If you live in Kenmore, you may be interested in my writeup of the candidates forum last week:
http://www.washblog.com/story/2007/10/15/45411/810Kenmore has been targeted by the Christian Coalition as a city that it wants to have control over. Half of the city council and the city's mayor have financial backing by members of a Christ's Church of Kirkland and Bethany Bible Church. Christ's church brought in 200 people from outside of the city to hold signs on Bothell Way during the last election and members of this church and Bethany who lived outside of Kenmore gave up to 70% of total contributions to city council members.
The problem is that the city is planning a huge makeover of the downtown area and the city council does not appear to have a clue about how to carry out such a project. They have wasted millions of dollars already and the project hasn't even begun. They are pushing established businesses (that bring in good income) out of the city and they seem to think that once the project is completed, they will be able to convince new businesses to come into the city after they have shown that they are willing to abuse existing business owners--even to the point of putting people completely out of business.
I found out today that one of the things that's happening behind the scenes is that the city mayor, Randy Eastman, had an unsuccessful run for the state legislature a few years ago, and the Republican Party told him that they would back him if he ran for a local position, providing him with money and people, so he could build his resume. Once this project in Kenmore is finished, he is going to run for the state or U.S. legislature with full bakcing of the Washington State Republican Party.
The group that backs him used to have a Web site where they posted militant christian propaganda (it has since been taken down). One person told me that when they say onward Christian soldiers, they take the soldier part literally. The person I spoke to today said that he attended a powerpoint presentation at Christ's Church of Kirkland during the election two years ago where the presenter was showing people how to mark their ballots for the election (with a picture of the ballot with the "proper" selections shown on the screen).
If any of you know people in Kenmore, please point them to my diary. If they know more about city issues, they can send me e-mail or start their own diaries. Since so many people in Kenmore commute to Seattle every day, it's hard for people to get information about local politics. The Seattle Times hasn't done a good job of covering the area and the Kenmore Reporter is too small and it doesn't archive articles so it's hard for people to research past issues.
Diane