1. The Clint Didier campaign was annoyed when they got word at the last minute yesterday morning that their joint endorsement board interview with Dino Rossi at the Seattle Times was postponed.
Rossi was in D.C. at a fundraiser sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
2. Senate Democrats in D.C. did not have the 60 votes to move ahead on the DISCLOSE Act yesterday—a bill that would force the financial backers of independent expenditure groups to identify themselves in their TV ads. (The measure was a response to the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited dollars directly from their treasuries on independent expenditure ads.)
Sen. Murray was hit by an IE earlier this month in which the only thing that was disclosed was the innocuous-sounding name of the IE group, American Action Network, rather than the funders. She co-sponsored the bill and spoke on the floor to support it.
Murray said:
“The Citizens United ruling has given special interest groups a megaphone they can use to drown out the voices of citizens in my home state of Washington and across the country. And the DISCLOSE Act would tear that megaphone away and place it back in the hands of the American people, where it belongs.
“When candidates put campaign commercials up on television, we put our faces on the ad and tell every voter that we approve the message. We don’t try to hide what we are doing. But right now, corporations and special interest groups don’t have to do that. They can put up deceptive and untruthful ads with no accountability—and no ability for the public to know who is trying to influence them.”
The nonpartisan OpenSecrets.org has the best report we’ve seen on the big vote.
Republicans had complained that unions weren’t subject to the rule, but Sen. Murray’s office disputed that:
“If a union runs a campaign ad, the president of the union has to appear on camera just like if a corporation runs the ad, the CEO does.”
3. The Party of the Future (!?!), a project of the local green urbanist group Friends of Seattle, released polling data today that found strong support for “road diets,” (pro-ped and -bike fixes to the traffic grid that our very own BikeNerd has been writing about lately).
“There has been isolated opposition recently to efforts to create ‘road diets’ in Seattle,” FOS spokesman Roger Valdez said. “But the poll found that there is widespread support for these measures among voters.”
From the poll:
City projects that improve transit efficiency, or make it safer and easier to walk or bicycle, like bus-lanes, pedestrian refuge islands, and bicycle lanes, sometimes require changes in travel lanes or parking on Seattle streets. In general, do you support changes in the configuration of Seattle’s streets that make mass transit, walking and bicycling safer and easier?
Support: 62.1%
Oppose: 24.5%
Not Sure: 13.4%
411 likely Seattle voters were polled and the results have 4.9 percent margin of error, FOS says.
4. Clarification/correction on a Fizz item from earlier this week. Reporting on the city’s Transit Master Plan, Fizz reported:
The mayor and the council had disagreed over the scope of the plan. The mayor’s office wanted the $600,000 to study light rail from Ballard to West Seattle and the council threatened to withhold the money unless SDOT did a broader citywide study looking at buses, bus rapid transit, street grid fixes, and light rail too.
In order to free up the money, the mayor has agreed to broaden the scope and the cautious council has reportedly agreed to an initial $300,000.
The implication of our report was that the mayor wasn’t interested in studying anything beyond light rail. That’s incorrect. He is.
The council’s victory was this—the mayor’s proposal specifically called out looking at Ballard to West Seattle light rail, and the council has dialed that down so that before they pre-determine that Ballard to West Seattle should be studied as a light rail option, they’ll be looking at all corridors with all modes in mind. (Phasing the money is the council’s check on the mayor to make sure he follows the same game plan.)
5. PubliCola will begin publishing its endorsements for the August 17 primary today. Stay tuned!
