Political Desk: Bits and Pieces

Grubb Street will post its recommendations (such as they are) for the Primary late on Sunday. In the meantime, there have been some updates:

Remember when I talked yard signs, about how you don't put red on blue because it vibrates and is hard to read? I'm talking to you, Jim Postma and Nancy Wyatt. Your graphic designer is not being your friend.

The morning of the day I posted about the challenges facing State Rep. Geoff Simpson, the Seattle Times launches its own article on page 1, section 2, beneath the fold. Not on the charges facing the incumbent Representative per se (which is "old news"), but on the attack video launched focusing on the situation. This was an immediate and rapid approach for a newspaper that usually lets such things ... marinate ... for a while before wading in. Almost as if someone at GOPAC had flagged them at the start, so they could be first in line. (Rereading the article, it only promises that the attack ad WILL be running on local channels, not that it HAS run - at the time of the article, the ad was purely an online creation).

In response, the candidate's mom called me. Well, she robo-called, and said her son was a good man and that this was a horrible attack. She sounds like a nice person. We're still in the primary, and we've already reached the "mom" stage on this race.

As for the Times, it created its own buzz a few days later by not endorsing incumbent Dave Reichert for USRep. Instead they split their endorsement between anointed Democrat Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon. DelBene I knew about, but Dillon has left so light an impression on me I had to go back to see where he came from. It turns out he is also a technocrat similar to DelBene, but also a councilman from Yarrow Point. And I then had to go look up Yarrow Point, to discover it to be an affluent community of about a thousand barnacled onto the side of Bellvue.

Anyway, there was much aflutter in the blogosphere about the whys of all this. Some have suggested that the Times is serious about its reboot 2010, while others point out that only now, after six years, the Times has realized that the 8th needs to upgrade its operating system. Regardless of its conservative bent in all things tax-related, the Times is very strong on its environmental reporting, and the idea that Reichert's devotion to conservation might be only skin-deep may have struck a nerve.

Instead, I think they are inoculating themselves with the dual choice. Reading through their reasoning, they lay out some traps for Ms. DelBene that they can later return to, should they decide to return to a more conservative candidate (her voting record is spotty). And by presenting a viable alternate GOP choice, they can still support their conservative heritage. Indeed, while they strive to put both forth as independent, viable technocrats, DelBene's and Dillon's politics seem poles apart.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet here, about a week out from the election. A few more fliers from Sullivan and DelBene, and a robo-call about Jim Johnson's firm judicial support of his donors, but that's about it.

So, endorsements. More later,