As reported in the Seattle Times, the conservatives are trying to break the blue wave by sending out mailers to many counties in order to confuse voters and split the Democratic/progressive vote through spurious ‘write in’ campaigns.
My family received this one, and it’s a real piece of work.
Notable is that… technically, Nathan Schlicher (who was a state senator for 11 months in 2013) likely DID have all those endorsements. However, he’s not running this year, and Planned Parenthood definitely supports Connie, which I hope makes this actionable. Perhaps under the ‘Idiot in a hurry’ standard used for IP and patents.
He’s a good guy, too, which makes the flier more believable. My parents know Dr. Schlicher personally in his role as an E.R. doctor, causing them some consternation when they got this mailer. He’s a local, caring individual who worked against big Pharma during his time in the state senate. He certainly fits the bill of a progressive candidate.
But when we reached out to him about this mailer, he said to support Connie. Maybe he’d run again in the future, but not this year, and disavows the mailer and the group trying to use him to split the vote.
Anyway, the ‘Conscience of Progressives’ group is trying this ‘write-in’ tactic in districts all across the state, with the laughable rationale that “The Democrats aren’t running progressive enough candidates, and we want to make sure the voters know about alternatives” (and also “yes, we want the Republican to win”). Watch out for similar things in your neighborhood, and come out hard against it, we can’t afford to lose because of some snake in the grass trying to pit us against each other.
Best,
Grecotch
Update (10/21/2018):
I’ve sent information on the flier to the Seattle Times and the Tacoma News Tribune. Hopefully that will help get the message out. Pondering local TV news, too.
Update 2:
Sent in tips to local TV & radio news stations as well. Hooboy there’s quite a few. But we must fight on every front.