Proving he’s a born-again Republican, Rodney Tom endorses Dino Rossi for Congress

EDITOR’S NOTE: After this post was pub­lished, Dino Rossi’s cam­paign removed Rod­ney Tom’s name from its list of endorse­ments, with cam­paign man­ag­er Andrew Bell telling The Seat­tle Times’ Jim Brun­ner that Tom’s inclu­sion was “a mis­take”.

For his part, Tom told The Stranger over the phone: “I nev­er offi­cial­ly endorsed Dino Rossi. He’s a Repub­li­can and I’m a Democrat.”

Nev­er offi­cial­ly?

That’s a tac­it admis­sion that Tom at least dis­cussed an endorse­ment of Rossi’s can­di­da­cy with Rossi’s cam­paign or oth­er Repub­li­can offi­cials. And that makes sense. Oth­er­wise, why would Tom’s name have been on Rossi’s endorse­ments list to begin with? Tom obvi­ous­ly does­n’t have a prob­lem with enabling mil­i­tant right wing Repub­li­cans, but has appar­ent­ly cal­cu­lat­ed that a pub­lic endorse­ment of Rossi would jeop­ar­dize his cred­i­bil­i­ty with vot­ers in the 48th District.

Our orig­i­nal post follows:

Six years ago, when par­ty switch­er and shame­less oppor­tunist Rod­ney Tom struck a deal with Repub­li­cans to deliv­er con­trol of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate into their hands, he insist­ed that he was still a Demo­c­rat, even though he’d just proved through his actions that he’d become a born-again Republican.

Since that time, to prop up his claim that he is still a Demo­c­rat, Tom has empha­sized that he sup­ports Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and caus­es at the fed­er­al lev­el. For exam­ple, he told The Seat­tle Times back in the spring that he sup­port­ed Hillary Clin­ton for Pres­i­dent in 2016, and he has long com­plained that Dave Reichert bad­ly rep­re­sents Wash­ing­ton’s 8th Dis­trict in Congress.

(In 2007, for six weeks, Tom was even a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date for Con­gress run­ning against Reichert, but he end­ed his cam­paign after decid­ing he sim­ply could­n’t com­pete with fundrais­ing pow­er­house Dar­cy Burner.)

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Tom’s name appeared on the list of endorse­ments unveiled by Dino Rossi, who is mak­ing his fourth bid for high­er office after being defeat­ed twice by Chris Gre­goire for Gov­er­nor and once by Pat­ty Mur­ray for the U.S. Senate.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists prob­a­bly won’t find this a very sur­pris­ing development.

After all, Rod­ney Tom enabled mil­i­tant, right wing Repub­li­cans to turn the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate into a grave­yard of progress for half a decade; then, after leav­ing the Sen­ate, he teamed up with some of Tim Eyman’s wealthy bene­fac­tors in a failed attempt to smear two of the incum­bent pro­gres­sive jus­tices seek­ing reelec­tion to the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court. It’s only log­i­cal that Tom now wants to enable Repub­li­cans like Rossi at the fed­er­al level.

But what about Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in the 48th? If they’re new to the area or don’t pay close atten­tion, they may not be aware of all this history.

Tom is adver­tis­ing him­self to them as a Demo­c­rat, just like his oppo­nent, Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er. Impor­tant­ly, the bal­lots sent to vot­ers do not dis­tin­guish between who has the par­ty’s sup­port (Kud­er­er) and who does­n’t (Tom).

“Prefers Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty” is the label that disin­gen­u­ous­ly appears next to Tom’s name on the bal­lot, despite the fact that he does­n’t pre­fer the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty at all, chose long ago to sev­er his asso­ci­a­tion with the par­ty by betray­ing it, and is con­sid­ered by its grass­roots activists to be an agent of the opposition.

Mean­while, on his web­site (plus the cards that he leaves for left-lean­ing vot­ers), Tom pro­fess­es to be a “social­ly pro­gres­sive and fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble Democrat”.

How­ev­er, Tom’s endorse­ment of Dino Rossi is the lat­est and best proof of all that he is actu­al­ly none of those things.

No one who tru­ly cares about issues like wom­en’s repro­duc­tive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, or gun safe­ty would ever endorse a mil­i­tant right wing Repub­li­can for Con­gress who oppos­es all of those priorities.

No one who tru­ly believes in fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty and fis­cal strength would ever endorse a can­di­date for Con­gress who whole­heart­ed­ly sup­ports the Trump tax scam that Repub­li­cans jammed through Con­gress dur­ing the hol­i­days last year.

And no one who is tru­ly a Demo­c­rat would ever endorse a can­di­date from the oth­er par­ty for the U.S. House. A vote for Dino Rossi is a vote for the sta­tus quo in our nation’s cap­i­tal… a sta­tus quo in which Wreck­er-in-Chief Don­ald Trump has a free hand to con­tin­ue destroy­ing Amer­i­ca’s alliances and essen­tial pub­lic services.

Even pre­vi­ous­ly-loy­al Repub­li­cans like for­mer FBI Direc­tor James Comey and John McCain’s 2008 cam­paign strate­gist Steve Schmidt know this, which is why they’re telling every­one to vote Demo­c­ra­t­ic in the 2018 midterms.

Rod­ney Tom is essen­tial­ly giv­ing any­one who will lis­ten the oppo­site advice: Sup­port Dino Rossi in the 8th Dis­trict in 2018 and ensure the 8th Dis­trict gets a rep­re­sen­ta­tive that is even more pro-Trump than the one it has now!

Again, no true Demo­c­rat would ever do some­thing like this.

But some­one who is des­per­ate to get his old job back at any cost would. Some­one who needs the sup­port of Repub­li­can vot­ers in order to get elect­ed again would. Some­one hun­gry to resume his old pow­er games would. In a heartbeat.

A pic­ture of Rod­ney Tom might as well adorn the dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of the word oppor­tunist. He is the epit­o­me of the stereotype.