In two days it will be over, thankfully.
We’ll say goodbye and good riddance to the scummiest campaigning in the most expensive election in Washington state history.
This season of sleaze ran longer than any other, too. Four years in the race for governor and much of this year for everyone else.
No self-respecting person will be sorry to see it end, except maybe owners of TV and radio stations who cashed in big time from all the brazenly misleading and despicably deceptive commercials.
Few hands are clean of the filth sprayed in drenching fashion on the Evergreen State by office-seekers, political parties and Pond Scum Action Committees.
While many candidates refrained from any actual spraying themselves, their friends didn’t, tainting them by proxy.
Ways exist in elections to converse without coarse ad hominem attacks, but apparently it’s just easier to be disrespectful and inconsiderate. It’s reached the point where calling one’s opponent a liar is standard fare in Washington’s electoral lexicon.
Getting around the rules for financing campaigns — or cheating — is almost commonplace.
Increasing numbers of complaints get filed each election and trigger legal action. In this campaign the Office of Attorney General sued two powerful interest groups for allegedly moving around hundreds of thousands of dollars in an illegal sleight of hand. It’s OK. The money’s been spent on ads that ran and a legal decision isn’t due for awhile.
Sadly, the undignified and perverted display of democracy we’ve endured is going to be the norm we’ll suffer forever more.
Too much money and power is at stake in every election for all those involved to not fight with brass-knuckle mailers or sucker-punch commercials.
What I saw when big money and hard-knocks politics arrived in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1992, I see happening on a statewide scale in Washington today.
Then, Republican Michael Huffington, a millionaire oil man, spent roughly $5.6 million to unseat U.S. Rep. Bob Lagomarsino, the party’s longtime incumbent, in the primary. Huffington beat three foes in the general election.
He spent the money in a district with only 300,000 registered voters — 100,000 fewer than in Snohomish County. He paid for a mailer a day, commercials during every prime-time TV show and phone calls every couple days.
Feel familiar?
As for the nasty, well, Huffington dug up dirt on his Democrat opponent, Gloria Ochoa, and had it delivered to me in a binder. With tabs.
Among its contents were records of her divorce. Ugly and unproven allegations of drug use and violence involving her and her ex were highlighted.
Now, such hit piece manuals come in e-mail form with links to incriminating materials. Technology makes for a more efficient delivery of character assassination.
It is almost over for 2008. We will survive and democracy will too. That’s worth celebrating even though we know it may take weeks, or months, and a lawsuit to know the winners.
Then, we’ll begin again as if this didn’t happen at all.
Political reporter Jerry Cornfield’s blog, The Petri Dish, is at www.heraldnet.com. Contact him at 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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