Goldy might as well be on the staff over at the Times. Has he got any good Darcy stories for you?

Was his behavior inappropriate? Possibly. But this just shows how there is not difference between our two parties in Washington state. The democrats are just as low in the gutter, hypocritical and sniping as the republicans can be. No wonder I keep saying no to them every time they call. Also teaches me to never go to a caucus again!

Postman, all true. However, Lowry isn't running for office this year. I personally am more interested in which candidate views environmental protection measures as ways to preserve public interests or part of a "liberal activist big government supported anti-freedom agenda" There are differences (sometimes too small for my taste) between the two major parties. But the game of politics is played the same the world over. So I expect they will make as much hay as they can with this story and hopefully replace Sutherland with a someone who doesn't ideologically lump arsonists, nazis, and those who would like sensible conservationst policies to govern our public lands for future environmental and econmoic benefit.

Upchuck, you're living up to your name.

That Lowry is or is not running for office this year isn't the issue. The issue is the rank, reeking leftist hypocrisy of rabidly supporting one of your own when it suits you and then rabidly attacking someone else for pure political gain when the other is guilty of the same thing.

We have grown to expect this sort of thing among our leaders. It's conduct worthy of condemnation. But the condemnation must not be impacted by party affiliation. That the well-established double- standard of the left is once again coming into play here (The earlier example of this year is at the national level: in 04, democrats rabidly supported their war "hero," using his military "experience" as a huge reason to vote for him. Now that the shoe is entirely on the other foot, and the democrats are running an inexperienced, empty-suited waste of skin for president, they take great delight in belittling McCain's vastly superior experience generally, and his military experience specifically, every chance they get) is quite undeniable and it begins to show itself as a campaign policy of the their ilk.

I'm surprised that Postman put this up, I admit. I'm not surprised that the Times acted as an HA subsidiary; nor am I surprised at the selective memory of the left; well-established at first the national level and now, the local level.

whatever hinton. my point is that all sides play politics essentially the same even if their governing styles are different. i'm sure you would like the issue to be democrats somehow being bad by calling out sutherland the same way repubs called out lowry. but really the issue in the news right now is sutherland's inappropriate behavoir and eventually who will be commisioner of public lands after the election.

and hinton... very silly to suggest that one year nominating a war vet for prez and touting his redcord and then another cycle electing someone with different qualities somehow is a double standard...

I was with you Hinton, until you dragged Kerry vs Obama into it.
There's no double standard there.
No one's questioning McCain's patriotism and service accomplishment, or falsely accusing him of deceit, or receiving medals he didn't deserve, making tratitorous comments about the U.S....etc -- as was done to Kerry.

Personally I was unfamiliar with the Lowry case, so it had no bearing on how I feel about the Sutherland case. Sutherland's actions should be condemned.

If there is a double standard from Democrats here, there is a worse one from Republicans. Democrats may have at least learned something, while Republicans seem fine with sweeping this under the carpet.

I'm glad to see that someone, like Postman, is leaving us breadcrumbs so we can follow the trail -- and oh, by the way, the Goldmark backers are the Washington Forest Law Center, and former attorney Toby Thaler, the partner of the so-called environemtal attorney Peter Goldman (multi-millionaire) -- the KIRO TV story did a good job of reporting this one. It's not too hard to figure out what Goldmark would be like in office, talk about sleazy.

Didn't Goldmark almost kill a farmer in Eastern Washington due to his speeding and inattentive driving? Goldy has been in the tank for Goldmark from day 1, clear back to his failed run for Congress.

The Lowry angle of this does not condone or judge the harassment/inappropriate behaviour, it merely explains why the Times sat on the story. I personally am glad the Times doesn't decide to carry all the water/mud in these political battles, and the reasoning here is sound. However the news value of the story was almost lost, and was saved by a horse's ass. Seems appropriate.
Voters easily re-elected a drunk driver to the KC Council just last year, so I bet Sutherland is here to stay. In this blistering presidential election, no one will remember Lands ("Wandering Hands"? :-) Commissioner in Nov.

This also emphasizes to me that indeed both parties are the same, but only as in behaving as dirty gutter pigs. The ideology is what is different, vastly different.
Nice job, Postman.

Turbine,

I cannot find so much as a traffic ticket that Peter Goldmark has received in the state court system on-line database. Granted, this only goes back so far (up to 30 years, depending on case type), but Goldmark basically has no involvement in the court system at all.

