Here’s Where It Gets Weird

Morning Fizz August 23, 2010 at 8:18 am Morning Fizz

1. State Sen. Jean Berkey (D-38, Everett) has fallen down to third place in last week’s top-two primary. She’s being bested by progressive Democratic insurgent Nick Harper (here’s a PubliColaTV interview with Harper) and conservative Republican Rodney Rieger.

Unions had vowed to take out Berkey in the primary after Berkey voted for state worker furloughs and, as banking committee chair, killed a move to repeal a $50 million loophole for big banks. Forming a political committee called Stand Up for Citizens, the Washington State Labor Council and the Service Employees International Union poured money into pro-Harper and anti-Berkey independent expenditures, nearly $200,000 against her and $100,000 for him.

Rieger also benefited from independent expenditure money. A political committee called Cut Taxes PAC did an anti-Berkey mailer.

Here’s where it gets weird, though: The same Democratic political consultant, Moxie Media, that did the TV and mail for Stand Up For Citizens, also did the mailers for Cut Taxes PAC.

Cut Taxes PAC hasn’t yet disclosed who paid Moxie to do the work. (The Public Disclosure Commission only shows that Cut Taxes PAC owes Moxie about $5,000 for a mail campaign.)

It’s widely assumed that union money funded Cut Taxes PAC—a sly political play to bring out Republican voters in the majority blue district, boosting Rieger’s numbers to oust Berkey in the primary.

The move has pissed off the Democratic senate caucus. Under pressure from a progressive coalition, including the unions, Berkey voted for $757 million in tax increases during this year’s session—only to get hit by the Cut Taxes PAC (presumably the same people who pushed for tax increases) in the primary election. The relationship between the unions and Democratic Senate leadership is likely to be toxic next session.

Rieger is beating Berkey by 19 votes. There are about 5,000 votes left to be counted.

In a comedic side note: The Seattle Times published an editorial that went up online Thursday (and ran in Friday’s print edition), using the 38th race to extol the virtues of the top-two primary, in which, they assumed, two Democrats (both better fits for the 38th) would go through. [Correction: We'd originally reported that the Times published on Saturday, making fun of them for missing the latest numbers. That wasn't accurate.]

2. Despite city budget director Beth Goldberg’s statement in March that the city planned to continue “maintenance hiring” of police officers during the ongoing budget crisis at the city, so that the total number of officers won’t go down, a recent memo produced by city council central staff shows that the total number of officers at the city has, in fact, declined this year. Mayor Mike McGinn and the council have agreed to forgo hiring 21 new officers that are needed to fully implement the city’s neighborhood policing plan until the economy rebounds.

McGinn’s spokesman Aaron Pickus clarified after this post was written that Police Chief John Diaz has pledged not to let the number of sworn officers fall below 1,329. “[I]f we sense that there will be more than 20 separations between now and year’s end, including student officers and/or recruits, we would hire in anticipation of losses beyond that number, with the goal of hiring up to the authorized/funded number of 1,329,” Diaz wrote in an August 4 memo.

According to the report,

“The [Police] Department has ceased sworn hiring. As a result, it is now projected to lose 13 more officers than it replaces with new hires in 2010. The impact of this decline probably will be felt in a decline in positions in service by mid-2011.”

Last year’s projections showed 49 new recruits entering police academy training this year; however, only 15 recruits have entered the academy so far this year, and none are expected to enter for the rest of the year. Additionally, the city expected SPD to hire 11 officers from other jurisdictions; however, SPD is on track to hire just five such officers this year. As a result of the hiring shortfall, SPD will have just 1,330 filled sworn officers at the end of 2010, rather than the 1,348 that were projected, the council report concludes.

3. Over at the PI.com, reporter Chris Grygiel found some oddities in the latest SurveyUSA poll that has Dino Rossi beating U.S. Sen. Patty Murray 52 to 45. Most notably, the poll says the two are tied in Seattle 48 to 48. But as Grygiel points out:

In King County … Murray ran up huge numbers on Rossi. She won 59 percent to 27 percent, prevailing by more than 120,000 votes.

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Mikos

I think if you look at the SurveyUSA methodology the results are not so odd. They define King, Pierce and Snohomish as “Seattle area”. Murray did not hit 50 percent in either Snohomish or Pierce. If you add all the Republican votes to Rossi’s total (as some people will do), the 48/48 is not so far fetched. Given a slightly different electorate for the general election and the margin of error, I would not sneer at this poll if I were Murray. It’s just hard to believe the Rossi is at 52 percent…
herrnichte

#3: Here’s a good rule-of-thumb for media/blog folks: if a political poll was paid for by some private interest (as most are): it’s purely coincidence if it reports something accurate. If instead the funding came from some source that’s theoretically unbiased (usually government or a media outlet (yeah, like FOX is unbaised…)), then it should be merely regarded with “French justice”, that is, it must overtly prove why it should be trusted (with error estimates, and explanations of how the sample was designed).

