1. The King County Democrats have filed a "major" campaign ethics complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission against Constantine's opponent, Susan Hutchison, alleging 81 violations of campaign finance law. The most serious allegation is that Hutchison is using a four-bedroom home in Laurelhurst as her campaign office without paying rent on the property, "illegally allowing her campaign to avoid paying ... between $10,000 and $20,000," according to the Democrats. The interior of the house, which is not Hutchison's residence, is visible in this story on KCTS.

The complaint also alleges that Hutchison has failed to report nearly $20,000 in expenses accrued before the primary election.

Hutchison's campaign spokesman, Jordan McCarren, responded, "Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Chairman Constantine is unable to explain how he created a $110 million budget deficit and voters are rejecting his divisive, negative, mudslinging campaign as evidenced by yesterday's King 5 poll showing Dow's campaign collapsing.  Dow has now resorted to a frivolous, last minute attack in the hopes of distracting from the real issues King County voters care about."

McCarren added: "we have not been contacted by the PDC."

2. Learn to trust the Fizz: As we reported last month , Port Commission candidate David Doud dropped his consultant, Cathy Allen, after a lackluster showing in the primary election. New Public Disclosure Commission reports show that Doud paid nearly $20,000 last month to three consulting firms, Polis, Claddagh Associates, and Fundraising Partners Northwest.  As PubliCola also reported, the Doud campaign spent nearly $7,000 on polling testing negative messages against his opponent, Rob Holland.

In other Doud-related news, Clare Nordquist, a former Port Commission member, sent a letter on Doud's behalf alleging that Holland was "subject to a tax warrant for failing to report overpaid unemployment benefits earlier this year" and rehashing the fact that Holland attended a forum sponsored by ACORN, the scandal-plagued community organizing group. As we already noted, all but two Port Commission candidates attended that event.

As for the "warrant": Holland told PubliCola that there was a "discrepancy" between what he believed he was owed for unemployment benefits and what the unemployment insurance commission said he was owed. Once the discrepancy was cleared up, he paid back the unemployment benefits. In other words, Doud and his supporters are taking a routine unemployment dispute and attempting to blow it up into a scandal.

3. In the other Port Commission race, Tom Albro, who has dodged questions about his Republican ties, received the endorsement yesterday of Skip Priest, a Republican legislator from Federal Way. Priest's endorsement comes on top of endorsements from GOP state Attorney General Rob McKenna, former state lands commissioner Doug Sutherland and Eastside developer Kemper Freeman, along with several Republican state legislative districts.

4. Lots of city election events last night. At the CityClub debate at the downtown Seattle library, the eight candidates for city council took tough questions from moderators C.R. Douglas and Ryan Blethen (of the Seattle Times, which also sponsored the debate). We'll have video of the debate later today, but some highlights included:

• Position 8 candidate Robert Rosencrantz accusing his opponent, Mike O'Brien, of wanting to toll all city streets and double electric rates. O'Brien's pointed reponse: "The only person in our race who's supporting tolling and increasing utility rates is my opponent," who supports the $4.2 billion waterfront tunnel, which would require tolls and $250 million in utility relocation costs.


5. Meanwhile, at a forum sponsored by several North Seattle community groups, mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan called his opponent Mike McGinn "Tim Eyman-esque," a reference to the fact that McGinn wants to put the tunnel project to a public vote. McGinn slammed back, noting that he's voted against every Eyman initiative that has ever been on the ballot. Mallahan, meanwhile, has skipped 13 of 25 elections since 2000.

6.



It was time.

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