Brewster: It’s a Susan Hutchison Kind of Year

By NW Digest Team at July 15th, 2009.

If you’ve been paying attention to the liberal blogs, or the local media, you might have wondered why Susan Hutchison–who continues to lead in all the polls–is often so quickly dismissed as just someone who once “read the news.”  Perhaps that’s because Hutchison is strategically picking and choosing her media battles, and in so doing, managing to stay above the media fray of a knock-down drag out fight among other top contenders.

As we noted yesterday, Hutchison’s opponents in the King County Executive race only occasionally come up from their intra-party slugfest to throw mud in her direction.  Even though voters elected to make the County Executive position non-partisan, the other four contenders brandish their Democratic credentials at every chance, and as the SeattlePI.com reported, appear to be campaigning for the title of most incompetent.

But in a county that two years ago elected a moderate Republican county official in Dan Satterberg as Prosecutor, relying entirely on the Democratic party label might not be an effective strategy anymore. Especially once candidates take their campaign outside the notoriously liberal Seattle core, and into the more moderate blue-collar neighborhoods, rural areas, and the Eastside suburbs.

All of that has led one of Seattle’s old guard, David Brewster at Crosscut.com, to make the call today that it might just be Susan Hutchison’s year:

The usual explanation/brushoff is to cite the initial fame of a television anchor, plus Hutchison’s being the sole woman in a race against four progressive Democrats. But there’s more: Hutchison is about the only person in the race with a clear message: Cut costs and clean house, big time. The others have rung changes on ho-hum issues like the best way to do the budget and whether people at the county are overpaid. The debate du jour is whether to blame the state for underfunding the county or the county for blowing through all the dollars it could find, therefore turning off the Legislature. (Answer: both of the above.)

Stay tuned to NWDIGEST.COM for continuing coverage of this and other local races around the Northwest this summer!

Tags: Crosscut, David Brewster, Dow Constantine, Dow Phillips, featured, Larry Constantine, Larry Phillips, Susan Hutchison

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