Here’s latest chapter in Senate race debate over debates

This week’s bizarre twist in Washington’s U.S. Senate race – should this be a regular feature? – involves the latest installment in debates over debates.

The staff for Republican challenger George Nethercutt wangled an invitation for their boss to a Thursday event in Bellingham that featured Democratic incumbent Patty Murray and the transfer of a restored federal building to the city of Bellingham. After dignitaries signed documents, posed with checks and chatted up potential voters, Nethercutt caught up with Murray on the way out.

They exchanged brief pleasantries, and Nethercutt mentioned debates. At this point, the campaigns tell slightly different stories about what was said. The Nethercutt folks say Murray replied, “Our staffs are working on it.”

The Murray folks say she replied, “After the primary, our staffs will talk.”

Nethercutt dashed off a note to Murray on Friday, asking her to “remind your aides you’re ready to debate,” and of course the campaign staff marked the occasion with a press release. Nethercutt spokesman Alex Conant said in an interview that the congressman would like to do 39 debates – one in each county. Like most challengers, he’s a fan of as many debates as possible.

Murray’s staff said she’s more than ready to debate when she has “an official opponent.” Like most incumbents, she’s consistently said she’ll debate Nethercutt or anyone else who wins the other party’s nomination.

Murray spokeswoman Alex Glass accused Nethercutt of misrepresenting the conversation, adding he “has spent enough time misrepresenting his own positions, he doesn’t need to misrepresent Sen. Murray’s.”

Don’t be surprised if the Nethercutt campaign counters by suggesting soon that Murray is a) backing out of a debate; b) unwilling to debate; c) afraid to debate; or d) all of the above.

Go Fourth

Happy Independence Day. Since many readers are in places that forbid fireworks, Spin Control suggests emulating the tradition of longtime reader Tom Westbrook and doing something that really lit the fuses back in 1776. Read the Declaration of Independence. All the way through. It is, after all, what the day is all about.

Color coded

Here’s election news that everyone’s been awaiting: The secretary of state has selected the colors for the 2004 Washington primary ballots. Want to remember it? Here’s a poem:

Democrats are red.

Libertarians are blue.

Republicans are green.

There’s no Top Two.

OK, so it’s not Shakespeare or e.e. cummings. But Washington voters are going to need something to help them with the first partisan primary since the Depression, and color-coded ballots seem to make as much sense as anything. Voters will have to pick a major party – Republican, Democrat or Libertarian – and vote only for the candidates on that party’s ballot. Candidates from minor parties – Constitution, Green, Reform or Socialist Workers – won’t show up until the general election.

The old blanket primary was ruled unconstitutional, and the Legislature’s attempt to bring it back with something pretty close, the Top Two or Cajun style primary, was vetoed by Gov. Gary Locke. An initiative from the Grange will likely give voters a chance to enact the Top Two in November, so this could be Washington voters’ one and only chance to vote with color coded ballots.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said counties don’t have to use color-coded ballots, but if they do, the color scheme has to match this one.

Now for something really important

Neither President George W. Bush nor Democratic hopeful John Kerry are date bait, says a new Internet survey conducted by an on-line dating service.

No, not THAT kind of on-line dating service.

It seems the prez takes a back seat to his wife and daughters in terms of datability, and Kerry is no Kennedy. Those are some of the results of the totally unscientific and somewhat whimsical survey by It’s Just Lunch, which apparently helps to hook up single professionals in 65 cities (Seattle is the closest one.)

Visitors to the website were asked to pick among various political figures on such weighty matters as whom would you like to have lunch with, have a drink after work or be set up on a blind date with.

Some of the choices were pretty bizarre. For example, among the options for a blind date in the men’s survey were Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Neither would be much fun, considering they are dead. Onassis was also an option for a lunch date … she wouldn’t eat much, but she wouldn’t fight you for the check. Women got live options for their blind dates – one really live one, Bill Clinton, who according to a press release on the survey “scored with 21 percent of female respondents.”

But the women’s option for an afterwork drink included George Washington, Abe Lincoln and John Kennedy, all of whom are probably way past the bar scene. The women’s lunch date options included Ike, LBJ and Nixon … small wonder that Jimmy Carter topped that list at 43 percent.

The Web site says it got 1,542 singles to fill out the survey over about three weeks. In an even more unscientific survey, Spin Control asked a single colleague how she would vote, and she assured us that she’d definitely rather have lunch with Carter, but a drink with Clinton. A single male colleague, like the survey respondents, leaned toward the Kennedy-Shriver options on his survey, although he might go to lunch with Barbara and Jenna Bush, just to be able to sell the item to the New York tabloids.

First lady competition

It’s doubtful that George Nethercutt filled out the survey in the above item, but if asked, he’d almost have to answer “Laura Bush” as the political figure he’d most like to be fixed up with. After all, the White House is fixing the two of them up for a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., on July 12.

It’s to help build on the momentum from the president’s Spokane campaign stop, Nethercutt said in a campaign press release.

First Ladies apparently are hot commodities in the Senate race. Patty Murray was in Seattle last week with former first lady, now Sen. Hillary Clinton.