Pity how campaign season in Meekerville has turned foul this year, reminding us that you can’t spell Puyallup without “P-U.”
The race for the at-large City Council seat in Cowtown has gotten so stinky, it’s left us humming: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be politicians.”
We ignored the manure spreading for awhile. Then some documents were leaked to Le Schnoz and we could stay on the sidelines no more.
After all, there’s no bigger election scandal than a tete-a-tete between a mayor and a rodeo clown.
Even city slickers like us know the job of the clown in a rodeo ring is to distract attention away from the target of an attack – not draw the attacker to the target.
Alas, a Puyallup Fair rodeo clown had the opposite effect on Mayor Kathy Turner and her protege Nicole Martineau, an appointed councilwoman who’s running for the at-large seat.
Bad ethics or bum steer? On Sept. 30, candidate Steve Vermillion, who’s locked in a bitter campaign against Martineau, filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission over various ways he felt the mayor was promoting Martineau.
One of Vermillion’s allegations: that Turner showed up at the rodeo Sept. 9, attracted the attention of the microphone-equipped clown and engaged in playful banter with him – all while she wore an “Elect Martineau” T-shirt.
“This is unethical and creates an unfair political campaign advantage by the Mayor’s use of her official position,” Vermillion wrote in his complaint.
Turner contends that she was minding her own business when the clown approached her.
“I don’t know the clown,” she told The News Tribune.
The only part of their stories that line up (sort of) is that she was wearing the T-shirt, and the flirtatious clown apparently thought she was a smokin’-hot mayor.
In the end, the PDC didn’t investigate the mayor’s behavior at the fairgrounds because it “did not involve the use of city facilities, and was not a City of Puyallup sponsored event,” according to the commission’s response to Vermillion dated Oct. 14.
The moral of the story? Small-town rodeos and small-town politics have one thing in common:
A whole lot of bull.
Costconfusion: Something seems backwards about Costco shelling out $22 million to buy an election.
The Washington company wrote the book on wholesale shopping with good bargains and no advertising. Yet they spent more than anyone’s ever spent hawking an initiative campaign solely for the right to sell their own booze?
Maybe next time they’ll run 10 or 12 campaigns at once, and package ’em under the Kirkland label.
Politics are no different than toilet paper or mayonnaise. It’s all about bulk, baby.
Just ask Tim Eyman.
D’oh, those %$#@! decimals!: Don’t be too hard on Pierce County government staff who didn’t catch a math error on the Nov. 8 ballot. They described the Proposition 1 sales tax hike correctly in words (one-tenth of 1 percent) but incorrectly in digits (.01 percent).
Decimal points are tricky little buggers, and those folks work hard every day to give their full .100 percent.
It’s also comforting to know various prosecutors, auditors and other highly trained pros are just like the rest of us shlubs: If they were to take the 10th grade WASL/HSPE exam, they’d probably pass the reading but fail the math.
Auditor Julie Anderson explained the goof thusly: “When we are proofreading text, we are really focused on language and sentence structure. Lots of people made the exact same mistake, which is reading with their eyes.”
As opposed to another sensory organ that’s better suited for reading numbers?
Trust us, it ain’t the Nose.
Sing along with us!: In the spirit of helpfulness, we offer county department heads “The Decimal Song” to share at their next training retreat.
Our littlest Nostril brought it home from school once. We sing it whenever we balance the checkbook:
When he hops to the left he makes the number feel small!
When he hops to the right he feels big and tall!
He’s a tiny little dot but has power in his hand,
As he runs and he runs through number land!
Got news for The Nose? Write to TheNose@thenewstribune.com.
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