In this week’s fishwrap, I write about state senator Adam Kline, who represents the 37th District. Before I go on, let me say this: I love Adam Kline. Before I was writing here, I was an advocate for drug-policy reform and Kline was one of the few members of the legislature bold enough to stand for controversial bills, like overdose prevention, needle exchange, and sentencing reform. He’s also my state senator. So it was a surprise when I spoke to about 20 progressive Democrats who support Kline’s ambitions—who demanded their comments remain anonymous—but provided a universally poor assessment of his efficacy.
“He is considered a very ineffective legislator,” says one former legislator who watches state politics closely. Kline’s notoriously bad temper has alienated fellow Democrats and renders him incapable of striking deals with conservatives around the state, the former legislator says. […]
According to current legislators and nonprofit leaders who have worked with Kline on legislation, his committee meetings routinely disintegrate into chaos, with senators talking and sometimes yelling over one another. Routinely, they say, Kline holds hearings on bills without first notifying stakeholders.
The only exception—people who said Kline was the man—came from a lobbyist who said he recently waited for election returns to come in while hanging out at Kline’s house (which undermines the endorsement a bit) and a person who relies on Kline to secure funding for their nonprofit (also kicking the cred).
But people are upset in comments and I’ve received a few notes chastising me for a hatchet job on a great legislator. They say Kline’s done great things in Olympia. In specific, he’s been a fabulous advocate for underdog liberal causes. And I get that. However, being a legislator requires more than being a good advocate—a good legislator must work a bill, involve stakeholders, build gravitas, and turn that advocacy into laws. I didn’t set out to write a damning piece; only a piece that examined his impacts in the legislature.
I asked Kline to cite some of his recent accomplishments. “Oh, boy. You’re catching me kind of flat-footed here,” he said.
This isn’t a piece I wanted to write, but it’s a piece I think people need to read.
Dom is a bad, bad man. Please don’t read his blog.
Parallel case: Patty Murray was voted one of the dumbest Congressmembers, early in the W. era. Dumb or not, and I can’t tell from here, I think many of the people who said that about her have since been indicted.
Dom – I worked at the Legislature for a session, and have only watched local politics for a couple of years, and even I can tell that you’re absolutely right: Adam Kline is a pretty lousy advocate for his own ideas.
But your sources for this story just aren’t there. You have almost no one on the record for entirely understandable reasons. No democrat involved in local politics has anything to gain from dissing Adam Kline. You don’t even a democrat damning him with on the record faint praise. Presumably one of his seatmates (or more likely an aide) told you that s/he fails doesn’t return Kline’s calls–couldn’t you have gotten him/her to go on the record with a weak endorsement?
You might as well have quoted Lit “I am my own worst enemy/every now and then I kick the living shit out of me” and then said they were really talking about Kline.
Still, it’s sweet to have a Senator that lives by the lake and describes jet skis as “seemingly jet-powered little missiles whose only apparent purpose is to risk death and dismemberment for boaters and swimmers, for the amusement of spoiled drunk teenagers.”
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/da…
I agree with you Dom. I have worked down during the last two session, and I have heard the buzz from the legislators. I appreciate the progressive issues he brings forward, but since he is not respected, nothing gets passed. It is time for a new Senator.
I am a constituent and I appreciate that Kline is willing to not only thoughtfully answers my calls and e-mails but also that he takes on Tim Eyman. He tells it the way it is, we are in the budget mess partly because we are not paying attention to the impacts of Eyman-type initiatives. Why is no one else making that point? Besides it is time to come together to take on a difficult budget not split hairs.
Whatever Kline’s faults, I am glad postage stamps don’t take him by surprise.
I met and hung out with Adam Kline when he was first running for office. It became clear to me early on that he was scattered and ineffective. His recent mailer made me sick to my stomach in that he advocated shorter sentences as a way to balance the budget and then, under that heading, really didn’t advocate shortening sentences….
When I decided to take him of my Christmas Card list I realized that I hadn’t liked him long enough to put him on it.
The question is why so few if any people would go on record airing their complaints. If he’s ineffectual, what do they care if they alienate him? There’s something else going on here. I think you were played by your sources, whose reasons for hating on Kline need to be submitted to deeper scrutiny.
Not totally Trevor, Kline does have a ferocious temper and carries a grudge for a long time. If you wanted him on your side for other issues, you certainly wouldn’t want to go on record.
