News from 2007

• Seattle Times:The residents of King County are entitled to a vote of the people (August 29, 2007)
• Toby Nixon Endorses Mitt Romney for President (August 13, 2007)
• Remarks on I-25 to the King County Charter Review Commission (July 31, 2007)
• Seattle Weekly: Initiative 25 Has the County’s Democrats Lining Up to Oppose ... More Democracy (July 11, 2007)
• Crosscut: A Nixon could help save the Washington GOP from itself (April 5, 2007)
• Initiative 25: A non-partisan elected Director of Elections in King County (March 8, 2007)

News Archives

• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003
• 2002

Seattle Times: The residents of King County are entitled to a vote of the people

     Seattle (August 29, 2007) -- Reform delayed is reform denied.
     More than 74,000 King County voters signed Initiative 25, and it has now qualified for the ballot. A vote on either I-25 itself, or on the charter amendment proposed in I-25, will be held this November.
     Every county in Washington state has an elected official who is directly responsible to the voters for the orderly administration of elections. Our polling indicates that a significant majority of King County voters wish to change the charter to have an elected official directly responsible for elections, as well.
     In an editorial position, The Seattle Times wants an “orderly transition,” insinuating that pushing reform to 2010 is appropriate [“Orderly transition to elections director,” Editorial, Aug. 26]. Voters, however, want the King County Elections Department reformed now.
     It is perfectly reasonable to vote on the key issue this November and on the initial director of elections this February on the same date as the presidential primary — a key election with substantial voter participation.
     An elected director of elections would be empowered to speak out and advocate both to the County Council and the state Legislature for changes in laws that would improve the conduct of elections. They could speak freely — over the heads of the County Council and the county executive, if necessary — and advocate for the resources needed to properly conduct elections. They would answer directly to the people and would not be buried seven layers deep in bureaucracy as they are today. They would be a needed agent of change in a troubled department and would hire expert election supervisors and staff as they create the new department.
     The proposal to elect the director of elections for King County did not come out of thin air. Both the Elections Task Force, appointed by the county executive, and the Citizens Elections Oversight Committee (CEOC), appointed by the Metropolitan King County Council, recommended that the county charter be changed to allow the office to be headed by an elected official. These recommendations came after the 2003 and 2004 election difficulties and were strongly endorsed by both committees.
     The CEOC report states “Creating an elected auditor is the kind of basic organizational change needed to show voters that King County has thoroughly reformed its elections system. It signals to the public that the problems that occurred in 2004 are being successfully addressed and will not be repeated ... ” We have amended the charter to make the office of sheriff an elected rather than appointed position. There is ample precedent that I-25 is prudent and rational reform — the kind of reform that elected officials resist, despite it being the foundation of our democracy.
     The King County Charter would not have been established without a vote of the people. Likewise, no amendment to the charter can be adopted without a vote of the people of King County. In any organizational chart you draw for King County government, the box at the top would be labeled “the people of King County,” not the executive, not the council, not freeholders, not anyone else.
     The current attempt by some county councilmembers to say they “agree with the concept, but not now” is simply a sneaky way of delaying the people’s vote. Some councilmembers would have the voters vote on the issue four times!
     Reform delayed is reform denied.
     The Metropolitan King County Council must put the charter amendment proposed in I-25 on the November ballot for one vote on the merits. Secretary of State Sam Reed and State Auditor Brian Sonntag, both former county auditors themselves, support I-25 and a November election. In addition, many Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Greens support I-25 for a November election.

Toby Nixon is a former state representative for the 45th District and chair of Citizens for Accountable Elections, the committee sponsoring I-25. He can be reached at toby@tobynixon.com.

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Toby Nixon Endorses Mitt Romney for President

Dear Friends,

For those of you who don’t already know, I’m supporting Mitt Romney for President. I was on the host committee for his June 20 fundraiser in Bellevue, and am stepping up my involvement to include helping Jennifer Dunn and others on Mitt’s campaign team in Washington to organize grassroots efforts statewide to get Mitt’s supporters to the caucuses on February 9 and to vote in the primary on February 19.

