[caption id="attachment_11396" align="alignleft" width="195" caption="Ballmer: Big spender for Hunter"][/caption]

The candidates for King County Executive like to tout their experience on the campaign trail: Susan Hutchison as a 22-year news anchor at KIRO, Fred Jarrett as a project manager at Boeing, Ross Hunter as an executive at Microsoft, and Larry Phillips and Dow Constantine as members of the King County Council.

But are the candidates' former colleagues supporting their campaigns? And which companies' employees are supporting their former colleagues' competitors? We crunched the numbers; here's what we found.

Jarrett—who boasted in a May interview that he changed the way Boeing builds airplanes and saved the company money—has reported just one contribution from a Boeing employee: $125 from a Boeing manager. (A former mayor of Mercer Island, Jarrett also received one $250 contribution from the city's current mayor). The largest recipient of Boeing employees' largesse: Dow Constantine, who reports contributions from nine Boeing employees.

In contrast to Jarrett, Hunter (who touted his own management credentials in a May interview) has reported 30 contributions from Microsoft employees—including a maximum $800 contribution from Microsoft president Steve Ballmer.

Predictably, both Constantine and Phillips—seven-year and 17-year county council veterans, respectively—are raking in donations from King County employees, with 31 and 23 contributions, respectively.

Finally, Hutchison—whose lawsuit against KIRO involved allegations of "womanizing," drug use, and lesbian managers "on the prowl," among other salacious details—hasn't received a single contribution from employees of KIRO or its parent company, Cox Broadcasting.

[caption id="attachment_11395" align="alignright" width="313" caption="Hutchison: No love from KIRO"][/caption]

Candidates win contributions based on relationships and goodwill. If you get a ton of contributions from a place you've worked for years or decades, that could be a sign folks there liked working with you; in contrast, if you work somewhere for 20 years and no one there sees fit to give you money, that could suggest you're less than popular with your former colleagues.

Caveat/side note: Although candidates are required to list the employer and occupation of every contributor who gives more than $100, none of the county executive candidates have done so consistently. Jarrett's campaign finance records are the least complete, with 29 percent of contributors listing no employment information, followed by Hutchison, with no information for 13 percent of contributors.