Electoral Storm - Updates

I talked about the initiatives a while back, but there are more measures on the local ballot, and I'll get to them in a later post. First an update on the signature races out here.

The Air War has turned poisonous - its like watching people playing badminton with live grenades. At the Senatorial level, Murray has fired back hard at Nethercutt, hauling out VFW members to say how scuzzy they think Nethercutt's Osama ad was, and rolling out his record to show his conservative nature. Nethercutt, for his part is taking on a Nader-esque tone, "debating" with a pair of size 7 white sneakers to protest that Murray only will agree to two debates. Nethercutt also tried to create an "ambush debate" at the airport when both candidates had planes come in the same time, but that fizzled when he missed Murray at the baggage carrousel. The national GOP is showing its support for Nethercutt's initiatives by pulling $100 thousand dollars of support ads and sending the funds to other races.

And the Gubernatorial stage, Ross has played the $18 Million Dollar mistake card against Gregoire, who has batted it aside by noting that at the time she admitted fault, accepted responsibility, and put into place fixes that would make sure it never happened again. Then Gregoire returned a volley that keys in on Rossi's votes when he was in the state house, particularly tough on the Republican since he's been running on the "outsider" model, and does not want to admit he spent a decade there. Rossi's getting ad support from Scott Howell, a Republican media consultant from Dallas who is responsible for a variety of "low-blow" ads.

And in the Congressional bracket, I got a chance to watch the debate between Reichert and Ross. Reichert came across as patrician and calm, Ross as eager and knowledgable. Reichert seems a little disengaged from the process, but is trying to firm up his base by adhering to many hard-core GOP memes (tax cuts for the wealthy, anti-abortion, pro-drilling in Alaska). Problem is, his views don't line up with those of the person he's trying to replace, Jennifer Dunn, which opens himself up to the "too-conservative" attack that is the Democrat's meat and potatoes assault (a flip on the "Tax and Spend Liberal" trope from the right). Reichert has Dunn campaigning for him, and in addition has Tom DeLay coming in to firm up the donor base. Newspapers and the general public are not invited to any events showing the former Sherrif with the scandal-tainted Majority Leader.

Yeah, things are getting interesting.

More later,