Paul Queary, a veteran AP reporter and editor, is founder of The Washington Observer, an independent newsletter on politics, government and the influence thereof in Washington State.
Several citywide campaigns this year focused heavily on harvesting the four $25 coupons issued to every registered voter in Seattle. Two who did were soundly beaten by more conventional campaigns centered on direct mail and advertising.
The Republican maps signal ambition to win back recently lost territory. The map proposed by former Rep. Paul Graves, representing the House Republicans, is the most aggressive of the four in terms of displacing incumbents. He would move a whopping 25 Democrats out of their districts.
The democracy-voucher program, combined with other changes in the city’s campaign finance laws, have essentially moved a big chunk of the political spending in municipal elections onto the taxpayers’ dime. Meanwhile, the vouchers themselves are a kind of pseudo-money that has no other value to the holder. Persuading people to part with them is apparently much easier than asking for real cash. Such a change was bound to have some unintended consequences.
Regardless of where you come down on the free-speech rights of giant corporations, here’s why you should care about this: Taking a million dollars of political money out of a campaign is going to help somebody. The interesting questions are who, and why.
Realtors are aggressive about promoting their own members who aspire to political office, under the argument that Realtors will back Realtor-friendly policies. That’s typically where you see the eye-popping contribution numbers from the national group.
Mennet gave the party $300,000 last month, according to the PDC, more than half of ithe party's 2021 haul thus far. That’s an unusually large donation, especially for an odd-numbered year.
2021 will be the rare year without a statewide ballot initiative or a citizens’ referendum challenging something the Legislature did earlier this year. Years without direct democracy at the state level are rare, and the last one was in 2017. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1989.
Imagine the now 30-something offspring of one of the original Microsoft executives selling $10 million of the stock daddy got for $10,000 back in the bad-hair days. That’s a capital gain of $9,990,000. Born-rich heir would owe $681,800 under the new tax.