Time to note campaign highs, lows

The 2004 campaign may last another week or two for Christine Gregoire, Dino Rossi and Washington residents who wonder who their next governor will be. But for everyone else, it’s approaching “stick a fork in it” time.

But the election year that came in with a shout – the notorious and notoriously overblown Howard Dean scream – shouldn’t go out with a whimper. Or at least, without a few awards for good and bad campaigning.

Here are some honors for the highlights and lowlifes of the late, great campaign.

The Alf Landon-Literary Digest Award

Named for the poll that predicted the Republican nominee would beat Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, it goes to the worst polling of the campaign. While some of the presidential exit polling is a good contender, this honor goes to SurveyUSA, which was doing work for KHQ and KING-TV. A day before the election, it predicted Rossi would win by 6 percent. While it was evident to anyone covering the campaign that the former GOP legislator was gaining ground, that kind of a spread was hard for anyone except the state GOP leadership to swallow. One possible explanation: They got the decimal point wrong, and meant to say he would win by .06 percent.

The Harvey Trophy

Named for the invisible rabbit in a movie of the same name, goes to an animal that (thankfully) never rematerialized, the Weasel King. This vintage 2000 costumed rodent that shadowed George Nethercutt for breaking a term limits pledge, promised – or maybe more accurately, threatened – to call himself a rat and stalk Nethercutt’s 2004 opponent, Patty Murray. He didn’t, and for that, we are all extremely grateful.

The Silver Slug

Given each year for the slimiest campaign tactic, goes to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its phony front group, Voters Education Committee, for a poorly disguised attempt to influence the Democratic attorney general primary. Claiming to be an independent expenditure committee under federal law, the chamber tried to skirt state law and mask its $1.5 million attack on Deborah Senn until after the primary by setting up the committee. When faced with court action and state sanction, the committee coughed up its sugar daddy just two days before the primary – probably just in time to tip Senn’s race with Mark Sidran her way. Along with its legal problems, the national group managed to seriously hack off state and local affiliates.

Palme d’Or: Best Commercial

For the best TV spot that not very many people saw, it goes to the Nethercutt campaign for “Easy,” which featured outtakes of the candidate and his wife, Mary Beth, taping another commercial. The light-hearted 30-second spot features the congressman flubbing his lines, and his wife telling him he was too stiff and asking the producers to “tell him to stop telling me how to say it.” It didn’t debut until the final weekend of the campaign, and generally got lost in the final flood of commercials. It was one of the few ads from any campaign that didn’t merit “Ad Watch” scrutiny from The Spokesman-Review’s overworked ad umpire, Megan Cooley.

Bomb d’Or: Worst Supporting Actor

Given to the star of two television commercials that all of Washington, and much of the rest of the country, saw: Osama bin Laden. The terrorist leader showed up first in a Nethercutt commercial that featured a snippet of Patty Murray’s 2002 comments to high school students about why bin Laden might be popular in other countries. When Murray counterattacked with a “shame on you” commercial, he showed up again. Even with his late campaign video message to voters, Osama spent more time on Washington TV than on Al Jazeera this fall.

Jubilation T Cornpone Award

Named for a character in the L’il Abner comic strip famous for losing battles, goes to Democrats trying to help U.S. House candidate Don Barbieri by accusing Cathy McMorris of supporting a national sales tax. That could have been a good issue, except for two things: It was based on fairly light evidence, a survey that she answered for the National Taxpayers Union (hardly a household name); it was a thin echo of the commercials the GOP had used against Barbieri for a month, beating him with the raise-taxes stick.

Howard Cosell Math Scholarship

Given to the campaign most in need of remedial math, goes to the McMorris campaign, which described the above commercial as “110 percent wrong.” That’s an overworked cliché for sportscasters talking about athletes; it’s just plain stupid when trying to discuss campaign fact and fiction.