This week: Karen Kieser announces she's running for office again.

[elfs]

Karen Keiser

Omaha dragged the family (just kidding, we all went voluntarily) to a rainy picnic at Angle Lake, where Karen Kieser, Democratic incumbent candidate for the Senate seat from the 33rd district, held her opening announcement that she was running for another term. It was the usual rah-rah kind of stuff, and we were accompanied by the usual local political types from other politicians and local leaders.

This being the Democratic forum, we had more veterans than usually show up at the Republican equivalents. There was the usual smattering of union types. We had a few business leaders, too, which surprises me more than it should, I guess. A local charity gave Karen its endorsement, as did the current King County executive, Dow Constantine.

Dow's been assailed from all sides ever since getting elected. I guess that's one of those career decisions all politicians have to make, to either go for the next rung of the ladder or decide your time is past. (Psst, Dino, your time is long past.) But Dow's path required him to make a bid for the county executive at a time when that job was going to be utterly thankless, and even I have strong disagreements that Rossi didn't negotiate hard enough for salary and vendor concessions before giving in and trying to raise taxes.

Dow Constantine

There were others there, including our legislators from our district, Tina Orwall and Dave Upthegrove. All in all, it was a pretty ordinary kickeff event for a state-level politician. It's surprising how small these are compared to, say, county executive level positions. You wouldn't think those mattered as much, but apparently executive battles are positively ferocious compared to legislator positions.

The food was adequate, but given these were Democrats there were a lot of veggie-burgers.

Tina Orwall and Dave Upthegrove

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

More vets at D's than at R's? How very... interesting.

Madame senator looks (and dresses) a lot like my mother. (Who, interestingly, is a GDI... that's gorram independent, put semi-politely. :)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's surprising at all. Most politics is done by older people, and the older vets are Vietnam vets, who have much more to lose if the Veteran's Affairs programs start to retract. Veteran's Affairs under Bush was a national disgrace, and General Shalikashvili's efforts to put it back together have been nothing short of Herculean.