I received today a mass mailing from the Mark Sidran campaign which purports to be from Al Franken, endorsing Sidran's candidacy for Washington State Attorney General. Of course there's no contact information for Mr. Franken, so there's no way to verify the authenticity of this letter or determine whether it is perhaps another big fat lie from lying liars.
Al, I will address the rest of this to you in the first person, with the presumption of the letter's veracity:
Sidran was the worst City Attorney the City of Seattle has had in my lifetime. The letter penned in your name speaks of his integrity and common sense.
Did he take on polluters and big business or make deals with them?
His refusal to settle various damage claims where the City was ultimately found liable racked up legal costs and cost the City far more in judgements.
He was a Prosecutor and City Attorney, yet he seems to have had some problems with campaign financial disclosure compliance.
His capricious and precipitate policies and poor judgement contributed to the poor planning for WTO and the subsequent violations of civil rights. His judgement on various issues was so questionable that the City Council considered hiring independent counsel.
His "civility" initiatives, defended at huge financial cost by the City and largely overturned, are right out of some white paper at The Discovery Institute, a Republican-infested right wing think tank located right here in Seattle.
Maybe that's the real reason the Republicans think he'll be hard to beat.
If the Republicans want him, they can have him! Except that even though he purportedly shares their views, he's probably too "activist" for their liking. He's the Richard Pope of the Democratic Party.
Sadly, this does seem to be the year of negative voting. In fact, Sidran is probably the only reason at the moment that I'd consider voting for a Republican.
At least, that's my take on it from what I've seen. Harvard buddy, eh? You keep this up and I'm likely to suspect that your real agenda is to take back the Republican Party!