If there is one thing our Port Commissioners are good at, it is on doing things that benefit themselves. If you’ll remember back to March, the port commissioners gave themselves a massive pay raise. Well it doesn’t stop there! Now they have given themselves $2.5 million dollars worth of advertising at the Sea-Tac airport! For comparison, in the most expensive commission campaign ever, Bill Bryant spent $365,680.86 to get himself re-elected.
If our elected officials are giving themselves advertising equal to six times the highest amount ever spent on a race for their offices, how can any outsider dare to compete? Even worse, two of these candidates have never been elected. Do we really have a democracy if two unelected officials spend millions of public dollars securing their own election?
In the only primary race to date, Stephanie Bowman completely blew the election out of the water. She had no more name recognition than any other candidate, and had spent only a few thousand dollars more than the other candidates. Could this election possibly have been influenced by the advertising done over the public address system at the Airport? If so, state law requires the election to be invalidated and a new special election be held.
On Monday morning I will be filing complaints regarding these violations by incumbent commissioners Tom Albro, Stephanie Bowman, John Creighton, and Courtney Gregoire. How will our state Public Disclosure Commission and Attorney General respond? Only this will show if we might still have some shadow of a democracy left.
The complaints and evidence are posted here. If you too find the evidence to be irrefutable as I do, I urge you to write a letter to Phil Stutzman at the Public Disclosure Commission and Attorny General Bob Ferguson, urging them to take action.