Jolt
Afternoon Jolt
Today's loser: Northwest Passage Consulting
Local political consultant Christian Sinderman's firm is doing campaign work for Seattle Municipal Court candidate Ed McKenna, who is running to unseat incumbent judge Edsonya Charles.
A mini-scandal broke out last week when Charles supporters started pitching reporters the story that McKenna has been coordinating his campaign with a political action committee made up of DUI attorneys. The campaign and the attorneys were violating a state law that says campaigns can't coordinate with independent expenditure campaigns. The PAC, called Citizens for Judicial Excellence (CJE), has raised about $200,000.
Today, a group of lawyers (including Charles supporter James Tupper, the attorney who filed the complaint against the DUI attorneys) held a press conference to "condemn the PAC's behavior." And they presented some pretty incriminating-looking emails between the DUI PAC and the McKenna campaign.
We think Northwest Passage is the loser here—they should have nipped this non-story in the bud when they had the chance. Instead, Charles and the lawyers who support her are passing around emails that imply that McKenna might have been consorting too closely with the DUI attorneys.
Today's winner: King County Executive Dow Constantine.
As we reported earlier, Constantine just secured an agreement with unions representing 700 jail guards and juvenile-detention deputies to forgo their cost-of-living wage increases next year, saving the county $1.5 million. The agreement leaves just two county unions that haven't signed similar agreements---the Metro union and the King County sheriff's deputies.
No one expected Constantine to get even this far---conventional wisdom among the media earlier this year was that Constantine was in for a bumpy ride with the unions---but he could end up going even further: Now that the majority of the county's 11,000 union employees have agreed to make sacrifices to save county services, the pressure's on the bus drivers and sheriff's deputies to help their fellow workers shoulder the burden.
Local political consultant Christian Sinderman's firm is doing campaign work for Seattle Municipal Court candidate Ed McKenna, who is running to unseat incumbent judge Edsonya Charles.
A mini-scandal broke out last week when Charles supporters started pitching reporters the story that McKenna has been coordinating his campaign with a political action committee made up of DUI attorneys. The campaign and the attorneys were violating a state law that says campaigns can't coordinate with independent expenditure campaigns. The PAC, called Citizens for Judicial Excellence (CJE), has raised about $200,000.
Today, a group of lawyers (including Charles supporter James Tupper, the attorney who filed the complaint against the DUI attorneys) held a press conference to "condemn the PAC's behavior." And they presented some pretty incriminating-looking emails between the DUI PAC and the McKenna campaign.
We think Northwest Passage is the loser here—they should have nipped this non-story in the bud when they had the chance. Instead, Charles and the lawyers who support her are passing around emails that imply that McKenna might have been consorting too closely with the DUI attorneys.
Today's winner: King County Executive Dow Constantine.
As we reported earlier, Constantine just secured an agreement with unions representing 700 jail guards and juvenile-detention deputies to forgo their cost-of-living wage increases next year, saving the county $1.5 million. The agreement leaves just two county unions that haven't signed similar agreements---the Metro union and the King County sheriff's deputies.
No one expected Constantine to get even this far---conventional wisdom among the media earlier this year was that Constantine was in for a bumpy ride with the unions---but he could end up going even further: Now that the majority of the county's 11,000 union employees have agreed to make sacrifices to save county services, the pressure's on the bus drivers and sheriff's deputies to help their fellow workers shoulder the burden.
