Pollet backers look to courts to get White off ballot

Scott White and his cronies have no credibility. White has been a King County political appointee for years; he has a cozy, cozy relationship with County Executive Ron Sims. White has been endorsed by the Democratic power elite, including Sims and Sims’s chief of staff Kurt Triplett, and Sims's son Daniel is White's campaign manager. White himself has admitted that he and Triplett discussed White's campaign during work hours (shouldn’t these County employees be working on County matters?), and White used the fax machine in Ron Sims's own office to fax in his withdrawal. Both of these activities are ethics violations (County Employee Code of Ethics 3.04.020A and E) even though White paid $1.50 days after the story broke in the newspapers to ostensibly cover the cost of the fax. Despite these blatant and well publicized abuses of office, the County apparently has interest in launching an ethics investigation of White’s personal political activities on the taxpayer’s dime. Along these lines, it would be interesting to know what allowances are being made to release White from the obligations and responsibilities of his County job to pursue his campaign activities – I understand that he’s been out talking to various groups seeking endorsements during usual business hours.
So, in light of White’s buddy buddy relationship with Sims & Co., let’s look at the timeline of events, statements by White, time stamps on faxes sent and received, and confused, conflicting reports by County officials. White claims that he didn’t fax in his withdrawal until between 4:45 and 5 PM on Thursday, June 12th, which is pretty odd since he knew the deadline to be 4:30 PM that day. But wait, the time stamp on his fax says that it was sent from the King County Executive’s office fax machine at 1:29 PM on Thursday; the elections office fax time stamp says that his fax was received at 3:35 PM the same day. (Another oddity - the elections office adds that, for some unknown reason, White’s fax didn’t actually get printed out until noon the following day.) White’s candidacy was briefly noted as “withdrawn” on the King County website on Friday, June 13th, but the “withdrawn” was removed later that afternoon. But wait again, in explanation, elections officials said that they (suddenly?) discovered that the clock on their fax machine had not been changed over to daylight savings time last spring (they didn’t “spring forward” along with the rest of us), and so they really received White’s fax not at 3:35 PM but at 4:35 PM on Thursday – a very convenient five minutes past the 4:30 PM deadline for withdrawing from the race. But wait again - to back this up, Sims’s chief of staff, Kurt Triplett, has written a letter stating that Sims’s fax machine – the one used by White to fax in his withdrawal – also has the wrong time, being three hours slow, so that the 1:29 PM time stamp on White’s faxed withdrawal really means that he sent the fax at 4:29 PM. Unless key County offices are being run by amateur political clowns – and Sims & Co. are certainly not amateurs – there’s a credibility gap here bigger than Safeco field.
Scott White publicly announced that he’s so befuddled he faxed in his withdrawal after the deadline because Thursday afternoon he was so sick he had to withdraw from the race but twelve hours later he’d miraculously recovered enough to resume the rigors of campaigning. He has so little integrity that he and his cronies spin this ludicrous tale of time clocks and fax machines gone wrong. He thinks we’re dumb enough to believe him.
Pollet has spent over decade fighting for the public good in trying to get the radioactive mess at Hanford cleaned up; White has spent over a decade as a political appointee. Pollet has smarts and integrity; White has shown himself to have neither. And, Pollet knows how to set a clock to the right time. I’m voting for Pollet.

Pollet knows he can't win so his supporters are acting like idiots. Just dumb!