Republican Rob McKenna kicked off his 2012 gubernatorial campaign last week by kicking The Stranger out of his press conference. Specifically, he kicked me out.
“I don’t think David Goldstein qualifies as a journalist,” a flustered McKenna explained to my fellow Stranger reporter Eli Sanders two days later, when they crossed paths in the hallway at KUOW. “He’s a hack. He’s a partisan hack. He’s just there to parrot points from the other side.”
In his defense, The Stranger will probably never get behind an anti-gay, anti–reproductive rights, anti-worker teabagger like McKenna. But he’s trying to label someone else as a partisan hack—as a derogatory term? That’s an awfully ironic accusation coming from one of the most obviously partisan political hacks in the state (one who is attempting to cast himself as a moderate).
I’m not sure where McKenna gets his definition of “journalist” (certainly not from the reporter shield law he allegedly authored, which covers “any person” in the employ of a company “in the regular business of news gathering and disseminating news”). But look up “political hack” in the dictionary (“a person who is part of the political party apparatus, but whose intentions are more aligned with victory than personal conviction”), and McKenna’s campaign kickoff speech provides a perfect example.
Speaking at Bellevue’s Sammamish High School before an invited audience whose ethnic diversity was nearly doubled by the presence of KIRO TV’s Essex Porter,
McKenna spent the evening farting rainbows and unicorns in a speech that focused mainly on solving our state’s budget woes through the powerful magic that is “reform.”
McKenna correctly diagnosed the greatest threat to our state’s long-term economic health—our dramatic underinvestment in K–12 and higher education—before prescribing the usual Tea Party panacea: fuck state workers. Pandering to the mainstream, McKenna promised to spend billions more on education, the one program virtually everyone supports, but without raising taxes, the one consequence of state spending nearly everyone hates. All that is necessary to make such magical thinking a reality is some lazy math and an equally lazy audience.
McKenna starts by cherry-picking data from before the Great Recession, and before two straight all-cuts budgets forced several rounds of state worker pay cuts, givebacks, layoffs, and forced furloughs.
“I looked at one 10-year period, 1998 to 2008,” McKenna told the credulous crowd of old white people. “And what I discovered is that, in that 10-year period, every single year, the state increased the amount it spent per employee by 5 percent. Every year, for 10 years.” It may sound shocking, but it’s not surprising considering that health care costs skyrocketed during this period. Yet McKenna breaks out employment benefits, as if they were a separate expense: “In that same 10-year period, the state increased the amount it spent on state worker benefits by 9 percent a year, every single year for 10 years.” (The audience groans under the mistaken impression that these costs were compounded, rather than the latter being the largest component of the first.)
And then McKenna gets really clever: “And at the same time, in that same 10-year period, they increased the number of state employees by 13 percent.”
The audience gasps again under the mistaken impression that this, too, is per year. But this 13 percent increase is spread out over 11 years (1998 to 2008). And it’s less than the 15 percent increase in state population over the same period. I might’ve asked McKenna a follow-up question, giving him the chance to defend his numbers… had I been allowed into the press conference.
McKenna didn’t stop there with his partisan hackery, going on to raise the specter of ballooning health care costs for state workers, which is both doubly redundant (health insurance is the largest component of the previously redundant benefits) and ironic, considering that McKenna launched his campaign on the same day oral arguments began in the federal lawsuit he joined to kill last year’s historic health care reform act and the billions of dollars it would save our state.
It’s all classic McKenna.
He’s the kind of politician who can declare to reporters that it is “inconceivable” that his lawsuit could bring down the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) at the same time his own legal filings asked the court to “declare the entire ACA unconstitutional.” He’s the kind of politician who can blame our state budget woes on the rising cost of government workers at the same time his office paid more bonus money to employees than any other state agency, almost $600,000 in 2009 alone. He’s the kind of politician who claims he sup ports gay rights but defends DOMA and opposes same-sex marriage, and who insists he’s pro-choice while endorsing parental notification and fighting health care reform that would guarantee access to family planning. He’s the kind of politician who had no problem talking to me live on-air back when I had a radio show and could offer him the broad reach of 710 KIRO, but who kicks me out of a press conference on grounds that I don’t “qualif[y] as a journalist,” now that I write for The Stranger and its overwhelmingly urban, progressive audience.
