Thursday, August 07, 2008

VG: State Auditor

The Stranger, one our two free weeklies, has posted its endorsements. The Stranger has a punky, in-your-face attitude that makes it sometimes rude, occasionally unfunny and usually NSFW. Still, its a set of endorsements. The other free weekly, the Seattle Weekly is still recovering from being gutted following its purchase by a conservative chain a few years back. So there's not much there - a blog entry about Sam Reed and that's about it. All the old hippies who used to work at the Weekly are now over at Crosscut complaining how the city has gone to hell ever since they put in the floating bridges.

But as we make our way downballot, things start thinning out. Ten challengers for Governor, four for Louie, three for Treasurer, and now three for State Auditor. Who, you know, audits.

Brian Sontag has been on the job for a long time, he’s got broad support from Reps and Dems, and from both sides of the Cascades. That pretty much sums up his candidate statement, and like Sam Reed, he’s a keeper.

Glen Freeman (Constitution Party) flips the argument – Sontag’s been in office forever, it is time for a fresh set of eyes (preferably his). He dogwhistles the Constitution/God connection with the Kent Covenant Church, but avoids the obvious mention in the candidate statement, unlike his other Connies.

J. Richard (Dick) McEntee takes the “Things Suck!” approach, challenging that the auditors office is not performing enough audits, while at the same time straining resources by performing too many expensive audits. In other words, the food is terrible, and the portions are too small. Initiative 900, demanding performance audits, should have (says McEntee) brought in a billion dollars. Since we don’t have a billion dollars, then it must the auditor's fault!

Me, I blame those durn floating bridges.

More later,