That "z" up there was an accident, but I decided to keep it to honor all those years I lived in Utah, where all the professional sports teams had z’s in their names and sometimes drove their fans to zzzzzzz. There is the NBA’s Jazz. The minor league baseball and hockey teams were the Buzz and the Grizzlies and the short-lived WNBA franchise was the Starzz. The baseball team became the Stingers, then the Bees and the women (just the ones connected to the Starzz, not every woman in Utah)  left for San Antonio where they became Silver Stars.

Also, the light blogging yesterday was because I wrote two stories for the regular paper and went to the Marinerzz-Red Soxzz game. Some fun that waz.

The debate was in the Cloverleaf in Bremerton, which is a pretty good site for this kind of thing. I can’t speak for the food so you’ll have to discuss that with someone else.

Democrat Kathy Haigh is the incumbent in the 35th District Position 1 seat. She’s a veterinarian. having a run a business with her husband for 30 years. She’s focused much of her legislative work on education.

Republican Brad Gehring , a Bremerton city councilman, is a Vietnam vet and former business owner. He throws the "Blue Collar" moniker before his name. He was the first to announce he was running against Haigh. That may help get him to November. By announcing he early he spent months as the presumed candidate from the GOP (which means Republican, or Grand Old Party). He’s had several months to tell his story. His presence is calm and when he’s critical he’s polite. He wants to make Washington more business friendly and says that will boost the local economy.

Republican Marco Brown ran against Haigh in 2006 and lost by 22 points, which in political terms qualifies as getting landslid. I only saw him once in that election, at another Eggs & Issues. The Brown I saw this week was far different, more passionate, more forceful. Maybe two years ago he was having a bad morning. On Tuesday he said some of the same things he said in 2006. He says he’s the "common man." He’s an immigrant from Panama. He talks about illegal immigration in ways other candidates for state office don’t. He says show him the budget and he’ll show you where to cut.

You can see all their views here . Well, you can eventually. Brown hasn’t sent his in yet, but plans to. Also, Brown declined to visit with our editorial board, saying something about "insolence." From what I understand he believes newspapers are insolent in their endorsement process.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Democrats, Election 2008, Legislature, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.