1. As late as 7:15 am, Dino Rossi’s website—where he had said he was going to announce his candidacy for U.S. Senate with a video at 7 am—was still an advertisement for his real estate business, Coast Equity Partners.
We emailed his campaign at 7:05 and they told us they would check and see what was going on.
2. Intramural factionalism isn’t just for Tea Partiers. The Roadkill Caucus, a group of conservative Democrats in the state legislature who feel their ideas get run over by both lefty Democrats and hard-right Republicans, have started their own political action committee, The Roadkill Political Action Committee.
They’re holding their first fundraiser on June 8 at Melanie Stewart’s Indian Summer Golf Course Home in Olympia.
The group includes: Sens. Steve Hobbs, Brian Hatfield, Derek Kilmer, Chris Marr, Mary Margaret Haugen, and Paull Shin and Reps. Judy Clibborn, Deb Eddy, Chris Hurst, Kelli Linville, Larry Seaquist, and Larry Springer.
3. The Cascade Bicycle Club just released its early endorsements, to legislators they say are “true friends and allies of sustainable transportation and smart growth.”
However, several Seattle-area reps didn’t make the list: 11th District Sen. Margarita Prentice and Rep. Zack Hudgins; 36th District Reps. Mary Lou Dickerson and Reuven Carlyle; 37th District Reps. Sharon Tomiko Santos and Eric Pettigrew; 43rd District Reps. Frank Chopp and Jamie Pedersen; and 46th District Reps. Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney and Scott White. (Sen. Ken Jacobsen, also from the 46th, is not running for reelection).
David Hiller, policy director for Cascade, says he wants to talk to the candidates who didn’t get an early endorsement before the group’s July 15 board meeting, when they plan to make final endorsements. In particular, he cites three particular proposals—a street utility fee to pay for street maintenance, which never made it to a vote in the House; a proposal to fund transit on an emergency basis, sponsored by Marko Liias (D-21) in the House—who got the Cascade endorsement; and last year’s transit-oriented communities bill, which would have encouraged density around transit stations.
4. Marc Phillips, president of the Maple Leaf Community Council, wrote a comment-baiting post on his SeattlePI.com reader blog yesterday morning titled “Biking to Work is Stupid.” In essence, the (very long) post damns “iron men and women” who “paint on their spandex riding pants” to commute by bike every day with (very) faint praise, then argues, basically, that biking to work is impossible for just about everybody. “Newsflash—the guy 3 miles from the nearest station who works downtown and is ready and willing to take the train and be one less car on I-5 is not going to walk in the rain to do so.”
We wrote Phillips to ask him whether he was being tongue-in-cheek or serious: Did he, the president of a large community organization in North Seattle, really think biking to work was “stupid”? Phillips wrote back, saying his main point was “that biking to work … is what Seattle needs to be a great city. … Personally though I believe some current policies are misguided and may not allow for the maximum benefit of these options.” Phillips added that he meant for his comments to be taken as his alone, not as the views of the Maple Leaf Community Council.
5. Just before noon yesterday, a yellow postcard dropped through PubliCola’s mail slot, announcing that Monday’s NARAL Pro-Choice Washington luncheon—at which Erica was honored with NARAL’s annual Power of Choice Award—raised nearly $64,000 for the pro-choice group.
