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Especially if You Knew What Really Happened in the Legislature – Left Makes Generic Attacks on Senate Democrat
State Sen. Jean Berkey, D-Everett
By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire
UPDATE, Aug. 24, 12 a.m.--Latest ballot-counting shows a dramatic reversal. Berkey is trailing her two opponents, and it appears she may have been defeated in the primary. But the 79-vote margin is so slim that a recount will be required under state law.
UPDATE, Aug. 17, 12 a.m.--Latest results in the Tuesday primary election show Sen. Jean Berkey in second place in the 38th District race, behind Democrat Nick Harper. Washington's top-two primary allows both top vote-getters to advance to the general election, meaning that Harper and Berkey will face off in November. Harper had 35 percent of the vote and Berkey had 34.
OLYMPIA, Aug. 16.—Looks like Jean Berkey’s getting hit from both sides in this Tuesday’s primary election.
That's what it looks like, anyway. Over the last month, there’s been a spate of ugly mailers from the left. They say the state senator from Everett voted against spending for education, health care, and just about everything most voters care about.
And on Friday, a new one hit Republican mailboxes in her district. That one says she’s a taxer and a spender.
From the right and the left. A one-two punch. But the whole thing is being orchestrated by activists and the state’s public employee unions. The Republican mailer has a different return address than the rest, but it comes from the same political consulting firm that is doing most of the work for the left – Moxie Media of Seattle.
“It’s outrageous,” Berkey said. “I have never seen this unethical of an attack.”
Berkey, the chairwoman of the Senate Financial Institutions, Housing and Insurance Committee, is being targeted by the state’s labor leaders and activist groups in what is proving to be the year's biggest-spending legislative campaign. They’re angered by what they see as Democratic indifference to their issues. This year, as the economy tanked, Democrats passed a tax increase, and it caused howls from the state’s business community. But it could have been bigger.
They also forced furloughs for state employees, cut some state programs, nixed some Labor Council initiatives, and eliminated a whopping spending increase that would have gone to schoolteachers. That's why the left is so upset.
The union leaders and activists wanted to send a message – and so they’ve spent $275,000 on independent-expenditure efforts in the weeks leading up to the primary, all apparently aimed at taking out Berkey. It's a staggering amount for a legislative campaign. Berkey herself has raised only $100,000. Meanwhile, they're mounting a smaller independent effort in the adjacent Snohomish County district of Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens.
Generic Charges Leave Few Dems Safe
If the goal is to get Olympia's attention, it's working. The tactics have prompted cries of outrage in Capitol circles for the last week. But what exactly those mailers are saying -- that's even more of an eyebrow-raiser. The same charges the left is using against Berkey might be used against nearly every Democratic member of the state Legislature.
The hits are coming in form of mailing-cards, mostly, but also commercials, leaflets, doorknob hangers. So far at least 15 of these attack mailers have arrived in the mailboxes of Berkey’s 38th District. At least 10 have come from Stand Up for Citizens, a group whose financing comes primarily from public-employee unions.
They include the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Public School Employees of Washington, the Service Employees International Union, and the Washington Federation of State Employees. Other money comes from FUSE Washington, a left-leaning activist group based in Seattle, and much of it is being funneled through the state Labor Council’s fund-raising arm, DIME PAC. Moxie Media is behind those mailings. For the record, Moxie Media didn’t return calls Sunday – though it hasn’t been speaking to anyone in the press since the mailers started hitting.
Other hit pieces in the race are being mailed directly from the Washington Education Association.
They make Berkey, 71, sound like the single worst lawmaker in the history of the state. But when you boil them down, they’re really saying the darndest thing.
Living it Up
The shocking fact appears to be this: Berkey voted for the same tax and spending bills as just about every other Democrat in the state Legislature.
Not exactly damning – until you start reading the mail.
“It’s true,” says one. “Sen. Berkey voted for House Bill 1244 and cut tens of millions of dollars from nursing homes, in-home care and health services for seniors and people with disabilities. She protected hundreds of millions in tax cuts for big businesses and insurance companies instead.”
House Bill 1244? That’s the state budget bill of 2009. Berkey voted for it, along with 73 of her fellow Democrats in the Legislature, including the party’s leaders.
