Arthur Harrigan, the Seattle attorney who, with little fanfare or thanks, used his legal prowess to save the Seattle Mariners and Seahawks, has retired from the firm he founded in 1986.

But Harrigan, now 79, shouldn’t be permitted to ride off into the sunset without belated acknowledgment by the community whose professional teams remain here because of him, despite credit having been legitimately shared with several others.

In essence, Harrigan’s legal victories over Jeff Smulyan and Ken Behring that prevented their moving the teams to other cities paved the way for finding local owners for their teams. In the case of the Mariners, that allowed the late Sen. Slade Gorton to emerge as a hero for finding local ownership in Nintendo and owner Hiroshi Yamauchi.

Harrigan is having trouble finding the sunset as he remains involved as a funder, organizer, and chairman of an energy project designed to help save the planet.

The legal battles with the owners of two of Seattle’s professional sports teams came about because they were tenants of the Kingdome, having leases with King County, which was a longtime client of Harrigan’s law firm. So it fell to him to keep the teams from moving.

The venue for resolving the future of the Seattle Mariners franchise was what amounted to an arbitration hearing before Arthur Andersen, the national accounting firm that both sides agreed to have decided some key issues relating to the lease.
Since it wasn't a court process, which would have gotten large visibility for the battle between attorneys over the fate of the Mariners, the outcome got no media attention.

So it was amusing to both Harrigan and me that after I first wrote a column about seven years ago on his success in keeping the two teams, he told me his staff, in reading the column, asked, “How come no one knew of this back in 1992?”

Harrigan's maneuvering over the meaning of wording in Smulyan's contract regarding an attendance clause accepted by the Andersen firm was key to the final outcome,

So Smulyan was required to give a four-month opportunity for a local buyer to be found. And of likely equal importance, Harrigan successfully argued that there should be a local value lower than the open-market value.

The accounting firm agreed and set a "stay-in-Seattle" valuation at $100 million, rather than the national open-market value of $135 million that it had determined.

That created the opportunity for Gorton and others to lead the effort to keep the team in Seattle to find a local buyer for $100 million, rather than $135 million, within four months.

No one knows if, at $135 million, Nintendo's owner would have opted to pick up the cost of saving the Mariners for Seattle.

More visible was the effort to save the Seahawks since the battle with Ken Behring included a decision by the State Supreme Court.
King County hired Harrigan's firm to keep Behring from fulfilling his widely publicized intent in the winter of 1996 to leave Seattle and move the team to Los Angeles.

Behring made the argument after some tiles had fallen from the Kingdome roof, that he had concerns about the seismic security of the Dome as he announced that he was moving the team to Los Angeles.

Harrigan recalled the meeting at which he, King County Executive Gary Locke, and his assistant and chief civil deputy Dick Holmquist met with Behring and his attorney, Ron Olson, who Harrigan noted was also Warren Buffet's attorney.

He said Olson read from a yellow pad, explaining that the team, fearing earthquakes might impact the Kingdome, had to be moved to the comparative safety of Southern California and the Rose Bowl.
“Holmquist and I were trying not to laugh," he said.

"We were poised to file a temporary restraining order the moment the meeting ended, Harrigan said. “In the meantime, the trucks had already begun the moving process.”

"So when Behring and Olson left the room, I made the call, and the restraining order was filed," he added. "Had that not happened, we would have had to go to California and ask a California judge to send them back."

In the same timeframe, the NFL owners were holding their annual meeting in Boca Raton and wanted to hear what both sides had to say," Harrigan said. "I brought along Jon Magnusson and two other renowned structural engineers with West Coast seismic design expertise who explained that the idea that Southern California was safer than the Kingdome in case of earthquake was ludicrous."

The legal maneuvering all came to an end when it was announced that Paul Allen had purchased the Seahawks.

Now that the man responsible for this little-known piece of Seattle sports history has retired, there needs to be some recognition of what he accomplished.

There’s also an interesting piece of far-reaching legal history for Harrigan from when he was a young attorney in 1975 and spent a year as senior counsel to the Church Committee, the original Senate Intelligence Committee.

Chaired by Idaho Sen. Frank Church, the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence was looking into all federal intelligence activities, including IRS activity.

Harrigan discovered that other intelligence agencies were obtaining tax returns from the IRS and using the information for their own purposes. In one instance, the goal was to prompt an IRS audit of a Minnesota citizen to take place during the 1968 Democratic Convention so that the individual could not attend.

Harrigan determined the IRS wasn’t initiating its own audits of individuals but was responding to requests from other federal for the returns of individuals whose activities the agency was concerned about.

He said when he appeared before the full committee, Goldwater, Church, Mondale, and others, to tell them what he had learned, Mondale was outraged that one of his constituents was among those abused by the process.

“Mondale called a full-day committee hearing,” Harrigan remembered. “In the meantime, I had already told the IRS Commissioner what we had learned, and before the Senate hearing, he had already adopted new regulations to ensure nothing like that could ever happen, installing audit rights against any agency that has sought tax information from the IRS. We had the hearing. The Commissioner reported that he had already stopped this in its tracks. Frontpage NY Times the next day.”

As to the climate-aiding energy project that is still on Harrigan’s business plate, where it has been since he first got involved a dozen years ago, it's called Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES),

It’s basically “highly efficient’ electric rail cars running uphill and generating energy, converting electric power to mechanical potential energy, which is delivered when the cars are deployed downhill.

Harrigan and prominent Bellevue business leader Spike Anderson provided much of the initial and continuing funding for this system which CEO Howard Trott, another Seattleite, has in recent years led. The ARES system has already attracted attention from utilities around the country.

It’s been seven years since I did a column on the project, headlined “Seattle investor friends focus on ‘The Holy Grail of Energy’ train project,” indicating their long-term commitment to the time and cost of bringing the project to final deployment.

Don Bonker might have become the state's senior U. S. Senator but for encountering Patty Murray in the 'Year of the Woman'

Bonker, a friend for more than half a century, might well have become this state's senior U.S. Senator had he not encountered Patty Murray in the race for the 1992 Democratic Senate nomination.

Bonker's political credentials as a seven-term Congressman from the Third District in Southwest Washington and a congressional leader on trade issues, were far more impressive than those of Murray, a state legislator.

But Murray had the benefit of being 'The Mom in Tennis Shoes" in the year Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer were elected in California and Carol Moseley Braun in Illinois as the first black female in the Senate, in what became widely known as "The Year of the Woman."

Those four women were sworn in the following Congress, the first time the Senate had welcomed four new women senators, all the result of people believing Anita Hill wasn't lying in her accusations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. So other men paid the price for Thomas in that political year.

Bonker's trade credentials, both those he earned during his 14 years in Congress from 1974 to 1988 and from his involvements thereafter, gained him broad respect in this country and abroad for his trade and foreign investment knowledge.

Don Bonker

I got to know Bonker well from the late '60s when he was in his early '30s and an innovative auditor from Clark County, laying the groundwork for an intended but unsuccessful run for secretary of state. I was UPI's state political editor in Olympia in my late '20s.

