Added note - Noon, Nov 4.  Dan McShane has posted an excellent and dispassionate article on his blog at Washington Landscape that outlines the history of Linville's and Pike's views on the coal port and coal trains.  It shows that Linville has been a much more consistant critic of both than has Pike.

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Kelli continues, during the closing days of the election campaign, to be a class act. Her ads and mailed cards are about what she will bring to the leadership of our city - and to the issues of our waterfront, drinking water, economy, and improved running of city departments.

Most striking is the one-issue campaign of Dan Pike - coal trains. He is ignoring other issues of importance and hoping to win reelection strictly on the issue of coal trains. And he keeps impugning Kelli's position on coal trains. But what has caused me to write about all this so late in the campaign is other people who through errors, lies, and distortions have created virtual smears on Kelli late in the campaign.

Qualifying for our disgust is the Sierra Club and the Washington Conservation Voters (WCV.) The Sierra Club just plain lied on their card, saying Kelli had a 3 - 1 money advantage over Pike. When called on it, they weaseled and lied some more - saying they had sent a correction. The person who provided me with the original dishonest email never got the correction. We can only wonder how many others did not receive it.  Pike's supporters keep trying to make Kelli seem like the big money candidate.  Pike has raised more than she, and has also spent far more than he has raised.  

The WCV has simply become a partisan organization - endorsing Democratic Party candidates in a blind fashion. Their endorsements have nothing to do with environmental issues. They endorse Cathy Lehman who has exactly the same stance on the coal trains as Kelli, whom they condemn. And their cards are shameful in the way they twist Kelli's positions. They amount to smears.

John Stark, a 20-plus year Herald reporter, totally missed the $20,000 debt of the Pike campaign in his Wednesday story and then asked the inane question on his blog, "… whether this is a big deal?" I waited to see how the Herald would correct it in Thursday's paper. No correction on that, but they corrected an error on a high school football game - which goes to their priorities and honesty about correcting errors. And it goes to John Stark's incompetence as a reporter. Or was it incompetence?

These repeated lies and "errors" are all to Pike's advantage. He is running a rotten campaign and his supporters are joining him. The Sierra Club, while mumbling they are not sure where they got the 3-1 financial information, also imply they got the it from Pike's campaign. Sad that the Sierra Club cannot be honest. And it throws their entire endorsement into disrepute. Shame on them.

You can read Riley's piece on his website where he has posted scans of several of these mailers. But then, most of you have probably received them yourselves. My point here is to simply state what we all know - that the Dan Pike campaign has been, and continues to be, a very dirty and shameful effort.

As Pike has built his entire campaign on the coal train, here is something to consider. I was at the February 17 meeting at the Norway Hall when Craig Cole gave his presentation to the unions. I tried asking some hard questions about the coal trains but was cut off by boos, and Craig responded with insults and not answers. Bob Ferris courageously tried to ask questions and got booed down and yelled at. Craig thought it was all good fun. Dan Pike allowed it to happen without saying a word. Toward the end of the meeting, Dan jumped up and gave a short speech about how much he would support this coal port - to the cheers of the labor crowd. We all knew then how bad this coal port was and we knew how many coal trains there could be. Dan knew - but he didn't care. 

So now Dan has reversed himself. He says he learned more - but I think he just feels this is a good way to get reelected. And for myself, as one who worked on his campaign four years ago and watched what happened, I think if Dan is reelected, on the day after election he will forget all about his opposition to coal trains - just as he forgot about his campaign promises four years ago on the day after the election. The guy is no good.