Stew Henderson has a new commercial, which you can view at www.thurstondemocrats.org.  It’s a great commercial if you don’t know anything about Stew’s policies.  Let’s take a look at what Stew has to say compared to what he has done.

Stew starts by saying he wants to be our representative so he can fight for the values we share.  He claims that as a small business owner, he knows what it takes to create jobs and get our economy moving.  Stew’s record on this issue is to get grants for taxpayer money and spend over $1500 on a $400 job.  Especially concerning was when Mr. John Kingsbury broke down the math of Stew’s claims in the Olympian, and Mr. Ramsey Zimmerman, director of Thurston Energy, the program in question, felt the need to respond yet in no way refuted Mr. Kingsbury’s claims.  While it may be true that the program creates jobs for a few choice folks, it seems that these jobs are funded by what remaining real jobs we have left.  I did try to find out what kind of successful business owner Stew is, but all I found was this website for Third Way Consulting:  http://www.thirdwayconsulting.com/.  Stew’s name and number are on it, but he says he’s been putting the finishing touches on it for over two years now.  He has never described what Third Way Consulting does except to say, “Management consulting, team building, and leadership development.”  While I’m sure he’s an awesome management consultant for other people’s teams, it’s hard to figure out how this creates jobs for anyone but Stew.

Next Stew says he wants to fully fund education.  I happened to be at the American Federation of Teachers forum at SPSCC.  There were more candidates than spectators in the lecture hall that day, so I heard it good when Stew said he was in favor of a dedicated source of funding for education, but then defer to Sam Hunt who said it wasn’t a good idea.  He actually said, “Of course I defer to Sam on this issue.”  When he said that I saw why I didn’t like what I read about this candidate.  Speaking of dedicated sources of funding, wasn’t the Washington State Lottery sold to us as a revenue source for education?

Next he touts his Sierra Club endorsement.  Not a surprise.  What is a surprise is the lack of mention of global warming.  The whole premise behind his TCAT grant was to create jobs while we fight global warming.  It seems even Stew has now caught on that global warming was a fad dreamed up by colleagues in the grant-writing industry looking for another taxpayer-funded cash cow to milk.  It would seem that when it comes to jobs, only WFSE has thrown in with Stew.  Most of the rest of the support from union jobs in our district has gone to Chris Reykdal.  Instead of these, he touts his NARAL endorsement.  Fine, except that the office he’s running for has nothing to do with the abortion issue.  Is he reaching out to the “kill your baby and keep the party rolling!” demographic, or did he really just run out of things to say?  Was $1.5 million a number big enough for Stew’s campaign literature but not for TV?  Why is what was supposed to be his centerpiece achievement as an activist missing from his TV spot?

The next chapter on why Stew isn’t the right candidate for Brendan Williams’ seat will be on why Stew didn’t run in Hyattsville, MD, where he had already launched a political career and won election.