1. Former Seattle Supersonic and now Seattle mayoral candidate James Donaldson reportedly  went looking for votes in White Center. White Center is not part of Seattle. Blatherwatch has the funny story , which comes with this tweet from Full Tilt Ice Cream in White Ceter:

James Donaldson came to WC yesterday, askin folks to vote for him. I asked him if he knew that we were not in Seattle. He looked confused.

2. James Donaldson isn't the only mayoral candidate  that needs to do some homework. (Man, it's an underwhelming bunch.)

Candidate and longtime city council member Jan Drago has a new video spot up on her website that trashes mayor Nickels for supporting the 20-cent bag fee. (Drago was the lone 'No' vote when the council passed the fee in June, 2008.) Her ad says that WalMarts are exempt from the fee while food banks are not.

Food banks are exempt from the fee . And there are no WalMarts proper in the Seattle city limits. (The ones you might find listed in your Google search are a tire and lube center, a pharmacy, and one in Federal Way.) The closest one is in Renton.



3. In more mayoral candidate news: Yesterday , PubliCola got its hand on a letter signed by conservative lobbying groups like the Association of Washington Business, several local chambers of commerce, and a few companies—including T-Mobile—urging state legislators to kill a proposal to expand unemployment insurance.

We asked T-Mobile execuitve (and mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan) how he would have voted on the proposal. (It was defeated in the legislature earlier this year .)

His campaign says: "Joe supports an increase in unemployment insurance for workers to help make it through tough economic times."

I'm not sure that parts ways with T-Mobile's position on the bill: The legislature did slightly uprgrade unemployment insurance payments by correcting a gaffe that put our state rules out of synch with federal guidelines. The bill in question —the one T-Mobile lobbied against—actually changed the payment formula to increase payments beyond the required fix.

4. A new KING 5 poll shows former KIRO-TV anchor Susan Hutchison and King County Council Member Dow Constantine emerging from the pack of primary candidates in the officially non-partisan King County Executive's race.

Hutchison, a Republican, is—as she's been all summer—far ahead, at 39 percent. Constantine, a Democrat, is starting to pull away from the rest of the pack (as he's been slowly doing ever since early June when he went negative and started attacking Hutchison for skipping events and avoiding the press.) Constantine's at 13 percent.

The poll has State Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48, Medina) and State Sen. Fred Jarrett (D-41, Mercer Island)—both conservative Democrats from the Eastside Seattle suburbs—at 8 percent. (PubliCola endorsed Ross Hunter on Monday. All our endorsements are here .)

King County Counicl Member Larry Phillips, a liberal Democrat and the first to jump into the race back in late January when King County Executive Ron Sims was still planning to run for reelection, is at 6 percent. (Sims has since taken a job with the Obama administration as the number two at HUD.)