Opinion
Centrist Hobbs Stands Out in Pack of Liberal Candidates
We're going to be rolling out a bunch of Jolts, our daily winners and losers, today (there are a lot of winners and losers to catch up on from last month when we were offline).
First up, we thought state Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens), won the latest candidate debate in the 1st Congressional District fight between the five Democrats who are trying to make it through the August primary. Rather than talking in 99 percent rhetoric, as the Democratic frontrunner Darcy Burner did ("I feel no [obligation] to to use your tax dollars to make the shareholders of Haliburton and Blackwater happy,"), Hobbs, a Kosovo and Iraq war vet, emerged as the actual Wal-Mart Dad on stage by just sticking to his own story.
Hobbs' personal finances show that he's both an average Joe and a total nerd. Marvel Comics stock?
The five Democratic hopefuls in the newly drawn 1st Congressional District debated on a Wednesday night late last month in a community center in downtown Redmond, the hub of Washington state’s new swing turf district that stretches north to the Canadian border. (This is Jay Inslee’s former district. Inslee resigned to run for governor.)
Much of the debate was same-old, same-old sound bites from these candidates. Liberal firebrand and frontrunner Burner denounced Congress for being “bought and paid for by powerful corporations.” Meanwhile, milquetoast Democratic establishment favorite Suzan DelBene disappeared with another low-key performance. Nonetheless, there’s actually a lot to report from the event.[pullquote]“I drive a Ford Focus, my [mortgage] is underwater, I’ve got three kids, one with a disability, and I make $50,000 a year.”[/pullquote]
Hobbs, riding a boost from his June 24 Seattle Times endorsement, was sharp and on message. Democratic voters might be wise to take a closer look at Hobbs, who's currently a dark horse in a field that’s dominated by Burner, the netroots star (she was endorsed by Moveon.Org today) who’s run for Congress twice now, and DelBene, who lost a congressional race herself but remains the establishment’s anti-Burner choice because of her wealth and even-keeled style in a district that’s not likely to go for a flaming liberal in the November general election. Hobbs has raised just $198,000 to Burner's $300,000 and DelBene's nearly $400,000.
What’s the two-term state senator’s message? He’s a “radical moderate, a radical centrist” who was born in the district. And his Joe-Six-Pack resume—“I drive a Ford Focus, my [mortgage] is underwater, I’ve got three kids, one with a disability, and I make $50,000 a year”—along with his ability to appeal to the center (“I’ve been endorsed by business and labor”), make him, he argues, the Democrats’ best option for beating the presumptive Republican candidate, hard-right Snohomish County Council Republican John Koster.
Hobbs was, in fact, the first candidate to name-check Koster at the debate. He did so right away, in his opening statement, saying he was running to “stop John Koster.”
The most recent polling actually shows Burner doing the best against Koster, though she loses 48-39 percent. And among the Democratic candidates she shows the biggest support from voters in general; she’s closing in on 20 percent. Her Democratic rivals, all well below 10 percent, write off the two-time candidate Burner’s numbers off as pure name recognition. (Hobbs, at four percent overall, has 37 percent in a direct matchup to Koster's 47 percent).
Hobbs, after effectively distinguishing himself from his lockstep liberal Democratic opponents (during the “Yes or No” lightning round, he proudly stated that he’s for charter schools and said he supports building a new coal port at Cherry Point in Bellingham), also made it clear he had little in common with the socially conservative Koster. He pointed out that during the last legislative session in Olympia, he was the prime sponsor of Planned Parenthood’s number one priority bill, the Reproductive Parity Act, and that he co-sponsored state Sen. Ed Murray’s gay marriage bill. Murray has endorsed Hobbs.
Hobbs also showed his liberal Democratic side, arguing that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should expire and the government should foot the bill for another stimulus package; saying he supports pot legalization; and demanding that any immigration reform include a living wage provision.
Throughout the debate, Hobbs demonstrated a nuanced command of the issues, talking policy instead of going for easy crowd pleasers. When an audience member asked, for example, if he would support a constitutional amendment that says money is not speech (a response to the Citizens’ United ruling), Hobbs got the heart of the problem. Rather than trying to stanch corporate donations (direct and unlimited corporate giving to independent expenditure campaigns was legal in Washington State long before Citizens United made it kosher at the federal level), Hobbs said: “I’d like to see the feds do what we do, require disclosure.” Indeed, the biggest loophole in the Citizens ruling is the one that allows corporate and union donors to remain anonymous.
