Morning Fizz
I Am Trying to Provide As Much Cover to Funders as Possible
1. 34th District state house candidate Joe Fitzgibbon has gotten labor to endorse his campaign (SEIU, UFCW, the Washington State Labor Council, Washington Teamsters, the International Association of Machinists 751), but apparently he can't get any actual labor folks to be in his campaign mailers.
These two guys in hard hats? They don't wear hardhats for a living. That's Fitzgibbon's treasurer, computer techie Jeff Upthegrove on Fitzgibbon's right and community activist and homelessness advocate, former city hall candidate Dorsol Plants on his left.
2. As the Seattle Times' Mike Lindblom reported over the weekend, the state of Washington has agreed to add millions of dollars of incentives to two potential contractors bidding on the deep-bore tunnel contract. The new incentives are on top of another $230 million in allowances from the state; taken together, they reduce the contingency fund (the fund that would pay for any cost overruns) for the tunnel from $415 million to less than $200 million.
The news prompted a surprisingly scathing editorial from---of all places---the Tacoma News Tribune, which argued that the shrinking "slush fund" was yet another reason Seattle taxpayers, not the state, should be required to pay for any tunnel cost overruns."
"If push comes to shove, the Legislature must do as it said it would: Hold Washington taxpayers harmless for Seattle’s insistence that the state go the gold-plated route to replace the quake-damaged viaduct," the paper's editorial page writes. "Here’s hoping the Department of Transportation’s professed confidence in its risk assessment and cost estimates is well-founded because its margin for error just got smaller."
3. The Public Disclosure Commission has found that Democratic campaign consultant Lisa MacLean of Moxie Media failed to disclose the funding behind an attack ad she did against incumbent Democratic state Sen. Jean Berkey (D-38, Everett) during this year's primary.
Moxie had been doing independent expenditures on behalf of labor groups to attack Berkey from the left and support Berkey's progressive challenger, Nick Harper. But then she created a phony conservative group to squeeze Berkey from the right. Pretty brilliant. (Harper and the conservative candidate who benefited from the sham ads, Rod Reiger, beat Berkey in the primary.) But, according to the PDC, not kosher.
PubliCola broke the story about Moxie's weird right wing expenditures in August. Berkey filed a complaint shortly afterward .
An extensive PDC report released on Friday shows that MacLean coordinated the attack mailer with lefty groups, including Don't Invest in More Excuses (DIME PAC, the Washington State Labor Council political committee) and the Service Employees International Union.
Emails between MacLean and union leaders, who, by the way, denied to PubliCola that they were involved when we first reported on all this, catch MacLean explicitly plotting to conceal the funders.
The Everett Herald has the story, noting that MacLean could face fines of thousands of dollars.
4. A couple of outtakes from last week's Obama appearance in Seattle: Fizz hears that elected officials were given a choice between going to the President's intimate backyard Q&A in Wedgwood or speaking at his huge rally at the University of Washington. King County Executive Dow Constantine chose the latter; Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn chose the former. Our take? Constantine made the smarter political decision---speaking in front of a cheering, enthusiastic crowd of thousands is a far better choice, politically, than showing up at a backyard rally of a couple dozen.
Second, Eighth Congressional District challenger Suzan DelBene, running against incumbent Republican Dave Reichert, overstayed her welcome on the presidential stage, speaking for a hefty 10 minutes and only mentioning US Sen. Patty Murray, the incumbent who's being challenged by Republican Dino Rossi, once. Our take? Retribution for Murray's repeated shout-outs to Reichert at last month's Washington Conservation Voters breakfast?
5. And in case you missed it over the weekend, Erica uncovered a report from 2003 showing that 34th District state rep candidate Mike Heavey had a DUI as a young man in college in Alabama. The news explains last week's Fizz item about a surprising Heavey mailer that focused on drunk driving and Heavey's opposition to the liquor privatization initiatives on this year's ballot.
These two guys in hard hats? They don't wear hardhats for a living. That's Fitzgibbon's treasurer, computer techie Jeff Upthegrove on Fitzgibbon's right and community activist and homelessness advocate, former city hall candidate Dorsol Plants on his left.
2. As the Seattle Times' Mike Lindblom reported over the weekend, the state of Washington has agreed to add millions of dollars of incentives to two potential contractors bidding on the deep-bore tunnel contract. The new incentives are on top of another $230 million in allowances from the state; taken together, they reduce the contingency fund (the fund that would pay for any cost overruns) for the tunnel from $415 million to less than $200 million.
The news prompted a surprisingly scathing editorial from---of all places---the Tacoma News Tribune, which argued that the shrinking "slush fund" was yet another reason Seattle taxpayers, not the state, should be required to pay for any tunnel cost overruns."
"If push comes to shove, the Legislature must do as it said it would: Hold Washington taxpayers harmless for Seattle’s insistence that the state go the gold-plated route to replace the quake-damaged viaduct," the paper's editorial page writes. "Here’s hoping the Department of Transportation’s professed confidence in its risk assessment and cost estimates is well-founded because its margin for error just got smaller."
3. The Public Disclosure Commission has found that Democratic campaign consultant Lisa MacLean of Moxie Media failed to disclose the funding behind an attack ad she did against incumbent Democratic state Sen. Jean Berkey (D-38, Everett) during this year's primary.
Moxie had been doing independent expenditures on behalf of labor groups to attack Berkey from the left and support Berkey's progressive challenger, Nick Harper. But then she created a phony conservative group to squeeze Berkey from the right. Pretty brilliant. (Harper and the conservative candidate who benefited from the sham ads, Rod Reiger, beat Berkey in the primary.) But, according to the PDC, not kosher.
PubliCola broke the story about Moxie's weird right wing expenditures in August. Berkey filed a complaint shortly afterward .
An extensive PDC report released on Friday shows that MacLean coordinated the attack mailer with lefty groups, including Don't Invest in More Excuses (DIME PAC, the Washington State Labor Council political committee) and the Service Employees International Union.
Emails between MacLean and union leaders, who, by the way, denied to PubliCola that they were involved when we first reported on all this, catch MacLean explicitly plotting to conceal the funders.
"I am trying to provide as much cover to funders as possible," she writes in an email to representatives from DIME and SEIU, "and don't want funder names on pieces ... funder money will not move until after the primary. The expenses for these pieces ... will be listed only as debts."
The Everett Herald has the story, noting that MacLean could face fines of thousands of dollars.
4. A couple of outtakes from last week's Obama appearance in Seattle: Fizz hears that elected officials were given a choice between going to the President's intimate backyard Q&A in Wedgwood or speaking at his huge rally at the University of Washington. King County Executive Dow Constantine chose the latter; Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn chose the former. Our take? Constantine made the smarter political decision---speaking in front of a cheering, enthusiastic crowd of thousands is a far better choice, politically, than showing up at a backyard rally of a couple dozen.
Second, Eighth Congressional District challenger Suzan DelBene, running against incumbent Republican Dave Reichert, overstayed her welcome on the presidential stage, speaking for a hefty 10 minutes and only mentioning US Sen. Patty Murray, the incumbent who's being challenged by Republican Dino Rossi, once. Our take? Retribution for Murray's repeated shout-outs to Reichert at last month's Washington Conservation Voters breakfast?
5. And in case you missed it over the weekend, Erica uncovered a report from 2003 showing that 34th District state rep candidate Mike Heavey had a DUI as a young man in college in Alabama. The news explains last week's Fizz item about a surprising Heavey mailer that focused on drunk driving and Heavey's opposition to the liquor privatization initiatives on this year's ballot.
