"Horse's ass radio: darcy burner, ron sims, larry phillips, joel connelly, king kong, godzilla, bambi and david goldstein's mom"

Michael Hood listens when we don't have the time:

Darcy Burner spent far too little time on the David Goldstein Show (KIRO Sundays, 7-10p) Sunday, but it was Father's Day and she's a mother, if that makes sense.

Burner certainly makes sense, though; she's all about policy. She's all about specifics. Quite a contrast with her opponent, the platitudinous Dave Reichert, the incumbent the Republican haircut who brought President Bush, his political mentor and spiritual leader leader on Friday to Mercer Island's Millionaire Row for a funder that snagged him some 700k.

Reichert has been trying to pass as a GOP moderate, (is there really any such thing anymore?) since the plunge in popularity of the failed president. But that got a whole lot harder to pull off when Sheriff Dave was pictured on page one of both Seattle dailies arm & arm debouching Air Force One with the faux-ney cowpoke we must call Prez for another year and a half.

Reichert is counting on that this is early enough in the campaign and that the public's memory will be too short to remember this trip by the President to shore up his fundraising.

As JDB asks in a comment string, "If Dave Reichert is campaigning for the 8th, and he has the President in to fund raise for him, why isn't he willing to appear in public in the 8th and have a rally with him?"

Good question- the answer would be that he doesn't wants his increasingly Democratic district to know about his go-along/get-along voting record in such lock step with the prez.

The GOP, while poo-pooing Burner out of one side of their mouth as a 2nd tier candidate is clearly threatened by a campaign that beat Reichert in fundraising last quarter, and is raising a daunting profile in the district. And the polling is flaccid for Reichert.

Burner raised the money with the help of the net roots, and is the first net roots endorsed candidate, whose Republican opponent has drawn out the president

Reichert is from blue collar South King County and was able to wrest those votes from his opponent in 2004, KIRO talk host, Dave Ross, a Cornell-educated New Yorker, whom they were able to paint as an effete Mercer Island/Bellevue-ite.


Burner is from a blue collar, Army brat background, self-propelled through Harvard and into the management strata of Microsoft. She'll be harder to paint as elite and aloof- especially with her innate communication skill and personal identification with working people.

She's a political natural; and her candidacy is a principled long-shot. But her fight's a fair fight. And energy and brainpower are her distinct advantages over the bland, hackneyed ex-Sheriff.

For local political junkies and bloggers, Goldstein's show could have been like King Kong vs Godzilla tonight- Stefan Sharkansky phoned in while County Exec Ron Sims on the line talking about all-mail voting.

But for all the flaming in the two activists' shared past, (they sort of invented each other) everyone on their best behavior. Sharkansky was kind of timid when in the room with the big guys and Goldstein' had his hand on the dump button. Sweet.


In Goldstein's short time on the radio, the conservatives and David's many detractors have been so cowed that there's a smart-mouthed local liberal partisan with a microphone and a dump button they haven't called.

We're happy to see that's changing and hope that Stefan will become a regular. Also Orb from Orbusmax- we're sure he was itching to get on the show.

The caller of the night: Goldstein's mother from Florida. We've finally found the one person who exists in the world who can shut David up. If Stefan doesn't watch it, Goldstein could turn her on him.