Why do I support Mitt? Without question, among all of the candidates (and presumed soon-to-be candidates) for president, he is the most capable of leading the largest government in the world and tackling the complex problems that face us. He’s a successful businessman who has turned around many faltering enterprises. He understands the principles of the free market and why it has made this nation the greatest in history. He has the analytical skills to identify solutions and the vision, courage, leadership and political skills to implement them. As governor of Massachusetts, he turned a multi-billion-dollar deficit into a balanced budget without raising taxes or increasing debt, proving that he can guide a divided government and population. He is smart, articulate, and a man of strong character and principles. He shares my values, including commitment to individual liberty, personal responsibility and limited government. He has the right positions on the right issues.

I invite you to join me in supporting Mitt Romney for President. If you would like to become involved in the grassroots organizing efforts in Washington at any level – precinct, legislative district, county, congressional district, or statewide – please send email to WashingtonForRomney@hotmail.com or to me at toby@tobynixon.com. And, of course, I encourage you to contribute to Mitt’s campaign online. If you know anyone else who supports Mitt and would like to get involved, please forward this email to them.

Best regards,

            -- Toby

Remarks on I-25 to the King County Charter Review Commission

     Governor Lowry, Mrs. North, members of the commission, thank you for the opportunity to address you this afternoon.
     Until King County adopted its first home rule charter almost forty years ago, its elections functions, like those in the other 38 of the 39 counties in the state of Washington, were overseen by an elected county auditor. The people of the county could decide for themselves who was best qualified to serve in that office. The auditor was directly accountable to the people for the conduct of elections. The auditor hired the professionals who would report directly to them with the expertise to operate the technology, develop the detailed processes, and supervise the front line employees in their work. The auditor had the ability to speak out and advocate both in Seattle and in Olympia for any changes they believed were needed in laws and ordinances to improve the conduct of elections. They could speak freely –- over the heads of the county commissioners and directly to the people if necessary –- to advocate for the resources needed to properly conduct elections. And if any errors were made, they knew that no executive, no council, would be running interference for them -– they had to answer directly to the people for the integrity of what is truly the foundation of our democracy –- confidence that our elections are fair, accurate, transparent, and conducted in accordance with the law.
     When that original charter was created, the decision was made that, with the exception of those officers who under the state constitution are required to remain independently elected, all executive offices would become appointed by the county executive, under the theory that this would allow the executive to find and hire trained professionals who would supposedly be insulated from politics. This seemed to work -– for a while. But, over time, elections came to be viewed as a low priority in county budget negotiations, and with the elections budget rolled up into several others there was not much visibility of the problem to the council or to the people. The elections supervisor could not speak publicly or to policymakers about election issues without the consent of the county executive, and that consent was not often forthcoming. And being seven layers deep in the county bureaucracy, election integrity –- as important as it is -- became an infinitesimal issue in the broad spectrum at play in county executive elections, and so there was little accountability to the voters. Similar problems arose with regard to law enforcement.
     The people eventually realized that there are certain key functions that they prefer remain independent of the influence of the council and executive. The people have already amended the charter to require the chief law enforcement officer of the county –- the sheriff –- to once again be directly elected and accountable to the people. And now a petition, Initiative 25, has been presented to the council asking that the people be allowed to vote on whether the chief elections officer of the county should once again be directly elected and accountable to the people.
     This idea did not emerge from a vacuum and is not original to the sponsors of the initiative. On the contrary, after problems with several elections in 2003 and the well-known problems in 2004, the county council and the county executive both appointed independent non-partisan panels of experts to examine the conduct of elections and recommend reforms so that those problems would not be repeated. We are very pleased that the majority of those recommendations have already been implemented. But what many feel is the most significant reform, proposed by both the Elections Task Force and the Citizens Elections Oversight Committee, has not yet been implemented.
     Let me read to you from the reports of both of those panels. Here’s what the Elections Task Force had to say in its July 2005 report:

     Some groups, including some current or former elected officials, advocate keeping appointed senior elections officials on the basis that appointed officials are more professional, have greater managerial and technical experience of complex elections processes and procedures, and are immediately accountable to the County Executive if significant problems arise. The Task Force believes that an official elected in a non-partisan race with primary responsibility for conducting elections would increase accountability to citizens, be better able to educate and encourage citizens to participate fully in the electoral process, be a more effective advocate for improved technology and resources, and establish an independent elections system. [p. 11]

