Saturday, April 02, 2011

Connecting the dots: Axel Swanson now works for Clark County.


We already know that Ridgefield Barbie bribed former Clark County GOP Chair Ryan Hart with a 5 figure job offer to get him to violate the tenets of his position with an endorsement during a contested primary, seconds after Babs entered the congressional race in her own, cowardly, ubiquitous way.

But let's roll the video back a few years, shall we?

Cathy McMorris has a BFF here locally, one Marc Boldt.  In the interests of full disclosure, Boldt is, to my dismay (a feeling shared equally, I'm sure) my brother in law.  I also worked directly for Boldt as his legislative assistant for almost 6 years for his first 3 terms in the House.  McMorris, who I greatly admired at the time, was also there, and served as CoChair of what was then called Labor and Industries.

Boldt was a friend of McMorris.  McMorris would cheerfully go out and work to slay many of the same dragons, working very hard to stop, for example, handing over the keys to the pharmacy to the druggies... aka "collective bargaining" to the unions.  One particularly contentious hearing resulted in Marc asking me to sit in the front row of the hearing to make sure no union goon got their first, a task I cheerfully undertook for the two hour time frame.

McMorris's mother lives over here, I'm given to understand, but I was still surprised to see her and her brother show up at Boldt's house for a birthday party for Marc after she was elected to Congress.

Which brings us to connecting the dots.

When the Curtis debacle started, McMorris got a hold of Marc and asked him to grease the skids for Ridgefield Barbie to get the appointment.

Never mind that Babs hadn't lived here in 11 years; had no idea what the issues were, had no private sector experience, no business experience, no real experience of any kind.

She had been completely absent from the local political scene (or any other local scene, for that matter), and the Camas Manikin had actually told me to my face that her schooling, her weeks-long internships and her junior girl scout position with McMorris was "the same thing as being in the military."

So, Marc made the deal.  He got ahold of a couple of Cowlitz County Commissioners... democrats, like Swanson, and got the deal set.

So, while everyone was scrambling to make a case, none of them knew that it was all a sham, that Boldt had the deal, and it didn't matter who was on the top 3 list as long as Babs was on it, she was going to get the gig.

And she did.  And so, the next thing we know, a failed Cowlitz County Commissioner gets a job working for.... who?

Now.... how did THAT happen?

How do you think?

Cross posted on Jaime Herrera Watch.

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