- Taking a hit for carpetbagging, Seattle style.
For about a week now, we've been hearing persistent whispers about the voting record of Mike Heavey, one of the candidates in the big brawl over who's going to be the next state representative from West Seattle's 34th District. The whispers say all kinds of interesting things, but the most common whisper is this: Heavey is a carpetbagger (Seattle edition) who only moved to West Seattle recently from Madison Valley, just in time to run for office.
The evidence: Heavey's voter registration file.
Well, it's true. According to King County Elections, Heavey was registered to vote at an address in the 43rd District's Madison Valley until just last fall. That's when—on Aug. 31, 2009—Heavey requested that King County Elections switch his voter registration to an address in West Seattle's 34th District.
As confirmed by David Ammons, spokesman for Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, Heavey could not have mounted his current run for 34th District state representative unless he was able to show that he was registered to vote in the 34th District.
In fact, Heavey appears to have been registered to vote at that Madison Valley address ever since he came of voting age and first registered in December of 1997. How does he square that with his campaign trail claim that he was "raised" in West Seattle?
"After my parents divorced," Heavey told me via e-mail, "I was split between living with my mom in Madison Valley and living with my dad in West Seattle." As a result, he first registered to vote in Madison Valley. Then, more recently, in West Seattle, home of his father—who happens to have been a former state representative from the 34th District. "The only places I have ever lived in Seattle are in the 43rd and 34th," Heavey continued.
- Marcee Stone: Not worried.
Heavey didn't directly address the carpetbagger criticism, and one of his major challengers, Marcee Stone—who has been registered to vote in the 34th for decades—said she's not at all concerned. “I’m not bothered by that," Stone said of Heavey's registration address switch. "I know his family has long lived there, so no, I’m not concerned about it.”
Heavey's other major challenger, Joe Fitzgibbon, was a little more calculated in his response. "I first got to know Mike as volunteers on the Dow [Constantine] campaign last year and he lived in Madison Valley at the time," Fitzgibbon told me via Facebook chat. "I know he moved to West Seattle late last year, and of course he has a long family history in West Seattle. But I'm proud of the fact that I've been working on behalf of my community, both as a legislative assistant and as a Burien Planning Commissioner, for a few years now. I grew up in Burien, I own a home in Burien, and am pretty invested in the community. I didn't move here just to run for office."
- Joe Fitzgibbon: Twisting the knife with a smile.
(For the record, King County Elections confirms that Fitzgibbon has been registered to vote in the 34th ever since he came of voting age in 2004.)
Like Fitzgibbon, Heavey also connected his relocation with his work last year on West Seattle native Dow Constantine's campaign for county executive. "West Seattle was always the place I wanted to be long term," Heavey said. "It was where I was raised and where I want to raise my family. Working for Dow was a great opportunity to reconnect with my family’s tradition of public service and to move back to the district I consider my home."
We'll find out on Aug. 17 whether the voters of the 34th care who's been registered to vote in the district the longest. But, while we had the voter files open, we checked on one more thing people might want to know about Heavey, Fitzgibbon, and Stone: How often have they actually voted?
Stone, it turns out, has the best record of the bunch—a perfect voting record, in fact.
Fitzgibbon missed three elections: the September 2004 primary, the February 2008 presidential primary and special election, and the August 2008 primary.
With Heavey, it's easier to count the elections he did vote in: The February 1998 special election, the November 2006 general election, the August 2008 primary, the November 2008 primary, the November 2008 general, the Aug 2009 primary, the November 2009 general, and the Feb 2010 special election. The rest he missed—mostly, Heavey said, because he was attending college in Alabama for eight years, from 1998 to 2006. Heavey told me he registered to vote in Alabama while he was in school. And in case you're wondering: Under Washington law, it's not illegal to be registered to vote in another state as long as you don't vote in both states at once.
(Close readers may ask why it took Heavey eight years to finish college. He explains the eight years he spent at two different Alabama colleges, Spring Hill College and the University of South Alabama, this way: "It did take me a while to complete my degree. Although I earned a scholarship my first year, I had to pay my own tuition the remaining time and worked waiting tables and bartending while I put myself through school. This took some time as any person who paid their own way can likely attest. I also changed degrees and schools during that time which also meant I lost some credits in the transfer.")
