The South County Democrats dinner

The South County Democrats summer dinner last night was better than I'd expected. We had a full slate of candidates appearing - lots of judicial candidates, of course, but also finally heard from Terry Bergeson, the superintendent of the Office of Public Instruction. We've heard several times from her opponent, Juanita Doyon, but this is the first time I've had a chance to hear Terry herself speak. I have to say, I was favorably impressed with what she had to say.

Got a chance to talk to quite a few of the candidates one-on-one, including Andrea Darvas (judicial candidate) and Laura Ruderman, who's running for Secretary of State. Laura reminds me inescapably of my sister Gwen; their manner is very similar. Laura was kind of upset that the email from the district with the list of endorsements hadn't included her, so I assured her that we had indeed endorsed her and went and got Tyler to confirm that for her. Ron Sims came in and said, "Good to see you again," to me and gave me a big hug - probably recognized me vaguely but has no idea why. ;-) You've just gotta love that guy - he hugs everybody. His speech was great, as always. Dave Ross was there, Chris Gregoire, lots of others. The lieutenant governor, Brad Owen, sat at our table and I had a chance to talk to him a little bit. Brian Sonntag was unquestionably the hit of the night, though - his speech talked about both his record (3 successful terms as state auditor) and his opponent's POLICE record (19 complaints, mostly for harassing politicians). Um, oops - Chris Vance (head of the state Republicans) might want to check out candidates' records a little bit more closely next time before putting them on the slate! The PI has an article about this nut: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001999218_gopgoof07m.html

I was in a truly foul mood when we got there - really depressed about the one definite person I'd had for the Magnuson Awards canceling on me - but after a couple glasses of wine, I turned into a used-car salesman and started pestering EVERYONE about the Maggies. Tyler Page and Betty Swanson both gave me checks - bless Tyler, as Paul'd called him and asked him to be a row captain and he said no, he'd promised me he'd sit in my row. I bugged Pat Sullivan about it, and he'd already bought tickets, but then came back to me later and said he was going to try to cancel out of that row and move to mine! I pestered Eric Parks, Geoff Simpson's campaign manager, about Geoff and Kathy buying tickets, and he swore he'd talk to them about it today. It would really make me feel good if we had a little 47th District block there that included both our state Representative and our candidate for state Representative!

I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I started asking some of the other candidates if they already had their tickets. I'm sure they thought I was an obnoxious drunk, but I almost got Mark Sidran to commit. Couldn't catch Dave Ross on his way out (he was moving fast at that point!), and Laura Ruderman just said a curt No. I caught Chris Gregoire quite off-guard by asking her (I don't think she'd expected ticket solicitations), and finally had to tell her I was at least half kidding. We did talk for a bit after that (about Fahrenheit 911), so hopefully I didn't leave the impression of a complete lunatic. At least I got two tickets sold, and possibly a few more to Pat and Geoff. That would make me feel better about being such a loser of a salesperson. Hell, I can't even sell tickets by telling people there's about a 30% chance of Kerry making an appearance (he'll be in town that same day for a $1000 a plate fundraiser, and we've been rather coyly promised a "special guest").

Talked briefly to Javier Valdez and Greg Rodriguez, who both made brief appearances. Greg's having the King County Democrats picnic at his house on Saturday; I may stop by there after the chorus carwash, to which I've promised to give a couple hours.

I left in a much better frame of mind than I arrived, partly from finally selling a couple tickets, and partly from three glasses of wine! They auctioned off at least some of the junk I brought back from the Convention and gave to Tyler; I didn't pay attention to which stuff they had or how much they were asking for it. I know they auctioned off at least that silly Kerry bobblehead doll I won at breakfast.

Betty and Evelyn did tell me at dinner that Dennis Higgins decided he wants the treasurer spot, so I'm off the hook for that, anyway. However, without being a PCO and without being one of the legislative district officers, that leaves me as a non-voting member of the KCDCC, which will make it difficult to run for any of the KCDCC positions. I suppose I could have filed to run as PCO, but Rick Sweeney swears he wants to do it (although he never comes to any of the meetings), and I wasn't going to run against John, who was going to file for the position. John didn't file, because he felt bad about trying to take the position from Rick, but John's actually doing more of the work; he should be the PCO. He's going to file a declaration of write-in candidacy.

I put together a montage of some of my favorite convention photos and linked it from my main website finally. http://www.users.qwest.net/~ghawkins1/Conventionmontage.htm.

Jim Rassman had a great editorial today regarding the Swiftboat veterans who have been trashing Kerry: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005460