McKenna, Senn meet again

SEATTLE – What started nice ended with a verbal broadside Wednesday, as the two leading candidates for state attorney general faced off in their final debate.

Republican Rob McKenna, citing a newspaper editorial, said that Senn’s two terms as state insurance commissioner were disastrous, and that she’d be worse as attorney general. “It is hardly protecting consumers to drive insurance companies out of this state,” McKenna said, speaking before a Rotary Club at a downtown Seattle hotel.

Senn didn’t get a chance to respond at the podium, but afterward said that McKenna’s injecting “a bitter tone” into the race to be the state’s top lawyer. “I came here today to talk about the issues, not to be subjected to a vicious attack,” she said.

Vicious or not, attacks are nothing new in the race. Right before the September primary, Senn was the target of $1.5 million in ads bankrolled by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. McKenna is now the target of a Democratic Party ad suggesting that he supports a ban on abortion, which his campaign denies.

Senn is running on her record as a consumer advocate, both in courtrooms and as insurance commissioner from 1993 through 2000. A lawyer for more than 26 years, she’s handled utility cases – gas, phone and electricity – and worked with the Northwest Women’s Law Center. Since losing a race for U.S. Senate in 2000, she’s worked at a law firm specializing in asbestos liability cases.

If elected as attorney general, she told the Rotarians on Wednesday, she’d pursue predatory lenders and financial criminals like identity thieves. She has talked about investigating high gas prices, prescription drug costs, and cracking down on computer “spyware,” which can infect a computer and secretly seek out passwords, financial information and other data.

She acknowledged that her stint as the state’s top insurance regulator was controversial, but she said that comes with the job.

“It was my job to oversee that industry, and often there were some differences, there were some battles,” she said. But she said she fought for coverage for terminally ill people, making sure patients were treated fairly, and getting medical care for people with pre-existing conditions.

“Sometimes, there was some smoke, but when it cleared, we had a Patient’s Bill of Rights and we had more people insured when I was in office than since I’ve left office,” she said. “I really believe that I stood up for people, and that really was my job as insurance commissioner.”

Nonetheless, she said, the job of attorney general is different. An attorney general must defend state laws, policies and agencies, regardless of his or her personal beliefs. Senn said she could do that.

McKenna, a King County councilman since 1996, read aloud from an editorial in the Olympian newspaper during his closing remarks.

Senn, he read, “served eight tortured years as the state’s insurance commission, beginning in 1993. Her record leading that agency is one of failure after failure.”

During that time, Senn’s mandates to insurers caused the “collapse” of the insurance market for individuals seeking private health insurance, the newspaper said. Whistleblower complaints were common, and Senn’s “prickly personality” alienated lawmakers. “Her mismanagement of one state office does not qualify her to run another,” the newspaper wrote. “That sentiment is expressed again and again and again throughout the state,” McKenna told the Rotarians.

He said that he would run the attorney general’s office in a fair, nonpartisan, apolitical manner. He said he’d immediately expand the attorney general’s consumer protection division, which now numbers six lawyers. He said he’d fight to keep state documents open to the public, and noted that the current attorney general has filed friend-of-the-court briefs arguing against public disclosure.

“That’s wrong,” McKenna said.

He said he’d also push for changes to reduce lawsuits against state government, which end up costing taxpayers. The state and its insurers are now paying out about $150 million every two years in settlements and judgments, he said. His time on the King County Council – including two unopposed re-election runs – has given him valuable management and big-budget experience, he said.

“I’ve practiced law and I’ve made law,” he said.

Asked afterward if he unfairly attacked Senn in his debate closing, McKenna shook his head.

“Look, this is about making a choice, and people need as much information as they can get,” he said.