When you’ve looked at as many of Jay Inslee’s calendars as Shift has (examples here and here), you realize that the time he spends in the office is almost as rare as the time he actually spends working on matters of governing. But last week featured even more time away from his desk, as Jay was road trippin’!
Between Monday the 3rd and Sunday the 9th, our “green” governor put in almost a half week’s of work – some 18 hours and 45 minutes of the people’s business. And though he spent some time in the air (flying to Vancouver, Everett to Olympia, and Spokane to Seattle), for much of the time he was driven around the state, apparently to film campaign commercials.
And, of course, to fit in fundraising time on six of the seven days.
You may have seen the ads those fundraisers paid for on TV this week, with people talking about how Jay cares about jobs because he hasn’t personally tried to put their business on the chopping block (campaign contributions come in handy here). To get Inslee in on those testimonials, he drove around the state Monday through Wednesday, visiting filming locations in Seattle, Vancouver, Union Gap, Kennewick, and Liberty Lake.
Along the way, he also fit in several editorial boards for his re-election campaign – in Vancouver, the Tri Cities, Spokane, Everett, and Tacoma. All those interviews wore Jay out though, as he managed to do no official work at all on either Tuesday or Wednesday.
He tried to make up for that non-working gap by spending Thursday on the road performing ceremonial duties – hitting Tacoma, Lynnwood, Marysville, and Everett for speeches, ribbon cuttings, etc. It amounted to a seven-hour work day, though he did finish it off with a fundraiser at night.
It was on the road again on Friday, driving from the capital to Seattle for a press conference, and then flying back for an afternoon of meetings in Olympia. And, once again, an evening of “personal time” with his donor friends.
Fortunately he was able to take all of Saturday off, before spending all of Sunday on three different fundraising events. But, at least he was able to avoid any of that pesky governing work on his weekend.
So, Bill Bryant’s poll numbers still remain double-digits below Inslee’s, eh?
Do you always have to post irrelevant commentary? Pointing out that the current do nothing governor is just that is the point here.
The large and persistent lead Gov. Inslee has maintained over his challenger could have several possible explanations, each of which could be highly relevant to our upcoming election.
For example, if the polls’ respondents believed Shift’s characterization of Gov. Inslee’s job performance, that could mean the voters who were sampled prefer an inactive Democrat to an active Republican. Given the extravagant squandering of taxpayers’ money by Inslee’s most recent opponent, this aversion to Republican activism would seem well-founded.
For another example, the voters sampled simply may not believe Shift’s characterization of Gov. Inslee’s performance.