Steve Stuart's transparent effort to dilute conservative power fails... for now.

Look, we all know that democrat Commissioner Steve Stuart's political career is on the ropes.  His slavish devotion to the massive waste and 40+ years of $8+ tolls to the commuting public in the CRC Scam; his lie about the loot rail vote to get re-elected, his dismissive arrogance over an advisory vote on the CRC Scam, his Ballpark Fetish where he wanted to have his little baseball field to enrich the Yakima Millionaires by forcing the 400,000 of us who would have never set foot in the ballpark to pay for it by getting stiffed with a tax every time we went to a movie, the fair, the amphitheater, played golf or what have you; his bizarre, totally untrue and unsubstantiated allegations against his fellow commissioners during the "bread and circuses" meeting immediately after he teamed up with the democratian over the Benton hiring, his support of fellow democrat Marc Boldt (and how'd that work out for Marc?) all combine to arrive at this conclusion:

Stuart is over... Unless.

Unless he can manipulate the useful tools into setting up a re-organized county government that would enable him to run in a district only commission.

The leftists of the 49th would elect a child molester if he was a democrat.  After all, look at the three stooges they've elected to the legislature now.

The useful tools of ClarkBackward, a primarily RINO and leftist-inspired effort to keep Stuart's political career afloat, is all about that.  The left hated the outcome of the last election: hell they hate having elections when they can avoid them, because the last thing they seem to want is an accurate measure of the will of the people when that will may conflict with their agenda.

For example, a few of the leftist whack jobs out there... like Mike Briggs and that ilk, fresh from getting their political asses kicked on the CRC Scam, are looking at ways to reduce the conservative influence on the Commission... such as expanding the number of commissioners from 3 to 5.

At this point, the likely outcome of such an effort would be a 4 to 1 conservative advantage on that commission, but the leftists are so filled with rage and hatred of David Madore that they don't care that they're tightening the noose around their own necks in the process... or that the primary driver for this effort is Steve Stuart, saving his own ass.

Stuart went over the edge in this exchange, reported in the Daily Democratian:

After Madore and Stuart bickered a bit over the scope of the light-rail vote, Stuart said he had "one more advisory vote we can notice." 

"There's a petition going around to move from three to five commissioners and we can put that on the ballot ourselves," Stuart said. "So why don't we notice that? I mean, since it's five to seven thousand dollars, it's cheap right? We should trust the people." 

The petition for additional commissioners has mostly been discussed by individuals frustrated with Madore and Mielke over recent actions, including the appointment of state Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, to the director position of the county's environmental services department. 

Stuart, a Democrat, saw his suggestion fall on deaf ears from Madore and Mielke, both Republicans, who both said the freeholder process was now the proper arena for voters to change the makeup of the board. 

"I wouldn't want to pre-guess the freeholders," Mielke said.

Well, naturally Stuart is "frustrated" by the fact that he's now being "Mielked."

But given that just last year, Stuart trashed the idea of both an advisory vote on the CRC AND in 2011, the charter vote, this kind of reeking hypocrisy doesn't go all that far in furthering his own political future.

Those following this slimeball should not be fooled: this isn't about what's best for the people.  Instead, it's about what's best for Steve Stuart.