In anycase: don’t blindly trust any poll ever

…thankyouverymuch…. we return you now to good journalism in progress.
http://twitter.com/fattailed fattailed

Yes, somebody sniffing out oddities in a SurveyUSA poll should include in their odor-detection algorithm the fact that SurveyUSA has a habit of doing geographical grouping based on I think media markets rather than political geography — i.e. Seattle usually equals Seattle TV market rather than Seattle proper or even greater Seattle as defined politically.

Which is not to say that there aren’t regularly oddities in SurveyUSA polls.
http://peacetreefarm.org N in Seattle

SUSA says “Metro Seattle” has 54% of the state’s population (of voters? of likely voters?). That comes fairly close to King + Pierce + Snohomish, which is what I’m using in my analysis.

In a rather more meaningful “poll”, the current primary election percentages across the three counties come to 53% Murray, 30% Rossi. For SUSA to be right, then:

a) between 5% and 10% of Patty’s primary voters would switch to Dino, and
b) every person who voted for anyone other than Murray in the primary would vote for Rossi, and
c) the general election voters who didn’t participate in the primary (about 25% of the electorate, and appreciably more Democratic than the primary-voter subset) would act just like the primary election voters in a) and b)

Any one of the above conditions occurring is ridiculous. All three happening is beyond absurd.
Mikos

N–

You’re correct in your analysis in a) and b) but on c) your assumption is simply that. Historically Democratic voting has been suppressed in off-year Congressional elections when the President is a Democrat. Based on that, it seems unlikely there will be a Democratic voter surge in November. I suspect that the tax measures and measures with tax implicatons on the ballot will also not help Democratic turnout.
http://peacetreefarm.org N in Seattle

You’re using 1998 as your historical comparison? That’s the last off-year with a Democratic President.

I don’t think there’s very much that 1998 can tell us about 2010.
Jakers

If you add up all of the US senate votes by party:

Snohomish County (ballots cast 139,647)
R: 49.95%
D: 48.62%

King County (ballots cast 394,170)
R: 38.37%
D: 60.20%

Pierce County (ballots cast 138,934)
R: 50.73%
D: 47.39%
Mikos

Don’t forget 1994. Any assertion about turnout in November is going to be based on historical precedent. Pick your poison. I assume you’re thinking of a better example.
Mikos

Jakers–

I added them up too and I think I expressed scepticism at Rossi’s ability to get 52%. Still, Murray’s campaign is in the attack mode and that suggests only one thing to me: they realize her numbers are low and unlikely to go up much and therefore they need to bring Rossi’s numbers down. SurveyUSA has a good record when it comes to election polling so I tend to take them seriously.
http://43rddemocrats.org Michael M.

Re #3 – this is the first time I’ve ever said this, but the recent Rassmussen Reports poll may actually be more accurate, to a degree. I still believe in adding points to the Dem, but they have the race at 48-44 (Murray up).

In the end, the only poll that matters in November. And between now and then, I fully expect Sen. Murray to pwn Rossi on the air, TV, interwebs, and direct mail, along with direct voter contact.

Although the SnoCo numbers are troubling, and not just for her, but for Rick Larsen. Hopefully the Chad Shue’s of the world won’t try to “send a message” by fucking over two great incumbents.
Jakers

Oh, I agree, I would have expected her numbers to be higher in both Snohomish and Pierce counties. The fact that they are not should be very concerning since most everywhere else is republican leaning (although with much smaller populations).
Jakers

I figure that there will be some disenfranchisement of some tea partiers or write-ins (that will be invalid) for some of the tea party candidates that will help Murray out a bit.
http://43rddemocrats.org Michael M.

And you do have a point there. The Tea Party only scored one candidate, and, IMO, he’s a total insider (John Koster). Castillo lost, Diddier got effed in the a, and…well, that was just about it in WA.

I still am, honestly, more concerned with Democratic voters who don’t think that the current congress has done enough, or moved quickly enough. I mean, I understand that a lot of these folks have never really payed attention until 2008, and didn’t know how incredibly fucked the system is, but at the same time – there has been a lot of progress already.

And I’m not just talking about unraveling the mess from the previous administration, but messes from the Clinton administration, and further back. Unfortunately, message in the Democratic Party is, more often than not, an utter failure.
http://43rddemocrats.org Michael M.

And you do have a point there. The Tea Party only scored one candidate, and, IMO, he’s a total insider (John Koster). Castillo lost, Diddier got effed in the a, and…well, that was just about it in WA.

I still am, honestly, more concerned with Democratic voters who don’t think that the current congress has done enough, or moved quickly enough. I mean, I understand that a lot of these folks have never really payed attention until 2008, and didn’t know how incredibly fucked the system is, but at the same time – there has been a lot of progress already.

And I’m not just talking about unraveling the mess from the previous administration, but messes from the Clinton administration, and further back. Unfortunately, message in the Democratic Party is, more often than not, an utter failure.
Reasoned

I think you missed a link to the “good jounralism in progress.” It certainly isn’t found here.

Viva La Cola!

Here’s Where It Gets Weird