Joel Connelly, Seattle’s answer to Mr. Wilson in the Dennis the Menace cartoons, has taken issue with Republican efforts to tie left leaning Mankha Dhingra to the frantic and feverish lefty politics of Seattle. He’s telling supporters of Jinyoung Englund to get off his lawn because he thinks it’s not relevant to point out the connections Dhingra has to the Seattle’s swiftly tilting to the left politics. First, you don’t need to run a Public Disclosure Commission query to know that lots of money and support is flowing from Seattle lefties to Dhingra. Remember, lots of socialists in Seattle think Sammamish is something you put on pita bread; but they do know that the 45th district will tilt the legislature to the Democrats. And for the rump of people left in Seattle who understand economics, they also know that a Mankha win means the possibility that the equally left leaning Seattle caucus in the legislature might be able to get its way on things like rent control. Connelly and others in Seattle get their party affiliation confused with principles.

Oddly, its the curmudgeonly old Connelly who gets his plaid pants in a twist all the time about Seattle’s goofy politics, especially those of its bullhorn wielding proponent Kshama Sawant. When she called critics of protesters who routinely shut down Christmas celebrations in Seattle’s downtown fascists he wrote,

Bluntly put, the city’s confrontational far left should bear that label . . . for drowning out dialogue and trying to shout down democracy. They are enabled and justified by such apologists as Sawant and The Stranger, champions of the new uncouth, intolerant tone of Seattle politics.

Yep.

Like someone who is criticizing his own family, Connelly doesn’t hold back. But when someone outside the family, like a Republican does the same thing, well, then that’s fighting words. It is plain as day that Dhingra is getting support from Seattle liberals who claim a homeless “crisis” but think nothing of spending $300,000 to defend Councilmember Sawant’s tirades against landlords and police from legal challenge. Connelly asks,

What does this have to do with representing Kirkland, Sammamish and part of Redmond in the Senate, and does it have any bearing on Dhingra, who has lived in Redmond for 21 years? Englund tries to draw a tortured distinction:

“Seattle wants to charge city businesses a $100 per head tax but okay to charge taxpayers for these legal fees? This might work in Seattle but it certainly doesn’t live up with Eastside values.”

Well, Mr. Wilson, er, Connelly, this is true. It is a fact. At least the part about the proposed tax on jobs. I admit, I don’t know what “Eastside values” are, and I suppose that’s for the voters over there to decide. But the truth is that a voter in Redmond, Seattle, Renton, or Spokane should be wondering why it matters so much to lefties in Seattle and Connelly to defend a Democrat running in a Senate race in an off year.

Sawant wants rent control. The only way she can get that is through Olympia. Sawant, the City Council, and both candidates for Mayor want an income tax and a tax on capital gains. Again, there’s no way to do that but through Olympia. Voters on the Eastside and everywhere else in the world, should know that putting Dhingra in the State Senate makes all those things more of a reality for them — whether they live in Kelso or Kettle Falls, and whether they run a business in Tacoma or Tallahassee that is thinking of expanding in Washington state.

Sadly, when people have no principles party becomes the guide. I’ve seen many people in Seattle cheerleading Dhingra and bashing Englund with glee; people who are against rent control and support more housing supply. Why? Because Dhingra is Democrat and Englund is a Republican. If Connelly is truly worried about the out of control left in Seattle, then he’d hope for a win by Englund. That would at least keep the socialists and lefties who’d like exactions on housing and income on a shorter chain. And people who claim to be “urbanists” might do well to “like” that post trashing Englund but sit on their hands and stay out of it.