McGavick’s own blog bites him twice in a week
GOP Senate candidate Mike McGavick may have learned two lessons about the downside of blogging last week.
A week after he confessed in his online journal to a 1993 drunken driving arrest as one of the two “great failures” in his personal life – an incident no journalist apparently had caught wind of, and for which McGavick’s candor drew praise from several pundits – Jerry Cornfield of the Everett Herald dug up the actual arrest report from Rockville, Md.
The officer’s account was a bit harsher than McGavick’s.
Where McGavick had written he “cut a yellow light too close” and said in a later interview it was yellow when he entered the intersection but turned red while he was in it, the arresting officer said he “drove through a steady red signal.” When McGavick rolled down the window, the officer wrote he detected “a strong odor of alcoholic beverage” in the car. When asked how much he’d had to drink, McGavick reportedly replied “Oh, I don’t know. Two, maybe three beers.”
He failed the field sobriety tests and, when taken to the police station, fell asleep during processing. His blood alcohol content was recorded as .17, the number which McGavick recalled in the interview. But that was about 90 minutes after he’d been stopped.
To have a BAC of .17, various calculators say he’d have to drink the equivalent of 16 beers over eight hours. One could get there with fewer drinks over a shorter time span, but McGavick has said he and his future wife had been celebrating at multiple locations that evening.
Lesson two came from a later posting that decried the partisan nature of Congress, which is one of McGavick’s ongoing themes. This particular entry targeted the delay of a bill to open up government records, because an unknown senator had put “a secret hold” on the legislation.
This was a bit of a hot topic in punditry circles, and the bloggers began ferreting out the source of this secret. Turned out to be Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a political ally of McGavick and a big-time critic of his opponent, incumbent Maria Cantwell.
The Democrats, not surprisingly, were gleeful in their response.
It could’ve occurred this way
Some readers may have noticed a five-paragraph story last Wednesday about a carjacking in Liberty Lake, involving a suspect with the same last name as county commission candidate Bonnie Mager.
Worse yet, the suspect’s first name is the same as Mager’s son, which may have had some voters wondering if there was a familial connection.
There isn’t, as the newspaper noted on Friday. Of course, not everyone who saw the carjacking story saw the clarification, and even those who did might be wondering why the original story didn’t contain that disclaimer. Is there some connection to the fact that the newspaper endorsed Mager opponent Barb Chamberlain, perhaps?
Two possibilities come to mind, and you can choose which is the most plausible.
One is that the newspaper was trying to deliver a one-two punch to Mager, by first endorsing her primary opponent Barb Chamberlain on Sunday and then running this story, which purposely omitted that information, and published it on the front of the regional news section the day the ballots began hitting the mail. As part of this plot, agents for The Spokesman-Review scoured Spokane’s list of ne’er-do-wells for someone with the same name as Mager’s son. A week before the endorsement, he was hypnotized and convinced to carjack an SUV a few days before the endorsement, then ditch the vehicle and lie low until the following Tuesday – two days after the endorsement was published. At that point, the newspaper ratted him out so he could be arrested on a probation violation and cop to the carjacking at the moment most perfect to frighten little old ladies out of voting for someone.
The other is that the editorial endorsements and the news coverage are separate. The reporter who wrote the story didn’t make a connection on the name, and editors who may have noticed it would have concluded such information wasn’t necessary because the newspaper generally spends its time telling readers who a person is, rather than who a person is not.
Partisans are free to believe either one, of course. But to be absolutely clear, we’ll repeat that the Justin Mager allegedly involved in a Liberty Lake carjacking is not in any way related to Bonnie Mager.
Catch the candidates
Today and Monday: Candidates for many offices at booths connected with Pig Out in the Park. All day, along the walkway north of the Clocktower Meadow on the way to the Expo Pavilion.
Tuesday: Opponents of I-920, the repeal of the estate tax, at a press conference. 3:30 p.m., WSU-Spokane, 412 E. Spokane Falls Blvd.
Wednesday: Congressional candidate Peter Goldmark at an agricultural forum. 6:30 p.m., Wren Pierson Community Center, 615 Fourth St., Cheney.