We got together at many Democratic gatherings, I as reporter and he as participant, spending time together since we were usually the two youngest people in the room.

Later, after his first unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate when he lost the nomination bid to the late Mike Lowry, I had him write a regular trade-issues column for Puget Sound Business Journal.

During his tenure in Congress, Bonker authored and was a principal sponsor of significant trade legislation, including the Export Trading Company Act and the Export Administration Act. I had fun telling friends occasionally when Bonker came up in conversation that after he left Congress, we met for lunch and he gave me a photo of us that had been taken at a 1968 political fundraiser for Sen. Martin Durkan and that had hung on his wall during his years in Congress.

After sharing the story, I then added with a chuckle that the reason the photo with me had hung on his wall was because of the third person in the photo, then-Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana, a Democratic presidential hopeful and one of Bonker's heroes.

Bonker, in recent years, had traveled back and forth regularly from his Bainbridge Island home to Washington, D.C., where he was an executive director and on the international advisory council of APCO Worldwide, global public affairs & strategic communications consultancy.

We hadn't visited for a decade or more when I suggested that we have lunch so I could learn about his then-newly published autobiography called Dancing to the Capitol. The book begins with what the foreword describes as "a wry take on his brief stint as a dance instructor, which gives the book its title and its spirit."

The foreword, by former Los Angeles Times editor Shelby Coffey who is now vice chairman of the Museum, describes Bonker as "a man of faith--often struggling with being both a Democrat and a Christian," and noting that Bonker helped bring the National prayer breakfast to international prominence.

"He has been a key, if quiet, force for others of faith who contend in public life," Coffey wrote.

"My own achievements on international trade, human rights, preserving our natural resources happened only because of bipartisan support," Bonker wrote in his 2020 autobiography, "A Higher Calling: Faith and Politics in the Public Square."

I got together with Bonker for lunch again a year or so ago and invited Brian Baird, who became Third District Congressman a decade after Bonker left the office, to join us.

So I asked Baird this weekend for his thoughts on Bonker: "He was a friend. Mentor. Role model and outstanding public servant, who served our state in countless ways right to the end. He stayed engaged and informed and always found ways to make a difference."

Those who fight the wars that political devils create are sometimes also tagged as evil. But some journalists convinced that those warriors deserve to be remembered, chronicle their sacrifices and thus merit special recognition for ensuring that the sons and daughters who fought our wars are remembered appropriately.

That was the lead of my Memorial Day column of two years ago, which was a reflection on those who write of the warriors who fight our nation's wars to ensure their sacrifices are remembered.

That column included my longtime friend and former UPI colleague, Joe Galloway, whose three books and a movie about the battle of the Ia Drang Valley made him perhaps the best-known correspondent of the Vietnam War He died three months after that Memorial Day of a massive heart attack at the age of 79.

And it included my then-recently acquired friend, Scott Huesing, a retired Marine Corps major who guided his men of Echo Company through battle in the deadly urban battlefield of Ramadi during the Iraq War and then wrote about his experiences in Echo in Ramadi.

Huesing, in a small-world connection, but maybe not so small, explained to me when we met in San Diego in August of 2020 that as he wrote Echo in Ramadi, "it was the voice heard in Galloway's We Were Soldiers Once...and Young that left a great mark. It shared not just the stories of battle but of people. That power of human connection is so vital to me in all things."

Huesing's book became a number-one best-seller after it was published in 2018. It was described by a prominent reviewer as "so gripping it will be read by a generation of grunts and leaders, vividly depicting how, in crisis after crisis, mutual trust pulls a unit or a business through."

Huesing said he sent autographed copies of the book "to those I owed something, and Joe was one. Joe sent me a heartfelt note and a glowing review of my book. Although we've never met in person, Galloway and I understand the uncertainty of war and the most certain danger it brings close to one who endures the worst of what humanity provides, a connection that is something irreplicable"

Scott Huesing wrote of leading his Marines into war in Iraq in Echo in Ramadi

Now Huesing, 53, whose 24-year career in the Marines spanned 10 deployments and who led combat operations in 60 countries, seeks to help other veterans to become authors. One of those he introduced me to in an email exchange in which he described me as "fellow Marine and friend" was Andrew Biggio, whose book The Rifle. Was then about to go on sale days after that 2022 Memorial Day.

The Rifle is described as "an inspirational story and hero's journey of a 28-year-old U.S. Marine, Andrew Biggio, who returned home from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, full of questions about the price of war. He found answers from those who survived the costliest war of all — WWII veterans."

The promotion for his book goes: "It began when Biggio bought a 1945 M1 Garand Rifle, the most common rifle used in WWII, to honor his great uncle, a U.S. Army soldier who died on the hills of the Italian countryside. When Biggio showed the rifle to his neighbor, WWII veteran Corporal Joseph Drago, it unlocked memories Drago had kept unspoken for 50 years. On the spur of the moment, Biggio asked Drago to sign the rifle.

Andrew Biggio's The Rifle collected the stories of WWII vets who held and signed his M1 and relived memories

Thus began this Marine's mission to find as many WWII veterans as he could, get their signatures on the rifle, and document their stories.

For two years, Biggio traveled across the country to interview America's last-living WWII veterans. Each time he put the M1 Garand Rifle in their hands, he recalls that their eyes lit up with memories triggered by holding the weapon that had been with them every step of the war.

With each visit and every story told to Biggio, the veterans signed their names to the rifle. 96 signatures now cover that rifle, each a reminder of the price of war and the courage of the soldiers.

Biggio noted that he realized of the WWII vets "they were leaving us at an alarming rate, and their knowledge was leaving with them."

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, 325,574 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive, but around 296 die every day.

Biggio said the M1 being held by the veterans, who averaged 94 years of age, "acted like a time machine to take them back 75 years, and I asked them to tell me about their most stressful experiences." And thus, the book took form.

Biggio told me that about half of those whose stories are contained in the book have died since it was published. But among those still alive, most have become friends, and he has taken four or five at a time to France for book signings.

Now another group of interviews will be included in The Rifle 2, which is due for publication in September.

Biggio brought deeply rooted ties with the New England veterans community to the book project as the founder of Boston's Wounded Vet Run, a motorcycle rally nonprofit through which he's helped raise more than $1 million for wounded veterans.

Huesing has created his own non-profit to aid veterans. His is Save the Brave, devoted to providing companionship and stress-management tools to veterans with programs to address psychological and emotional challenges.

The most visible of those is Save the Brave Offshore, which provides offshore fishing opportunities for veterans at no cost, with Huesing sharing his view that nothing "can cure the effects of PTS better than connecting with fellow veterans in shared experiences on the water."

Anniversaries are to create memories. And sometimes if the anniversaries are from long ago, the memories they bring come in clusters.

 

So McDermott, who focused on cross country running (he had been the Wisconsin high school champion), won several of his collegiate meets and Evans and I had modest success through our sophomore years. Evans won several of his 880-yard races and I won in the Wisconsin collegiate indoor in the quarter mile and took first in that event in dual meets against Notre Dame and Bradley. And in two relay races I passed the baton to Evans, winning one relay and taking second in the other. 