     Here’s what the Citizens Elections Oversight Committee had to say in their March 2006 report; this is a bit longer, so please bear with me:

     Restoring public confidence in the County’s elections process requires consistently excellent performance and increased accountability to the voters. King County is the only county in Washington where the chief elections officer is appointed rather than elected. The majority of the CEOC recommends making the Elections Director an elected, non-partisan office. The CEOC is unanimous in recommending that non-elections functions be transferred to other county agencies, to create a stand-alone elections operation focused on one critical task – conducting elections. [p. 4]

     They went on to say:

     An elected auditor will increase public confidence because he [or] she will be directly answerable to the people for the performance of the office. An elected auditor would contribute to the independence and professionalism of the Elections Section by focusing the organization on a single core mission – running elections.
     The CEOC unanimously agreed that conducting elections is important enough to be a stand-alone function. The present licensing and records duties of the division should be assigned to other departments.
     Making the head of elections a non-partisan elected official sends a positive message to full-time election employees. It would emphasize that their work is an essential, independent and non-partisan part of our democratic system of government and worthy of being headed by an elected official. Election workers at all levels would be better able to operate free of any appearance of political influence.
     Creating an elected auditor is the kind of basic organizational change needed to show voters that King County has thoroughly reformed its elections system. It signals to the public that the problems that occurred in 2004 are being successfully addressed and will not be repeated. …
     Making the auditor a non-partisan elected position would promote a dramatic increase in public trust in King County elections. The Elections Section would no longer be seen as just a routine county department under the control of the County Executive. The higher level of importance given to an elected office would help ensure continued public scrutiny long after the current elections controversy has ended, thus helping to avoid a repeat of the elections problems of the past. [pp. 22-23]

     If you have not already received copies of these reports yourself, I would be happy to provide copies to you or to provide you the locations where they can be viewed online.
     The principles annunciated by the Elections Task Force and the CEOC are exactly what is embodied in Initiative 25.
     I want to emphasize once again that both the Citizens Elections Oversight Committee and the executive’s Elections Task Force were made up of citizens from a wide range of professional and political backgrounds, across the spectrum, including career experts in the conduct of elections. These strong recommendations that the King County director of elections be a non-partisan elected office and that the elections department be separated from other functions of the county government, are not, as has been characterized by some critics, a hair-brained scheme by partisan Republicans determined to replay the 2004 election over and over. The sponsors of Initiative 25 are simply a group of concerned citizens who watched as the county council struggled and failed to implement the recommendations of their own experts and felt that it was time for the people to exercise their right of initiative to bring about the needed change.
     I’d like to conclude with this. The letter that Governor Lowry and Mrs. North sent to you last week stated that Initiative 25 “essentially undermines our charter review authority.” I would like to challenge that. The King County Charter would not have been established without a vote of the people of King County. No amendment to the charter can be adopted without a vote of the people of King County. Whatever authority this commission possesses exists only because it has been delegated to you by the people of King County. A petition from the people of the county to our county council asking them to give us the opportunity to vote on an amendment to the charter does not in any way undermine the ability of this commission to review the charter and to propose –- to the people –- further amendments to the charter. I hope that you will keep in mind as you deliberate this issue and the other issues before you that in our form of government the people are sovereign, and that when the people exercise their independent right to propose legislation it is not in any way undermining the authority they themselves have delegated. In any organizational chart you draw, the box at the top should be labeled “the people of King County”, not the executive, not the county council, not freeholders, not anything else.
     Thank you very much for your kind attention.

