Thursday, May 04, 2006

The crack staff at WW just might be on crack

Willamette Week offered up its slate of endorsements for 30 primary races yesterday and lawdy--some of these are really making me scratch my head.

I get Ted and Ron. Most seem to find them the least objectionable--which is to say that neither are especially great. And Sten is a reasonable choice, too.

But I don't get re-upping for Saltzman. WW seems to be hitching away from Fritz because she didn't give a strong enough answer to one of their questions. Yet we all sat and watched Saltzman completely dodge a question (that WW had to have been asking in their endorsement interviews) at Candidates Gone Wild. WW even cherrypicks a pretty hefty misplaced priority pet project that Saltzman pushed. What gives?

And Tom Cox for Metro 4??? Are you kidding me? Cox is a libertarian--which means that he doesn't like government in any capacity. How can we trust a guy to run government who doesn't want anything to do with government? I've seen Cox's campaign literature. He bitches about traffic congestion and how Metro wants to fix the region by making it more like Los Angeles in terms of road infrastructure. Cox doesn't want that. Yet LA has a huge system of expanded roads and freeways in which they've heavily invested. In other words, Cox wants to whine about congestion but doesn't want to actually invest in the infrastructure to fix them. Uh..no.

I'm sure Sam Chase is a great guy. He may be a fantastic progressive. But I haven't seen anything that indicates he's ready to be in the State Senate. Maybe County Commissioner. Maybe even the State House of Reps. But I'm not ready to see a guy that citizens don't know that much about in Senate District 17.

WW also endorses Larry George over Starr for the GOP Senate 13 seat--which is like trying to choose which pile of shit stinks less. But frankly, George strikes me as completely dishonest. Which is about one level below where Starr sits: mostly dishonest.

And finally--State Supreme Court. Choosing Virginia Linder seems like nothing more than a pander to get a vagina on the court. Linder has experience..but its all government experience. She's never done anything outside of government work.

WW needs to go back to the drawing board. Or we should all be crossing our fingers and hope that they get a little more engaged next time. Yikes.