It was a great weekend --

traveling quickly to Vancouver, B.C. to meet
with the leadership of the New Democratic Party on their recent
campaign. The NDP managed to get 42% of the vote -- the most the party
has ever gotten, and it included a new class of great women. My good
friend Sue Hammell (and party top vote getter for her seat in the
Victory Parliament) crafted a new bill which basically means that
every time a male elected leader steps down or retires, the seat has to
have a woman designated replacement.

I was tasked with giving them the pro's and con's of how I saw their
campaign. The best news was the party now has gone from 10,000
fundraising e-mails to 65,000 e-mails. Though direct mail fundraising
continues to drop (by more than 40% in this case), the online
contributions are matching or surpassing the loss. And, our poor
Canadian friends just witnessed one of the most negative campaigns in
their pretty pristine history. Their opponents, the Liberals were
learning our tricks down here and went scandal-searching.

Facebook readers beware: five of the scandals were photos that were
launched on Facebook but taken as long ago as 20 years ago.

Hurried home with my tech coach Olivia and got ready for Sunday's
activities where I managed to looked subdued despite all the provocative
entries in the Seattle Gay Pride Parade. I walked along with my favorite
King County Executive candidate and friend Larry Phillips and his
closest 60 friends. I was carrying the "Where's Susan" sign as one of
our opponents, conservative Susan Hutchinson, as she doesn't deign to
show up at these events. They are beneath her queenship.

The election is now 48 days away. My, oh my, where does the time go?
We're into targeting and budgeting as we speak. Looks like it's going to
be a very good year.
Hugs
Cathy