Starting Fires

Forget the yard signs. Forget the
candidate forums. The real campaign season begins when political
interest groups start spending big money to give their own take on
things. In the races for Seattle City Council, that started the first
week of August, when the first $20,000 worth of independent
expenditures were announced on behalf of two candidates: Jessie Israel
and Sally Bagshaw.

Sometimes independent expenditures—payments made on behalf of
a candidate by any group other than the campaign itself without any
coordination between the two parties—are incredibly helpful.
Sometimes they are conveniently dirty. And sometimes they can become a
top story within the campaign itself, like when the Building Industry
Association of Washington (BIAW) relentlessly attacked Governor Chris
Gregoire in last year’s gubernatorial race. Because of their potential
for making a strong impact, the law requires that these expenditures be
reported by the end of the next business day during the three weeks
immediately prior to an election.

First to the line this year is the Seattle Fire Fighters Union,
whose PAC spent $10,000 on a mail piece supporting City Council
Position 6 candidate Israel last week. It immediately followed that up
by splitting the cost with the Seattle Police Officers Guild for a
$10,000 mailer backing Position 4 candidate Bagshaw under the aegis of
a group called Secure Seattle.

While Bagshaw is running in a crowded race to fill the open seat
that Jan Drago is vacating to run for mayor, Israel is challenging
three-term incumbent Nick Licata—an incumbent the firefighters
are actively campaigning against with the mail piece. That gives
Israel—who as a challenger desperately craves name recognition
and institutional support—a real shot in the arm. And it raises
the question: Are the firefighters doing this because they really like
Jessie Israel or because they really don’t like Nick Licata?

“It’s mostly because we support Jessie,” Seattle Fire Fighters Union
president Kenny Stuart told The Stranger. “But obviously if we
liked Nick more, we wouldn’t be spending money on this.” Stuart added
that although Licata has done some good things for the firefighters,
like signing on to the latest contract, the incumbent has not been
“proactive” enough—a pretty vague answer, especially when Licata
has plenty to defend himself with when it comes to supporting the
firefighters, like helping to push for a 2003 fire levy and the new
Queen Anne station.

The firefighters union and the police guild are certainly willing to
be proactive in flexing their political muscle. Last year, the union
spent more than $10,000 to help elect state representative Reuven
Carlyle (D-Seattle), while the guild backed Dino Rossi and infamously
forcibly removed a Democratic cameraman from a Rossi event.

Plus, the union isn’t afraid to use blunt objects to achieve its
means. Its consultants, Laurus Associates, are helmed by two staunch
Republicans with questionable pasts. One, Mike Sheridan, is a longtime
GOP staffer who served as political director for the state Republican
Party during the Bush/Rossi era of 2004. The other, Bruce Boram, is a
former Dave Reichert flack who resigned from Reichert’s 2004 campaign
after his consulting firm tried to hide the contributors who paid for a
million dollar television ad that smeared Democratic attorney general
candidate Deborah Senn and helped to pave the way for Rob McKenna’s
first statewide victory.

The kind of mercenary consultants that any Seattle candidate with a
semblance of a soul would avoid are fair game for third parties, who
are ultimately just looking out for their own interests. Asked about
the firefighters’ relationship with known political street fighters
like Sheridan and Boram, union president Stuart said, “We’re
firefighters. We’re not pro lobbyists or politicians. We went out and
talked to all of the consultants in the Seattle area. And in the end,
Laurus Associates fit the bill.”

In other words, the fight is on.