King County Washington Primary Election

So, it is time for another local election. The ballot came a few weeks ago, but of course I didn’t look at it and didn’t look at it. So here I am on the day the ballots need to return, having not yet looked at anything at all, and not knowing anything about any of the races at all. Yum.

So it is lunch time at work, and I’ll be skipping the eating thing in favor of quickly figuring out how I am going to vote. Unlike previous times, I think I won’t do one post per race, but rather will just summarize everything in this one post. I probably also do not have time to give a few thoughts on each candidate as I have done in the past. We shall see, but I need to do this quickly rather than at the length I usually do.

This is a primary, so I believe the top two in each race will be back on another ballot in November.

Anyway… first race.

King County Executive: There are eight candidates. Larry Phillips, Fred Jarrett, Stan Lippmann, Alan Lobdell, Susan Hutchison, Dow Constantine, Ross Hunter and “Goodspaceguy”. That last one is immediately intriguing. Anyway, time to spend a few minutes reading about each of them. I will probably just read each of their statements, I doubt I’ll have time for more…. OK. There are a couple wackadoodles here. And honestly just from their blurbs I don’t really like any of them. I guess if I have to choose… Fred Jarrett. I like that he is a previous party switcher (R->D) and that he is from the Eastside. I think I saw him at some events back in 2008 too and he seemed decent enough. Looks like he has a few prominent endorsements and has a history as a moderate. (Yeah, I ended up clicking through to a few additional websites besides his statement.) Anyway, he will do.

Metropolitan King County Council District No. 9: Three candidates… Mark Greene, Beverly Harison Tonda, Reagan Dunn. Ehh… I guess I’ll go for the incumbent, Reagan Dunn. I don’t see anything really bad there, and the two others did not impress me much.

Court of Appeals Division No. 1, District No. 1, Judge Position No. 3: First, I continue to not like the idea of elected judges. Anyway, two candidates. Robert D. Kelly and Anne L. Ellington. I’ll go with Ellington. Better experience, and the other guy said he would pray he would make good decisions.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 3: 3 candidates. Rob Holland, David Doud, Al Yuen. I like Holland for the previous port experience. Doud turned me off by mostly talking about how to use properties rather than directly talking about the port. I just didn’t see anything compelling in Yuen.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 4: 4 candidates. Juan Paraiso, Max Vekich, Tom Albro, Robert Walker. Robert Walker gets my vote. I clicked through to his website and like his humor and his outside perspective. He won’t win of course, but I think a fresh outsider perspective like that would be good in almost any position.

Now wait one more thing… Brandy’s mom told her a week or so ago that a woman from where she works… in the Philadelphia area… heard her family was out here, and asked her to tell us that we should vote for Ross Hunter. It seems that the woman’s girlfriend is Hunter’s sister. Or something like that. I intentionally did my decisions above without looking up the email from Brandy mentioning what her mom said, so I wouldn’t know who that was. As it is I picked someone else. I did just now give Hunter a second look. He doesn’t look too bad. And the Seattle times actually endorsed BOTH the person I picked and Hunter. (Article is here.) If I remember properly when I looked through these guys a few minutes back, Hunter was also on my short list, although as I said I didn’t really *like* any of them that much from what I read. Anyway, I’ll stick to my original vote, although Hunter doesn’t look bad. Doesn’t sound like either of them will win of course.

OK, I guess that’s it. Time to fill out the bubbles. I’ll drop the ballot off in the designated place after work.