Marquette teammates Dick McDermott, (lower left) and Mike Flynn, (upper right), from 1961 team photo

As a guy who capped his legal career with prominent New York law firm Rogers & Wells by helping put together his firm's merger with the London firm Clifford Chance to create one of the world's largest law firms, it was logical that McDermott's legal mind came into play with the anniversary,

He sent a note to the school's athletic director a few days ago questioning the 100 years tout, saying "how is it 100 years given that the school dropped track and football in December of 1960, never restored the football program and only restored track and field in the '70s?"

As McDermott wrote in his memo: "The university dropped track and cross country along with the football program, ruining the careers and disrupting the lives of student athletes who had been recruited from around the country."

"Even more heartbroken than the athletes that day was Coach Bus Shimek, who had coached a number of NCAA champions as well as Olympic medalists and was himself an NCAA two-mile champion at Marquette," McDermott wrote.

The best Marquette track star was Ralph Metcalf, who took second to Jesse Owens in the 100 in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and joined him on the Gold Medal 400-meter relay team.

Years later, Owens credited Metcalf, who later engaged in a long political career that was capped with his four terms as a congressman from Illinois, with helping his 16 Black teammates get through the Berlin Games. Remember, those Games were Hitler's event to show the world the talent of the Third Reich and the black competitors who diminished the German display were not appreciated,

But back to McDermott and Evans, neither of whom I had much contact with after I went home to Spokane in February of 1961 and transferred to Gonzaga, which did not have a track team. Thus I was left to focus on co-eds and academics (in that order) so met my wife-to-be, Betsy, in math class.

Dick and I had spoken once when he called me in Seattle in late 1965 to tell me of the birth of his first son.

And Terry and I spoke once when I called him in 1988 to ask if my son, Michael, could stay with him on a college-look-see visit to Marquette.

By then Evans was a U.S. District judge, named to the position in 1979 at the age of 39 as one of the youngest appointees ever to the Federal District Court. "We'll be on a trip at that time but he can certainly stay at our house...I'll leave a key," Evans said, an offer that Michael quickly rejected as not appropriate.

The close relationship that developed long ago between Evans and me sprang from things like the fact that, in track, I passed the baton to him in the mile relay and the relay team's performance depended on both of us, and we on each other.

Five decades on from our Marquette parting, I decided McDermott, Evans and I should reconnect so I reached out to the two of them and said "it's 50 years this September since we first met at Marquette Stadium so let's get together again in Milwaukee and bring our wives."

And so we did, spending several days together and visiting the campus, including a visit with the university president, thanks to McDermott's alumni prominence.

Evans had, by then, become a judge of the Seventh U.S. Circuit, appointed in 1995 by President Clinton at the recommendation of Wisconsin's Republican governor and its two Democratic U.S. Senators.

And what kind of a judge was he? I learned during our visit that a newspaper reporter had once asked him that question and his response was "that's like asking me if I'm a good kisser. I'd have to be on the receiving end to answer either question."

When a traveling carnival worker was found to have a rigged game, the penalty included the donation of 144 teddy bears to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

And according to CNET.com, Evans was the first federal judge to cite a YouTube video in an opinion, which occurred in July of 2007.

Evans and I didn't have an opportunity to explore how much the visit reconnected us because a couple of years later he died suddenly of a respiratory infection.

But McDermott and I reconnected from the moment he came into the workout room at the Pfister Hotel, saw me working out on the treadmill and rushed over, flashing a smile, and gave me a hug.

In the 15 years since that reunion, we have stayed connected, despite his living in New York and I in Bellevue. He reads my column regularly and reaches out to touch base and share thoughts on various sports, political or business things via phone or email.

So having spent three days of face time in the 62 years since I bid him goodbye and headed back to Spokane, McDermott, who remains a prof at Fordham Law School, has resumed being, and remains, one of my closest friends.

He may attend the 100-year celebration of MU track and field on June 10. I won't be able to be there.

McDermott was also critical, still, of MU dropping football, noting in his letter to the A.D.:"

The football program Marquette saw fit to abandon so abruptly had produced nine NFL draft picks in the previous three years and two NFL players who became Pro Bowl stars from that final team. And the 1960 team had the nation's second-leading passer who was drafted by the New York Giants." his letter to the athletic director ended thus:

"Lest I be misunderstood, I have not lost my devotion to Marquette. Twenty years ago, my wife Mary Pat and I established an endowed Blue & Gold Scholarship for the benefit of members of the women's lacrosse team. We remain grateful for our education and experiences at Marquette, particularly our meeting in the Brooks Memorial Union."

And I remain grateful to Dick for our meeting and remaining close friends, although unusual in time and distance.

When I sat down with Lisa Brown in downtown Spokane's Davenport hotel for an interview on her decision to run for mayor of Spokane, it was a day after Gov. Jay Inslee announced he wouldn't seek a fourth term. So I couldn't help but kid her about "why aren't you running for governor?"

When I mentioned that the following day to a mutual friend, he said: "That's not as much of a joke as you think, Mike. She has better credentials to run for political office than Jay Inslee, who was merely a member of Congress with a healthy ego 12 years ago when he decided he wanted to be governor."

Those credentials include being the majority leader of the Washington State Senate, a role she held for eight years, then serving as chancellor of the WSU Spokane campus, in which role she helped set the stage for the launch of WSU's Elson Floyd Medical School. Then Inslee named her to be director of the state Department of Commerce, the role she is leaving to run for mayor.

She now hopes to parlay what she would characterize as a background of leadership into the job of Spokane mayor, seeking to unseat Nadine Woodward, who is running for a second term.

Both Woodward and Brown have more visible political ties than is usually the case in nonpartisan municipal races. Brown's Democratic ties, including close friendship with U.S. Sen, Maria Cantwell and in Olympia for at least the rest of Inslee's term, are a key part of her background. And Woodward has close ties to several Republican groups, including keynoting last weekend's Mainstream Republicans of Washington conference in Leavenworth.

And those partisan connections could play a role in the outcome of the race for the top elected position in the city that is the economic center for a region stretching over three-state and two Canadian provinces. It's a region viewed as more conservative than liberal.

But Brown polled 52 percent of the Spokane County vote in her unsuccessful run in 2018 against GOP incumbent Cathy McMorris Rogers in the heavily Republican Fifth Congressional District.

Lisa Brown's background includes having been the majority leader of the State Senate.

I asked former Spokane mayor John Powers, a Brown supporter, what are the key challenges Brown faces in her race against Woodward, who was a local TV personality before winning the race for mayor in 2019.

"There's a bit of a perception in centrist and conservative communities that she is too progressive," said Powers, who became head of economic development organizations in King and Kitsap counties before retiring and returning to Spokane to go into real estate.

"But I think that's not accurate," Powers said. "She understands better than most the process of getting things done by discussion, compromise and resolution," he added.

According to the local Spokesman-Review, Brown appears to have the backing of the majority of Spokane's city council, who are progressive. "She also has the support of several leaders of color in Spokane," the newspaper noted.

