As Stefan just noted, the Everett Herald reported yesterday, Snohomish County Auditor "Sideshow" Bob Terwilliger has canceled the registration of former independent county council candidate Greg Stephens. Why? He didn't live in Snohomish County--and thus was an ineligible candidate, despite recieving 8% of the vote--larger than the gap between Democrat Dave Somers, the victor, and the incumbent, Republican Jeff Sax. Oops!
The article highlights the three groups who seriously messed up in allowing Stephens' candidate to go forward. First, obviously, is Sideshow Bob himself, though he defends himself by saying that "No one ever called me or e-mailed" about Stephens, though he never outright says he did not know Stephens was ineligible.
It would be surprising if he had not heard it somewhere, though--both Sax and Somers, and apparently many others had heard the allegations well before the end of the election. It is understandable why Sax and the Democrats didn't do anything, as Stephens was going around telling people he was a Republican, despite the fact that he had supported Somers in the last election.
The inaction of Sax or the Republican Party is a bit more puzzling to me. Sax claims that "he did nothing because he didn't want his inquiry perceived as dirty politics," and heaven knows it would have been. But I also wonder if it might be that the party hoped that Stephens would pull more from Somers. Jerry Cornfield has more on that in an article today
But that leads us to the final culpable party in this mess, one the Herald doesn't mention--that's no surprise, though, because the Herald is that culpable party. The fact that the Herald, which styles itself the paper of record for Snohomish county, and Jerry Cornfield, the only man who gets paid to pay attention to this stuff full time, let a council candidate go through an entire campaign without even noticing that he doesn't even live in the county is a black, black mark. Unfortunately, not a surprising black mark. The Herald had something of a love affair going with Greg Stephens, treating him as a legitimate candidate with a shot to win, and credulously referring to him as a Republican running as an independent with no evidence that he was anything of the kind.
The auditor, the politicians and the press all screwed up on this one. They should all learn a lesson from it, but somehow I think that only one of them will. Care to guess which one?
Posted by Timothy Goddard at December 18, 2005 10:57 PM | Email ThisSounds kind of fishy that a citizen puts a D political sign up in one race and he cannot declare himself an R? Sounds like Snohomish County Rs have issues.
To be an R in Snohomish County, you have to take a litmus test. Always was and always will be. They will always squelch other opinions. No wonder they are in such a minority.
Sorry, Tim. You are a good R and too bad you have to associated with the County Rs.
Posted by: swatter on December 19, 2005 06:54 AMThe article doesn't really explain what happened at the caucus. Nobody would vouch for Stephens that he was a Republican, which was required for the caucus. There was exactly zero indication that he was a Republican, and plenty of evidence that he was a Democrat posing as one.
I'm sorry you think so poorly of the County R's, but you should know that if they are "Bad R's" than so am I. You either don't know enough about me, or don't know enough about the SCRP.
Posted by: Timothy on December 19, 2005 07:57 AMSo, I will defer to your comment about the caucus since we all know newspapers don't get the story striaght most of the time.
Tim, so what does your party do for DINOs, especially politico types, who venture over to the R side? Don't you embrace them? In fact, don't you (being the party) go out to recruit the DINOs to run as Republicans?
The answer is yes to the above paragraph questions.
So again, why wasn't Stephens allowed to participate in the caucus?
Posted by: swatter on December 20, 2005 07:07 AMIn retrospect, the party should have let him participate, and squashed him like a bug in the caucus and then in the primary. But this being the first time they had ever done the caucus thing, and not knowing that Stephens really had no supporters to speak of, they took the safe route.
Posted by: Timothy on December 20, 2005 09:44 AM