Three-term incumbent Patty Murray (D-WA) is a powerhouse in the US Senate. A senior member of the appropriations committee, Murray brings billions in federal dollars home to Washington State, most notably as chair of the transportation appropriations committee, where she’s been a champion for Sound Transit. It would be regional suicide to lose Murray at a moment when the Puget Sound’s economic future is predicated on expanding light rail.
Murray’s other earmarks—a fancy word for budget line items—include everything from money for YWCA domestic violence programs in Yakima to infrastructure fixes at McChord Air force Base to law enforcement dollars directed at fighting meth in Tacoma to diesel-electric hybrid buses in Spokane.
Republicans have tried to use Murray’s talent for getting local projects into the budget as a gripe against her this election, citing it as evidence of her spendthrift ways. (Fact check: Earmarks make up less than one percent of the federal budget.) Moreover, the criticism that her line items for defense, cops, and social services add to the deficit doesn’t make sense because getting something in the budget requires knocking something else out. We’re glad Murray has Washington’s back.
Murray makes no apologies about her ability to bring home the bacon: “When I come to D.C., it is my responsibility to fight for my home state.”
Meanwhile, Murray has a stellar record on the big issues: Health care reform (yea); financial reform (yea); global warming (yea—the EPA should be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions); immigration reform (yea on creating a path to citizenship); abortion rights (she’s adamantly pro-choice and led the fight to make emergency contraception available over the counter). Vote after vote, Murray’s record lines up with the Obama agenda that Washington State voters loudly supported in 2008. At a time when the Democrats need every one of their 60 votes to overcome cynical—and seemingly weekly—GOP filibuster threats in order to extend unemployment insurance or pass equal rights legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, PubliCola is glad Murray’s in D.C.
Murray isn’t scared to vote her conscience when it matters most. She was one of just 23 liberals who voted against the Iraq War back in 2002, and she’s currently co-sponsoring one of our favorite bills in D.C.—the DISCLOSE Act, which would require independent expenditure groups that do political attack ads to identify their corporate backers. (The Republicans filibustered that one yesterday, but it’s coming back.)
Murray’s main rival, two-time failed gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, comes on strong with language about bipartisanship. But that campaign rhetoric does not match Rossi’s own hotly partisan record as a state senator in the early 2000s, when he voted with big business 100 percent of the time (how do you think he would have voted on the bailouts he’s currently and conveniently criticizing?) and against environmental, labor, and civil rights legislation. His campaign has relied on unimaginative Republican platitudes (small government, less taxes, the American Dream) while his few specific policy points—repeal health care reform and Wall Street reform— seem to be framed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and by his spokeswoman, a former staffer for Republican Senate Minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) office.
The other main GOP candidate in this top-two primary is Clint Didier, an Eastern Washington farmer and former pro football player. Didier is taking up the Tea Party cause and gaining traction with the Republican base. His campaign is also heavy on the rhetoric, although it’s much more histrionic than Rossi’s on issues like immigration reform (send troops to the border) and abortion (opposed, with no exceptions) and education (“shut down the DOE.”)
Didier’s a quotable dude. When we interviewed him, he referred to Murray as the “housewife in tennis shoes” and himself as a “farmer in work boots.” And in a recent profile, he told the Seattle Times: “We’ve got to get rid of this, ‘protecting the weak.’ If we keep the weak alive all the time, it eats up the strong, and then our economy will never come back.”
Sending a pour-and-stir Republican like Rossi (who’s already been rejected by voters twice) or a hard line conservative like Didier (who’s out of sync with Washington voters) to the Senate on 2010’s generic wave of discontent would be a rash blunder with long-term consequences.
PubliCola picks Patty Murray.
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Duh. Post your endorsements for the 34th House Position #2- that should be more interesting
Agreed. Especially after this:
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/vashon/vib/news/993...
Agreed. Especially after this:
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/vashon/vib/news/993...
So earmarks are cool again now that they're being handed out by favorable politicians, to favorable causes in favorable locales?
Also, I got a good hearty laugh about the supposed “unimaginative…platitudes” or Mr. Rossi. I suppose raising taxes and increasing regulation are counted by PubliCola as “imaginative”?
My name is Schalk Leonard, candidate for US Senate.
I am a retired Navy Judge Advocate (JAG) officer, living in Poulsbo.
I am about Washington, and also … about America.
We can do much better. http://www.schalk4senate.org
Schalk
We can do better than Murray even within the Democratic Party. I am Bob Burr and am running against her because she does not support the State Democratic platform. I do.
Patty is against public campaign financing, is against even the decriminalization of marijuana, is part of Senate leadership that gave us weak healthcare and financial reform bills and no energy bill, continually votes for the funding of unwinnable and unnecessary wars, and votes for estate tax relief for multi-billionnaires. She is funded by special interests and caters to them.
I have been endorsed by the State's Progressive Caucus. Check me out. Vote for Bob Burr on August 17.
http://www.bobburr4senate.com
If Ohio can have Sherrod Brown, WA can do better than Patty Murray. I'm not connected with any of the other candidates in any way. But look a bit deeper at how “progressive” Murray's record really is:
•voted to build a fence on the Mexican border
•voted against letting states have single payer if they want it
•voted against allowing Rx drug reimportation from Canada, siding with Big Pharma against the public
•won't cosponsor the Fair Elections Now Act (public financing)
•underpays her staff (http://www.legistorm.com) then lets them accept $1000 gifts from huge corporations
•makes hiring, meeting, and earmark decisions based in part on such “benign” contributions
•votes for NAFTA and other job-killing “free trade” deals
•voted for No Child Left Behind
•chairs a Labor subcommittee, and ranks 4th in Senate leadership, yet has done nothing to raise the minimum wage–it hasn't gone up in over a year
•voted with Republicans to repeal the estate tax
•opposes same-sex marriage
•goes to bat for warmongering corporation Boeing, perpetuating the military-industrial complex (majority of their money is made on military contracts)
The list goes on. Murray is a classic fear-driven congressional Democrat who's too timid to go out on a limb and take a strong position for an important cause and gets by on sending lots of $$$ back to her state through the inherently corrupt earmark process (how do you get one from her? Hire a lobbying firm that has one of her former staffers on their payroll). You can't support weak Democrats like this at election time and then complain the next 6 years about how weak and ineffective congressional Democrats are. Patty Murray is part of the problem, and she won't change, so she needs to be replaced.
Yeah, I'll grudgingly vote for her in November if the polls tighten, but there's no way I could in good conscience back her in a primary. She's clearly the better of our two senators, but we deserve so much better. Like a Sherrod Brown, who represents a much more conservative state yet found his way to vote for the single payer amendment Patty opposed.
Please provide a citation where Publicola has ever said that earmarks are “not cool.”
And they are platitudes – they're soundbites, they're not real world policy. We know what happens when Republicans get elected and the nation can't afford it… literally.
I'm Pro-Murray. She's awesome for all the reasons you listed and she's a nice in-line moderate, right in Washington's style. She straddles the middle while giving big hugs to the left… but not the crazy kind of hugs.
A vote for Patty is a vote for the status quo–a vote that says you are satisfied with the leadership of the Democratic party and the direction in which this country is headed.
If you are a Democrat who is satisfied with the pace of “Change We Can Believe In”, then vote for Patty. That will assure that special interests will still rule the roost. If you are diasppointed with the delivery of the Promise of 2008, then Bob Burr is your candidate. He will become a much needed Alan Grayson type in the Senate who will tell it like it is and point fingers at those in his own party who cave in to their donors.