"Black leaders in Spokane have clashed with Woodward's administration over roundtables on police reform and her decision to locate a police precinct in the former East Central Library."

"Visible homelessness, housing affordability and the perception that crime is worse downtown are real issues that I will take on," Brown told me. "But building on our strengths as an increasingly diversified regional economy is a key theme for me."

"I plan to be a mayor focused on economic development," Brown said.

'The cluster model we helped create at the Commerce Department is dramatically present in Spokane with the clusters of aerospace, healthcare and emerging technology, which can be built on to be keys to the future."

Spokane is my hometown, where I retain personal and business ties. So I've been intrigued to see the downtown develop into a surging business core while watching downtown Seattle decline to a level from which some bet it won't fully recover.

And I think a growing visibility for Spokane may accompany that Seattle core decline. And part of Spokane's economic success, dating back its 1974 World's Fair, has been that leaders have understood the importance of the fact The River Runs Through It.

And now that riverfront focus has extended along the north bank to include The Podium, the adjacent Spokane Arena that houses concerts and sports events and a new $35 million outdoor football and soccer stadium across the street which will open later this year.

So the area is developing into a true sports and entertainment district and that represents another cluster that will require close relations between city hall and the Public Facilities District that oversees those facilities and the role they will play in Spokane's economic future.

The realization of that cluster emerging, coupled with events already long part of the Spokane sports scene gave me the opportunity in February 2022 to suggest that Spokane should take the nickname "Sports Town USA."

The idea actually came to mind as I watched high school and college runners from across the country at a track event in February 2022 at the city's still gleaming new indoor 200-meter six-lane track that boasts the nation's newest and one of the few hydraulic-banked running tracks. That means the ends of the track in the $53 million Podium near downtown are hydraulically elevated for sprint events and lowered for other events.

There might actually be little argument if Spokane claimed the title of the nation's basketball capital. Afterall, it's not only home to a Gonzaga Bulldog basketball team that has dominated the nation's collegiate ranks for going on a quarter century, but the city also hosts on one weekend each year the 3-on-3 basketball tournament called Hoopfest that is the largest event of its kind in the world. Or as the event launched in 1989 touts itself, "the largest 3-on-3 basketball tournament on earth," attracting a quarter-million fans, 450 courts spanning 45 city blocks and drawing 6,700 teams.

Then of course, for the world of runners, there's the Lilac Bloomsday Run. The 7.4-mile run marked its 46th anniversary this past weekend, celebrating the 1977 launch of the event by Spokane resident Don Kardong, who had finished fourth in the marathon at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.

I'm still waiting for someone in Spokane to have the courage to say: "Of course we should be Sports Town USA. And we are going to start a campaign to claim the title." Maybe Lisa Brown in her run for mayor.

Awaiting the next word on Jimmy Carter, the 98-year-old former president now in hospice care at his Georgia home, may stir some reflection on his 1976 campaign when voters in western states’ primaries all wanted someone else to be the Democratic standard bearer.

And Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington was actually the favorite to win the nomination when the’76 campaign for president began. It was a role Jackson might already have held had the script of fate been written differently 16 years earlier.

The challenge in the West for the former Georgia governor wasn’t that his disarming “Hi, my name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for President” didn’t sell as well with western voters as with those in other parts of the country. Rather it was that 1976 was a year of western favorite sons or favorite sons of neighbor states.

In fact, two of the favorite sons, Sen. Frank Church of Idaho and Rep. Mo Udall of Arizona, were considered to be in the running, along with Carter, through the primary election season and collected delegates at the party’s national convention.

JIMMY CARTER'S 1976 quest for the presidency found a challenge with western primary votersChurch and Udall were longtime opponents of the Vietnam War with Church’s opposition dating back to 1963, well before the escalation began under Lyndon Johnson. The opposition was part of the Church’s criticism of American policy in Southeast Asia.

And though the final day of the war had been in 1975, the campaigns of most presidential hopefuls had begun by then and its political impact on the electorate still echoed into 1976.

The other favorite son was California Gov. Jerry Brown, then only two years into his first term as California chief executive, who won both his state’s primary and the Nevada primary.

Udall, who won the Arizona caucuses, finished second to Carter in the delegate contest at the Democratic National Convention and Brown third. Church won Idaho, Montana, and, in an upset, Oregon.

Jackson was a long-prominent Senate Democrat, including having been chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1960 and had been on the short, short list for the vice presidential role with John F. Kennedy before JFK decided to pick Lyndon Johnson because of his Texas and southern ties. Thus Jackson might have already been president before 1976.

Jackson’s appeal rested on his political beliefs that were characterized by support of civil rights, human rights, and safeguarding the environment. He was one of the few members of Congress who sent his children to D.C. public schools.

But his equally strong commitment to oppose totalitarianism in general and communism in particular and support for the Vietnam War as the focus of his campaign against communism brought a hostile reception from the party’s left wing.

Jackson’s run for president in 1972 drew little support but by the time of the 1976 campaign, he was viewed as the frontrunner. He received substantial financial support from Jewish Americans who admired his pro-Israel views.

HENRY M. JACKSON was actually favored to win the Democratic nomination when the 1976 presidential campaign beganUltimately, Jackson’s decision not to compete in the early Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary spelled doom for his presidential aspirations as Carter took the largest percentage of caucus votes in Iowa and won the New Hampshire primary over four other candidates.

Jackson won the Massachusetts primary but after losing the key Pennsylvania primary to Carter by 12 points, he dropped out of the race.

I had the chance to help cover the 1976 Oregon primary for United Press International as a political reporter and so had the opportunity to see Carter, Church, and Brown on the campaign trail in that state.

One of my favorite memories from my political writer days was when I was sent to the Portland airport to interview Church as he arrived on election night, with returns showing he was on the way to a substantial victory over Carter.

So as I walked up to a smiling Church as he walked from his plane to the airport, introduced myself and asked: “So, are you going to be viewed, senator, as the new “Lion of Idaho?”

The question was a reference to Sen. William Borah, who was affectionately, and widely, known as “The Lion of Idaho” during his 33 years in the Senate, elected in 1907 as a Republican and establishing himself as a prominent progressive with fiery independence.

“I’d be fine with that,” Church responded with a smile, “as long as I don’t also become known as "'the stallion of Idaho,’”: apparently an amused reference to a lesser-known aspect of Borah’s reputation.

Despite losing the western primaries and caucuses, Carter went on to win the nomination and defeat Gerald Ford in the 1976 general election and become the nation’s 39th president. And it was losing four years later to Ronald Reagan that the door was opened in his post-presidential decades to become known for a life of service, which will be his lasting legacy.

Jackson died on September 1, 1983, of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 71, in his 30 in the Senate.
Jackson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984. President Ronald Reagan called him "one of the greatest lawmakers of our century.”

And as a closing note, it’s difficult for a one-time political writer not to offer the following observation: For a man with Carter’s experience and background to defeat three highly respected and qualified members of Congress like Jackson, Church, and Udall is an indication of the role of timing and circumstance in fate's scripting.

