May 07, 2007
King County Elections E-mails (II): "Professional and non-partisan"

Last July 25, Councilmembers Dunn and Ferguson introduced a proposal to change the King County charter to have a separately elected elections Auditor. Ron Sims immediately fired back with an angry press release opposing the measure, as did state Democrat party chairman Dwight Pelz.

Pelz e-mailed his press release (headline: "King County Auditor should be professional and nonpartisan, not a politician") to party spokesmen and to Ryan Bayne, the County Executive's taxpayer-salaried lobbyist under the subject "edited -- get this out". Bayne forwarded Pelz's e-mail to Sims and senior staff. The e-mail was forwarded down the food chain to interim Elections Director Jim Buck, who replied "Who do you want me to send it to?"

Since when does a professional and non-partisan Elections Director offer to distribute partisan press releases?

Several e-mails (forthcoming) show that Buck and staff helped prepare arguments against the elected Auditor proposal.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 07, 2007 01:15 PM | Email This
Comments
1. Your commentary on the email are enlightening, but in fairness, the rapid response by Mr. Tanaka that nothing should be done to forward the message is important. It shows that Mr. Tanaka recognized that forwarding such a partisan press release would be wrong; and that Mr. Buck had no similar common sense or understanding.

Posted by: Beantowner on May 7, 2007 01:38 PM
2. Regrettably, Mr. Tanaka just retired, and Mr. Buck was promoted to fill his position.

So now Ron has plugged all his gaps in perfect lockstep loyalty to Sims.

Posted by: Voter on May 7, 2007 02:03 PM
3. In a normal world, it would be astonishing that an email from the head of a political party would make it into the chain of a "non-political" office. One would think that the only place the "non-partisan" employees would hear of the political party's position would be through a news organization - not their internal email system.

But, alas, this is King County.

"Nothing to see here, move along"

Posted by: SouthernRoots on May 7, 2007 08:14 PM
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