A final laurel and dart before the vote
NEVER TRUMP-FOREVER McMULLIN? It sure took them a while, but a few of Washington’s most illustrious state Republicans have offered up a path for “Never Trump” Republicans.
If not Democrat Hillary Clinton, the clear qualified choice, then who? It’s never been enough to say one won’t support GOP nominee Donald Trump.
With that in mind, former U.S. senator Slade Gorton and former three-term secretary of state Sam Reed went to the state Capitol on Wednesday to deliver a list of Electoral College electors for Evan McMullin, the former CIA operative running as a conservative independent. McMullin graduated from King County’s Auburn High School but isn’t on the Washington ballot.
Gorton and Reed offered to serve as electors for McMullin in case his long-shot campaign receives a load of write-in ballots.
Clinton is receiving support from some Republicans who find Trump is an unstable, reckless, misogynistic, xenophobic, belligerent and out to serve his own interests ahead of the nation. But the nation’s likely first female president is not for everyone. This move gets Gorton and Reed off the horns of a dilemma, and we respect their decision.
UNFAIR ADS TARGET JUSTICE: Once again independent groups are targeting a sitting justice on the Washington state Supreme Court with misleading ads. This time it’s first-term Justice Charles Wiggins in the crosshairs of two groups — one a business PAC funded by Bill Gates and other Microsoft alumni who were upset about a charter schools ruling; the other by conservative billionaire Ken Fisher of Camas and others who are behind a PAC called Judicial Integrity Washington.
The second group’s work that is the hardest to stomach. It’s 30-second ad says Wiggins has “a history of letting dangerous people do dangerous things,” in part citing his majority ruling in a search and seizure case involving a sex offender whose pornography conviction was overturned. The suspect was recently arrested for allegedly soliciting sex from a minor.
But Wiggins’ majority ruling in the Budd case was not enabling predators, as the commercial claims. It kept intact a bright legal line between legal and illegal police excursions into a home.
The scary ad has drawn a letter of rebuke from former chief Justice Gerry Alexander, former U.S. attorney John McKay, two former prosecutors and Seattle University law professor David Boerner.
The beneficiary of the ad is David Larson, challenger to Wiggins on Nov. 8. Just as more than 200 judges in our state have done, we’ve endorsed Wiggins.
This story was originally published November 3, 2016 at 2:35 PM with the headline "A final laurel and dart before the vote."