But the important role Carter came to play after his single term as president may be taken as evidence that fate, in whatever form, does have a plan.

Gov. Jay Inslee hasn’t indicated publicly whether or not he will seek an unprecedented fourth term. But on the issue he hopes will be his legacy, he may have sidestepped a negative public reaction that might have tempted one of the three Democrats waiting in the wings to decide it’s time to help him step aside.

It’s fair for Inslee to say he is a national leader on the issues of climate change and clean energy since he gained national visibility in what turned out to be a quick-exit run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 with climate as his sole issue.
But his website goes farther in what some may view as a bit of a stretch by saying he is “known as the greenest governor in the country.”

As an amusing note, Inslee actually owes a bit of thanks to the oil-producing countries of whose product he’s not a fan. The reason is that the latest dramatic decline in the last half of 2022 in the price per barrel of oil from $122 in June to $80 in January took the sting out of a January doubling of the state tax on the per-gallon price of gasoline.

The “sting” was a boost of 49.4 cents per gallon in the price of gasoline at the pump, and 59 cents on the cost per gallon of diesel fuel. That represented a doubling of the tax rate of 49.4 to 50.4 and it took more than a century to reach a tax first implemented in 2021.

But given that decline in price per gallon, which stood at $5.55 as the average in this state in June, likely exceeded the 49 cents for gasoline and 59 cents for diesel price additions in January, there was nothing for voters to react to. Certainly not how they likely might have if the new taxes had pushed the per-gallon gas cost in this state to over $6 per gallon.

Gov. Jay Inslee's carbon tax could be an issue if he decides to seek a fourth term

What went into effect on January 1 was a result of the Climate Commitment Act passed by the Legislature in 2021 and the related cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions.

At its core, the program is designed to cap, or limit, greenhouse gas emissions to 25,000 metric tons and allows those industries or companies that exceed that amount to purchase “emission allowances” to offset 6 percent of carbon emissions.

The Act directed the Department of Ecology to develop and implement a “Cap and Invest” program to raise the penalty for exceeding the 25,000 metric ton allowance to $58.21, an amount that, incidentally, is much higher than the estimate used by the legislation.

Thereby hangs the tale of a 49-cent or 59-cent increase at the pump. The global oil price decline allowed the tax to go into effect basically unnoticed rather than being an issue to stir the political pot.
 
The intent of Inslee’s program is to penalize industries that historically are heavy emitters of greenhouse gas emissions to force them to reduce their emissions to save the planet.
 
But critics say the reality is that when the oil-producing nations send the price back up, it means the state’s new carbon tax will leave Main Street burdened by yet an additional cost for nearly everything that is delivered. Transportation of any goods will now require what amounts to a gas tax disguised as a carbon tax.
 
And if an increase from oil producers occurs between now and the 2024 state elections and the reality hits voters that the state tax on gasoline will continue to rise until 2030 with the goal of a total increase per gallon of 80 cents, voter reactions may be interesting.
 
And lest there be any doubt that those who pay the gas seller's fee will be passing on the tax, despite state officials' suggesting otherwise, the memo from a Kittitas County petroleum dealer should make it clear,
 
The note to customers of A-1 Petroleum and Propane spelled out the added cost per gallon for each type of fuel and then noted “our neighbors in Oregon and Idaho have seen significantly lower prices at the pump since January 1.”
 
“If those costs concern you,” the memo concluded, “please reach out to your local and state representatives.”
 
As to the Democrats waiting in the wings hoping that Inslee ultimately decides that, having just turned 70, it may be time to leave the governor’s office rather than pursue a record fourth term, it’s pretty sure that one of them would replace him.
 
The reality is that with the next election, it will have been 44 years since a Republican was elected the state’s executive, and none seems to have emerged to challenge in the 2024 election.
 
So if history holds, it would mean that three-term Attorney General Robert Ferguson, 57, Four-term King County Executive Dow Constantine, 61, or Lt, Gov, Dennis Heck, 70, would replace Inslee.
 
And many Democratic leaders might offer candidly that they’d like to see one of the three take charge of the state for the rest of this decade, bringing a focus on other issues while continuing Inslee’s climate focus, which is now part of this state’s political culture.

I asked the state’s most respected political pollster, H. Stuart Elway, if Inslee could be successfully challenged in the unlikely event any of the three Democrats would run against him if he does decide to run again. He indicated that would be unlikely
 
Elway said that while Inslee’s approval rating has long been “underwater,” meaning fewer than 50 percent of voters approve of his performance, “it’s been constant,” meaning he’s done little to irritate voters nor much to make them enthusiastic.
 
But most tellingly, Elway said that among Democrats, 62 percent would support him if he runs for a fourth term, though at this point they haven’t seen any other candidate.

The long-awaited autobiography of Daniel J. Evans, governor, U.S. senator, college president, and six-plus decades as a civic leader, was well worth the wait and offers more than a look at the deeds and accomplishments of a man who is viewed as likely the most important political figure in Washington state’s history.

It also offers the first broad telling of what may be one of the most intriguing civil rights stories never fully told before, one that I’m hopeful is destined to finally bring national recognition to Evans and Arthur Fletcher, the black political figure Evans reached out to in the late '60s and who went on to become the Father of Affirmative Action.

The autobiography gives an important historical look at the bright young professionals Evans describes as "a lively mix of lawyers, accountants, engineers, contractors, real estate developers and
businessman," a group basically composed of young republicans and Jaycees, whose leadership in the early 1950s included the creation of an organization called the Seattle Municipal League, whose grades for political candidates made it a prominent influence on local elections.

Its members, including Evans and a group of then age ‘30s professionals, all veterans, some of whom would become part of his political team a decade later, brought a political acumen that changed the face of a Seattle in which “city hall and the courthouse were patronage mills and where police winked at gambling and prostitution corruption. In addition Seattle merely looked on as its “burgeoning bedroom communities were dumping raw and partially treated sewage into Lake Washington at the rate of 20 million gallons a day.”

Dan EvansThat group of young professionals who would change Seattle included future congressman and lieutenant governor Joel Pritchard and future attorney general and U.S. Senator Slade Gorton. And Jim Ellis, the young attorney whose half-century of citizen activism included cleaning up Lake Washington and voter approval of his Forward Thrust bond package that included The Kingdome, that provided a home for the baseball Mariners and pro football Seahawks when those teams came into existence.

I chuckled at the likely reaction of Seattle’s current emerging political and civic leaders to learn that it was a cadre of young Republicans who were the city’s first civic movers and shakers.

In the late ‘60s, after Evans had been elected governor, the second youth cadre he nurtured sprang from the ranks of young Republicans. The following passage from the biography indicates how the stage was set for the emergence of Fletcher.
 
"Sam Reed (who later became a three-term Secretary of State) and Chris Bayley, two of the brightest young guys I’d ever met, launched a political action movement in 1968 that harnessed the restless energy of a new generation of moderate Republicans. They were frustrated by Vietnam and passionate about civil rights.

"'Action for Washington' was the genesis of today’s Mainstream Republicans of Washington. Back then they called themselves 'Dan Evans Republicans.' For me, it was an honor and a responsibility rolled into one.
   