Hobbs also got off some charming one-liners. He asked for “contributions please” after all the other candidates were accused of “double dipping” for donors by running in the nominal race to fill Inslee’s seat for a month (Hobbs isn’t running in that race). Hobbs ended with an appeal to bedrock progressive principles: “I’m for equal opportunity for all, and I’ll be against anyone who’s against that,” he said summing up his political philosophy.
Note: Labor doesn’t believe Hobbs has stood up for them—he fought to limit workers’ comp payouts and to weaken the teachers’ union’s bargaining rights on health care.
Here are a couple of other things worth noting from the debate.
Quixotic candidate Darshan Rauniyar, a Nepalese immigrant and small businessman who prides himself on being the only “non-politician” in the race and who talks about restoring the American Dream (in idealistic and left-wing) terms, continues to be the only candidate who flat-out opposes the coal port at Cherry Point.
That’s fine. But Rauniyar gets the Michele Bachmann award for having his US history all goofed up. After listing off his favorite members of Congress (Dennis Kucinich, Keith Ellison) along with his heroes Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, he credited Adam Smith—presumably the 18th century economist and not the Washington State rep—for writing the Constitution. Both Hobbs and Laura Ruderman had named Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA, 2) as their favorite congressman.
Burner gave an odd answer here too. After naming Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer as her favorite members of Congress, calling them “masters of getting things done,” Burner then pointed out that Pelosi and Hoyer were continually blocked in the Senate, which undermined her whole point.
Burner had another awkward moment when Cornfield asked the candidates to name something that President Obama had botched. Burner, infamously among Democrats, trashed Obama on Twitter last year during the debt limit debate when he agreed to put Social Security and Medicare on the table, calling him “a Republican.” The Twitter tantrum cost her several big endorsements, including the King County Democrats and the Teamsters. At the debate, she played it safe and said Obama’s biggest mistake was believing the Republicans would play fair, sympathetically likening him to “Charlie Brown getting the football taken away.”
(Hobbs also punted on this answer, by the way, saying he had zero qualms with Obama.)
Both DelBene and Laura Ruderman, a former state rep, were more candid. DelBene said Obama’s Wall Street reform did not go far enough; she advocated reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a wall between commercial and investment banking (something she pushed for in her 2010 campaign as well). And Ruderman said Obama was a questionable negotiator, giving the failed cap and trade legislation as an example.
However, every single candidate dodged one of Cornfield's questions1: He wanted each candidate to turn to the candidate on their right and explain why primary voters shouldn’t choose them. The question drew boos and howls from the Democratic audience, but was certainly a logical thing for Cornfield to ask a group of people who are each claiming to be better than one another. (Not to mention that behind the scenes, their teams often stir up dirt about their opponents, pitching negative stories to reporters.)
Hobbs, in fact, dared Cornfield to “write something bad about me” after refusing Cornfield’s request.
Ruderman was the most disingenuous on this point, though. Earlier in the evening, in her opening statement, she alluded to something several of the candidates have been trashing DelBene for behind the scenes: the fact that DelBene is super rich. Her net worth is $53 million.
“Half the members of Congress are millionaires,” Ruderman groused. “They’re out of touch. They’re not in the real world.” However, she went mum when formally asked to critique her opponents.
DelBene wasn’t so great on this one either. Not only did she, like all the others, use it as an opportunity to simply repeat her stump speech, she also hauled out the biggest campaign cliché in the book, saying she was “a work horse, not a show horse.”
Speaking of net worth. I did check up on Hobbs’ claim to be an average Joe. And indeed, his financial disclosure statement with the US House (all candidates have to file these) shows that he makes $47,000 a year between his senate gig and his gig as a consultant. It also shows that he’s got a batch of not very valuable shares—in Marvel Comics, General Electric, Disney, Sirius XM Radio, Zillow—some of which he apparently had to sell. (He didn’t get much; maybe $5,000 for Marvel.) Hobbs also owes at least $50,000 in student loans and has at least $10,000 in Master Card debt.
