As Koi Walker tells it on her website, she set out to document the race and got blown off by Mayor Greg Nickels, the incumbent. So she started focusing on the underfunded and less experienced candidates in the race — and of course ended up with a great story when environmentalist Mike McGinn won an unlikely victory.

Walker is having an invitation-only showing of the movie next weekend, but you can see a trailer here.

The filmmakers plan to offer DVDs through their Facebook page sometime in August.

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LOUISVILLE, Ky.
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Republican U.S. Senate candidates Clint Didier and Paul Akers announced Thursday evening they are going to be joining forces — despite the fact that both are competing for the same seat.

The two said they would be doing joint radio ads and talking together online. Both said they were upset at the political establishment, which they said is trying to control the election.

“To my knowledge, no one has ever done this before,” Akers said in about working with a political opponent. “We are innovators, to say the least.”

The two are considered long-shots in the race, which also includes Republican Dino Rossi and incumbent Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.

They made their announcement during a joint appearance in an online radio broadcast.

Update at 7:45 p.m.: The blogtalkradio connection is working now. An announcer apologized for what she described as a “complete phone system crash.” Didier is now on the air.

Update: 7:35 p.m.

Somebody keeps repeating: “Good evening everyone” in a screech. We are hearing all sorts of pings, and snippets of people saying things like “ridiculous.”

It sounds like we are trying to hear astronauts from mission control, and the space craft has just gone to the dark side of the moon.

Update: We finally heard something on the phone-in line. Somebody announced that “we will reconvene” at 7:30 p.m. — giving out a new call-in number 1-712-432-3900, with a conference call code 285110# and an online url at blogtalkradio.com/squareonemedia.

Republican U.S. Senate candidates Clint Didier and Paul Akers appear to be having technical troubles with their telephone town hall meeting, at which the two have said they plan to make some sort of big announcement this evening.

The links for a live web feed and a call in phone number didn’t work when The Times tried to listen in. We did managed to get some kind of connection through which you could hear people cursing in the background.

At 7:10 p.m., we called Didier’s spokeswoman Kathryn Serkes, who said she didn’t have time to talk, because she had to try and get the Town Hall meeting going. She then hung up.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla.
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That news – posted on the Didier web site – quickly got some speculating (like the Stranger’s Eli Sanders, who noticed the announcement first) that maybe Akers was going to drop out and endorse Didier. (Or vice versa.)

I confess I had the same suspicion. It’s very unusual for two candidates running in the same race to be doing a joint announcement of any sort. Both Akers and Didier are essentially competing for the same voters as longshot alternatives to Dino Rossi, the choice of the Republican establishment.

But Didier campaign consultant Kathryn Serkes cautioned against jumping to such conclusions.

And Akers’ campaign manager, Bob Lodder, said flat out that Thursday’s announcement won’t be about either candidate dropping out of the race.

“That’s a wrong read – there will be no dropouts by either of us,” Lodder told me. “I don’t want to say more than that.”

Akers himself called shortly after I spoke with Lodder and refused to say anything about Thursday’s announcement. “You’ll just have to listen,” he said.

The town hall event, which begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, will be conducted via a telephone conference call and moderated by Serkes. People will also be able to follow the event live at BlogTalkRadio.com

Serkes said about 100,000 Washington voters will receive robo-calls telling them how to participate.

More info, including a call-in phone number for the event, is at the web site www.takebackwashington.org

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla.
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PROVIDENCE, R.I.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. House on Tuesday evening passed a $59 billion war funding bill that isn’t paid for — and it was Democrats, not Republicans, crying foul against further deficit spending.

The House voted 308 to 114 for the emergency supplemental appropriations for the war in Afghanistan. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, were the only House members from Washington state to vote nay.

Both Inslee and McDermott cited the cost of a war that is now nearly a decade old. On the House floor, Inslee said lack of money could force the Lynnwood Police Department to trim a quarter of its employees while Congress is asked to spend $4 billion to train police officers in Kabul.

“It is wrong to be borrowing money from China, laying off American police officers, to train police officers in Afghanistan,” Inslee said.

Inslee supported President Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan in 2001, but opposed the war in Iraq that started in 2003. Nonetheless,he has voted for deficit spending to pay for the wars, most recenlty in 2009. Inslee said he wanted to give the new Obama administration a chance to start winding down the war — something Inslee said he sees no real indication of happening.

Meanwhile, the rising deficit, the recession and the accumulating years of combat have made it untenable to keep pouring billions of dollars into the war, he said.

“My position has not changed,” Inslee said. “The world has changed.”

As for McDermott, he said he sees no point in spending any more money on a problem that U.S. troops can’t solve.

“If we really want to help the Afghan people form a functioning government that serves its people and respects human rights, we must do it with additional aid and support — not with more troops.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obamas once solid support among Hispanics is showing a few cracks, a troubling sign for Democrats desperate to get this critical constituency excited about helping the party hold onto Congress this fall.
Hispanics still overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party over the GOP, and a majority still think Obama is doing a good job, according to an Associated Press-Univision poll of more than 1,500 Hispanics.
But the survey, also sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, shows Obama gets only lukewarm ratings on issues important to Hispanics _ and that could bode poorly for the president and his party.
For a group that supported Obama so heavily in 2008 and in his first year in office, only 43 percent of Hispanics surveyed said Obama is adequately addressing their needs, with the economy a major concern.
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