"Christopher T. Bayley, a descendant of one of Seattle’s most respected old-line families, arrived back home with a law degree from Harvard in 1966. Sam Sumner Reed, the grandson of Wenatchee’s leading lawyer, became executive director of my Urban Affairs Council in 1967 after receiving a master’s degree in political science from Washington State University.

"Bayley, 29, landed at Perkins Coie, a top Seattle law firm. He had extensive contacts among King County’s politically ambitious young reformers, not to mention large donors. Reed, 27, had founded the College Republican League of Washington in the fall of 1967. He knew energetic young Republicans on campuses around the state."

Evans recalls one of Reed’s first assignments as an intern in the governor's office was to work with Secretary of State Lud Kramer, House GOP leader Slade Gorton, and Seattle civic activist Jim Ellis to draft an urban affairs report.

When Reed met Pasco City Councilman Art Fletcher he saw a rising star. A football star at Washburn University in Kansas, and the first black player on the old Baltimore Colts team in 1950, Fletcher organized a community self-help program in predominantly black East Pasco after moving to the Tri-Cities to work at the Hanford nuclear site. Fletcher radiated charisma.

As Evans wrote: "The Reed-Bayley masterstroke was to create the first, and to date only, effective party ticket in Washington State history. They dubbed us 'The Action Team for an action time.' Each flier, full-page ad, and TV spot featured our foursome, three young white men and one black, as Evans noted, “striding forward side by side with clean-cut confidence.”

Arthur Fletcher had already built a reputation in other parts of the country for activities that set him on the road to becoming a political anomaly as a Republican civil rights activist. Evans viewed him as the type of political leader who could bridge racial differences at a time of high local and national racial tensions.

I had the good fortune, as UPI's state political editor in Olympia, to meet and interview Fletcher in early 1968 after Evans’ press secretary, Neil McReynolds, flagged me about “this cool guy in the Tri-Cities whom Dan has been very impressed with.” Soon other Puget Sound area reporters also wrote about him, which helped propel him into an attention-getting role with Washington voters.
 
Evans, an engineer by education, engineered the fletcher role in the quest, with enthusiastic support, for the lieutenant governor's race against popular Democratic incumbent John Cherberg. In the end, he lost.
 
At the 1968 Republican National Convention, for which Evans was the keynoter, Fletcher had a role promoting his self-help philosophy to an audience eager to attract black voters. Among those drawn to Fletcher's convention message was Nixon himself.
 
Soon after taking office, Nixon appointed Fletcher Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards. With responsibility for the wage and hour regulations for the nation's workforce and supervision of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, Fletcher now had the power to revoke federal contracts and debar contractors from bidding on future work.
 
On June 27, 1969, Fletcher implemented the nation's first federal affirmative action program, which required federal contractors to meet specified goals in minority hiring for skilled jobs in the notoriously segregated construction industry.
 
But after two years, Fletcher's affirmative action programs had earned him so much enmity among the leaders of the skilled construction unions that he was forced to resign.
President Nixon gave him a brief assignment on the United Nations delegation under Ambassador George H.W. Bush, which began the friendship that would take Fletcher's political career to even greater heights.
 
He went on to serve in the administrations of Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush and became known as the “father of affirmative action.” Fletcher headed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and as president of the United Negro College Fund coined the phrase “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
 
“Those were remarkable achievements,” Evans has said to me on several occasions in recent years as we discussed Fletcher. “But how I wish Washington could have been the first state in the union since Reconstruction to elect an African-American governor. That would have been a proud boast.”
 
When Evans shared with me passages about Fletcher from his autobiography four years ago, he said: "I'm confident that if Art Fletcher had been elected lieutenant governor he would have succeeded me, perhaps in 1977. In any case, sooner rather than later."
 
"He later had remarkable achievements, but how I wish Washington could have been the first state in the union since Reconstruction to elect an African-American governor. That would have been a proud boast. It could have had a huge impact on race relations and who knows how history could have changed.”

Evans' reflections on Fletcher, with whom he remained friends until his death in 2005, have been key parts of interviews I’ve done with Evans in the past couple of years, two at the Columbia Tower Club, including in fall of 2019 and another last fall for Seattle Rotary, done remotely since the club wasn’t having live programs that month.
Regular readers of The Harp may recall a column I did four years ago on the Evans-Fletcher story, a half-century anniversary piece, As I wrote it, I realized that 1,700 readers were a dramatically small number to know about the story.

So I reached out to Mark Higgins, assistant editorial page editor of the Seattle Times, to offer him the column and he first explained that The Times doesn’t run a piece that has already appeared as a column elsewhere.
But he soon decided, on reflection, and much to his credit, that the Evans-Fletcher story deserved being brought to The Times readership. So the Harp appeared as an op-ed piece under the headline: ‘Remembering Arthur Fletcher, the father of Affirmative Action.”
 
In fact, in terms of national visibility, if you search Wikipedia for Fletcher, there’s a brief look at his accomplishments. And there is one media source reference. Seattle Times: Remembering Arthur Fletcher, Father of Affirmative Action (Mike Flynn, Nov. 11, 20128)

John Hughes, former editor, and publisher of the Aberdeen World, who edited the autobiography, remembers meeting Evans in Olympia in 1966 when he was a reporter for The World.

He told me he began helping Evans five years ago, noting that at the time Evans had written about 300,000 words but the manuscript ended when he left the U.S, Senate in 1989.

"I'd liken my role in Dan's marvelous book to that of a consulting structural engineer. (Ever the engineer, that line will make Dan smile)."

Hughes, now chief historian with Legacy Washington in the Secretary of State's office, recalls "Almost exactly a year ago, Secretary of State Kim Wyman asked me how Dan was doing on the book. Sighing, I said it was still unfinished. Then in a spontaneous moment, I suggested we help him finish the narrative and publish the autobiography as a Legacy book. 'Absolutely!' she said."
 
"From February to October, I conducted oral history interviews with Dan to speed up the process. He'd review the transcripts, then I'd weave them into chapters."

"I think it's a hugely important book, particularly at this moment in our political history.
Dan's memorable declaration that he 'would rather cross the political aisle than cross the people' reminds us that politics doesn't have to be fear and loathing."

Now as national book reviewers get their copies, I'm hopeful they'll focus on the Evans-Fletcher segment.

Then perhaps my goal of seeing some ongoing national recognition come about for what their relationship meant, both in Evans' original goal and the way it paved the road for Fletcher's future, will begin attracting attention in high levels.

The idea of preserving the voice and video presence of every U.S. service member killed in action led Sandy Wheeler to create an archival video platform that would allow those whose military service leads to the ultimate sacrifice to have preserved, before their departure for a battle zone that may be well known or top secret, their legacies for family members left behind, and even those not yet born.
 
“We would hope to make it part of their pre-deployment requirement that they create for their loved ones and family members short video messages that will go into the archives,” said Wheeler, a Vietnam veteran who returned to civilian life in 1970, graduated from what was then Central Washington College and began what he expected would be an accounting career.
 