I truly appreciate some of what he’s done and also really wish he wasn’t the person behind a couple of my pet issues. They’re dead the second he gets behind them.
His endorsement of Republican Dan Satterburg in the last King County Prosecutor race is just one of the many things Kline has done to sour this 37th Dist Democrat on him.
Someone who can’t pinch a stamp from the Stranger office for his ballot is giving advice on anything?
Domenic, you are rapidly going all in – all in, a la the Stranger, full of self important shit on every topic. All expert and full of opinion – on everything. Is it a Diva Mega Complex?
I love Adam. He is my 37th Dist. Senator, and being prickly is of course getting him back stabs from the pulpy bland go along with anything drunks and low IQ masses. Olympia and DC have about the same rating for getting things done, and decision making.
Do some lobbying, you will find Adam is a breath of fresh air. He is a certified lefty, articuate, fearless and so pro gay he squeaks.
No Republican dolts left to kick around? Or, the beginning of the Stranger plan to get a friend elected? Tired of kicking Chopp and Jim Mc Dermott?
By the way, in a gun battle, you would want Adam on your right with the double barrel. And after you cleaned up the town, he would be the perfect drinking buddy at the whore house/cafe/bar.
Adam Kline is probably the best legal mind in the legislature. It’s not for nothing that he chairs Judiciary. Losing him would be a great loss because there are very few attorneys in the legislature. Plus, he is the only legislator to really confront Tim Eyman. All the others are afraid of Eyman or (still!) underestimate him. After 9/11 he killed a state “patriot act” proposed by Gov. Locke and supported by most. It was as bad as the federal bill! He stopped it despite enormous pressure from his own party. With a lot of work he brought together and led a coalition of “black helicopter” Republicans and a few liberals to kill the bill. That was a historic moment. I was down in Olympia and saw it happen. The people who don’t support him are probably the spineless Dems and Republicans who are irritated because Kline constantly tears apart their arguments with ease.
He’s ineffective because no one can stand him, and he says and does so many stupid and offensive things. He and Jim McDermott are cut from the exact same bolt of cloth. They sound great in a campaign brochure, and they don’t have a single lasting accomplishment.
Dominic, you don’t get off that easy. Your attempt to justify your misguided attack of Adam Kline as some kind of journalism just doesn’t wash. Look at the posts on the Stranger website by the people to whom you are responding. They are talking about his effectiveness, as well as his advocacy. They mention the tougher laws he has gotten passed by his colleagues, not just what he stands up for. Why don’t you address these comments directly? You can’t just blithely chat your way past this by repeating apparently unverified claims of unnamed sources, and coming up with a new cute and clever rhyming title (The Decline of Adam Kline).
Read the list: He fought Governor Locke and Attorney General Gregoire on terrorism and wiretapping in 2002, and won big. King County is now Martin Luther King County, which means something to a lot of people here, because Adam fought eight years for that against legislators who argued that we “can’t re-write history.” He fought off Republican moves to gut the Growth Management Act. He succeeded in advancing the rights of the developmentally disabled in any number of ways, including changing the anti-discrimination law in the face of a Supreme Court decision, and in one year. And year in, year out, he resisted the Tough on Crime crowd with damn little support from his caucus leadership.
And there are lots more real successes. What defines Kline is avoiding the easily-passed bills that look good, going after the hard stuff that really matters, and those bills don’t get passed in one year. Reforming Three Strikes? Changing sentencing downward? Fighting developers to put some spine in the Growth Management Act? These aren’t the quickie “fixes” that so many politicos love, and they won’t be passed in one session by any sponsor.
So let me ask you some questions:
(1) How often in your reporting for the Stranger have you ever set foot in the Capitol Building?
(2) Have you ever witnessed Kline chairing the hearings of the Judiciary Committee that you refer to as “chaotic”? Even on TVW? Did you do any research to verify the “facts” that your anonymous sources fed you? You wrote, “Routinely, they say, Kline holds hearings on bills without first notifying stakeholders.” I’ve been to lots of Judiciary hearings, and to hearings of other committees. Kline’s hearings almost always include stakeholders testifying on all sides of an issue. As you may not know, committees are required to give public notice of hearings in advance, and I’d be willing to bet that Kline does as good or better than other committee chairs in notifying stakeholders.
