King County Democrats picnic

Interesting. I guess I thought this was going to be a regular picnic, but instead, this was clearly an important campaign stop. Nearly every candidate for office in the local region was there: everyone from Dave Ross and Heidi Behrens-Benedict to the judicial candidates. Both candidates for attorney general were there, Representative McDermott was there, both gubernatorial candidates, etc. I got an opportunity to talk to quite a few of them at some length: judicial candidate Jim Rogers, Ron Sims, Laura Ruderman, Deborah Senn, Jim McDermott, and most interestingly, Speaker of the state House, Frank Chopp. Speaker Chopp gave me his card and asked me to contact him directly if I saw anything dicey happening with the Sullivan/Simpson campaigns, or anything that might need his personal attention. I hadn't realized he was so plugged into the local races, but that makes sense, in retrospect; he won't keep his speaker position if we lose the House majority.

Got interviewed by the political editor for the Olympian about the gubernatorial race. He's following Ron Sims around this week, and wanted to get my impressions of Sims' candidacy compared with Gregoire's. As I'm a big fan of Ron's, I gave him quite an earful - probably more than he was wanting. I read him chapter and verse of my admiration for Ron's stand on taxes particularly, and pointed out that no one leaves a Sims speech unmoved, whether they disagree or not. It was about a 20-minute interview, and so far, he's used all of three lines of it:
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040822/_government/127347.shtml

I noticed today that no Democratic candidate has filed for the 31st District House seat. Dammit, I wish I lived two blocks further south; I'd file for that race, just to see what would happen.

Missed the soprano carwash for the chorus; I went by there after the picnic, and there wasn't a soul in sight, so they'd apparently given up by 3:30. I feel a bit bad about that, but it was important to make my appearance at the picnic, I think.

Finally mailed in my form for the Maggie Awards. There'll be all of four of us. I suck as a fundraiser. I gave up on getting anyone else: I had high hopes of getting both Pat Sullivan and Geoff Simpson in my row, but that hasn't panned out and I owe it to Tyler and Betty to get the best seats we can, so in it goes.