veiled4allah: a gubernatorial endorsement

The last time I tried to post about local politics, I got nearly 30 off-topic comments having more to do with the religion I practice or the way I choose to practice it (entry on Heidi Behrens-Benedict). While I appreciate hearing from my readers, I do ask that that the comments be on-topic. If you want a place where you can post about anything that crosses your mind, Blogger offers blogging services for free.

Anyway, I've added a new endorsement link to the right sidebar, for Phil Talmadge, a Democratic candidate for governor here in Washington.

Washington's current governor is Gary Locke, who is much disliked for being too passive and not trying to work to get things done with the Legislature. Locke decided last summer not to run for re-election and most Democrats are just as glad.

Talmadge was a state senator for a long time, then served on the Washington Supreme Court (he is an attorney). He started his campaign back in 2002 after completing his term on the court. At that time, he was the only challenger, since no other Democrats wanted to run against the incumbent. However, after Locke decided to retire, two other candidates joined the race. Christine Gregoire is the Attorney General and the front-runner. She has the backing of much of the Democratic establishment, the biggest labor unions, and other key groups. Ron Sims is the King County Executive (Seattle is located in King County). If elected, he would be our first African-American governor. Unfortunately for Sims, his tenure as county executive has associated him in many peoples' minds with several major boondoggle projects that they don't want to repeat.

Talmadge bears more than a few similarities to Howard Dean in terms of his blunt campaign style and appeals to progressives. From what I've seen, he has a better claim from his record to be a progressive than Dean does. Currently, he's trailing in the polls (both he and Sims are far behind Gregoire).

I don't have any major objection to either Gregoire or Sims but Talmadge is saying things I think need to be said. You know I'm a sucker for that

For the moment, the governorship seems to be fairly safely Democrat, while Heidi is struggling to take back a Congressional seat long held by Republicans. For this reason, I expect that more of my attention and perhaps my efforts will go towards helping her campaign than Talmadge's.