This is it. The last entry in my election series for Another Green Monday leading up to November 2nd. Less than twenty-four hours to turn in your ballot and I couldn’t be happier. In case you’ve missed it, check my thoughts on Referendum 52, Spokane County Commissioner Bonnie Mager, Initiative 1107, and Initiative 1098. Predictions are wild. The Cook Political Report's pre-election House outlook is a Democratic net loss of 50 to 60 seats, with higher losses possible. Last week, I said I would write about the Chris Marr vs Michael Baumgartner race but I can’t without taking a shower. They took cues from the Willie Horton playbook and, simply put, Baumgartner’s environmental agenda is so vague it doesn't even register as an agenda. The finger paintings I did in pre-school could tell you more. Instead, I set my sights on Patty Murray and Dino Rossi, a race that isn’t much cleaner but there’s certainly more at stake for DTE readers.

And with that I’m unabashedly biased in favor of Sen. Patty Murray. My Achilles heel: She has fought to secure funding for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. She has brought in millions for transportation and agriculture for the eastern part of the state. She has worked to increase Veterans Affairs hospital funding and banned cancer-causing asbestos from the marketplace.  You might not remember the 2000 deadly pipeline explosion in Bellingham  – Murray was alone in calling for tougher standards and President Bush acquiesced, signing the Pipeline Safety Act in 2002.  She also led the drive to allow expanded use of stem cells for medical research and approval of the morning-after birth control known as Plan B. Along with Sen. Maria Cantwell, she received perfect ratings of 100 in the National Environmental Scorecard, produced annually by the non-partisan League of Conservation Voters compared to her challenger’s 32 percent in our state.

She also gets climate change.

"Climate change is real – scientists agree that it is happening and that there is a better than 90% chance that it is being caused by humans.  Climate change can mean more serious natural disasters and storms like Hurricane Katrina, less clean freshwater shortages and food production.  We owe it to our children and future generations to get this issue under control and soon." - Patty Murray.

There are six key Senate races for climate action, in which a strong vote for climate runs a serious risk of being replaced by a denier. For the 37 U.S. Senate races this fall, 36 involve Republican candidates who are global warming deniers or oppose climate action.
Rossi told the Seattle Times that he couldn't take a stand on climate change because it's still being debated between "scientists and pseudo scientists.” Of course, he sided with the pseudo scientists. You know, the kind funded by Exxon and say the jury is still out on science who don’t want to rock the boat when a fifth of Pakistan was flooded, forest fires evacuated Moscow, and America dealt with record temperature levels and extreme weather events like massive floods, tornadoes and ice storms.

But I’ve always had a difficult relationship with Dino Rossi and his stance on Hanford is the latest head-scratcher. Even though he served five years on the Energy and Telecommunications Committee in the Washington State Senate, his interest in Hanford was virtually non-existent until this election. Murray secured $2 billion for cleaning up Hanford from the stimulus bill which generated thousands of jobs. Rossi, true to form, wants to repeal the stimulus bill, not seeing the connection in creating jobs and cleaning up one of the biggest environmental disasters in the country.  Opportunity always knocks for Rossi.

He has so much baggage. (Check here for a DTE editorial on the 2008 race and more ethics issues.) But The Stranger made an interesting point: “Most of the people who would write those investigative stories about Rossi have written them all before, don't want to write them again, and did such a thorough job on them in 2004 and 2008 that there's not much new dirt for anyone else to dig up. Plus, he doesn't have an 18-years-long Senate record to comb through. Thus, Rossi ends with a relative pass on his past in 2010. As they say, third time's a charm.”

I hope not. The choice is obvious for me. But this season, particularly the Marr-Baumgartner money train and new developments in the County Commissioner race, have left me with a bad aftertaste. Some are so desperate to win; they will say anything negative about their opponent's record, no matter how misinformed or wrong it is.  I want citizens to get involved in politics because it’s a public service – they believe in making the world a better place or you have folks who get addicted to the drama of the game. This time around, Spokane seemed to have more of the latter. Tonight, I want to collect campaign signs and recycle them by building an ark. If the climate deniers win, you'll thank me.

---

---