Seattle Weekly: Initiative 25 Has the County’s Democrats Lining Up to Oppose ... More Democracy

     Seattle (July 11, 2007) -- Ask citizens if they want more control over the people who run their government, and most will reply in the affirmative. Kurt Triplett agrees with this notion, and it has him a little worried.
     Triplett, who is King County Executive Ron Sims’ chief of staff, insists that for the greater good of King County, the director of the county’s Records, Elections, and Licensing Services Division (i.e., the director of elections) needs to remain an appointed position, not an elected one. Enter the boosters of Initiative 25, who have collected 74,000 signatures—well over the 54,000 required to trigger council consideration—in support of putting the issue of whether to have an elected director of elections to a public vote.
     In July or August, the King County Council will decide whether to put I-25 on the November ballot as a charter amendment, although there are a handful of more nuanced maneuvers the council could undertake to effectively table this issue. “We are working on persuading the council to do the right thing and...[put] the charter amendment on the ballot this year,” says I-25 campaign spokesperson Toby Nixon, a former Republican state legislator who represented portions of Kirkland, Redmond, and Woodinville.
     King County is the only county in the state without an elected director of elections. “The elected county positions of the other 38 counties are really held publicly accountable for elections,” says Washington’s Republican secretary of state, Sam Reed. “The press holds them publicly accountable, and the public does in public forums.”
     The three key figures behind I-25 are Nixon, King County Republican Party advisory board member Glenn Avery, and political strategist Sharon Gilpin. They say that before the 2008 presidential election, a new nonpartisan director of elections should take office—one who doesn’t fit neatly into Ron Sims’ hip pocket, according to Gilpin.
     On the flip side, Sims and the King County Democrats say that when an office is appointed, a more qualified candidate can be picked for the job, free from the occasionally toxic politics of re-election campaigns. They also argue that an elected director of elections who does a poor job can retain his or her position for years without consequence.
     “An elected auditor could screw up every election for four years, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity to make any changes to that,” Triplett says. “In the appointed system, the executive can fire and replace that person immediately.”
     Staking out a more partisan basis for opposition than Triplett, the King County Democrats claim that despite the fact that I-25 would call for a nonpartisan election, it is in fact a Republican-backed initiative which seeks to diminish Sims’ powers as executive and make amends for 2004’s gubernatorial debacle, when King County shouldered most of the blame for two required recounts.
     “I think the Democrats will look at this as a ‘defend the job that’s been done’ issue and the Republicans will excoriate it again,” Democratic consultant Cathy Allen says. “This all goes back to 2004 and which side you were on.”
     Conversely, I-25’s backers say that Sims just wants to retain his power of appointment. “Perhaps he’s afraid that if he had an independent voice in that position, that person might not be nearly as enthusiastic about going to all-mail balloting as Ron seems to be,” says Nixon, an ardent opponent of the proposed switch to a mail-only system.
     Susan Sheary, chairwoman of the King County Democrats, says that their organization simply supports the director of elections as a professional, nonpolitical appointment. She claims that the I-25 supporters are mostly Republicans having a fit.
     “It’s a group of disgruntled Republicans that formed a coalition,” Sheary says. “They’ve been fighting Ron Sims and the election department for four years.”
     While the King County Democrats say this is a partisan issue, support for I-25 has crossed party lines. High-profile supporters include Republican Reed, Democratic State Auditor Brian Sonntag, and former Green Party county executive nominee Gentry Lange. The biggest financial contributor to I-25 so far has been Seattle real-estate baron Martin Selig, who donated $25,000 to the campaign in May. (So far, the I-25 campaign has raised roughly $130,000. As of now, no formal opposition has surfaced, but Sheary says an independent campaign to fight I-25 is “being talked about.”)
     “Brian Sonntag can say what he wants,” grumbles consultant Allen, “but he doesn’t live here, and he doesn’t matter here.”
     Sonntag, who lives in Tacoma, says his rationale for supporting the initiative is simple: He believes in people having the opportunity to choose their leaders.
     “I didn’t think whether you’re a Republican or Democrat would enter into what is really a governance issue,” Sonntag says. “I’m befuddled by partisan opposition.”
     Recent history shines an unflattering light on King County’s elections office. In 2002, the county failed to mail out thousands of absentee ballots. Then, in 2004, the elections office failed to follow procedures concerning signatures on mailed ballots, counted some provisional ballots as regular votes, and discovered ballots that were not factored into the first count.
     The County Council formed the King County Citizens’ Election Oversight Committee in 2003 as a bipartisan panel that would suggest changes to the elections office in the wake of the aforementioned debacles. In 2005, Sims formed his own panel, the King County Independent Task Force on Elections, which functioned similarly.
     Sims and the County Council did make many recommended changes, which included setting in motion the implementation of mail-only voting, consolidating facilities to improve security, and enhancing voter-registration efforts. But one recommendation that county officials refused to act on was the election of a county auditor. Susan Hutchison, the former KIRO-TV news anchor and a onetime member of the county’s Independent Task Force, is still not happy with that result.
     “They should have immediately moved on that issue after our task force met,” Hutchison says. “We didn’t work for weeks and months on end to put forth recommendations that were to be looked at lightly and ignored.”
     The last time an important King County office shifted from an appointed to elected format was the sheriff’s position in 1997. Sims and his predecessor, Gov. Gary Locke, didn’t support that change, but the County Council, narrowly controlled (7-6) by Republicans at the time, voted along party lines in May 1996 to put the proposed change on the ballot.
     In November 1996, voters passed the charter amendment and, the following year, King County elected its first nonpartisan sheriff since 1968: current Republican Congressman Dave Reichert, who had been Sims’ appointment for sheriff before the process began.
     Current King County Sheriff Sue Rahr says she has not decided whether to support I-25, but adds that “the level of accountability and scrutiny is far more intense in an elected position.”
     Then there’s I-25’s third rail: those who support the concept of an elected elections director, but not I-25—at least not yet. Democrat Bob Ferguson, a King County Council member whose district includes North Seattle, Shoreline and Bothell, says he supports an elected director of elections but thinks the 2008 presidential election could be bungled if it is in the hands of a “rookie.” “I wanted to do this in 2009 because we just recently got a full-time auditor on board in the last couple months,” he says. (Similarly, state Democratic Party Chair Dwight Pelz has voiced support for a 2009 election.) “And frankly, I want to have some stability in office, which has been sorely lacking in recent times.”
     Mark Smith, an associate professor of political science at the University of Washington, feels that neither system is infallible when it comes to finding the right person for the job.
     “Election alone doesn’t ensure that someone will be competent or not,” Smith says. “You can say the same thing about appointments. At the end of the day, you still need good people.”

