As Labor Day 2019 dis­ap­pears into the rearview mir­ror, Gen­er­al Elec­tion Day 2019 draws ever clos­er. Sum­mer is end­ing and autumn is approach­ing. While the weath­er becomes cool­er, though, state pol­i­tics is heat­ing up. With the Novem­ber 2019 gen­er­al elec­tion only a few weeks away, it’s fundrais­ing sea­son.

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and the con­stel­la­tion of right wing orga­ni­za­tions based around these parts have long used fall din­ners with out of state guests to score cash for their oper­a­tions. This year, the oppo­si­tion is bring­ing a tru­ly ter­ri­ble trio to town to please their base: Failed Gov­er­nor Scott Walk­er and big­ot­ed Fox per­son­al­i­ties Lau­ra Ingra­ham and Jea­nine Pir­ro.

Scott Walk­er, Lau­ra Ingra­ham, and Jea­nine Pir­ro. All pho­tos by Gage Skid­more; repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

Scott Walker

Walk­er will appear in Belle­vue tomor­row night at the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s Annu­al Din­ner (which does­n’t have a name, oth­er than “Annu­al Din­ner”), which will be emceed by right wing radio per­son­al­i­ty Jason Rantz.

The din­ner will be held at the Hyatt Regency, which is part of right wing donor Kem­per Free­man Jr.‘s “Belle­vue Col­lec­tion”. A VIP recep­tion, replete with a pho­to line, will be held con­cur­rent­ly with a gen­er­al recep­tion from 6 to 7 PM.

The din­ner and pro­gram will run from 7 to 9 PM.

Walk­er inflict­ed tremen­dous dam­age on the State of Wis­con­sin dur­ing the eight years that he was in pow­er. He rammed through leg­is­la­tion aimed at break­ing up the state’s pub­lic sec­tor employ­ee unions and reward­ed his friends with sweet­heart deals. Before leav­ing office, he also struck an eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment deal with Fox­conn that turned out to be a com­plete sham.

“In his near­ly twen­ty-five years in pol­i­tics, Scott Walk­er has proven he will say any­thing and do any­thing to move up the polit­i­cal lad­der,” the non­prof­it OneWis­con­sin­Now explains, assess­ing Walk­er’s modus operan­di.

“The Walk­er Doc­trine is sim­ple: (1) Reward my donors, (2) Increase my pow­er, and (3) Pun­ish my ene­mies. This caus­es Scott Walk­er time and time again to mis­rep­re­sent the facts, deflect respon­si­bil­i­ty and flat out lie about his record, his poli­cies and the dam­age he has inflict­ed upon Wis­con­sin. There is only one place which ignores Scott Walker’s crony­ism, cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence, a mag­i­cal alter­nate uni­verse he has con­coct­ed called ‘Walker’s World.’ ”

In 2011, Walk­er was pranked by Ian Mur­phy, a New York blog­ger who was pre­tend­ing to be the late bil­lion­aire David Koch. Mur­phy got through to Walk­er and fooled him into believ­ing that he was Koch. Walk­er’s respons­es dur­ing the near­ly ten minute phone con­ver­sa­tion are reveal­ing and worth hear­ing.

Laura Ingraham

Ingra­ham will appear at a dif­fer­ent “Annu­al Din­ner” — this one to ben­e­fit the so-called “Free­dom Foun­da­tion”, a right wing group that is pri­mar­i­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the destruc­tion of the Pacif­ic North­west­’s trade unions.

Like the WSR­P’s din­ner, this event will be held at the Hyatt Regency.

It will take place Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 21st. A VIP recep­tion is planned for 5:30 PM, fol­lowed by a gen­er­al recep­tion at 6 PM. Din­ner will be at 7 PM.

Indi­vid­ual tick­ets cost $200. VIP tick­ets cost twice that… $400.

“Lau­ra Ingra­ham is a for­mer ABC News polit­i­cal con­trib­u­tor who hosts The Ingra­ham Angle on Fox News,” explains the watch­dog group Media Mat­ters. “She has used her Fox plat­form, her for­mer radio show, and her pod­cast to smear refugees, immi­grants, and LGBTQ Amer­i­cans, as well as to demean school shoot­ing sur­vivors and mock deceased individuals.”

Media Mat­ters has a com­pi­la­tion (includ­ing videos) of more than fifty racist state­ments made by Ingra­ham which goes back sev­er­al years.