Cola coverage of previous 1st District debates here and here.
First up, we thought state Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens), won the latest candidate debate in the 1st Congressional District fight between the five Democrats who are trying to make it through the August primary. Rather than talking in 99 percent rhetoric, as the Democratic frontrunner Darcy Burner did ("I feel no [obligation] to to use your tax dollars to make the shareholders of Haliburton and Blackwater happy,"), Hobbs, a Kosovo and Iraq war vet, emerged as the actual Wal-Mart Dad on stage by just sticking to his own story.
Hobbs' personal finances show that he's both an average Joe and a total nerd. Marvel Comics stock?
The five Democratic hopefuls in the newly drawn 1st Congressional District debated on a Wednesday night late last month in a community center in downtown Redmond, the hub of Washington state’s new swing turf district that stretches north to the Canadian border. (This is Jay Inslee’s former district. Inslee resigned to run for governor.)
Much of the debate was same-old, same-old sound bites from these candidates. Liberal firebrand and frontrunner Burner denounced Congress for being “bought and paid for by powerful corporations.” Meanwhile, milquetoast Democratic establishment favorite Suzan DelBene disappeared with another low-key performance. Nonetheless, there’s actually a lot to report from the event.[pullquote]“I drive a Ford Focus, my [mortgage] is underwater, I’ve got three kids, one with a disability, and I make $50,000 a year.”[/pullquote]
Hobbs, riding a boost from his June 24 Seattle Times endorsement, was sharp and on message. Democratic voters might be wise to take a closer look at Hobbs, who's currently a dark horse in a field that’s dominated by Burner, the netroots star (she was endorsed by Moveon.Org today) who’s run for Congress twice now, and DelBene, who lost a congressional race herself but remains the establishment’s anti-Burner choice because of her wealth and even-keeled style in a district that’s not likely to go for a flaming liberal in the November general election. Hobbs has raised just $198,000 to Burner's $300,000 and DelBene's nearly $400,000.
What’s the two-term state senator’s message? He’s a “radical moderate, a radical centrist” who was born in the district. And his Joe-Six-Pack resume—“I drive a Ford Focus, my [mortgage] is underwater, I’ve got three kids, one with a disability, and I make $50,000 a year”—along with his ability to appeal to the center (“I’ve been endorsed by business and labor”), make him, he argues, the Democrats’ best option for beating the presumptive Republican candidate, hard-right Snohomish County Council Republican John Koster.
Hobbs was, in fact, the first candidate to name-check Koster at the debate. He did so right away, in his opening statement, saying he was running to “stop John Koster.”
The most recent polling actually shows Burner doing the best against Koster, though she loses 48-39 percent. And among the Democratic candidates she shows the biggest support from voters in general; she’s closing in on 20 percent. Her Democratic rivals, all well below 10 percent, write off the two-time candidate Burner’s numbers off as pure name recognition. (Hobbs, at four percent overall, has 37 percent in a direct matchup to Koster's 47 percent).
Hobbs, after effectively distinguishing himself from his lockstep liberal Democratic opponents (during the “Yes or No” lightning round, he proudly stated that he’s for charter schools and said he supports building a new coal port at Cherry Point in Bellingham), also made it clear he had little in common with the socially conservative Koster. He pointed out that during the last legislative session in Olympia, he was the prime sponsor of Planned Parenthood’s number one priority bill, the Reproductive Parity Act, and that he co-sponsored state Sen. Ed Murray’s gay marriage bill. Murray has endorsed Hobbs.
Hobbs also showed his liberal Democratic side, arguing that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should expire and the government should foot the bill for another stimulus package; saying he supports pot legalization; and demanding that any immigration reform include a living wage provision.
Throughout the debate, Hobbs demonstrated a nuanced command of the issues, talking policy instead of going for easy crowd pleasers. When an audience member asked, for example, if he would support a constitutional amendment that says money is not speech (a response to the Citizens’ United ruling), Hobbs got the heart of the problem. Rather than trying to stanch corporate donations (direct and unlimited corporate giving to independent expenditure campaigns was legal in Washington State long before Citizens United made it kosher at the federal level), Hobbs said: “I’d like to see the feds do what we do, require disclosure.” Indeed, the biggest loophole in the Citizens ruling is the one that allows corporate and union donors to remain anonymous.