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Crosscut: A Nixon could help save the Washington GOP from itself

Seattle (April 5, 2007) -- Ever think a Republican named Nixon would be missed? Neither did I. But I was surprised recently when someone from a fairly liberal public interest group told me off-the-record that they missed former state Rep. Toby Nixon, a Kirkland Republican, in Olympia. Nixon was defeated in 2006 in a bid to step up to the state Senate from his House seat.

What was the group’s beef? They were having trouble finding Republican co-sponsors for some of the bills and proposals they were pushing. Even in the Democrat-run Legislature, bipartisan support is an asset in helping bills through committee and giving them an aura of seriousness, even inevitability. It can also signal that there’s less risk involved in supporting a measure. The bipartisan imprimatur suggests a public good.

It’s also true that many bills have no particular partisan agenda. The old saying is that there are no Democrat or Republican potholes. There are also issues that cut across party lines — issues, for example, that have to do with fundamental rights, like civil liberties.

Nixon voted against the bipartisan pork package for Boeing. He was out front in trying to block the U.S. government’s implementation of the Big Brother Real ID program to make your driver’s license a computer-chipped national identity card. He has supported restoring voting rights of felons who’ve done their time in prison. He was — and is — dogged on open-government issues. He’s still co-chair of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, which is the advocate of shining the disinfectant of daylight on public process. It’s the kind of coalition Toby Nixon relishes, drawing support from Democrats, Republicans, the right-wing Evergreen Freedom Foundation, labor, and the media.

Nixon’s value was that he was a libertarian Republican. (Before he moved here to work for Microsoft, he in fact was an official Libertarian Party candidate for office in Georgia.) He was, and is, a conservative, but also an unconventional one. His voting record was to the right, but he also took some stands contrary to many others held by both parties. His being out of lockstep with his own party was refreshing, and often useful.

Nixon is unconventional in other ways, too. He is a Mormon convert but isn’t missionary about his faith: “As a Mormon libertarian, I am no threat to anyone,” he jokes over a recent lunch in one of the lodge-like dining rooms on the Microsoft campus.