But a decade later Wheeler, now 74 and a Wenatchee resident, turned to be an entrepreneur, founding and presiding over the founding and growth of one of the best-known exercise-equipment companies, Bowflex, and its acquisition of Nautilus as well as Schwinn Fitness and Stairmaster.
 
Wheeler says the idea for memory-carrying time capsules was planted when he arrived home from his 18-month tour in Vietnam expecting to connect with one of his best friends, Dennis, who was to be discharged two weeks after him and also head home. But he learned that Dennis had been killed in action two days before his discharge.

“Simply unbelievable. Dennis’ baby boy would never see his father and his wife would never see him alive again,” Wheeler said.

Sandy Wheeler“That was truly the point in time that this vision took root,” Wheeler said. “I was sick with grief that this baby boy would never get to hear his daddy's voice, play ball, wrestle or do any of the things little boys desire and need.”

Fast forward to this past August as the U.S, involvement in Afghanistan wound down and two events served to cement in Wheeler’s mind the power behind the vision, and the need for the time capsules.
 
First was an incident related to him by a friend in the Seals who had a close friend, Lou, who was among the 22 Seals killed, along with eight other U.S, troops when their helicopter was shot down on August 21 in Afghanistan.
 
“Lou left a wife and two little boys, 7 and 9, behind,” related Wheeler. “But something else he left behind cemented in my mind the power behind this vision. Lou had a fellow Team member film a video of him on August 6 that was to be sent to his wife and boys IF he was killed in action. At Lou’s funeral, his wife played the video messages for all to see and there was not a dry eye in the place.”
 
“Finally, on August 26, 2021, our whole nation watched in horror as 12 Marines and one Navy Corpsman were killed in Afghanistan and their loved ones would be left in shock with no chance to say goodbye,” said Wheeler. “I then knew this vision had to move forward and launched it with two other co-founders.”

The first group Wheeler hopes to target with his TimeCapsules Corp., for which as CEO he is now in fundraising mode, is the 75,000 or so members of the various Special Operations (Special Ops) units spread across the armed forces, troops ranging from reconnaissance and counter-terrorism typically conducted by small groups of highly trained personnel like Army green berets and rangers and Navy Seals. Those are all grouped under what is commonly referred to as special forces.

“The deaths of the 12 marines and the navy corpsman killed in the suicide bombing attack on the airport in Kabul made me realize how important it might have been for their families to have videos of their dead service member, to hear them say "I love you" and they could listen a million times,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler's first step with his business is a crowd-funding effort to raise $350,000 to complete the technical aspects of the capsule and provide first-year operating costs. Then, having filed a Reg-D, he will go after qualified investors seeking to gain equity shares and looking to an exit strategy.

“We are now working on the app and finishing the buildout of the encryption stuff,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler's knowledge of how to grow a business is indicated by his exercise-equipment venture. He launched Bowflex in 1985, taking the role of marketing vice president and fundraiser, then guiding the purchase of Nautilus as well as Schwinn fitness and Stairmaster in the '90s, using the name Nautilus for the collective businesses. Then he took the companies to the NYSE under the symbol NLS, completing the growth from zero sales to more than a half-billion dollars.

Wheeler emphasizes the importance of family to him. He and his wife, Dianna, celebrated their 50th anniversary in July, and the day we talked, he was heading off with his grandson to drive to Nebraska to go deer hunting.
.
“Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM), which has three or four special ops groups, would be our first target, then Fairchild near Spokane, then once we have all special ops, move on to regular military, to all reserve and eventually national guard members, whose lives are on the line if they are called up.”

It’s intriguing that Wheeler’s project starts with a part of the military that frequently operates in secret so most Americans are not even aware there are members of the military who are on assignments that, at any given moment, can be in life or death situations.

“The time capsule will allow any member of the military to leave something for any future calendar date they wish and for any reason, even 20 to 30 years into the future, and the system knows the disbursement date,” Wheeler explained. “Those for whom a message is left will have a disbursement date that could be like to a granddaughter on her wedding day saying in a video capsule ‘grandpa would love to be with you on this special day.’”

Wheeler’s time in Vietnam included an incident that brought home to him personally the importance of communication with loved ones, an incident he shared with a chuckle.
 
He recalled that he sent a letter each week to his mother, “sometimes even just a quick note, like ‘send cookies,’ but it was every week.”
 
“Then I got sent on a secret mission to Laos or Cambodia, a mission where you didn’t even take your dog tags let alone communicate,” he said.
 
“So when my mom didn’t get her letters, she called the Red Cross and her concern eventually came to the attention of an admiral who called me in when I returned and he said ‘we can’t have your mom calling the Red Cross. Next time you leave me a series of letters to send to her and I’ll take care of it.’”

The political melodrama being played out in Republican-held legislatures around the country of rewriting election laws, a process worrisome to election officials of both parties, is getting a hard pushback from two nationally respected retired Washington Republican secretaries of state as well as the current holder of that office, also a Republican.

And a Republican side-stage scene of a bizarre vote recount in Arizona is described by Kim Wyman, the three-term current Washington secretary of state, as “a process that should concern every American.”

As in their outspoken support for Georgia’s secretary of state as he was being personally pressured by President Donald Trump to twist that state’s election outcome to his favor, five-term secretary of state Ralph Munro and his three-term successor Sam Reed have nothing but criticism for the voting rewrite efforts.Kim Wyman

“It’s ridiculous for elected officials in these states to be using this Democracy-threatening device to perpetuate the big lie,” said Munro, to which Reed said, “that’s exactly how I would say it.”

“These election-change efforts are starting down a pretty scary road for Democracy,” added Wyman, who was elected to her third four-year term last November.

The three, plus Bruce Chapman, Republican who was appointed secretary of state in 1975 by Gov. Dan Evans and was elected to a single term in 1976 then made an unsuccessful run for the GOP nomination for governor in 1980, are being honored in a virtual event on May 20 by the Mainstream Republicans of Washington. The four will share the virtual stage to discuss their collective roles in this state’s 57-year GOP hold on the office of secretary of state, Washington’s chief election officer.

That remarkable political success story in what has usually been, and increasingly so in recent years, a deep blue state began in 1964 with the election of young Seattle City Councilman A. Ludlow Kramer who joined Dan Evans, who was elected governor, in a remarkable year in which their success defeating Democratic incumbents went dramatically against the Democratic sweep across the nation, led by Lyndon Johnson’s overwhelming defeat of Barry Goldwater.

Jon Nehring, the 10-year mayor of Marysville and chair of the organization that names itself mainstream isn’t sure an organization of that name exists in other states, though he agreed with a chuckle that it’s quite likely Republicans in Alabama or Texas would describe themselves as mainstream. Pretty certain that would include all the GOP House members who ousted Liz Cheney from her leadership role Wednesday for her criticisms of Trump.

Reed said that while The Mainstream Republicans of Washington is a unique organization, most states have a loosely connected group of moderates/mainstreamers.

