Port incumbent, challenger swap insults, innuendoes

Bob Edwards and Gael Tarleton agree on most issues, but you wouldn't know it listening to them bash each other in their race for Seattle Port Commission.

Both want the Port to grow in environmentally responsible ways. Both want to keep the Port's countywide property-tax levy. Both want to strengthen Port security and replace the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct with something other than a surface street.

On the campaign trail for Position 2 on the commission, Edwards and Tarleton have been anything but agreeable, serving up insults and innuendo about one another.

Tarleton is running as a reformer and paints Edwards as a "go-along get-along" lackey of former Port CEO Mic Dinsmore who appeared to support a controversial "golden parachute" for Dinsmore's retirement.

Edwards, in return, says Tarleton is a tool of a huge government contractor she used to work for and has her own ethics problems.

Neither claim appears entirely accurate. You might say both Edwards and Tarleton are campaigning on guilt-by-association.

The election is Nov. 6.

First run for office

Tarleton, 48, has taken an unusual path to her first run for office. She went straight from Georgetown University to a job as a Pentagon analyst specializing in the Soviet Navy.

After 10 years and two commendations from the CIA, she started working for SAIC, a San Diego-based firm with 44,000 employees and $5 billion in government contracts last year. She rose to vice president at SAIC and spent most of her time in Russia, managing a U.S.-funded program to set up detection systems for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

"No, I'm a not a spy," she jokes. "I get asked that question all the time."

She left SAIC in 2002 and is now a special assistant in the University of Washington's Office of Global Affairs, where she helps faculty compete for research grants.

Last year she decided to pursue a longtime ambition. "This is my launch into politics," she wrote friends of her plan to run for Port Commission. She went on to write that the Port could be an "the foundation for all future scenarios," including her dream of running for secretary of state.

Besides reforming the Port to make it more open, accountable and trusted by voters, Tarleton wants to bring her expertise in security, international relations and disaster preparedness to the commission.

But her background is a problem, Edwards says, because her links to SAIC create a conflict of interest that would force her out of discussions of security issues.

SAIC had $7 million in security contracts with the Port between 2002 and 2004. Tarleton also has received at least 49 campaign contributions totaling $20,350 from former or current SAIC employees and their relatives, out of $186,057 in overall contributions.

Edwards, who has raised $88,860, also has voiced concerns about SAIC's ethics record. The company has pleaded guilty to making false statements to the federal government, paid settlements after allegations that SAIC overcharged the government, and played a part in making the pre-war case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, according to an article by Pulitzer Prize-winners Donald Barlett and James Steele.

Tarleton says she'll recuse herself from any Port decisions or discussions involving SAIC. But she maintains she would not need to recuse herself from all conversations about Port security.

She also said the Barlett and Steele article doesn't reflect her experience at SAIC. "I'm not associated with a single one" of the problems they highlight, she said. "Never have been, never will be."

Emission-curbing efforts

For her part, Tarleton's campaign has tried to saddle Edwards, an eight-year incumbent, with recent problems at the Port, including a proposed $340,000 severance package for Dinsmore and a scandal involving Port police officers sending sexually explicit e-mails to one another — even though Edwards' fingerprints aren't on those specific problems.

Edwards, 57, a former Boeing engineer and Renton City Council member, now works as an investment adviser.

He touts his Port Commission record to reduce seaport pollution, create jobs by expanding cargo and cruise-ship business, and his work on regional transportation committees and issues.

Specifically, Edwards has sponsored a voluntary agreement among the ports of Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver, B.C., to reduce ship emissions by 70 percent. He has supported multimillion-dollar plans to build new Seattle terminals for cargo and cruise ships, and has served on advisory boards that have come up with plans to solve traffic snags on Interstate 405 and state Highway 520.

He also has backed more controversial proposals to turn over Boeing Field, now owned by King County, to the Port — an idea the commission opposes — and to develop office buildings on Port property between Queen Anne and Magnolia. City officials say the area should be reserved for industrial jobs. "The light industry of today has more of a look and feel of office space," Edwards explains.

Edwards maintains he is not to blame for Port problems, as Tarleton has suggested.

He says he learned of the police e-mail controversy only a few days before it was reported by the media. He has criticized Port staff for not providing commissioners with an earlier, more thorough account of the problem. And once the lewd e-mails came to light, the commission ordered an investigation and hired a new police chief, he says.

On Dinsmore's severance package, Edwards has said he recalled some mention of it in a closed-door session, but he says he never supported the proposal.

While it's true Edwards voted to give Dinsmore a 6 percent pay increase last year, an investigation by retired King County Superior Court Judge Terrence Carroll concluded that Pat Davis was the only commissioner who signed a memo last year supporting the severance package, which the commission later rejected in a unanimous vote. Even Commissioner Alec Fisken, who has endorsed Tarleton, said he sees no evidence Edwards authorized the payment for Dinsmore.

Still, Edwards has managed recently to irk his commission colleagues with an initiative to save Lora Lake, a Burien apartment complex, although the Port and city of Burien had already decided to demolish the complex because of its proximity to the new third runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

That initiative, seen as grandstanding in an election year, prompted e-mail rebukes from commissioners Lloyd Hara and John Creighton, who told Edwards they had lost trust in him. Calling it "sneaky behavior" and a "campaign stunt," Hara wrote that Edwards' ploy "makes the Commission look like a dysfunctional organization just for your own political publicity." Creighton added a few profanities in a similar e-mail, saying he hoped Edwards would be replaced by a new commissioner with more maturity and integrity.

Edwards shrugs off the criticism. "I can work with everyone on the commission. I don't participate if somebody want to send a nasty e-mail. I don't respond."

Bob Young: 206-464-2174

or byoung@seattletimes.com