Cancer won’t stop Snohomish County Council Chairman Mike Cooper’s service
Published 6:42 am Monday, August 9, 2010
Sights set for 2011: Snohomish County Council Chairman Mike Cooper knew what I wanted to know before I asked.
I didn’t need to be cautious about inquiring of his duel with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that’s forced him onto dialysis and into chemotherapy.
I didn’t need to pussyfoot around the effect of these health battles on his political career because he didn’t want to pussyfoot around the reality of it all, either.
“I absolutely feel I can finish my term and run for re-election,” he boomed through the phone. “I’m making those plans.
“Next question.”
Delivering dissent: Julie Martinoli and her associates in Seeds of Liberty will be in the audience Wednesday when Rep. Rick Larsen talks health care at a town hall in Everett.
These are not professionals hired by a partisan organization to disrupt the proceedings. They are the Snohomish County residents who’ve been holding tea parties on street corners in Monroe, Everett and other cities.
These folks worry the federal government is expanding its reach into too many corridors of their lives and want to ask Larsen where it will stop. Some of them feel he’s been ducking them and that this is an opportunity to quiz him.
As far as health care, Martinoli told me members of the group are “quite concerned” and plan to “respectfully inquire” about the proposed federal legislation.
She sent out an e-mail encouraging others to attend Wednesday.
“If we are serious about saving our Republic we had better show up en force to every meeting we can. I’m not talking about 40 people or 79 people, I am talking about hundreds!” she wrote. “If we don’t take the time now to combat this wave of socialism we will find ourselves living in utter oppression!”
That’s pretty strong stuff and caused me to wonder if possibly this is being fueled by outside sources.
“No outside influences impacted our desire to attend,” she assured me in an e-mail.
Curtain rises on the forum at 5 p.m. in the Weyerhaeuser Room at Everett Station, 3201 Smith Ave.
A felon and a fibber: Is anybody who they really say they are in the battle for the 5th District seat on the Snohomish County Council?
Let’s start with Greg Stephens. The self-proclaimed mayor of Maltby is making his second run for the job, and it turns out there should never have been a first try as he ‘fessed up this week to a 1983 conviction of a felony sex offense.
Then there’s Lake Stevens Mayor Vern Little. He talks about how he has been through the University of Washington. It sounds like it was in a car more often than a classroom as he now prefers chatting about academic achievements in the school of hard knocks.
Incumbent Councilman Dave Somers initially confused folks by declaring for re-election while at the same time applying for a federal government gig. He’s stopped that pursuit, leaving voters to wonder why this darling of environmentalists is getting financial aid from builders and developers.
Steve Dana, well, he may be the only candidate who is who he says he is. Unless something comes up in the next week.
Political reporter Jerry Cornfield’s blog, The Petri Dish, is at cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet. Contact him at 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
