Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

Congrats to David Brewster's Crosscut for doing a second story on gay issues in a month. That's more than The Weekly would have done in a year while he was running the thing.

The latest story is by Austin Jenkins, "the Olympia-based political reporter for Northwest News Network, a consortium of public radio stations in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. He covers Northwest politics and public policy as well as the Washington Legislature."

It's a good story about the influence of philanthropist/activist Tim Gill on Washington politics. But we're just slightly less than thrilled to see it because we saw the same story somewhere else several months ago. Where? Right here and here. That was February.

Unlike our story, Jenkins doesn't show the actual influence of the Gill group on Washington races, but he does add some quotations by folks who didn't comment for our story.

Washington state Sen. Ed Murray, an openly gay Seattle Democrat, says the gay lobby has traditionally focused on national races. But after the 2004 election, that started changing.

"In the last presidential election, the gay community had its clock cleaned," admits Murray, referring to the eleven states ? including Oregon ? that passed ballot measures banning gay marriage.

Murray and Guerriero say after that election, the gay community swung into action. Murray explains it this way: "What's going on is there's sort of a fairly low-grade, under-the-radar conversation that's going on in the gay community about investing at the state level."

...and...

The fact the Gill effort in Washington and Oregon is only now [???, ahem...] coming to light ? six months after the election ? concerns one defeated Republican. Former House member Toby Nixon says it's a sign the current campaign finance disclosure system may be inadequate.

"If there was some way in more real time during the campaign to find out that this kind of considered effort was going on, maybe a more effective response could be mounted," says Nixon.

But another defeated Republican, Luke Esser, a former state senator and now Washington State Republican Party Chair, refuses to bash the out-of-state money that came into his district. "I think it's incumbent upon Republicans and those who are not in favor of the gay marriage agenda to be ready to raise the money they need to win elections in the future," Esser says.

It's a story worth repeating and Jenkins tells it well, but really now... there's a thing out here sometimes called "the internets" and something on those "tubes" called, by some "the Google" or "the Technorati". Amazing things. You should try them out. We also understand that Brewster and his crowd of ex-Weekly-ites at Crosscut like to see themselves as arbiters of what is good and proper in journalism and much more, but really, now. Wouldn't you consider this kind of thing unseemly if it were done without attribution by someone else?

Labels: legislature, politics, tim gill, Washington