This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Local Bellevue WA Elections Again (Part II)

OK. Lunch break time. I am allowing myself 45 minutes, and am doing this instead of eating lunch today. Bleh. Of course, they put out excess Halloween candy in the hallway, so I am not hurting for junk calories with no actual nutrition value. Woo! Anyway…

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 1

One candidate. John Creighton. Leaving aside the Farscape reference (yes, I know it is spelled differently) the unopposed thing gets me again, and I write myself in. I vote for SAMUEL MINTER.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 3

Two candidates. Holland: Truck Fleet Salesperson. Supported by unions. Doud: Investment properties broker. Says he represents the whole county rather than just Seattle. Criticizes union support of opponent. I think I’ll go with the more business oriented Doud. I generally dislike the idea of unions, and therefore am wary of Holland. I will vote for DAVID DOUD.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 4

Two candidates. Albro: Touts his independence. Bunch of endorsements. Small business owner. An engineer. Vekich: Former longshore worker and Democratic Legislator. Says we don’t need an insider, but then lists a bunch of insiders who endorse him. Why are these elected positions again? The Stranger says: “The port needs a business-minded person who isn’t evil. That’s Tom Albro.” Ha! OK. Good enough. I’ll vote for TOM ALBRO.

City of Bellevue Council Position No. 2

Two candidates. Orrico: Involved in a lot of local commissions and such. Points out opponent is running for 4th term. Her website was done by a middle school aged relative (child?). Lee: Incumbent. Basically says he has done a good job so bring him back. Looking around I don’t see much about issues that are very contentious. I think multiple terms in local government is generally not a great idea though, and I liked the middle school designed website. So I’ll vote for VICKI ORRICO.

City of Bellevue Council Position No. 4

Two candidates. Wallace: Looks like he is the keep taxes low, fiscal responsibility, that sort of thing type. Also pushing light rail. Bonincontri: Some stuff about parks and quality of life and the like. There really isn’t much to go on here. Most of the stuff on both of them is of the “I’ll work to make things better” type. On balance though, I think I’m leaning Wallace. I will vote for KEVIN R. WALLACE.

City of Bellevue Council Position No. 6

Two candidates again. Marchand: Talks about jobs and pushing Bellevue to the next level. Davidson: 22 years on the city council. He says to reelect him because he has done a good job. OK. Marchand looks OK, and Davidson has just been there too long. I will vote for MICHAEL MARCHAND.

OK. My timer went off and my 45 minutes are up. I have five more races to make decisions on. They will have to wait for a few more hours until I am done with work. I did six in this last 45 minutes, so I should be able to finish up in another 45 minute batch. There should be plenty of time. I’ve got just under four hours left before the time I usually leave work, and just under six hours before the ballots are due. I can do that.

King County Washington Primary Election

So, it is time for another local election. The ballot came a few weeks ago, but of course I didn’t look at it and didn’t look at it. So here I am on the day the ballots need to return, having not yet looked at anything at all, and not knowing anything about any of the races at all. Yum.

So it is lunch time at work, and I’ll be skipping the eating thing in favor of quickly figuring out how I am going to vote. Unlike previous times, I think I won’t do one post per race, but rather will just summarize everything in this one post. I probably also do not have time to give a few thoughts on each candidate as I have done in the past. We shall see, but I need to do this quickly rather than at the length I usually do.

This is a primary, so I believe the top two in each race will be back on another ballot in November.

Anyway… first race.

King County Executive: There are eight candidates. Larry Phillips, Fred Jarrett, Stan Lippmann, Alan Lobdell, Susan Hutchison, Dow Constantine, Ross Hunter and “Goodspaceguy”. That last one is immediately intriguing. Anyway, time to spend a few minutes reading about each of them. I will probably just read each of their statements, I doubt I’ll have time for more…. OK. There are a couple wackadoodles here. And honestly just from their blurbs I don’t really like any of them. I guess if I have to choose… Fred Jarrett. I like that he is a previous party switcher (R->D) and that he is from the Eastside. I think I saw him at some events back in 2008 too and he seemed decent enough. Looks like he has a few prominent endorsements and has a history as a moderate. (Yeah, I ended up clicking through to a few additional websites besides his statement.) Anyway, he will do.

Metropolitan King County Council District No. 9: Three candidates… Mark Greene, Beverly Harison Tonda, Reagan Dunn. Ehh… I guess I’ll go for the incumbent, Reagan Dunn. I don’t see anything really bad there, and the two others did not impress me much.

Court of Appeals Division No. 1, District No. 1, Judge Position No. 3: First, I continue to not like the idea of elected judges. Anyway, two candidates. Robert D. Kelly and Anne L. Ellington. I’ll go with Ellington. Better experience, and the other guy said he would pray he would make good decisions.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 3: 3 candidates. Rob Holland, David Doud, Al Yuen. I like Holland for the previous port experience. Doud turned me off by mostly talking about how to use properties rather than directly talking about the port. I just didn’t see anything compelling in Yuen.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 4: 4 candidates. Juan Paraiso, Max Vekich, Tom Albro, Robert Walker. Robert Walker gets my vote. I clicked through to his website and like his humor and his outside perspective. He won’t win of course, but I think a fresh outsider perspective like that would be good in almost any position.

Now wait one more thing… Brandy’s mom told her a week or so ago that a woman from where she works… in the Philadelphia area… heard her family was out here, and asked her to tell us that we should vote for Ross Hunter. It seems that the woman’s girlfriend is Hunter’s sister. Or something like that. I intentionally did my decisions above without looking up the email from Brandy mentioning what her mom said, so I wouldn’t know who that was. As it is I picked someone else. I did just now give Hunter a second look. He doesn’t look too bad. And the Seattle times actually endorsed BOTH the person I picked and Hunter. (Article is here.) If I remember properly when I looked through these guys a few minutes back, Hunter was also on my short list, although as I said I didn’t really *like* any of them that much from what I read. Anyway, I’ll stick to my original vote, although Hunter doesn’t look bad. Doesn’t sound like either of them will win of course.

OK, I guess that’s it. Time to fill out the bubbles. I’ll drop the ballot off in the designated place after work.