I was once a big fan of Rob McKenna's work. Technically we were classmates at the University of Washington's Economics program, I transferring in the January of his last year, 1986 - but it was not until watching him at great length on the Sound Transit Board that I connected a face to a name. On the Sound Transit board he was responsible for cutting the deal for freeway money for 405 during the rewrite of the first Sound Transit Bond package - a good deal, and one that led to a successful vote on try number two, and the accompanying delays in transit development were appropriate for that area - something current Sound Transit leadership forgot, to their peril.
I decided earlier this year not to actively support him on the basis of his failure to discipline one of Gregoire's last attorney hires during her years in McKenna's current job, Attorney General.
At the end of this summer I read the Jack Abramoff Biography, the former Microsoft lobbyist, hired, to a successful result, at the height of their anti-trust effort before the DOJ, coincident with the takeover of the House of Representatives under the leadership of Newt Gingrich.
The reason Abramoff was able to do this, as a lobbying virgin, was his time as head of the National College Republicans, during the Reagan years - after winning, of all places, Massachusetts, for the gipper. It was the very same individuals he trained nationwide that were, and still are, the heart of the right wing conservative movement - both as elected officials and as staff - including most notably his old buddy Grover Norquist.
These were the exact same years that McKenna was in school, serving himself as president of the Associated Student body of the UW in 85/86. As such, it was in this context that I viewed this video shot surreptitiously at the Young Republicans. The FaceBook poster claimed, I believe rightly, this to portray the Real Rob McKenna.