Doug Sutherland has been in court a lot -- and not always in his public official capacity. For example, he was divorced from his ex-wife Patricia in Pierce County Superior Court No. 85-3-02930-4. Patricia obtained three judgment against Sutherland in that divorce lawsuit -- were any of them for failure to pay child support or alimony? Sutherland was mayor of Tacoma at the time, and refused to pay his judgment(s). Patricia had to garnish four different sources of Sutherland's income and assets -- the City of Tacoma (mayor's salary), a business that Sutherland owned, a bank, and a brokerage -- in order to collect her judgment(s).

If Sutherland was a deadbeat dad, even 20 years ago, that would be scandalous -- especially given his recent treatment and attitudes towards women. But even if the judgments were for something else, it reflects poorly on Sutherland that he wasn't able to manage his own finances when he was 51 years old and mayor of our state's second largest city.

Lost in the partisan comments is the fact that the Times did not run the Sutherland story until after horesesass.org ran it. This continues the tradition of the traditional news organizations protecting those who hold power.

Another example of this: Remember FEMA's failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina? It was horsesass.org that first published the fact that Brownie's only prior administrative experience before heading up FEMA was as head of an Arabian horse club.

Another example: talkingpointsmemo.com was reporting the story, and nearly the complete story, of the fired US attorneys for two months before any major daily or network news ever mentioned it.

It works both ways, it was the Drudge Report that broke the Monica Lewinsky story.

And remember that the press covered up JFKs extra-marital escapades for years.

News reporters nowadays do not go looking for the news, they merely regurgitate official press releases. Perhaps that is why fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers.

Mr. Postman - can you walk down the aisle (or up a floor) and ask Ryan Blethen how his Daily Democracy blog squares with this? You know, the pontificating writings about a free press, crusading journalists and the White Knight Seattle Times?

As the actual member of Seattle N.O.W. who moved we pursue Governor Lowry at both our chapter and the resulting Washington N.O.W. chapter meeting, this is the worst argument I've ever heard.

As I recall I was a Dem back then - and we demanded the press investigate it.

DO YOUR JOB, PRESS! Don't come up with excuses for why it wasn't "convenient" for you to DO YOUR JOB!

In 2000, Washington voters found Mike Lowry unworthy of public office based on his sexual harassment history. In 2008, Doug Sutherland will get the same treatment.

Hey, David, your comments are fair and reasonable, as always, but you didn't really answer the most important question in this story. Why did the Times sit on the story when they received it, and why did the Times change their position when someone else ran with it?

As I recall, Mike Lowry compensated the woman he harassed by paying her $95,000. I don't think she ever sued Lowry or the State of Washington. Lowry paid this money out of his OWN pocket, even though he could have probably stuck the taxpayers with the bill.

Doug Sutherland has never compensated the young woman that he harassed. Unlike Lowry's victim, who stayed in her state employment after being harassed, Sutherland's victim left her position because the work environment was unalterably hostile due to Sutherland being in charge of DNR no matter what.

This makes Lowry somewhat more honorable and acceptable than Sutherland, in my humble opinion. Lowry was defeated in 2000, and Sutherland certainly should be defeated this November.

Daniel K has it right "Sutherland's actions should be condemned."
Richard Pope also is on track. Mike Lowry chose not to run for reelection as Governor as result of the loss of support stemming from his actions and a few years later he lost the Lands commish race for the same reason.
This being said, he remains an honorable man who paid a high price and learned from his experience.
DNR with Sutherland at the helm learned nothing from this experience other than how to botch a teachable moment. Not only should Sutherland pay the political price for his actions but the middle manager who turned the blame onto the new employee by asking her to button an extra button on her shirt just after the incident.
And as for the party support for Lowry and now Goldmark and the argument that this spells some sort of double standard, well this is just bunk. That money flows to the democratic candidate based upon policy. Voters get to decide what kind of person they want to hold statewide office. And now that the paper is no longer withholding the facts about this incident, the voters will have a better chance to fully measure their choice of who to support.

The fact is the Times is a mouth piece for Democrats. They held the story until it was politically damaging and would strike more interest with the voters. It is very common for your paper to defend the left and report thier stories in a very biased nature. Lets remmber the Gallup Poll that 93 percent of journalists vote democrat and lets also remember the times newstaff chear for Karl Rove's depature. If you really had faith in peopl you would understand that you report the facts and the voters will come to intelligent insightful conclusions on thier own. Thats why the paper suffers and goes bankrupt. Even democrats want just the facts so they can make a valued opnion for themselves based on those facts. Journalists aren't that smart, and frankly the Times writing in general is poor. If the journalists were smart they would have lives deserving of being told instead of trying to destroy people who have lives worth noting. People don't like the slanted views from leftist journalists educated by thier socialist proffessors. Postman, once again your wrong on your political analysis, your biased and you fail to get the point. When will Northwest readers get the quality of reporting that we deserve?