Incidentally, I advised the three that Republicans like them are going to have to come up with a different mantra than “big lie” about Trump and Republicans who contend without factual support that the election was stolen by President Joe Biden and the Democrats. That’s because Trump this week co-opted that “big lie” phrase to now refer to his view, and the view of his followers, that he actually won in November.

The Washington Post did an analysis of the GOP’s national push in states around the country to enact hundreds of new election restrictions. The Post said the effort “could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men”.

In data compiled as of Feb, 19, the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that in 43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person, and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee.Ralph Munro

One of the numerous voter constraints being enacted or considered in many states where Republican legislatures hold sway is voters being required to carry some sort of approved personal i.d. to be permitted to vote.

Addressing that, Wyman said, “if states are going to crack down with a requirement for a voter i.d. then every eligible voter should have access to official i.d. for free.”

Wyman was particularly critical of the unusual election recount in Arizona, where the Republican-led State Senate ordered a recount of All 2.1 million votes cast in Maricopa County, a review being conducted not by elections officials but by independent contractors…a Florida firm that has no background with elections.

“If the 10,000 people who oversee local elections are to be replaced in oversight of the elections by state legislators, outcomes in the future will depend on which party is in power in a particular state,” said Wyman,

Wyman used the phrase “epitome of the opaque” to describe the Arizona recount, which she said is “a process that should concern every American.”

Munro, who I’ve known for 54 years and have never known him to go easy with something that deserves his criticism, said “rightwingers see voter fraud under every rock. In my 35 years of election involvement, I’ve seen voting mistakes occur but never of significant consequence.”

“To allow legislatures to directly oversee local election officials would be totally politicizing what is basically a very good process everywhere with people from both parties involved in watching the process and the counting,” he added.

When I wrote of Munro’s and Reed’s praise Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for the manner in which he resisted personal pressure from Trump to alter the presidential election outcome in his state, I noted their suggestion that he deserved some sort of national honor for his courage.

Now Raffensperger’s state is among the leaders of the move to basically rewrite voter eligibility provisions with what critics see as a way to reduce the minority vote in the future.

One of the reasons Munro and Reed give for the phenomenal string of terms the Republicans have held the state’s chief elections overseer is that all have guided the office almost as if it were a non-partisan office.

And each had roles that went well beyond election oversight in their service to the state, including the international trade role, in Munro’s case.

Meanwhile, as the Republican state senate order of a recount of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County continues, one of the Republican senators who voted to approve the recount, under the control of a Florida firm hired to oversee it, is expressing regret at voting in favor of it.Sam Reed

“I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point,” Paul Boyer said of a partisan recount.

More than 100 Republican former governors, members of Congress, cabinet officials, and others plan to release a “call for American renewal” statement of principles and vision for the party on Thursday, a day after House Republicans removed Liz Cheney from their leadership ranks for her opposition to Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election that sparked an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The group says it is prepared to raise “tens of millions” of dollars to support candidates in competitive 2022 midterm elections that will decide control of Congress and are laying the groundwork for an alternative party if the GOP doesn’t change course.

But Reed had a firm response to the idea of an alternative party.

“Third parties are a pipe dream. A waste of time,” Reed said.

That means he sees changes that need to be made having to come from within the GOP.

(Virtual event May 29 at 7:00 pm. Register at www.mrwalliance.org/honoring-our-secretaries-of-state-virtual-event. Individual tickets are $25 each or purchase a ticket to the event and the VIP reception with Secretary Kim Wyman for $250.  NOTE: Information on how to log onto the Zoom event will be sent after registration. )

Two Eastside women with significant business backgrounds have recently assumed roles heading the non-profits that fund technology needs and community outreach programs of Bellevue’s first responders, both police and fire. This amid the challenge posed by the national movement to defund the police, a move that both view as not supported by the majority of citizens.

Villette Nolon, president and executive director of the Bellevue Police Foundation for only a few weeks, has made an intriguing transition into her new role having most recently served as the president and CEO of Imagine Housing, the Eastside’s leading affordable housing non-profit where she frequently worked with low-income families.

Villette NolonThat involvement helped her realize “the relationship between the community and the police is complicated but important.”

Nolon was long one of this area’s most prominent female angel investors, including chair and president of Seraph Capital Forum, the nation’s first all-women angel group, and a key executive with Angel Capital Association, the national association of angel investors.

Laura McCloud Mathers, President & CEO of the Bellevue Fire Department Foundation, was urged by Bellevue Fire Chief Jay Hagen to take the leadership of the foundation after she had been tapped as a consultant in December of 2019 to advise on how to create a foundation for the department.

Mathers, who had served as head of the Seattle Police Foundation for two and a half years while Kathleen O’Toole was chief, describes Hagen, who had spent 30 years with the Seattle Fire Department before being tapped to head the Bellevue fire department three years ago, as “an incredible leader, passionate in his commitment.”

Mathers’ background includes being the first membership director of the Columbia Tower Club, a key executive at the World Trade Center, and executive director of the Seattle Rotary Club.

“It is so sad that defunding the police foundations is a new racial justice target, putting pressure on companies to cut vital ties with nonprofit police foundations,” said McCloud. “Clearly they don’t understand the role of the foundation is primarily to ensure the police are well equipped with those things that will save lives and make the community safer for ALL!”

Nolon used as an example of the importance of the foundation’s work last month’s grant of $104,000 to police for what she described as “sorely needed new training and command system and a mobile wellness hub for officers, their families and retired officers to access health and wellness benefits the department offers.”

Mathers pointed to several examples of tools available to the Seattle police department as a result of community donations to the foundation, starting with AEDs for every patrol car, which she explained are “easy to use, low-maintenance defibrillators for people experiencing cardiac arrest while waiting for a medic unit to arrive.”
 
Another Mathers example:
Laura McCloud Mathers“Naloxone, a nasal spray that could be administered by officers to opioid overdose victims to bring back to life,” she explained. “SPD having Naloxone was initially a concern with the Seattle Fire Union - it was believed to be intruding on their scope of work. Fortunately, a meeting between Police Chief O’Toole and Fire Chief Scoggins put that to rest. “The union recognized the greater good for the community was for police to have it as they typically are at the scene before medics arrive – and seconds do matter between life and death.”

It might be suggested that those seeking to “defund the police” be made aware more forcefully of that point that police are usually at the scene of accidents or crises before the medics arrive and thus their services in such situations are vital, possibly even to the survival of victims.

The pushback against defunding the police may be getting underway, at least if the comment by New York mayoral candidate Eric Adams, a black former NYC police officer who see himself as the pro-public safety candidate who seems police as part of the solution. is any indication.

In an interview with New York Magazine published Tuesday, Adams said the "defund the police" movement is led not by people of color in the Big Apple, but rather by young white professionals.

Reflecting on her time guiding the Seattle Police Foundation, Mathers said:  “It was truly an honor to work with the many amazing men and women of SPD. I saw only big hearts and dedication to serving a community and improving lives. After seeing the evil of mankind perpetrated daily, they got up every day to face it again and pray they returned home safely to see their families again.”

Both are undertaking their roles confident that they’ll get more yes than no responses as they go about their fundraising duties in the Bellevue community.