Democrats STILL whine that Commissioner David Madore "bought his seat."
You know, as if he went down to a WalMart and just whipped out his American Express Black Card and bought it... that his positions opposing the leprosy of the CRC, Loot Rail and Tolls had nothing to do with the final outcome of the vote.
It's kind of like, to my mind, the fringe-left nutters throwing an embolism over Tim Eyman initiatives: like the people don't actually vote on these questions, or we're just too stupid to understand the issues.
Local democrats went into mourning the evening of Election Night: their stranglehold on the county commission finally... and perhaps irrevocably (at least for the foreseeable future) shattered by not only a true, Republican, majority, but a conservative one at that.
The platforms that the winners ran on were no secret. Both have hated the CRC and/or light rail and/or tolls for years and both have done everything they can to put a stop to this rip off.
The man who spent the least on his campaign... by a factor of 4 (next closest was Marc Boldt, who lost to Madore, but who outspent Tom Mielke roughly 4 to 1) received 21,000 more votes than the rabidly pro-CRC Boldt.
For those of us in the hinterland as a result of Boldt's move to gerrymander the CTran taxing district.... thus having the privilege of paying for his tax increases without getting the privilege of voting on them.... the commissioner vote was the ONLY opportunity we have and are likely to get to express an opinion on the entire CRC scam... through our commissioner vote.
Shifting, briefly, over to the OTHER race, Tom Mielke - Joe Tanner: Tom Mielke raised and spent about 25,000 dollars.
Joe Tanner raised and spent roughly 11 times as much as Mielke. (Around $270K from all sources). He went up on TV. He was the recipient of tens of thousands of dollars in independent expenditures, as was his fellow democrat, Marc Boldt.
Of that amount, Tanner spent roughly $41K of his own money... or almost twice what Mielke raised in total... and when IE's are added, 2.5 times more.
Marc, as stated, raised $97,000 (Folks... Boldt's PDC's are an absolute mess. His expenditures, for example, list a $5000 repayment to himself of a loan that his records indicated he did not make. (In short, while there is a record of a loan repayment, there is no record of a loan... and you can't have one without the other.) and on one hand, his total cash contributions indicate $97.3K while in the data base, it's listed at $90,2K. A mess.) He apparently gave himself $5,000 (and an $800 set of tires... hardly a legal campaign expense) and was outspent by David Madore by a factor of around 3.5 to 1. ($331.8K)
As stated, democrats complain. Democrats whine. Democrats snivel. (They obviously refused to vote for Boldt, but they sure seem upset that he lost) and democrats claim that Madore "bought his seat" because he outspent Boldt by the aforementioned 3.5 to 1 or so.
Really?
Tanner outspent Mielke by around 11 to 1... and he lost.
Why is that?
To ignore the Mielke -Tanner race in the "bought his seat" equation is to be deliberately self-delusional.
The over-arching issue here is that county-wide, the pro-CRC candidates were clobbered. One clobbered was outspent 3.5 to 1; the other clobbered candidate OUTSPENT HIS OPPONENT ROUGHLY 11 TO 1.
And LOST.
Madore did absolutely nothing wrong, illegal, unethical or immoral.
Neither did Suzan DelBene, the new democrat congress-critter in the 1st District who spent $3 million plus of her own money to get that title.
If the issue was money and money only... then why did an outspent 11 to 1 Tom Mielke win?
It's because the people of this county have a deep-seated hatred of the CRC. And in every way that can be measured where the people of this county can vote, the CRC scammers lose. That's one of the reasons why Steve Stuart will likely be leaving us, because he'll lose just like Boldt.
Did Madore "buy his seat?"
No more than Mielke.
Memo to the democrats: Like the presidential race where the GOP lost... here, locally, the GOP won. Isn't it time you got over it? Because, just like in the presidential race, when you whine and snivel about who bought what, you sound like a bunch of playground punks.
Just sayin'.
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