PS Pope, nobody cares about your woman stalking, nutty and completely delusional assesment of the situation. I can't believe they still let your abusive behavior out on the streets in this county.

Fed Up wrote, "The fact is the Times is a mouth piece for Democrats. They held the story until it was politically damaging and would strike more interest with the voters"

Really? I think it far more likely they would never have printed anything about this had it not come out. Given this man is a public servant, that's an issue.

All, I won’t bother to address the claims that the Times and/or I are biased. Since there are folks here attacking from each side I’ll just let you slug it out.

Particle Man, why is it bunk to say this is a double standard?. “That money flows to the democratic candidate based upon policy,” you say. So it flows based on policy without regard to any personal behavior? Could a murderer get that money if his positions were right on the environment?

Nothing in these comments does anything to dissuade me from thinking there is a double standard at work here. Folks, you can’t just decide these things based on who agrees with you about environmental policy. The fact remains that Democrats – including some of you here – think Sutherland should be disqualified from high office because of this incident, but you are not bothered at all apparently by Mike Lowry’s behavior as governor and as a member of Congress. That’s your right. But don’t pretend that is based on anything other than partisanship.

Dennis, I can’t say much about why the Times chose not to run the story at first. I was not involved in those discussions and didn’t see the documents until they were posted on horsesass. But I think the Times did the right thing in rethinking its decision and not letting any personal feelings about horsesass get in the way of doing the right thing at this point.

That certainly doesn’t make us a mouthpiece for the Democrats. That’s ridiculous. And it doesn’t mean we withheld the story because we were trying to cover up for Doug Sutherland. If you think that, please let me know in the comments here what you think of the PI’s decision to continue not to publish the story. Is the PI a tool for Republicans?

I am a Democrat and I abstained from voting in the Public Lands Commissioner's race in 2000. I did so because after everything that happened I thought that Lowry was damaged goods and despite the fact I agreed with his views I could not pull the level for him.

The sexual harassment scandal forced Lowry from the governorship and likely cost him the Lands Commissioner's race in 2000. Why does Donald Sutherland deserve better? Peter Goldmark was not on the political scene at that time and as far as we know has no similar problem. According to the Washington State PDC he has never donated to Mike Lowry. I don't see how Goldmark can be accused of hypocrisy.

As for the WA Democratic Party they are full of it -- but that is standard behavior for political parties.

David, you wrote this
"But the Democrats have established a double standard for this behavior that rises above run of the mill campaign hypocrisy."
If you had said that the democratic party structure which endorsed Lowry four years ago, though made up of a different set of voting officials, this time chose to endorse Goldmark as a result of Sutherland's actions with his employee, then I would challenge your facts. Those who voted are different and did not know of Sutherland's actions at the time.
The facts are that many of us wanted Larry Phillips to be the candidate last time and were very disappointed when he backed out at Lowry's request.
This time, we as democrats have an excellent candidate in Goldmark who has no baggage and is well qualified. To say that supporting him is hypocritical or that pushing for the press to do their job is hypocritical is as I said, bunk.

As for the Times, PI and others who had a wealth of facts about a state wide elected official who without question crossed the line and still does not get it, and yet chose to sit on the story, well shame on you.

for the record, i never supported lowry after it was revealed what he did, nor would i support any other dem with similar behaivoir. neither party is a monolith, but a more or less loose conglomeration of likeminded individuals. don't believe me? go watch a floor fight at any democratic convention, or the ron paul repubs at a gop convention = )

Postman,
You sure slide quickly past the questionable conduct by the Times.

Bringing up the old Mike Lowry stuff and making a new issue--great way to change the story!

Now back to reality. Why did the Times sit on this story so long???

Nice Try RP, try the July 17th , 2007 Spokesman Review article . I never said he was cited, nobody was. the 69 year old Farmer got airlifted when he was hit from behind by Goldmark and his wife who were also injured. "Goldmark stated the Tractor turned unexpectedly in front of him."

Democrats getting the vapors over a male politician who acted improperly with a member of the opposite sex.

That's a 12 on the unintentional comedy scale.

Thanks to David for reminding us why a lot of people did not vote for Mike Lowry when he ran against Sutherland. I'd actually forgotten that Lowry ran for the post and lost.

Sutherland is a nice guy. It looks like he really screwed up. But he also faced up. And it doesn't appear to be a pattern. So save the outrage.