The wipeout of the GOP in the 2006 election did a great deal of damage to the Republican Party locally, and much of it was self-inflicted. George Bush and Iraq dragged everyone down. It was a bad year, in some ways historically bad. But demographic trends and the state GOP drift toward extremism in an increasingly Democratic-leaning state didn’t help.

GOP turnover in Seattle’s Eastside suburbs was particularly notable. Recently, the place has been a hot zone of unconventional, swing-vote Rs. Slow-growth advocate Brian Derdowski was the Republican maverick of the King County Council for years, having to fight his own party and the GOP-loving development lobby to stay in office.

But it’s the Eastside legislative districts closest to Lake Washington that have seen the most pronounced change. Bill Finkbeiner got into the Legislature representing the 45th District as a “Tom Harkin” Democrat, then switched parties and became a GOP leader in the Senate. Last April, he decided to get out after he bucked the majority of his party and cast a critical vote in favor of gay rights. Former state GOP party chair Chris Vance called the decision “terrible, terrible news.” Then Rodney Tom, reading the suburban coffee grounds, switched parties, too, only he bolted from the GOP and ran for and won a Senate seat in the 48th as a Democrat.

The result of the Finkbeiner retirement, the Nixon loss, and the Tom switch is that the hot zone of independent-minded, reasonably moderate Eastside Republicans got royally f—, uh, fumigated in 2006. The lakefront “liberals” — with the exception of Mercer Island’s Fred Jarrett — are gone.

Even the so-called suburban, Reagan-bred metrosexuals — younger, suburban conservatives who seemed tuned in to the new ’burbs — have taken a hit. Luke Esser was defeated in his re-election bid, and Dino Rossi is on political Elba, plotting his possible return to reclaim Queen Christine Gregoire’s crown with the help of surviving suburban “Dinocrats.”

Seattleites are probably thinking: Good riddance. The GOP in the city is extinct. The fact that an openly Republican candidate, Jim Nobles, announced this week that he was running for City Council was news in political circles because the last Republican to leave Seattle was thought to have turned out the lights not long after former Gov. Dan Evans, the ur-liberal Republican in this state, left office in 1977. As the die-off occurred, the once-solidly Republican Eastside has been swinging leftward to the middle, and now farther left, at least to a point. I noticed things had changed when I saw desperate Kirkland housewives holding Moveon.org cookie sales for John Kerry in Eastside parking lots.

Urbanization has been one factor in the swing — the Microsoft ’burbs are filled with sophisticated workers from other cities. Growth has brought on a whole raft of urban issues with which to contend. Transportation is now not just about highways but transit. The new suburbanites are often very green: They moved to a less-urban environment for a reason, often to be closer to nature. And social issues, like homelessness and housing affordability and dealing with greater racial and ethnic diversity, have put Democratic causes on the radar. Call it the Crossroads Factor.

Politicians have figured out that independent suburbanites will often reward socially tolerant, fiscally restrained, pro-business, pro-environment candidates of either party. Right now, the mo in those departments is with the suburban Dems. Think Rep. Ross Hunter, the moderate ex-Microsoftie who represents the 48th, which includes much of Bellevue, Redmond, and the Lake Washington Gold Coast. He is also widely seen as a prospect for an elected statewide office or Congress. Imagine that: a Democrat who might be able to use the crabgrass frontier as base for running for higher office. That used to be the exclusive turf of Republicans like Jennifer Dunn, Rob McKenna, Dan McDonald, or Rossi.

Mercer Island’s Fred Jarrett, lonelier than the Maytag repair man, also misses Nixon. “Very much,” he says. In an email response to a query about Nixon, he wrote: “One of the things many of us relied on Toby for was his keen eye and insightful analysis of bills.” Nixon says his mindset as a systems analyst for Microsoft was invaluable to helping him figure out legislation and how to tweak it and work the process in Olympia. The law book is called the Revised Code of Washington, after all. Nixon’s a details guy, and he clearly misses wrestling with the devil who resides in them. “He’s still engaged in the process,” Jarrett says. “I get several e-mails a week from him kibitzing on bills!”

But Jarrett sees ominous signs for the party if the Nixons are no longer electable: “The urban wing of the party looks like an endangered species. Republicans need to take this as a serious challenge, and it can’t be attributed to chance. House Republicans have lost seats in every election cycle since 1984 and the net loss in urban areas is staggering. Nixon is an indicator species.”

