Rob McKenna Is a Partisan Hack

[pscot]

Republican Rob McKenna kicked off his 2012 gubernatorial campaign last week by kicking The Stranger out of his press conference. Specifically, he kicked me out.

"I don't think David Goldstein qualifies as a journalist," a flustered McKenna explained to my fellow Stranger reporter Eli Sanders two days later, when they crossed paths in the hallway at KUOW. "He's a hack. He's a partisan hack. He's just there to parrot points from the other side."


NaNa: Women seeking Men In his defense, The Stranger will probably never get behind an anti-gay, anti–­reproductive rights, anti-worker teabagger like McKenna. But he's trying to label someone else as a partisan hack—as a derogatory term? That's an awfully ironic accusation coming from one of the most obviously partisan political hacks in the state (one who is attempting to cast himself as a moderate).

I'm not sure where McKenna gets his definition of "journalist" (certainly not from the reporter shield law he allegedly authored, which covers "any person" in the employ of a company "in the regular business of news gathering and disseminating news"). But look up "political hack" in the dictionary ("a person who is part of the political party apparatus, but whose intentions are more aligned with victory than personal conviction"), and McKenna's campaign kickoff speech provides a perfect example.

Speaking at Bellevue's Sammamish High School before an invited audience whose ethnic diversity was nearly doubled by the presence of KIRO TV's Essex Porter, McKenna spent the evening farting rainbows and unicorns in a speech that focused mainly on solving our state's budget woes through the powerful magic that is "reform." McKenna correctly diagnosed the greatest threat to our state's long-term economic health—our dramatic underinvestment in K–12 and higher education—before prescribing the usual Tea Party panacea: fuck state workers. Pandering to the mainstream, McKenna promised to spend billions more on education, the one program virtually everyone supports, but without raising taxes, the one consequence of state spending nearly everyone hates. All that is necessary to make such magical thinking a reality is some lazy math and an equally lazy audience.

Read more at the http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/rob-mckenna-is-a-hack/Content?oid=8642228">Stranger

[eridani]

1. And he wants to kill Medicaid and Medicare too

McKenna has used the office of the Attorney General to lead a national lawsuit to overturn the historic health insurance reform law. If he succeeds, hundreds of thousands of people in Washington will be denied the quality, affordable health coverage they deserve.

1http://publicola.com/2010/03/22/gregoire-blasts-mckennas-health-care-reform-lawsuit;
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/McKenna-commands-solid-lead-1158375.php#ixzz1OiurfGz3;
http://washingtonpolicywatch.org/2010/09/29/washington-ag-would-block-voter-approved-minimum-wage-increase-how-will-governor-respond

2McKenna has taken tens of thousands of dollars from big health insurance and pharmaceutical companies opposed to health insurance reform: http://www.followthemoney.org/database/uniquecandidate.phtml?uc=16949

McKenna has fought increases in our state’s minimum wage - a law passed by Washington voters that thousands of working families rely on.
5http://washingtonpolicywatch.org/2010/09/29/washington-ag-would-block-voter-approved-minimum-wage-increase-how-will-governor-respond


McKenna has embraced Tea Party extremists and said it’s “unfortunate” that Americans overwhelmingly oppose Medicare changes that would hurt millions of seniors.
5http://washingtonpolicywatch.org/2010/09/29/washington-ag-would-block-voter-approved-minimum-wage-increase-how-will-governor-respond


McKenna sought to overturn current law and deny patients access to critical medications because of the personal objections of pharmacists.

7http://publicola.com/2010/07/07/womens-rights-groups-fear-state-is-settling-for-less-in-landmark-emergency-contraception-case

[tavalon]

2. Jay Inslee is running against him

Let's get behind Inslee!

[pscot]

3. Jay Inslee leads in early polling by Survey USA

This is from DKos elections, published last week. As always, the comment thread is worth your time.

first public poll giving Inslee a lead over all-but-certain Republican opponent Rob McKenna. Previous polls from SurveyUSA and PPP had given McKenna within-the-margin-of-error leads over Inslee, which, frankly, I'd expect at this point, given that McKenna, as Attorney General, is known statewide, while Inslee represents only 1/9 of the state, and also that McKenna has meticulously crafted the image of an old-school moderate Northwestern Republican for himself. (Notwithstanding the way he incinerated that image last year with one quick match-strike when he signed on to the multi-state Republican AGs' anti-HCR suit.)

Particularly surprising is that this poll comes from SurveyUSA, an automated pollster who've historically tended to lean in a pessimistic direction for Dems in Washington despite their best efforts to include cellphone users in the sample when polling the heavily wired state; case in point, their April poll of the race put McKenna ahead by 7. I'm not sure what would explain this big a shift, although a lot of Democratic-leaning locals who haven't thought about the race before probably got their first real exposure to Inslee in the last few weeks as the local media spotlight turned to him in the wake of Chris Gregoire's announcement that she wouldn't seek a third term. Inslee and McKenna are similarly well-liked, with 31/16 and 36/21 favorables respectively; Inslee's overall lead seems to come from a 19-point edge among self-described moderates.

Further down the ballot, we've already got two stories developing today in the race for the Democratic nod to fill the safely-blue suburban seat that Inslee leaves behind. State Rep. Roger Goodman, who filed to run in the 8th against Dave Reichert but who lives (under the current map) in the 1st, said that he'd filed in the 8th out of respect for Inslee but quickly clarified today that he's actually running in the 1st. And Nepal-born tech executive Darshan Rauniyar also announced his bid today; while he hasn't held elective office before, he's been active in the local party organization. They join state Rep. Marko Liias and ex-state Rep. Laura Ruderman.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/27/989185/-WA-Gov:-Inslee-announces,-leads-new-SurveyUSA-poll-?via=blog_542760

[freshwest]

4. Jay Inslee must win this election or we're going down. Percentages in the last election were scarey.

Good talking points as well as the other posts with information about Karl Rove's new puppet McKenna. Will be sharing those locally. Thanks.

[saras]

5. So he broke the law that he wrote himself... typical