Rumors of West Senate bid tantalize but don’t bear fruit
All the political warriors can go off red alert. Come down from DefCon1. And maybe just chill.
Jim West is not – repeat NOT – running for re-election to the state Senate.
Rumors have been floating for about a week that West will run for his old 6th District Senate seat. Some are convinced he’s filed for the office; others that he’s raising money for an attempt to wrest the seat from fellow Republican Brad Benson or keep it from falling to upstart Democrat Chris Marr.
Are those rumors delicious? You betcha.
Picture it: Recalled mayor rises phoenixlike from the ashes of disgrace to tackle an old political rival and a new partisan threat, ignoring the financial odds and the strategic challenges, rushing heedlessly and headlong into a long-shot comeback campaign.
Cue the theme from “Rocky.” Cut to an American flag waving in the breeze, with a bald eagle flying into a cloud overhead in the shape of Mount Rushmore…
It may have potential as a Movie of the Week script. But as delicious as those scenarios are, they just aren’t true. No one has filed officially for the 2006 elections because no one can. That happens in July.
The state Public Disclosure Commission does have some paperwork to record contributions to a 2006 West for Senate campaign. But check the date, folks, those are from 2003.
It’s money he raised right after being re-elected to the Senate in 2002 but before he embarked on his 2003 mayoral campaign. Because of that, the PDC’s official list of 2006 state Senate candidates includes these pro-forma forms from West.
That doesn’t mean he’s running. Heck, the Federal Election Commission still lists records for Tom Foley in the congressional reports, even though he hasn’t run since 1994.
If West were running, he’d be raising money and updating those reports monthly. Which he’s not.
“We have seen nothing coming in. They’re going to have to figure out something else to talk about over there. Nothing here in terms of C-1s or any indication that Mr. West would be running for any office,” the PDC’s Doug Ellis told Spokesman-Review colleague Rich Roesler recently.
West attributes the rumor’s origin to “a rookie doing a PDC search and coming up with my old records.”
“I guess it’s invaded the local Democrat Party, and they’re kind of excited about it,” West said. “I have absolutely no intention of running for the Senate whatsoever.”
So at ease, soldiers.
Tanker politics
When U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, announced last week he would drop his proposal to bring oil supertankers into the Puget Sound, he specifically mentioned discussions with GOP Senate hopeful Mike McGavick as a key to chloroforming of the bill.
McGavick said at a later press conference in Seattle that constructive dialogue, not confrontation, would be the hallmark of his Senate tenure. That was his goal when he met with Alaska’s senior senator and ‘splained how folks in Washington state would really, really not like bunches of tankers coming into the Sound at an expanded Cherry Point refinery.
Hard to think this came as a shock to Stevens. He supposedly dreamed up the proposal as a response to losing one of his favorite ideas, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If he thought Washington would be jumping for joy over more tankers in the Sound, he’d have come up with something more incendiary, like moving the Seahawks to Juneau or taxing lattes.
But after chatting several times with McGavick, Stevens apparently concluded that just as Alaskans don’t like folks telling them what to do, Washingtonians might be the same way.
Apparently neither the animus of Washington congresspersons of both parties, who threatened to nuke the idea, nor the promise by Sen. Maria Cantwell, McGavick’s potential opponent in this fall’s election, held any sway. But there was a political consideration: “It will not be a football in a Senate race in Washington,” Stevens said.
No word whether Stevens has given up plans to come to Washington and campaign against Cantwell. That may be the subject of another constructive dialogue McGavick schedules.
Democrats are likely hoping Stevens will become a football, all by himself.
Wait till next year
When the state primary moves to August next year, filing week – the period when candidates officially enter a race – will move from the end of July to the beginning of June. That could move everything else up in the political calendar, like announcements by candidates that they are thinking of running for an office, that they are dropping out of a race or that their likely opponents are afraid to debate them.
The fact that the election calendar isn’t being changed until next year is probably better news for Democrats than Republicans in Spokane. The change would have meant two months less to dig up a candidate for Eastern Washington’s 5th Congressional District.