The Mitch and Shelly Short Story Continues

That headline might be unfair, because Shelly Short hasn't been implicated in the case against her husband, but when the wife is a candidate for elected office and the husband is facing arraignment it's proper to discuss them together.

I've written about this case before; Mitch Short is accused of stealing money from the Northeast Washington Fair, about $3000, while his wife is running to replace Bob Sump as Representative for the 7th Legislative District. Mitch is looking at an arraignment on August 26th, but the story is all over the papers right now, in the weekend before the primary.

The shorts are portraying it as politics at its worst:

"I'm really tired of the one-sided nature of this," Shelly Short said. "This has, frankly, been nothing less than a public lynching, done to derail my campaign."

...but the missing piece there is why people would want to derail her campaign. This can't be partisan--all the other candidates for the office are Republicans, too. It makes you wonder.

Something else from the Spokesman article that also made me a little sad:

Turplesmith noted in charging documents that the Shorts were in debt at the time Mitch Short wrote the allegedly improper checks. Court records show Discover Bank won a $12,328 default judgment against the couple Aug. 17, 2007.

Asked about the judgment, Shelly Short said, "We are checking on those records to determine if that's actually the case.

"At no point has there been any attempt to garnish and, frankly, I was not served with any documentation on any complaint." Was she saying she didn't know about the Discover Bank lawsuit?

"I'm telling you that I had never been served," Short said. "That's the distinction."

She declined to comment further when asked whether her husband was served.

Court records show a process server delivered the complaint to Mitch Short personally on June 12, 2007, at the couple's home at 1591 Swiss Valley Road, near Addy, Wash.

Court documents also show Superior Court Judge Al Nielson issued writs of garnishment on Oct. 23, 2007, and March 6. By the time of the second writ, the couple's Discover credit card debt had grown to $13,323.

That's an awful lot of credit card debt. Was there a family emergency that caused them to fall behind? Are the Shorts just not good with money? What is the story here?

Running for office sucks. When you put yourself out there as a leader you're really putting yourself out there, warts and all. I think that Shelly would be a great Representative for the 7th, and I've got a ton of respect for the knowledge base and energy she'd bring to the job, but stories like this that get people thinking the worst--they're no good.