1. At last night’s meeting of the 34th District Democrats, mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan was asked (by community activist and former City Council contender Sharon Maeda) about a statement he made to PubliCola during his endorsement interview that Mayor Greg Nickels had neglected basic services and instead pursued a “racial agenda” in the neighborhoods during his tenure. (Mallahan told reporters and bloggers that we had “badly misquoted” him, which isn’t true; background here).
Although Mallahan backed away from the “misquoted” allegations (noting afterward to me that “you’ll notice I didn’t say you misquoted me”), he did incorrectly claim he was “quoted in a blog quite out of context.” Ironically, in his attempt to clarify or add context, he simply restated the point he’d already made in our original post: “I said that I understood that the mayor, after changing leadership in [the neighborhoods] department had shifted to a race and social justice agenda and I hadn’t seen the results.”
And then he added: “Quite honestly, I think I spoke somewhat out of ignorance.”
Joe Mallahan, at last night's meeting
2. Last night’s 34th meeting wasn’t nearly as lengthy or raucous as the group’s primary-endorsement meeting (which, thanks to new rules adopted by the district, went on for five hours and resulted in a controversial decision to revisit the district’s primary endorsements in the general; links to my live coverage of that meeting here), but it had its moments.(Points of order, a former district chair loudly telling a former district parliamentarian to “shut up!”, loudly contested vote counts, etc.)
Under yet another new rule adopted last night, district members decided they would not ditch any previous endorsement; instead, members could add new endorsements to the roster (resulting, ironically, in even more of the dual endorsements that members complained about in the primary). In the end, the group added just a handful of new endorsements to its roster: Position 4 candidate David Bloom (who shares the endorsement with his opponent Sally Bagshaw); school board candidates Mary Bass and Kay Smith-Blum, both running for position 5; and school board candidate Wilson Chin, running for Position 7.
Side note: Mike O’Brien, running for Position 8, didn’t win a dual endorsement with Robert Rosencrantz (whom the district endorsed in the primary along with David Miller, who didn’t make it through), but he came close. One 34th District member spoke passionately for O’Brien (and against Rosencrantz), noting that Rosencrantz had given a “qualified” answer on several surveys when asked if he supports a woman’s right to abortion. (Additionally, at a meeting of the Metropolitan Democratic Club yesterday, Rosencrantz reportedly would not “affirm” his support for a woman’s right to choose.
“Mike fully supports a woman’s right to choose, unequivocally … and doesn’t support a physician’s right to deny care based on religious reasons,” the member said. O’Brien received 57 percent of last night’s vote, nine percent shy of the two-thirds he needed.
3. As we reported yesterday, King County executive candidate Susan Hutchison—a longtime Republican donor and conservative who has taken pains to paint herself as “nonpartisan”—announced two Democratic endorsements yesterday: Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen and former Seattle mayor Wes Uhlman. Uhlman called Hutchison the “moderate candidate running for this nonpartisan office” and praised her as a “tremendous opposite to the person she’s running against,” King County Council member Dow Constantine.
But the animosity between Constantine and Uhlman appears to go back much farther than this election. According to Constantine, Uhlman and the Apartment Owners Association, which Uhlman used to head, pushed for a new law back in the ’90s that would have made state law preempt all local landlord-tenant laws. The result would have been weaker protections for renters in Seattle, which has stricter tenant protections than the state.
Constantine, who was a state legislator when the law was proposed, says he refused to support the law despite an endorsement from the apartment association, and sarcastically proposed an “alternative”: if the apartment owners group would support a statewide law banning discrimination against gay and lesbian tenants, he’d get behind their proposal. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and Constantine says there’s been bad blood between him and Uhlman ever since.
4. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who’s on Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) Finance Committee (which currently holds the cards on the health care bill), won accolades from the left in late August when she went on CNN opposite Republican naysayer and fellow Finance Committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and called the public option a “key component” of “reforming the system” because it would “get true competition into the system” and “give consumers choice.”
Evidently, she meant it. In her statement on President Obama’s health care speech last night—in which the president defended, but fell short of, demanding a public option—Cantwell came out even more strongly for the public option.
Here’s what Sen. Cantwell said (in a press release that dropped just five minutes after Obama’s speech ended):
“We must extend health care coverage to those who don’t have it now while protecting the coverage of those who do.
“The key to both of these goals is reducing out-of-control costs and I believe that providing real competition in the health care insurance marketplace through a robust public option will help us get costs under control. I will be fighting to include a public option at every phase of the debate – as a member of the Finance Committee and on the Senate floor.”
In addition to “supporting a strong Public Option,” Cantwell also listed three specifics that she wanted in any bill, including reforming the Medicare reimbursement formula so that states like Washington with efficient (low-cost) care aren’t penalized with lower payouts.
Washington state’s senior senator, Patty Murray, issued a statement about 20 minutes later that was less specific and less forthright about the public option than Cantwell’s. After mimicking a GOP speaking point about making sure health care decisions are “in the hands of patients and their doctors,” Sen. Murray added this limp line: “And I support the President’s vision of the public plan.”
Today’s Morning Fizz is brought to you by Washington Conservation Voters.