(3) You refer to a source, “a former legislator who watches state politics closely.” As has been reported in several news venues, a couple of people have had it in for Kline for over a year now, since he endorsed Dan Satterberg for prosecutor. I’m hazarding a guess that your anonymous source is one of these people. If so, did you ask this “former legislator” his/her motive in getting you to write this hatchet-job? Did you give Kline a chance to say what this person might have against him? Why he endorsed Satterberg?
(4) Do you feel used?
(5) Does it occur to you that you may be trying to advance your career by attempting to trash a good legislator’s reputation?
One comment on the website got it right: “The Stranger’s genre of baseless and gratuitous ‘feel-good’ trashing of public officials like Obama, Licata, and Ron Sims.” Score one more. I expected better work from you, Dominic.
@14: The most damning source Dom interviewed did put his name on record, Adam Kline, and he seems to agree with everyone else about his lackluster performance.
On the other hand, Kline is a perfect representative for the large numbers of lefties who mistakenly believe that their idealism is by itself an effective political strategy.
@9: You can’t have it both ways. Either he is ineffective or his grudge matters.
Basically I think most of his critics– on this blog and in Dominic’s piece– are cowards. They are saying that he is ineffective, but seem to have had POLICY disagreements with him. Of course we aren’t told what those disagreements are. Anonymous criticism reduces political disagreements to character assassination through blog posts and off the record interviews. Dominic’s piece was basically a string of “I, Anonymous” allegations that is being mistakenly confused with journalism. I’m not a big Kline supporter. But I think the Stranger needs to improve its standards if it wants these allegations taken seriously, if it wants to be anything more than a gossip sheet.
ratcityreprobate (@10), your repeated mention of Kline’s endorsement of Satterberg made me wonder if I was right when I hazarded a guess that the anonymous “former legislator who watches state politics closely” who may have prompted Dominic’s article is someone who is mightily pissed at Kline for this endorsement. A quick Internet search reminds me that Dwight Pelz (Kline’s predecessor in that Senate seat) was one of the people who publicly criticized Kline for endorsing Dan Satterberg. So maybe Pelz is Dominic’s anonymous “former legislator?”
Here’s a little gossip: I heard last year that Pelz tried to get the Democrats to boo Kline at the Democrats’ Christmas Party that year when Kline endorsed Satterberg. (They cheered instead.)
If Pelz is your anonymous source, Dominic, I don’t quite get why the Chair of the WA Dem Party would anonymously target a legislator from his own party, but then I’m no expert on party politics. So how about it, Dominic. Was it Pelz? I respect that you have the right to not reveal your sources (and, coincidently, this right is protected in part because of the Reporter Shield law that Kline got passed in the Senate a few years ago), but will you DENY that Pelz is your anonymous source? Did he encourage you to write this story? And whoever it was, did you ask his/her motives? Did your source tell you who might have something negative to say? Are those the people you talked to?
Dominic, there are lots of people in this thread, including one who describes himself as no fan of Kline’s, who don’t like the way you are targeting Kline, possibly for Dwight Pelz’ or someone else’s political revenge. Several folks, including Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, have flat out stated that the statements you attribute to your unnamed sources are false. And I gather that folks responding here don’t like your smarmy self-justification either.
In my personal view, your approach doesn’t qualify as journalism, but when you put stuff out there to the kind of circulation you have, there is a certain responsibility that goes with that. Journalists have some ethics. Your article, which seems to mainly be a string of unverified allegations by unnamed sources, has the potential of damaging the reputation of a good man and an effective legislator. We’re left with the impression that this was a very cheap hit-piece. So do your job and answer all the questions, Dominic.
I take issue with your claim that Sen. Kline is ineffective. Kline has been a strong and loyal ally for the women of Washington. The pro-choice community has always been able to depend on him to advocate for the right to choose, funding for family planning care, and comprehensive sex education during his tenure in Olympia. He has played an important role in keeping Washington’s laws pro-choice and in promoting reproductive health and freedom. For the women and girls of this state, that is far from insignificant.
Furthermore, when discussing bills passed by the state legislature, it is important to distinguish between quantity and quality. Adam Kline has worked on legislation that has a direct and beneficial impact on the people of Washington, including the criminal justice legislation that you mention in your article. It is my hope that Sen. Kline’s colleagues in Olympia will take up these issues during the 2009 session.
Well, Dominic, the many Slog posts and comments after your original article about Kline have provided you with plenty of questions to answer and critiques to address. The only thing missing is your response. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.