“It’s true,” says another. “In 2009, state Sen. Jean Berkey voted in favor of Senate Bill 5963, granting big businesses hundreds of millions in unemployment insurance tax cuts, but strictly limiting benefits for unemployed workers. Meanwhile, she was living it up, courtesy of the business lobbyists who sent her flowers, took her to dinner and gave her tickets to the boat show.”
Senate Bill 5963? That was one of those complicated unemployment-insurance bills. Business and labor fight over them every session. In the end every single member of the state Senate voted for it, except for the three who were absent that day. But what really galls Berkey is the idea that she was living it up. Every morning during session the legislators' desks on the House and Senate floor are covered with bouquets. Maybe somebody took her to dinner – she can’t remember. And somebody passed along tickets to the boat show – she gave them to her husband. In the Legislature, such things really do happen all the time. Token items like these show up on every member’s public-disclosure forms.
“That one really irked me,” Berkey said. “It sounds like I’m living in a suite, not my tiny condo.”
And it gets worse.
'Jean Berkey Makes Me Want to Scream'
One card is headlined, “She Ought to be Ashamed!”
It shows a picture of a squinty-eyed female bus driver, who appears to be telling a personal story of woe. At one point it says, “Our state senator, Jean Berkey, slashed funding for public schools instead of making big out-of-state banks pay their fair share.”
Our state senator? The woman signed the statement, and Berkey’s campaign looked up her name. The woman is registered to vote in a different legislative district.
One expensive mailer that looks like a old-fashioned folding postcard features several personal stories like these, then displays a smiling photo of Berkey, taken from her web page. “Why is Jean Berkey the only one who is smiling?” it asks. “Because more than 90 percent of her election campaign is being funded by the big business interests she’s supporting.”
Take a look at any member’s campaign records and you’ll probably find the same thing. Republicans and Democrats alike take contributions from corporate interests, with the exception of those who are so far to the left that they get the bulk of their money from labor sources. Many of them get both. Berkey used to get significant labor contributions, until the union leadership declared war. That's why the percentages are so lopsided.
Berkey said, “As if campaign contributions didn’t pay for this mailing.”
And it goes on and on. One mailing is headlined, “Jean Berkey Makes Me Want to Scream.”
Attack on Berkey is Attack on All
Why Jean Berkey? It’s not as though she did anything any different than most of her fellow Democrats. In fact, she is a former shop steward and union official for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “I have an 87 percent lifetime voting record with the state Labor Council,” she said. “Apparently that’s not good enough.”
One thing she did do was to join up with a band of centrist Democrats in the Legislature this year who called themselves the “Roadkill Caucus.” They say they’ve felt under siege of late, because of the way labor leaders and left-wing activists have begun enforcing lock-step discipline on legislative members. The Roadkill movement didn’t have much of an effect this year, aside from blocking another unemployment bill that would have cost business plenty in the middle of a recession.
But labor officials said they wanted to teach the Senate a thing or two. Larry Brown, president of Aerospace Machinists Local 751, a contributor to the campaign, told the Seattle Times: “Some in the Democratic Caucus have taken us for granted. We felt we needed to get some people’s attention.”
An Odd Strategy
It’s a lot of money to spend for postcards, and the anti-Berkey message is clear enough. Yet if the goal is to take Berkey out, it is an odd race to target in the primary. For strategic reasons she has a good chance of pulling through the primary, no matter what those mailings say about her.
There are only three candidates in the race, and under the rules of Washington’s top-two primary system, the top two votegetters will advance to the general election, regardless of party.
The union leaders and activists are putting their money on political unknown Nick Harper, 31, who hadn’t launched a campaign until he signed up as a Democrat on the final day of filing week. Meanwhile, the third candidate in the race isn’t running much of a campaign. “Conservative” Rod Rieger is reluctant to describe himself as a Republican, says he has issues with the party, and has raised only $800.
But Berkey said the left’s character-assassination tactics have crossed the line. “They are trying to destroy me,” she said. “They are attacking my integrity and my reputation. It’s the most unethical thing I’ve ever seen.
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