It's primary day for city & county elections in Washington today. More information can be found at the King County elections home page. Voter guides can be found at King County's web page; P-I endorsements (which are the ones you want) can be found, well, in the P-I.
Stop by Drinking Liberally tonight; we'll be watching election returns. It's good wholesome fun for the whole family!
For the very curious here is my ballot:
County Executive (D): Carping on conservative talk radio aside, there's no reason not to stick with Ron Sims.
King County Council, District 4 (D): There's no primary challenger, so the winner by default is Larry Phillips. No shame in that.
Sherrif: There's some intra-sherrif's office politicking I don't quite understand in this race; the Weekly has a good run-down. Incumbent Sue Rahr has been the de facto sherrif for two years, while Dave Reichert started pre-running for political office, and she broke the blue wall of silence by cracking down on police beatings. The officers' union isn't happy. Meanwhile, Jim Fuda, who has the officers' union's endorsement, has a 'college degree' from a diploma mill, so he's a no go in my book. That leaves former fast-climber Seattle Lieutenant Greg Schmidt, whose black mark is a domestic violence arrest (but no conviction) that he's been acquitted of and a subsequent suit for "gender profiling"; meanwhile he's been quite open about what happened. I'll take this honest and trustworthy guy and vote for Greg Schmidt; since it seems that Rahr only cares about police beatings when her boss is running for office.
Court of Appeals, Division 1, District 1, Position 2:Susan Randolph Agid has no challenger.
Port of Seattle, Position 1:Lawrence Malloy has the support of basically everybody, and is both a friend of the working man (and woman!) and an environmentalist.
Port of Seattle, Position 3: Wow! I bet Lloyd Hara wishes he hadn't put "Regional Director of FEMA" on his resume right about now. Meanwhile there are two good choices in Peter Coates and Rich Berkowitz. I'm going with the reformist Rich Berkowitz for the open seat.
Port of Seattle, Position 4: Continuing the reformist theme, I'll go with the P-I endorsed Jack Jolley.
Mayor:Greg Nickels, Just Good Enough. He has no real opposition.
City Council, Position 2: Conlin's started to get complacent, and Nickels could use some opposition in the City Council. I don't know what "replacing the 520 bridge" means, but aside from that I'll stick with Paige Miller.
City Council, Position 4: It's tempting to vote for lefty Angel Bolanos, but I'll stick with incumbent Jan Drago.
City Council, Position 8: The race that matters most to me. Seattle City Council needs a real politician or two to build constructive opposition to the Mayor's office; we've got one running in Dwight Pelz.
Seattle Popular Monorail Authority, Position 8: It's not clear how much these races will matter, but whatever. Stan Lippman is a gadfly, while Beth Goldberg wants to destroy the monorail in order to save it. That leaves me with Cindi Laws, who drew labor opposition for anti-Semitism or quasi anti-Semitism which she used continuously and during her candidate interview. If this was an occasional joke around the office, that's one thing. Unfortunately, "none of the above" isn't an option, except in the Iowa Caucuses.
Seattle Popular Monorail Authority, Position 9: I'm tempted to go with out-and-out monorail advocate Dick Falkenbury, but incumbent Cleve Stockmeyer hasn't done anything to deserve losing his job.
Seattle School District No. 1, Director District 5: No, I don't want to know how school districts are drawn. Incumbent Mary Bass has wide support, and while Jane Fellner seems to know what she's doing, I'm hoping for some continuity for the School Board.
