tea party and he's regarded as Tim Eyman's and Rob McKenna's favorite Democrat.  What is the likelihood for either of them to become Governor?

[bgwah]

Brad Owen strikes me as a moron more than a DINO. But yeah, he's fairly conservative, especially on marijuana-related issues.

I don't think Sonntag is a DINO, though he is fairly moderate. He seems to be the most popular Democrat in Washington. Meeker might know more about it, but it seems fairly likely that Sonntag will run for Governor someday, maybe in 2012... He is getting kind of old, though. I think he would have a good chance. A lot of his more recent actions seem more like positioning for a 2012 run than being a DINO. He consistently gets the highest % of the vote of any statewide official, so I suppose he may know what he's doing.

While Sonntag would have a very good chance of getting through a primary for Governor, I just don't see how Owen could. Republicans will support one of their own, and Democrats will unite around more liberal candidates. The most plausible way for a Governor Owen would be the Governor dying/resigning.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Why has Brad Owen been the Lt. Governor for so long?

[Meeker]

Why has Brad Owen been the Lt. Governor for so long?

No Democrat is going to challenge him and the Republicans are incapable of nominating non-joke candidates for the office. And even if they did manage to get a respectable candidate it's very difficult to make the case for throwing out a Lt. Governor. There's nothing you can really attack them on because they don't really do anything.

Owen will be Lt. Governor for the rest of his life if he wants to, and I think that's exactly his plan.

[Meeker]

Also, re: Sonntag, I've met people who've said that he told them to their faces that he was going to run in 2012. I've heard similar whisperings from others. He also seemed to go a little overboard with the campaign in 2008 considering how horrible his opponent was. That could be a sign that he wants to up his name recognition even more, or it could just be a sign he has a big ego and likes to put up campaign material.

I honestly don't know much about his political positions (you don't really need to let them be known when you're State Auditor) and as such wouldn't quite know how he'd fit into a primary electorate. Although keep in mind we don't really have primary electorates anymore thanks to the top-two, so that'll make things even more complicated.

On the subject of 2012:

Basically for sure candidates
Attorney General Rob McKenna (R)
Congressman Jay Inslee (D)
State Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown (D)

Not really clear
State Auditor Brian Sonntag (D)
State House Speaker Frank Chopp (D)

I keep hearing the Chopp rumor as well but I don't really buy it. Regardless, even if it was just the three candidates I mentioned above as "for-sure"s, the primary would be very curious - especially because Brown would be the first strong candidate from the East (Spokane) in quite a while and she's a Democrat to boot. Throw in Sonntag or Chopp and things get even more complex.

[bgwah]

Do you really think McKenna and Sonntag would run against each other?

[Meeker]

Do you really think McKenna and Sonntag would run against each other?

Are they good friends? I'd never heard that before.

There's no way in hell Rob McKenna isn't running, so if you don't think they'll run against each other then the only logical thing is for Sonntag not to run.

[bgwah]

Well if McKenna does run, then I suppose Sonntag does seem like the best person to beat him...

[Alcon]

I'm not sure if anything else will find this interesting, but I did.  It's an op-ed by one of the state's activist evangelical pastors, who was a critic of the idea of getting R-71 on the ballot but was a strong supporter once it did.  I actually found it pretty sympathetic.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/471/story/949682.html

[Meeker]

Nothing to do with politics, but here's the title of tomorrow's News Tribune editorial: "Nidal Hasan: More red flags than Beijing"

Win.

[Alaska2392]

Is anyone planning on posting either R-71 or I-1033 maps?

I'm super interested in King, Spokane, and Piece county maps.

[bgwah]

King hasn't released any precinct data yet and still won't for a while... Hopefully Alcon will once they do!

[Alcon]

Is anyone planning on posting either R-71 or I-1033 maps?

I'm super interested in King, Spokane, and Piece county maps.

If I can get my crap machine to run my GIS program, yep.

There is a preliminary Pierce map (metro Tacoma only) earlier in this thread:

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3000/tacomar71prelim.png

[Sbane]

Can someone explain why Jefferson county voted so overwhelmingly for ref 71?

[Alcon]

Can someone explain why Jefferson county voted so overwhelmingly for ref 71?

Port Townsend.  It's an old shipbuilding town full of Victorian houses that has become a crunchy leftist enclave with major tourism.  R-71 won it over four-to-one.  R-71 also held up well in the surrounding areas, and well-to-do retirement village Port Ludlow, where it beat Obama.  That was enough to make up for some lag in the south of the county, around Brinnon and Quilcene, working-class towns with a heritage in timber.

