Austin Jenkins over at Crosscut is very interested in the fact that the CEO of a company responsible for a notable, national traffic scorecard is a contributor to Dino Rossi. From reading Jenkins's post, he seems to think this somehow colors the validity of the company's work.
A couple issues here:
1) If that political leaning did influence his company's work then the CEO in question isn't very bright. Seattle landing at #9 on a list of congested metro areas obviously isn't outstanding news for the region, but wouldn't it be worse to be a little higher up? Furthermore, if there was any correlation between the traffic scorecard and the political preferences of the CEO, wouldn't the company have found a way to land a few more Seattle-area bottlenecks on their related 100 Worst Traffic Bottlenecks list? 520, at interchanges on the Eastside of Lake Washington, ranks 99 on that compilation - the only Seattle-area inclusion.
The commuters of the Puget Sound region might be able to identify just a few more trouble spots. Moreover, it's not as if those same commuters need a national ranking to let them know traffic stinks, while state government has done precious little to address it.
2) Jenkins's apparent implication is all too typical of journalists who construe a maximum contribution ($2,800 in this case) as some great feat that implies much more relation with a candidate than actually exists. Such dollar amounts are significant to the average voter, but they are completely typical in the world of high-dollar political fundraising.
Are candidates appreciative of such contributors? Obviously. But if elected officials were beholden to every soul who maxed out to their campaign there would be a completely unmanageable list of paybacks owed by every Democrat and Republican alike holding major public office.
Thus, journalists would do a greater service to our political discourse if they didn't presume too much by viewing unrelated issues through the lens of political contributions so often.
Posted by Eric Earling at June 18, 2008 08:00 PM | Email This1) Staggering loss of revenue for taxpayers.
2) An obvious quid pro quo;
3) More than $650,000.00 in kickbacks; and
4) Shady funnelling of campaign donations through state party accounts.
Agreed. I wouldn't compare hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing through a state party to a max contribution from one individual to any candidate at all.
My point in the post is that journalists have a habit of pointing out such individual contributions, as if a couple thousand bucks in a multi-million dollar race is supposed to indicate some great allegiance being owed to the contributor from the candidate.
Posted by: Eric Earling on June 18, 2008 10:49 PMIf Crosscut wants they can e-mail the ole swatter and he will give them a lot of quid pro quo a lot worse than this one, and it is all on the record. I doubt they would have the guts to go after it.
Posted by: swatter on June 19, 2008 07:47 AM