Polarization and partisanship is part of the cause, Jarrett says. “Our ability to maintain a stable democratic government requires that both parties have a robust, centrist core. I think we’ve seen the results of polarization.” He looks at what the Democrats have done with envy. Seattle Democratic House Speaker Frank Chopp “has been much more successful at building that centrist core. At the expense of people like Toby. It’s a loss for both the Eastside and the [GOP] caucus.”

Another guy who misses the fray is new state Republican Party Chair Luke Esser, who loved his time in Olympia. “If the Legislature is a heroin addiction,” he tells me over a cell phone, “I’m on methadone now.” Talk about political junkies.

Esser’s job is to find good GOP candidates statewide, and he, too, thinks the party has to do a better job of developing candidates and healing internal rifts. “If we don’t work together as a team, we don’t have a chance of a comeback.” He draws inspiration from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The book shows how Lincoln led and eventually united a fractious group of rival Republicans in his cabinet and turned them into a winning team.

He says that Eastside Democrats are vulnerable and doesn’t rule out that a Toby Nixon — even the Toby Nixon — could make a comeback. “The Democrats are extended, like Napoleon enjoying a barbecue in Moscow,” he says. The victories of 2006 have stretched them into swing or GOP-leaning areas where they might not be able to hang on in the post-Bush era. They are isolated and supply lines are thin.

He cites the man who defeated Nixon as a prime example of the GOP’s hopes: Sen. Eric Oemig, the former Microsoft engineer. (And yes, Eastside candidates of both parties all seem to originate at Microsoft, just like Boeing in an earlier era.) Kirkland Democrat Oemig has made pushing for Bush’s impeachment a centerpiece of his rookie session in Olympia. “They think they’re representing Capitol Hill,” Esser says. “They’re not moderate in tone or governance.” He thinks they may come to pay a price with losing touch with the pragmatism of their districts.

Defeat has not slowed Nixon, however. He’s working on two projects that could help heal and focus the GOP and reform King County’s election system.

Nixon describes himself as a “grassroots Republican” rather than a corporate Republican and like Esser thinks the party needs to come together on ideas. He also thinks he can address some of the unhappiness in those roots regarding the 2004 election debacle.

Nixon is key organizer of Initiative 25, a drive to make the head of King County elections an elected office and to get it out of the Department of Licensing. Every other county in the state has an elected officer overseeing elections. The group pushing the initiative, Citizens for Accountable Elections, lists on its Web site supporters of the idea who include Republicans like Secretary of State Sam Reed, Democrats like State Auditor Brian Sonntag, Green Party and blackbox-voting activist Gentry Lange, and Ruth Bennett, state chair of the Libertarian Party.

It’s a classic Nixon coalition, one designed to solve a problem across party lines and appeal to the grassroots. It might also channel GOP anger into a reform cause that would take the heat off of Reed, assuming he runs for re-election in 2008. (Republican Party conservatives are angry that Reed played a neutral role in state and judicial efforts to sort out the close gubernatorial race of 2004, which Rossi lost by a whisker.) The King County Dems smell a GOP plot to seize control of the electoral process and are asking Democrats to “decline to sign.” Given the anger at Reed and John McKay (the former GOP-appointed U.S. attorney who was GOP-fired) over their perceived failure to pursue allegations of election fraud, who can blame them for being suspicious?

Nixon is also currently organizing something he calls the Evergreen Leadership Conference, a gathering in Richland in mid-May that would bring together grassroots conservatives and Republicans to search for common ground in preparation for 2008. The focus, he says, will be “principles, priorities, and presidential politics.”

With Nixon’s talent for details, coalition-building, and his strongly held libertarian principles, he brings a kind of independent thinking that the GOP desperately misses. It’s not Republicanism of the Dan Evans kind exactly — not necessarily centrist — but both principled and open to finding allies to solve systemic problems and support civil liberties. And if he can help remake the GOP’s suburban grassroots, Nixon might not be missed for long.

Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut’s chief Northwest native. He also writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a weekly Friday guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.

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Initiative 25: A non-partisan elected Director of Elections in King County