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WA Senate update

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Until now, former Safeco CEO and Slade Gorton advisor Mike McGavick has been running a competent if uninspired challenge to first-term senator Maria Cantwell, pretending to run against Washington, DC and partisanship in general, rather than against Cantwell or with Bush. He was creeping up in the polls against Cantwell, whose mild vulnerability has been vastly overstated due to the dearth of actually vulnerable Democratic senatorial incumbents. Cantwell’s first round of TV ads (as well the neutralization of a former from-the-left primary distraction) did some significant damage to any gains his campaign had made, a non-trivial but non-fatal setback.

Now, though, McGavick has done something truly bizarre:

In “An open letter from Mike” on his campaign blog, the Republican candidate also discussed his divorce from his first wife, the layoffs he ordered while chief executive of Seattle-based Safeco Corp. in 2001 and 2002, and an inaccurate campaign attack ad he allowed when he managed Slade Gorton’s successful Senate election campaign in 1988.

Does he honestly believe that if he takes the skeletons out of the closet himself they won’t be able to harm him? Or is this just an effort to avoid a strategic late October surprise?

At any rate, the Cantwell campaign is remaining silent, letting the state Democratic party take a few whacks at these softballs. David Goldstein notes that McGavick wasn’t just over the legal limit–his blood alcohol level was significantly higher than the level which apparently turns ordinary men into raging anti-semites.

In other local political news, Darcy Burner is still way down in what is apparently the 19th most competitive district in the country. I hope this gets more competitive soon; the good news is she’s hardly started her campaign and her fundraising has been strong. Given the current state of the district, if she can link Reichart with Bush she might have a chance.

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