Sierra Club Meetings

When you are funemployed (hat tip to Alex for introducing me to the word funemployment), you can accept just about any invitation that comes your way. At least as long as it involves your time and not money.

So, I got invited to come to some Sierra Club political candidate interviews, and I said "why not?" I sat in on all 4 interviews with the 4 democratic candidates for King County Executive to see who, if anyone, will get the endorsement from Sierra Club. I should add that the one Republican candidate did not respond to Sierra Club about interviewing, they didn't purposely snub her or anything.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "what's King County Executive?" and I am not so sure I can really answer that. My best guess is that it's sort of like being the mayor of a county. I understand that it is considered one of the most powerful positions in the state (underneath governor, I suppose), but suffice it to say I don't know a ton about politics.

I was surprised to find out that it was very interesting to watch these interviews. The candidates were all very intelligent, and had all taken time to provide thoughtful answers to Sierra Club's questionnaire. (BTW this is something I didn't know - Sierra Club sends them a bunch of questions well before the interview, and the candidates send back their answers. So in some sense, the interview doesn't really need to happen. But of course it's a chance for the Sierra Club members to probe further and just to get a feel for the candidate.)

It was actually a difficult decision for Sierra Club because all four guys have a good record on environmental issues, and have all received S.C. endorsements at some point or another in their political careers.

In my opinion, one of the four stood out as being the most 'hard-core' environmentalist of them all. Most of the others were pro-environment but more pragmatic. Now it seems to me that the hard-core enviromentalist fits best with what Sierra Club stands for. However, they also want to take into consideration who is most likely to win, and who would be most effective once in office.

Now I'm over-simplifying, but let me pose this question to you. Let's just say that you are the Sierra Club and you have candidate A, who is a tree-hugging hippie (but also has been successful enough in politics to have a viable campaign for King County Exec) and candidate B who has a good but not amazing track record on eco-stuff, but is more of a smooth-talking politician who you think is more likely to get stuff done in office. Which would you endorse, or would you endorse both (potentially splitting the environmental vote) or neither (abstaining from exercising your organizational power)?