1.  Local Democratic districts should expect a few new faces at their upcoming endorsement meetings, including at tonight's 37th District Democrats meeting (South Seattle) at the Rainier Cultural Center.

Mad organizer John Fox—the head of Seattle's lefty and populist Seattle Displacement Coalition—has put out the word to Displacement Coalition supporters that City Council candidate David Bloom needs some help getting the prized Democratic district endorsements. 

"I know some of you may not characterize yourself as a Dem, and I am sorry to bother you" Fox wrote to his list, "but even if you are only a 'nominal' Dem — you can attend and vote at these meetings for David."

Fox describes the race between Bloom, and his well-funded opponent Sally Bagshaw (the former head of the King County Prosecutor's Office Civil Division), this way: 

"He's the nabe', small business, and low income housing advocate person in the race squared off against the pro-downtown, pro-Paul Allen, more of the same, give-away-the-farm candidate Sally Bagshaw. Again I can't understate how important this [is] so do come if you possibly can..." 

We've reported on both Bloom and Bagshaw before—and decided they were both formidable candidates. 

2. Apparently it wasn't a very good weekend for the Sounders (They lost 1-0 on Saturday night to Chivas USA). I checked my email this morning and got this sad note from SoundersNerd: 

Hi Josh,

Here's my recap of Saturday's game.  I rambled on and on about a dozen tangents in the draft. I tried parring it down to a point or two, but I don't know if I succeeded. It's late and I'm frustrated with the Sounders and can't say much good about them.  If it's too incoherent, let me know.

Thanks,

SoundersNerd

We'll post SoundersNerd's full report later today.

3. In case you missed it (the SeattlePI.com had it late Friday afternoon), there are some new polling numbers from KING 5 on the King County Executive's race:

Former KIRO News anchor and Republican Susan Hutchison  34

King County Council Member Larry Phillips          9

King County Council Member Dow Constantine           8

Suburban Seattle Sate Sen. Fred Jarrett (D-41, Mercer Island)          5

Suburban Seattle Sate Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48, Medina)          5

 It looks like Hutchison is going to make it through the August 18 primary, while Phillips and Constantine have a small edge over the Eastside guys in a contest to be Hutchison's oppoenent in the general. 

Despite Hutchison's strong showing, I imagine she's going to have a hard time getting up over 50 in liberal King County against the Democrat who goes through. As we reported last week, Hutchison has deep ties to the GOP machine. 

4. In an important post this weekend, PubliCola Blog-Rola fave, Seattle Transit Blog, focused on the question: How do we fund the growing demand for transit when the budget rules (and priorities) in Olympia are out of synch with the times?

In plain English—"So what do we want the next state budget to look like? What funding options do we want to build our next rail line in the city? And how do we get there?"—STB highlighted a problem with the state budget that we think has become just as fundamental as the problem of our unsustainable and regressive tax structure: How do we fund transit?