R-71 actually beat Obama pretty reliably in the middle-class parts of the Olympic Peninsula (Jefferson and Clallam).  I spend the summers in one of those precincts, and it surprises me.  The areas are OK-off but not rich, aren't unusually educated for their income levels, and are full of old white people.  I-1033 (Death With Dignity) did well there, Obama did well in the primary (these areas seem to have especially liberal primary voters), and it's hard to tell why.

The "older, white middle-classers doing better for R-71 than Obama" also seems to be holding up on Whidbey Island (Island County) and the San Juan Islands (San Juan County), in both cases where R-71 is beating Obama outright.  The electorates on South Whidbey and throughout the San Juans are similar demographically and in behavior, although both areas are much more liberal.

[Хahar 🤔]

Why has Brad Owen been the Lt. Governor for so long?

No Democrat is going to challenge him and the Republicans are incapable of nominating non-joke candidates for the office. And even if they did manage to get a respectable candidate it's very difficult to make the case for throwing out a Lt. Governor. There's nothing you can really attack them on because they don't really do anything.

Owen will be Lt. Governor for the rest of his life if he wants to, and I think that's exactly his plan.

Owen's the shortest serving Democratic Lieutenant Governor in state history. lol.

[MaxQue]

Why has Brad Owen been the Lt. Governor for so long?

No Democrat is going to challenge him and the Republicans are incapable of nominating non-joke candidates for the office. And even if they did manage to get a respectable candidate it's very difficult to make the case for throwing out a Lt. Governor. There's nothing you can really attack them on because they don't really do anything.

Owen will be Lt. Governor for the rest of his life if he wants to, and I think that's exactly his plan.

Owen's the shortest serving Democratic Lieutenant Governor in state history. lol.

Yes, he served longer than any Republican Lieutenant Governor. That is especially funny because there was only 3 Democratic Lieutenant Governors, while there was 11 Republican Lieutenant Governors.

[bgwah]

Why has Brad Owen been the Lt. Governor for so long?

No Democrat is going to challenge him and the Republicans are incapable of nominating non-joke candidates for the office. And even if they did manage to get a respectable candidate it's very difficult to make the case for throwing out a Lt. Governor. There's nothing you can really attack them on because they don't really do anything.

Owen will be Lt. Governor for the rest of his life if he wants to, and I think that's exactly his plan.

Owen's the shortest serving Democratic Lieutenant Governor in state history. lol.

We've only had four state auditors since 1905.

I didn't know anybody actually looked at the Washington pages I made on the Wiki, lolz. Unless you looked at the pages on the real Wikipedia which Q basically stole from mine here.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So Washington has another waste of a Lt. Gov. office like Minnesota. There's a small movement in the Minn. legislature to abolish the Lt. Gov. option and let the Sec of State be next in succession but for some reason no one seems to want to get behind it. This is despite the current Lt. Gov. being basically the most unpopular political figure in state besides Michele Bachmann possibly (in a nutshell she was also Sec of Transportation due to Lt. Gov. being a nothing job, and became the scapegoat for the bridge collapse. The Senate thus refused to reapprove her as Sec of Transportation.)

[Meeker]

So Washington has another waste of a Lt. Gov. office like Minnesota. There's a small movement in the Minn. legislature to abolish the Lt. Gov. option and let the Sec of State be next in succession but for some reason no one seems to want to get behind it. This is despite the current Lt. Gov. being basically the most unpopular political figure in state besides Michele Bachmann possibly (in a nutshell she was also Sec of Transportation due to Lt. Gov. being a nothing job, and became the scapegoat for the bridge collapse. The Senate thus refused to reapprove her as Sec of Transportation.)

A Libertarian ran for Lt. Governor in 2000 on the platform of abolishing the office. She got around 7% of the vote.

[bgwah]

So Washington has another waste of a Lt. Gov. office like Minnesota. There's a small movement in the Minn. legislature to abolish the Lt. Gov. option and let the Sec of State be next in succession but for some reason no one seems to want to get behind it. This is despite the current Lt. Gov. being basically the most unpopular political figure in state besides Michele Bachmann possibly (in a nutshell she was also Sec of Transportation due to Lt. Gov. being a nothing job, and became the scapegoat for the bridge collapse. The Senate thus refused to reapprove her as Sec of Transportation.)

A Libertarian ran for Lt. Governor in 2000 on the platform of abolishing the office. She got around 7% of the vote.

Don't forget "Absolutely Nobody" in 1992: https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=53&year=1992&f=0&off=6