C'mon, Chris

This is just silly:

After passing the Families and Education Levy, and managing to re-elect three of the four incumbents running for school board, the Emerald City rudely cast out School Board President, Steve Sundquist. In an upset, Seattle elected a retired substitute math teacher – a result that has some casting about for answers and left to wonder, what happened? Teachers’ union contributions happened. And likely a whole lot of other stuff. But without the benefit of exit polling, we’ll likely never know, exactly.

That's from Chris Korsmo of the League of Education Voters, and while she's already being beaten up pretty good in the comments section (+1 for transparency), it bears repeating:

• The incumbent who got tossed out, Steve Sundquist, raised about $50,600 according to the PDC website. The winner, Marty McLaren, totaled about $27,000, or roughly half what Director Sundquist did.
  
• About $9,000 of McLaren's money, a third, came from the WEA.
  
• Director Sundquist had 11 donors who gave more than $1,000. McLaren only had 5, including three from the WEA.
  
• Sundquist's top donor is the head of the Gates Foundation, along with his wife, in together for a total of $5,000, so there were motives to be found on both sides of the ledger.

When the LEV points out the union money as something of note without talking about the other money at the same time, it's pretty easy to think that there's an agenda. That "whole lot of other stuff" includes a dilly of a financial scandal, a fired superintendent, and a technically legal land deal that still had a stink to it in the newspapers.

It's funny when people who are very good at playing politics, like the LEV, complain about politics not breaking their way.