Charter Amendment No. 8 envisions less partisan King County

Tired of choosing between Democrats and Republicans to represent you as King County executive, Metropolitan King County Council member and assessor?

Or do you want candidates to wear party labels so you know something about their political viewpoint?

Proposed county Charter Amendment No. 8 will let voters decide — for the first time since the charter was approved by voters in 1969 — whether elections for three key county positions should be partisan or nonpartisan.

Supporters, including former governors Booth Gardner and Dan Evans, say the amendment would take "partisan bickering" out of county government and bring more competition into elections by making it easier for challengers to take on incumbents. Incumbents raised 19 times the money challengers raised in 2005 King County Council races, and 26 times challengers' funds in 2007, they say.

"What that leads to is entrenched incumbency," said Joe Fain, who spearheaded the Initiative 26 campaign, which put the charter amendment on the ballot. Fain is a legislative aide to County Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer, R-Federal Way, who put his political muscle behind the initiative.

Proponents also say it would result in better government decision-making. "There are no Republican roads or Democratic stoplights!" Gardner, Evans and Auburn City Councilmember Sue Singer wrote in the voters pamphlet.

Opponents say party labels give voters an important signal about their political leanings. "Political party preference is the single piece of objective information about a candidate that appears on the ballot," former Gov. Mike Lowry and state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle, wrote in the voters-pamphlet statement against the amendment.

Lowry, a self-professed "admirer of the County Council," said he thinks the council and executive are doing a good job and that partisanship hasn't created a problem that needs to be fixed.

"I think political philosophy is important," Lowry said. Revealing candidates' political affiliations "gives more information out there and puts more cards on the table," he said.

The I-26 campaign raised $352,000 — most of it from former Western Wireless CEO John Stanton and his wife, Theresa Gillespie — to fund the petition drive and the primary-election campaign to put the measure on the November ballot. Neither side has raised or spent money on the November election.

Nearly 64 percent of voters in the August primary supported making county elections and future redistricting committees nonpartisan. Given a choice between I-26 and a County Council alternative that would have allowed candidates to list their party preference choice on future ballots, voters chose to put the stronger I-26 language on the November ballot.

Since the state Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that citizens have the right to initiate charter amendments, voters have always had to vote twice to get the measures approved — once on the initiative to put a charter amendment on the ballot, and later on the charter amendment itself. Amendment 8 is endorsed by more than 40 elected officials and the Municipal League of King County.

It is one of two citizen-initiated votes on the Nov. 4 ballot that would change the way county leaders are selected. (The other proposal, Charter Amendment No. 1, would make the elections director — now appointed — run for office in a nonpartisan election.)

Charter Amendment No. 7, a separate proposal from the county Charter Review Commission would eliminate the need for two votes for future citizen-initiated amendments.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com