During the last legislative session, state house Speaker Frank Chopp
infuriated his fellow Democrats when he killed legislation that would
have allowed homeowners to sue contractors for shoddy work. At the
time, house Democrats accused their own leader of carrying water for
the powerful Building Industry Association of Washington, which
also worked last session against global-warming legislation and fought
to ensure that 90 percent of toll revenues would have to be spent on
roads.
So happy was the BIAW with Chopp’s work on its behalf, it awarded
him special recognition as one of 25 “legislators protecting the
housing industry”—a rarefied group that includes just seven
Democrats, and only one, Chopp, from Seattle. Meanwhile, the
organization’s PAC has donated repeatedly to Chopp’s campaign, and its
head lobbyist, Tom McCabe, has said he’d like to see the Speaker run
for governor.
But even as the BIAW has supported Chopp, the group has done
everything in its power to get his fellow Democrats booted from
office. In 2004, the BIAW threw its financial weight behind
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, spending nearly $1
million to support his (almost successful) bid against
now-
governor Christine Gregoire.
And they’re at it again. Last week, the group rolled out a $150,000
ad campaign against the governor, with spots that blame Gregoire for
raising taxes, making congestion worse, and “threatening our way of
life.” The BIAW has nearly maxed out in direct contributions to
Rossi’s campaign; and if Rossi’s last run is any indication, it’s
prepared to spend hundreds of thousands more in independent
expenditures to take Gregoire down.
There’s a lot at stake in this election. A Rossi victory would mean
the first Republican in the governor’s mansion in more than 30
years—right at the time when the state most needs a strong
Democratic administration to take action on transportation and
climate change. Rossi, who has hedged repeatedly on climate change,
would move the state backward on nearly every front, but particularly
transportation, which he intends to address by paving the state from here to Yakima.
To be clear: The BIAW is no mainstream Republican organization. It’s
a collection of far-right loose cannons that has compared
environmentalists to Hitler; attributed global-warming and
growth-management legislation to “radical environmentalists”; and
referred to Gregoire herself as a “heartless, power-hungry she-wolf
who would eat her own young to get ahead.” Chopp’s 43rd District,
in contrast, is one of the most liberal in Washington.
So why, at a time when the BIAW’s opposition could sink the state’s
most powerful Democrat, is the state’s second-most-powerful Democrat
doing the organization’s bidding?
And do his constituents know who he’s been hanging out with?
