Desperately Seeking Susan
Susan Hutchison campaigns for county exec with name, game—and flashes of indignation.
SUSAN HUTCHISON WAS on the line, her voice rising: “From your questions, I believe you’re trying to hurt me!” It wasn’t the first time during our conversations that she’d shown her prickly side. But it was a very different Susan Hutchison from the warm, comforting presence who spent 22 years tucking Seattle into bed as coanchor of KIRO TV’s eleven o’clock news.
Then again, Hutchison has been full of surprises lately. A year ago, who would have guessed that with no experience in office and a decade largely out of the public eye she would seek the King County executive’s post Ron Sims suddenly vacated to join the Obama administration? Or that two months before the primary she’d be far and away the front-runner in the polls?
Hutchison the candidate has plenty of positives, on paper and in the flesh. At 55 she still has her anchorwoman looks, though her hair’s now brown with highlights rather than telegenic blond. Her face and voice are familiar to those 50 and older, a demographic that votes. She’s smart and articulate, though green at campaigning and vague on some issues. And her major opponents, Seattleite county councilmembers Dow Constantine and Larry Phillips and Eastside legislators Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter, are all Democratic politicians with conspicuous voting records. That makes them easy to criticize, and to lump together. Local politicos call the race “Cinderella and the Four Dwarfs.”
So who is this Cinderella? Hutchison insists she’s a nonpartisan candidate for a nonpartisan post, but her opponents, the alt weeklies, and liberal bloggers have variously dubbed her a stealth Republican, “an extremely conservative Republican” (Constantine), a conservative Christian, a creationist activist, and Sarah Palin minus the moose. For two months after announcing her candidacy she dodged the press and shunned candidate forums. Through most of that period her campaign manager promised me an interview but failed to confirm a time or place or even return phone calls. Finally the call came, and we met the next day at a picnic table in the greenbelt outside the elegant daylight-basement offices of the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences in Laurelhurst for the first of several extended conversations.
Hutchison has worked for six years as executive director of the $75 million foundation founded by Simonyi, a Microsoft billionaire and serial space sojourner. She’s given his money to institutions ranging from the Seattle Public Library to Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and the Russian National Orchestra, dined at Windsor Castle, and rubbed elbows with some of the world’s most celebrated artists, scientists, and tycoons.
As we spoke she offered few specifics on the more humdrum issues facing King County but adamantly stressed two broad points: Voters are sick of partisan bickering and 12 years of Ron Sims, and she wants to “bring people together.” She did say she would freeze county hiring and seek to reduce business taxes and roll back employees’ (including sheriff’s deputies’) benefits. As for cutting services to meet a $46 million shortfall, “everything’s on the table. The executive’s staff has 150 people; I’d happily trade some of those for a sheriff’s deputy.” She would appoint a county transportation czar and work to get the region’s fragmented transportation agencies gathered under a single “umbrella” agency.
Hutchison readily invoked populist conservative catchphrases: “political class,” “bloated bureaucracies,” “out-of-control spending.” But she exploded when I referred to her in passing as a Republican. “You got that from the alternative papers! You all line up to discredit me! You’ve decided that because Obama won by this big margin in Seattle that anyone who isn’t a declared Democrat has no right to run for office!” Because this is for a magazine, not a newspaper, “I thought you were going to be different.”
Published: August 2009
For someone running for public office, Susan Hutchison seems naive about her ability to control the questions asked of her. When you seek the political
stage, the public has a right to find out what your views are. I thought John wrote a restrained, balanced account of the interview. The voters need to know more about Susan than that her face is familiar to them from her time as anchor woman. Thanks John for helping to round out the picture for us.
I was phoned, prior to the publication of this article and asked if I would answer questions about Susan Hutchison. I asked “what questions?” The caller, who was a female, said, “Would you say Susan Hutchison is a person of high moral standards?” I thought it was a funny question because it tells you almost nothing about a person’s politics. I thought Jimmy Carter was a person of high moral standards and a TERRIBLE President.
They didn’t explain to me that the phrase was “classic code for pro-life.” I was unaware of that until I read this article, just now.
I never wrote that. The only source for the statement is my agreement with the phrasing of the question I was asked in preparation for this article.
“John Michael Hood” is the author of “Blatherwatch” a far-Left-wing attack site. It is very entertaining. I like Mr. Hood. But there is absolutely NO question that his intention in this interview was to hurt Susan. She had it right.
By the way, “über-conservative” means “toward freedom and away from government control” as such, I plead guilty for all Reagan Wingers.