County Council run full of surprises
Published 5:55 am Monday, August 23, 2010
Mayor Greg Nickels’ loss this week in the Republic of Seattle sent a shockwave through the political world.
Steve Dana’s success in the race for a Snohomish County Council seat stirred surprised looks from a few people observing the contest.
Me included.
A couple months back, I dissed Dana when I essentially said he was neither the best hope nor the first choice of the local Republican Party to take on incumbent Democratic Councilman Dave Somers.
Soon after, Lake Stevens Mayor Vern Little entered the race. Given how hard some GOP leaders had been pushing Little into the contest, it reasoned they would work double-time to help him make up ground on Dana, who had been in campaign mode for a while.
Yet Little’s abbreviated campaign never clicked, substantial cash never flowed in and — bottom line — he never connected with voters.
On Tuesday, Dana finished second — slightly ahead of Little — and will now square off with Somers in November.
As expected, Dana out-polled Little by a huge margin in his hometown of Snohomish while Little enjoyed a similar edge in Lake Stevens. The two candidates split precincts in Monroe and Sultan, with Dana out-polling Little in the majority of the rest. (It should be noted that Somers was the top vote-getter in nearly every precinct in the district.)
This outcome now puts the brain trust of the Snohomish County Republican Party in a quandary: How much should they help Steve Dana, if at all?
Party leaders could conclude that Somers is too strong and that extending much aid to Dana would be a wasteful investment of precious political resources.
Or they could decide Somers is vulnerable, Dana’s determination makes him electable and the party can flex its muscle by mounting a serious effort to topple the incumbent even if it fails.
Dana can surely use the assistance but is not expecting much given his recent history with party leadership.
“I would suspect they will support me. To what degree I don’t know,” he told me Friday.
“Part of the problem is they had an idea of who they wanted to run before and I wasn’t it,” he said. “They’re not enamored with me and I’m not enamored with them.”
Some in the party don’t consider him Republican enough for their taste. They’ll be disappointed hearing Dana isn’t retooling himself for the face-off with Somers.
He tackled this matter in an extensive post on his blog, NoLossForWords, which, by the way, is the best source for learning about his views.
His discussion on what it means to be Republican appeared in late July. Before that he wrote on Somers’ shortcomings, and before that he took aim at those who pooh-poohed his chances of getting this shot at Somers — like me.
I called him Friday to eat a little crow and found him unwilling to serve it up.
“Guys like me just want a little respect,” he said.
Here it is.
There’s a huge challenge ahead. Somers got 51.5 percent of the primary vote to Dana’s roughly 20.3 percent. My pundit gut cries out it’s too large a hill for Dana to climb.
I won’t count him out.
You need only look to Seattle to find proof of unpredictable results.
Political reporter Jerry Cornfield’s blog, The Petri Dish, is at cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet. He can be heard at 8:15 a.m. Mondays on the Morning Show on KSER 90.7 FM. Contact him at 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
