1. Congress is on recess this week, which means Washington's Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Reps. like Jay Inslee and Jim McDermott are in state showing up at events and making the rounds. Also in Washington state during the Spring break: Sen John Cornyn  (R-TX), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (the GOP fundraising committee that backs Republican candidates for U.S. Senate.) 

Sen. Cornyn is reportedly holding court at the W hotel in downtown Seattle where, Morning Fizz surmises, he's vetting potential candidates to take on Democratic Sen. Murray next year when she's up for reelection.  

However, as our D.C. reporter Chris K. reported on PubliCola TV last week, the Democrats are acting like U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert (D-WA, 8) is already in play for Sen. Murray's seat.

2. State Rep. Deb Eddy (D-48, Redmond, Bellevue) left a comment on our Firday post about the education reform bill where she accuses the state teachers' union of threatening legislators in the same way the Washington State Labor Council supposedly  threatened legislators over the workers' privacy bill. (Slight difference: The WSLC wanted a workers' privacy bill to pass and the teachers' union, the WEA, wants the education reform bill to fail. But the principle seems the same. Namely: It looks like the union is threatening legislators.

Rep. Eddy wrote: 

You might want to take a look at the letters sent to all representatives (and, I assume, senators) from the “uniserv” councils. These letters, and the enclosed resolution(s), left no doubt: anyone who supports any bill, any action, any budget item … any anything … that is not supported by the teachers’ union can expect to be opposed by the union in the next election.

What’s kind of sad about this situation is that the message isn’t particularly different than what prompted the shelving of the workers’ privacy bill last month. And the uniserv letters went to all legislators, I understand, not just the few working on the bill.

The significance of Eddy's closing aside: The controversial WSLC email—which Democratic leadership used to table the worker's privacy bill—was only sent to a few of the bill's main supporters, along with WSLC's membership. According to Eddy, the WEA letters (UniServs are local WEA councils) went to all legislators. This would make the threat more overt than the WSLC email

So, what Eddy is saying is this: If Democratic leadership was freaked out enough to kill the workers' privacy bill because passing it would have appeared like they were caving to the union—shouldn't leadership now call on Democrats to pass the education reform bill so it doesn't look like they're caving to the teachers union?