You know, a partisan hack. 
As much as I may disagree with McKenna’s political ideology, he’s definitely correct in calling you out as a partisan hack. In what fevered delusion could you ever be considered a journalist?
I’ve watched with disappointment as The Stranger has devolved into little more than self-congratulatory name calling. I’ve yet to see journalism of any kind appear under your by-line. Your article in last week’s paper regarding vaccinations is a perfect example. Did you add a single piece of information or insight to the debate? Your entire article could have been written by a 5th grader using wikipedia. It was complete garbage. You’re lucky that Seattle Weekly didn’t publish their article on the topic until this week – because Nina Shapiro’s work makes yours look like the product of a brain injury victim. You should be embarrassed.
But instead of embarrassment, you choose to attack those that recognize your failings. Par for the course of late…
And it’s a shame because at one time The Stranger was actually a legitimate voice (and even a leader) for both urbanism and progressive politics. Now you are becoming little more than joke to an ever increasing number of discerning readers.
What does Pretty Boy Rob hope to accomplish by keeping people out of his press conference, avoiding embarrassing questions maybe? But those questions will get asked and he needs to come up with some kind of answers.
Any body from the Freedom Socialist Party running?The Party for Socialism and Liberation?Are YOU planning to run for governer?Why not?The Dems are the left-wing of the Rethuglicons.
Funny that the word ‘hack’ is also associated with coughing up big gobs of goop, and wildly ‘hacking away’ at something like with a hatchet hacking at tree limbs. Hack: a person who is part of a political party apparatus whose intentions are more aligned with victory than personal conviction… Sounds like the United States of Hackerica!
He scares you, I love it!
Personally, I find it telling that McKenna gave his speech at one of the most diverse high schools in Bellevue and could only get elderly white folks to attend.
My daughter just graduated from there, and I suspect Rob would be terrified by a representative audience of Seniors, especially those that are already suffering from present cuts in general and to education in particular, come this fall.
Playing off state workers, and I suspect, also the unemployed who still receive state benefits versus education is bad governance. And Rob knows that.
But then, it’s all about Rob, not the citizens of Washington state.
Thanks for fleshing out the numbers. Nothing is as frustrating as hearing politicians spout numbers to the Oh’s and Ah’s of an audience ready to swallow it all down. It seems that’s all we’re exposed to – numbers picked arbitrarily to “illustrate” a point. More important than a general message should be actual facts with citation, and yet that doesn’t ever seem to be presented.
And Brett is welcome to his opinion of your writing, but you know what they say about opinions. My feeling is that you gave a solid defense behind your frustration with the candidate.
Brett seems right on.
A journalistic hack brings disrepute on the media source, whether it’s FOX, MSNBC, or The Stranger.
We’re just asking for good journalism … let us make our own judgements. And if you want to follow this perspective for your writing, call it what it is and put it on the editorial page.
George
Richmond Beach, WA
Brent is accurate in describing the situation.
No news organization is well served by ‘hack’ journalism – whether it comes from FOX, MSNBC or The Stranger.
How about reporting on a subject and letting the readers make up their own minds?
If you want to interject your opinion, there’s a proper place – the editorial section.
My definition of a hack … a reporter who can’t discern the difference between a news article and an editorial.
Come on Stranger, you can do better…..
George
Richmond Beach
@9: “How about reporting on a subject and letting the readers make up their own minds?”
All we have in the media these days is false equivalencies and even-handedness to the point where it becomes a series of lies so the Republicans can play catch-up and the Democrats can court “independents”.
This is not news, you’re are not a reporter, you don’t work for a journalistic publication. You’re a partisan hack who writes for a counter culture mag. Own it, love it, get it right. Just don’t cry when you’re not treated like Tom fucking Browkaw.
Eli Sanders ranted (again) on KUOW about Mckenna and the gay marriage thing and it wasn’t until a caller called him on it that he began backpedaling and saying there were other things to dislike about Mckenna.
@9 How about ignoring Goldy’s reporting on the correct context of Rob’s numbers so you can defend your political hack with some sort of ad hominem attack.
You can lead a conservative to facts, but you can’t make them read.