VG: Insurance Commissioner

So it's an amazing thing that I am plodding through the Voter's Guide, and just when I hit Insurance Commissioner, I get scooped not only by the blogger Mimerki but by the Seattle Times. You know you're behind the curve when the print media beats you to a story.

The scoop, by the way, underscores a screwiness with the top two primary as currently envisioned. You are supposed to list party preference, if you have one, but there is no mechanism to enforce this beyond relying on your own innate honesty. Hence we've seen Republicans rebranding themselves as GOP, and in the case, denying their origins entirely in the hopes of bamboozling the voters.

Meet Curt Fackler, challenger for the Insurance Commissioner position, whose candidate statement blisters with indignation about the current incumbent is letting the insurance companies rip you off, and that we "need a regulator who will hold the insurance industry accountable, without party politics and elites of Olympia calling the shots". He states no party preference, and sounds like a reforming, consumer-minded firebrand.

Except in the real world. He is the Spokane County Republican Party chairman, a delegate to the state Republican Convention, and served as the chairman for the 5th Congressional District Caucus. No one is FORCING him to declare a party preference, and if people think he's more liberal from his statements, hey, them's the breaks.

The official Republican candidate (which is to say, the one that admits to being a Republican) is John Adams. Why yes, he DOES have a picture of THAT John Adams on his website and points out that he comes from a "historical Massachusetts family". He states in his candidate statement that he is pro-consumer in that we wants to restrict extreme judgments in court. The Times notes his campaign has been low-key to invisible.

Actually, this should be interesting to see if Republicans vote for the brand or vote for the nudge-nudge-wink-wink independent.

Oh, yeah, there's the incumbent, Mike Kreidler, running for his third term. And as incumbent, his campaign stresses that things are going pretty well, and that if you keep them, they will get better. No, really.

More later,