the lives of the talk show hosts: john carlson, an uncommon political life

What's next for John Carlson?  He's down again. After sticking his political and professional neck far out once more, he got it chopped off.

He's the drive-time talk-host (KVI m-f, 3-6p) who, with fellow KVI talker Kirby Wilbur, thought up and gurued I-912, the anti-gas tax initiative which tried to jam a stick in the spokes of the massive transportation package passed by the Legislature in March.

The measure went down to defeat in Tuesday's election but not until it had followed an amazing arc that started with the talkers and their listeners gathering the signatures and getting the proposition on the ballot in a miraculous 32 days.

Carlson called it the "Cinderella Initiative."

Those were heady days--everyone agreed: I-912 would pass overwhelmingly. In summer, it polled in the 70th percentiles; but that was until its meteoric trajectory hit the rough atmospherics of November.

Carlson finds himself down once more. Not only did I-912, lose, but Carlson's standing with many Party stalwarts was badly damaged. Of course the GOP endorsed I-912--the whores that they are--because they thought it would win. But opposition to it was bitter in some hidden quarters--the business, donor quarters. 

If 912 had won, it would have helped, but after Carlson and Brett Bader staked so much and then lost the thing, there will be atonement. 

Carlson's ratings were down in the last two ratings periods and it's rumored that Fisher brass are not happy with having to pay to defend themselves from the legal issues brought up by Carlson, Wilbur and I-912. It is said that Carlson's contract is coming up in December and that he's been looking around. Rumors are that,  so has Fisher.

His has been a career that has had some amazing highs and some dizzying defeats. Win or lose, Carlson's ups and downs have always been center stage in local media.

He always runs against political insiderism, but he’s an insider’s insider and has been a politician all his adult life.

In 1986, southpaw political professional and historian Walt Crowley (founding director of HistoryLink.org) wanted to do a liberal/conservative point counter point on TV. He went looking on the UW campus for Carlson who had been stirring up some headlines as one of a politically precocious, conservative “bratpack" that stirred up UW student life in the late '70's and '80's. Others in this group of brazen student reactionaries were Brett Bader, now Attorney General Rob McKenna and Kirby Wilbur.

Carlson agreed to it despite Crowley being a well-known 1960's leader of student protest and a radical/liberal of the era. The two worked together honing their debate styles and talked Lloyd J. Cooney, the hemorrhoidal conservative CEO of KIRO TV into giving them a half hour spot after the Sunday evening news and before 60 Minutes.

In one of local TV news' last gasps of relevance, the show was a Sunday mainstay for seven years. Crowley says he and his wife Marie McCaffrey became close friends with Carlson, helping him grow up and in the process exposed the naive, straight-laced college conservative to some of life he may not have run into at Young Republican ice cream socials. "I remember sitting with John after a TV show having a beer at the Comet Tavern and pointing out to him that the woman sitting next to him at the bar was a transvestite. That made quite an impression on him."

In 1984, Carlson had run for the Legislature in Seattle’s 34th House District. He knocked on the doors of 10,000 homes in West Seattle, the neighborhood where he grew up. He received 19,829 votes -- 49.2 percent of the vote but lost to the incumbent Georgette Valle. He was 25.

"Losing that race was probably the best thing that happened to me,'' he says. "The next year I co-founded the Washington Institute and started my media career.

In 1985, Bader and Carlson started the Washington Institute Foundation, a free-market, conservative policy think tank in Bellevue.

His next rejection was by The Seattle Times who dropped his Tuesday column because he kept scooping his own work (and therefore the Times) on his radio show.

He and his Washington Institute  pushed the  "Three Strikes You're Out'' measure, which in 1993 began putting three-time violent criminals in prison for life; and "Hard Time For Armed Crime'' in 1996, which expanded sentences for felons caught with weapons.

In 1996, when he wouldn’t quit using his show to promote the anti-affirmative action I-200, (for which he was paid director). Fisher Broadcasting, the futzy old flour mill who owns KVI, fired him. They’d got nervous when 2,500 mostly black high schoolers marched around the station with signs that said "KKK: KVI, Karlson, KOMO."

Carlson says:  "The station initially permitted me to campaign for it on the air... and even let me announce that I was heading it on the air. Then the parent company took a position against it, donated $30,000 to oppose it, and the directive changed. This, during a time when the station promos insisted that the hosts views (are not restricted in any way). I rebelled and got canned, then eventually brought back."

Carlson’s troubles were blamed by radio fans on the  “liberal media” (laughable if you think about Fisher Broadcasting) but the 59% passage of I-200 won him national renown, tremendous cache in the state GOP and eventual reinstatement at KVI.

Being able to come back is very important for a politician.

His triumph gave him delusions of grandeur and the Carlson amazingly ran for and won the GOP nomination for governor in 2000 to run against the popular Gary Locke. It was mostly a quixotic run by a radio broadcaster who'd never administered anything more than his own checkbook; and whose name had recognition with far too few citizens statewide.

As a gubernatorial candidate, he ran against Seattle, or the “Space Needle sphere of influence,” just as he does now. Bader ran that campaign and it didn't work--Carlson lost ignominiously, polling only 40% of the vote--winning fewer votes than Ellen Craswell, the harsh old evangelical, flat-earther who won the GOP nomination in 1996.

Carlson and Wilbur did well both politically and with ratings during the post election attempt to unseat Governor Gregoire. They tried to extend and project the rage worked up by that nastiness into the gas tax revolt. The audience apparently grew weary after nearly 2 years of solid partisan politics (remember how early the 2004 cycle started)--the energy for the issues and the drop in ratings were nearly simultaneous.

This is a set-back, but John Carlson will spring back.  We can't tell you how or when, but when it happens, there will definitely  be a press avail. 

Comments

[ExDem]

Jeffords made a bad move politically. He thought he would get a chairmanship by leaving the Republican party. Instead, he guessed wrong and he moved in the opposite direction of the country. Within a year, he found himself in the minority as the American people continued to elect a majority of Republicans to the Senate. Now, 4 years later, he's kind of a forgotten asterisk in the history of the Senate.

When's the last time Jim Jeffords' name was even mentioned in association with anything consequential? He's become even more obscure than when he was in the Republican party.

[chris]

Considering the scandals lately, maybe thats a good thing..

[ExDem]

I'll grant you that point Chris.

It will be interesting to see how all of this stuff plays out - who gets indicted, and whether anyone ultimately gets convicted of anything.