Hobbs also got off some charming one-liners. He asked for “contributions please” after all the other candidates were accused of “double dipping” for donors by running in the nominal race to fill Inslee’s seat for a month (Hobbs isn’t running in that race). Hobbs ended with an appeal to bedrock progressive principles: “I’m for equal opportunity for all, and I’ll be against anyone who’s against that,” he said summing up his political philosophy.
Note: Labor doesn’t believe Hobbs has stood up for them—he fought to limit workers’ comp payouts and to weaken the teachers’ union’s bargaining rights on health care.
Here are a couple of other things worth noting from the debate.
Quixotic candidate Darshan Rauniyar, a Nepalese immigrant and small businessman who prides himself on being the only “non-politician” in the race and who talks about restoring the American Dream (in idealistic and left-wing) terms, continues to be the only candidate who flat-out opposes the coal port at Cherry Point.
That’s fine. But Rauniyar gets the Michele Bachmann award for having his US history all goofed up. After listing off his favorite members of Congress (Dennis Kucinich, Keith Ellison) along with his heroes Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, he credited Adam Smith—presumably the 18th century economist and not the Washington State rep—for writing the Constitution. Both Hobbs and Laura Ruderman had named Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA, 2) as their favorite congressman.
Burner gave an odd answer here too. After naming Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer as her favorite members of Congress, calling them “masters of getting things done,” Burner then pointed out that Pelosi and Hoyer were continually blocked in the Senate, which undermined her whole point.
Burner had another awkward moment when Cornfield asked the candidates to name something that President Obama had botched. Burner, infamously among Democrats, trashed Obama on Twitter last year during the debt limit debate when he agreed to put Social Security and Medicare on the table, calling him “a Republican.” The Twitter tantrum cost her several big endorsements, including the King County Democrats and the Teamsters. At the debate, she played it safe and said Obama’s biggest mistake was believing the Republicans would play fair, sympathetically likening him to “Charlie Brown getting the football taken away.”
(Hobbs also punted on this answer, by the way, saying he had zero qualms with Obama.)
Both DelBene and Laura Ruderman, a former state rep, were more candid. DelBene said Obama’s Wall Street reform did not go far enough; she advocated reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a wall between commercial and investment banking (something she pushed for in her 2010 campaign as well). And Ruderman said Obama was a questionable negotiator, giving the failed cap and trade legislation as an example.
However, every single candidate dodged one of Cornfield's questions1: He wanted each candidate to turn to the candidate on their right and explain why primary voters shouldn’t choose them. The question drew boos and howls from the Democratic audience, but was certainly a logical thing for Cornfield to ask a group of people who are each claiming to be better than one another. (Not to mention that behind the scenes, their teams often stir up dirt about their opponents, pitching negative stories to reporters.)
Hobbs, in fact, dared Cornfield to “write something bad about me” after refusing Cornfield’s request.
Ruderman was the most disingenuous on this point, though. Earlier in the evening, in her opening statement, she alluded to something several of the candidates have been trashing DelBene for behind the scenes: the fact that DelBene is super rich. Her net worth is $53 million.
“Half the members of Congress are millionaires,” Ruderman groused. “They’re out of touch. They’re not in the real world.” However, she went mum when formally asked to critique her opponents.
DelBene wasn’t so great on this one either. Not only did she, like all the others, use it as an opportunity to simply repeat her stump speech, she also hauled out the biggest campaign cliché in the book, saying she was “a work horse, not a show horse.”
Speaking of net worth. I did check up on Hobbs’ claim to be an average Joe. And indeed, his financial disclosure statement with the US House (all candidates have to file these) shows that he makes $47,000 a year between his senate gig and his gig as a consultant. It also shows that he’s got a batch of not very valuable shares—in Marvel Comics, General Electric, Disney, Sirius XM Radio, Zillow—some of which he apparently had to sell. (He didn’t get much; maybe $5,000 for Marvel.) Hobbs also owes at least $50,000 in student loans and has at least $10,000 in Master Card debt.
Cola coverage of previous 1st District debates here and here.