“We’re delight­ed and flat­tered to have some­one of her stature share this spe­cial evening with us,” said “Free­dom Foun­da­tion” head hon­cho Tom McCabe, an unapolo­getic mil­i­tant who used to run the Build­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton (BIAW). McCabe and his cronies were in charge of the BIAW dur­ing the days when it was a polit­i­cal pow­er­house thanks to the funds it was steal­ing from its mem­bers out of Wash­ing­ton State’s retro rebate program.

“Lau­ra Ingra­ham has the ear of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans every day, and you earn that lev­el of trust with an unre­lent­ing com­mit­ment to hon­esty and cred­i­bil­i­ty, com­bined with an infec­tious sense of humor,” McCabe added.

Hon­esty and cred­i­bil­i­ty are sad­ly virtues that nei­ther Ingra­ham nor McCabe know any­thing about. Ingra­ham has been sav­age­ly (and appro­pri­ate­ly) par­o­died by Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Kate McK­in­non for her white suprema­cist views.

Wash­ing­ton’s labor move­ment plans to pick­et Ingra­ham’s appearance.

Jeanine Pirro

Pir­ro, one of Ingra­ham’s com­padres at the Fox Noise Chan­nel, will be the guest of hon­or of the King Coun­ty Repub­li­cans on Octo­ber 25th.

The venue for this din­ner (which actu­al­ly has a name — the “Lib­er­ty Din­ner”) is… you guessed it… the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue.

Tick­ets start at $150 for gen­er­al admis­sion. The VIP rate costs $300 and facil­i­tates access to a “spe­cial meet and greet” with Pirro.

“Jea­nine Pir­ro served as a coun­ty judge for three years in the ear­ly 1990s and now hosts a week­ly Fox show called Jus­tice with Judge Jea­nine,” explains Media Mat­ters. “She has been a per­son­al friend of Don­ald Trump for decades and acts as a syco­phant for him on her Fox show, which pre­miered in 2011. In 2019, Pir­ro faced wide­spread back­lash for big­ot­ed remarks on her Fox show about Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ilhan Omar (D‑Minnesota).”

Pir­ro, who is a white suprema­cist like Ingra­ham, has been bril­liant­ly par­o­died on Sat­ur­day Night Live by reper­to­ry play­er Ceci­ly Strong.

A few days ago, Pir­ro went on C‑SPAN to pitch her new book; she took a num­ber of calls dur­ing her appear­ance. It did­n’t go well at all.

“Con­grat­u­la­tions on your sus­pen­sion from Fox,” one caller began.

“You were sus­pend­ed — you should share that with the audi­ence — and before you attack the left about us and what we do to you con­ser­v­a­tives, he gets neg­a­tive cov­er­age because he lies and dis­torts. Every sin­gle morn­ing, every sin­gle day we have to tune in to a lev­el of idio­cy and insta­bil­i­ty that this nation has nev­er seen on the left or on the right. Now, you, ma’am, and your net­work, you keep this alive. Recent­ly, just last week, you said they are, the Democ­rats are try­ing to replace you. Now you’re say­ing this to a pre­dom­i­nant­ly old­er, white audi­ence — 1% of your audi­ence is Black, prob­a­bly less than that for your show.”

When Seat­tle Times colum­nist Dan­ny West­neat learned the King Coun­ty Repub­li­cans had invit­ed Pir­ro to head­line their din­ner, he was nat­u­ral­ly incred­u­lous. What was left of the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment was most­ly gut­ted dur­ing last year’s midterms; there are no longer any Repub­li­cans rep­re­sent­ing King Coun­ty in the Leg­is­la­ture or in Con­gress who reside in King County.

How does bring­ing Pir­ro to Belle­vue rebuild the Repub­li­can brand in King County?

“Why, why, why, local Repub­li­cans, are you align­ing your­selves with nox­ious stuff like this? Just the con­tin­ued use of the word ‘ille­gals’ is low down, as it turns an adjec­tive into a noun sole­ly to dehu­man­ize,” West­neat wrote.

What Pir­ro ped­dles isn’t red meat to fill seats — it’s ran­cid, West­neat added.

He con­clud­ed his col­umn by opin­ing: “It seems to me Repub­li­cans will strug­gle in elec­tions around here until they can tell the difference.”