Editorializing by the AP

This story about Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell caught my eye this morning. The story was about the Republicans' supposed difficulty in finding a challenger for Cantwell, who is considered vulnerable in her re-election campaign next year.

The story, written by AP writer David Ammons, claims the Republican nomination is available for Dino Rossi if he wants it. However, Rossi is neck-deep in a challenge to the 2004 governor's race, which he "lost" to Democrat Christine Gregoire after two recounts (including a slew of ballots that miraculously appeared in the Democrat stronghold of King County) reversed his narrow victory. (A court ruling on that case is expected Monday, and will likely be appealed to the state Supreme Court regardless of the victor.) Rossi says he wants to be chief executive, not one voice in a sea of 100 senators, and he doesn't want to be jet-setting between the Washingtons when he has four school-age children.

Here's the paragraph that caught my eye:

(If this reluctance [of someone to commit to a challenge against Cantwell] sounds familiar, harken back to the last election cycle, when Jennifer Dunn turned down entreaties to run against [Patty] Murray. The eventual nominee, George Nethercutt, looked like stale leftovers and was mowed down.)

Hmmm...isn't that editorializing to call Nethercutt "stale leftovers" and claim he was "mowed down"?

Really, if you look at the numbers, it admittedly wasn't close. Murray, who should have been vulnerable solely for singing the praises of Osama bin Laden a couple of years ago, won 55 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Nethercutt.

Murray's margin of victory was 345,000 votes. However, Murray won King County, home of ultra-liberal Congressman Jim McDermott, by a 2-to-1 margin. (McDermott, who earned the moniker "Baghdad Jim" for his insinuation after a 2002 trip to Iraq that Saddam Hussein could be trusted more than George W. Bush, won 81 percent of the vote in his 2004 re-election bid). Subtract out those results, and Murray won by 60,000 votes statewide, a margin of 2 percent. (I realize you can't "subtract out" King County, but the point is that no Republican is going to come close in that area; it's like John Kerry's chances in Wyoming.)

So, Nethercutt wasn't as successful as the Republicans would have liked (or as Murray gave him room for), but there's no place in a straight news story for a reporter to label him as "stale leftovers" or claim he was "mowed down."