The far bigger story is whether he's running the DNR in a reasonable way overall. On that score, it appears that Sutherland has been asleep (or entrenched in an agency culture) as too many clear cuts happened in the wrong places, without smart and attentive regulatory oversight.

Hmmmm, no court record of Goldmark's indiscretions huh, no track record of Goldman's contributions? Not a very good researcher. "...Consider that not only did Goldmark's car skid over 150 feet, but when the vehicle hit the tractor it hit with enough impact to break the larger tractor into 3 large pieces." (nwrepublican.blogspot.com) where is the record? Was there alcohol involved, when almost fatally injuring someone on a straight stretch of country road? Was there speeding involved -- where is the ticket? Mmmmm, no record of this either. Why does Peter Goldman's website have Toby Thaler's name blocked out- the one who is pursuing the story-granted the woman involved is not pushing it-why not if there is something there? Mmmmm, no record eh -- do some more research Richard.

I know perfectly well why the Times did not publish the story earlier. They were holding it as an October surprise.

The politically novice blogger shot their wad prematurely. Most people don't even know what the Lands Commissioner does and most are out on summer vacation right now.

I bet at the local liberal alcohol overindulgence event, the veteran editors from the Times will take the local liberal activist aside and give him a going over for being so naive.

Particle Man, you wrote" To say that supporting him is hypocritical or that pushing for the press to do their job is hypocritical is as I said, bunk." Yes, and I didn't say either of those thing. I said that attacking Sutherland and saying he's unfit for office when the very same organization funded and supported another candidate with well-documented case about sexual misconduct is hypocritical. Shame on me? Nonsense. Shame on you for trying to words in my mouth as part of an effort to erase what is an obvious double standard.

And Glass Cage, you are obviously an insider since you know the term for the Times offices where top editors sit. First, why don't you come clean and tell all who you really are?

But you probably already also know I was not in the Glass Cages when this decision was made. All I can tell you is a lot of things were weighed when the decision was made not to run the story. But after it was published at horsesass those decisions were revisited and we published.

There's nothing evil about it. If we were working as agents of the Republican Party and this was a plot to cover up we could have just not published like, say, the PI did. If we were working as agents of the Democratic party we could have held it off until the big "October surprise." Instead, we put it in the paper the next day, for all to see, and so you all could feel free to spin your crazy conspiracy theories.

Postman - I am not familiar with all the names involved in the Goldmark campaign or their purported blase dismissal of Lowry's conduct. But isn't the more important issue the justification for the Times deciding not to publish the Sutherland story to begin with and then doing a 180, only after Goldy beat them to the punch?

You commented:

"All I can tell you is a lot of things were weighed when the decision was made not to run the story. But after it was published at horsesass those decisions were revisited and we published."

Okay, fine. But none of us knows exactly WHAT things were weighed, or how they influenced the non-publish decision. How strong could the original basis for that decision be when the paper did such a quick turnaround after Goldy's post?

Democratic party activists aside, it cannot be said that all liberal bloggers are hypocrites when it comes to harassment and the political party in question. I linked to Goldy's post precisely because it seemed a very newsworthy story to me. I don't happen to care which party's pol is doing the harassing -- Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian -- I have written about sexual harassment more than once on our blog because it's something I dealt with a lot as a student and an employee, and it's something many friends of mine (mostly women, but not always) have endured as well. It's an important subject and it should not be swept under the rug, regardless of political affiliation.

I personally believe all harassers fall into one category: "Creep".

It's six years old. At the time it happened, he did the right thing... admit to his actions, take it through HR at the DNR, and continue to serve the people of Washington State to the best of his abilities. I am a liberal, green, tree hugging Democrat, and I will be voting for Doug Sutherland this fall because he has the better qualifications to take care of Washington's public lands.

Postman,
What possessed you to write the following:

"But you probably already also know I was not in the Glass Cages when this decision was made. All I can tell you is a lot of things were weighed when the decision was made not to run the story. But after it was published at horsesass those decisions were revisited and we published.

There's nothing evil about it."

Who said anything was evil? Cripes.

And what editor would let a journalist write that "things were weighed"? What is that supposed to mean? Or "decisions were revisited"?

Did Robert Mak write that for you?

Stick to journalism. 'Splaining does not become you.

This story has no legs for a reason, it is totally bogus!

A woman felt "threatened" by her boss giving her a hug? So what? Did he ask her for a date? Did he chase her around the desk? Did he ask her to insert a cigar where none should be inserted?

To all of the above, the answer is: NO.

So what? I am getting sick and tired of peoples' "fweelings". Grow up!