Point About Porno Backfires On Legislator

Most of the handouts lawmakers distribute to each other on the House floor are pretty dull. But the one distributed this week by Rep. Gene Goldsmith, R-Ferndale, was decidedly not.

Goldsmith, a staunch pro-family conservative, used 14- and 15-year-old pages and a state copying machine to distribute a pornographic picture published in Western Washington University’s student newspaper.

The picture showed a naked woman with a piece of raw meat stabbed to her right breast with a bloody spike.

Goldsmith meant the piece to shock his colleagues into agreement with him that public colleges and universities ought to be privatized. But it didn’t have quite that effect.

Instead, House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, publicly reprimanded Goldsmith for distributing the picture without his permission after House Democrats sent Ballard a note complaining about it.

“His judgment on the distribution of this material is unquestionably poor at best,” the letter stated. It was also an “outrageous violation” of a state law prohibiting exposure of minors to pornographic materials, passed by the House just days later, Democrats said.

Goldsmith issued a public apology to the pages and the House, but added: “This is just one more reason I am calling for the privatization of all the state’s public universities. If the state doesn’t have the power to stop pornographic university publications, at least taxpayers don’t have to pay for them.”

The thinnest majority

Senate Democrats have been having a tough enough time holding their one-vote majority together over the GOP. Some of their Democrats vote with Republicans on many issues.

And now the majority has dwindled to a tie. One of the Senate’s dependable Democratic votes, Sen. Cal Anderson, has been hospitalized to undergo chemotherapy.

While Anderson has been away, the Senate GOP has played. Twice this week, Republicans took over the Senate with parliamentary moves.

The first time, GOP senators were stymied in their attempt to yank a bill from committee to the floor by Democrats who scratched up enough votes to defeat them.

Not that it was easy: one Democratic senator was seen weeping after a four-hour closed-door session in which she was convinced to vote with her party.

Republicans also rammed through amendments to a regulatory reform bill using Lt. Gov. Joel Pritchard, a Republican, to break ties in their favor while Anderson was gone.

The question is whether they will try next week to yank Initiative 164, the property rights initiative, out of committee for a floor vote - a move Republicans have threatened throughout the session. It now would be easier to pull off.

Republicans deny taking advantage of Anderson’s illness. But Democrats aren’t convinced. “This goes to a new level. A low level,” said Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen, D-Eatonville.

Slow going

Conference committees were convened in open session for the first time in state history this week. The pace was far from breathtaking: Negotiators reached only one agreement in four days of meetings.

“Too slow, far too slow. People are acting like peacocks and that always is a problem,” said Rep. Jean Silver, R-Spokane, a member of the budget conference committee.

The slower than snail’s pace led one of the primary proponents of opening the meetings, Rep. Dale Foreman, R-Wenatchee, to hedge on just how open the meetings ought to remain.

Wouldn’t it be faster, say, if just two of six members could meet privately to reach agreements, and then bring them to the committee?

Foreman’s suggestion was panned by the other conferees - this time.

xxxx