A Blast From the Past with WA State Senators Pam Roach, Jim West, and a Blog from 1998

Years ago, my good friend Mike Sando had a website devoted to politics and centered on the Legislature in Olympia, Washington’s state capital in the late 1990s.
Now I hestiatate to use a term as over-used as “blog” but in fact that’s what Mike’s site was – before we all knew the word “blog” and before the “cool kids” figured out these things.
Lost in the mists of the Internet, as Mike left the Legislature and became a high school teacher in Enumclaw, we also lost two gems of audio fun Mike had posted at his site. As it turns out, I am the only one who still has both these .WAV files stored (one of the benefits of archiving every single email I’ve sent or recieved since 1995!) and am posting them here so they may be found by intrepid Googlers the world over.
The first file is an actual audio recording of State Senator Pam Roach, who is expressing outrage that a large bouquet of flowers delivered to her Senate desk on behalf of a lobbyist, was moved. Mike mixed in the Imperial March theme for comic effect – but this really is a state Senator, and he really is that pissed off about some flowers.
Listen to Darth Roach on the critical matter of floral placement in Olympia.
The second is an actual audio recording of then-state Senator and now disgraced ex mayor, Jim West. Loyal readers may recall I spotlighted this clown’s troubles earlier.
The recording you are listening to here is an actual voice mail message left by Jim West to Tom McCabe, who at the time represented building interests in Olympia. Unfortunately such outbursts were par for the course with Jim West. But then again, recent research and reporting has shown other outbursts were also common – just not exposed in public until he became Mayor of Spokane!
Listen to Jim “Godfather” West talk dirty to lobbyist Tom McCabe’s voice mail machine here.
If you’re new to the site, I urge you to read some of the archives to the left and leave a comment! Enjoy!
Here’s a link to coverage of the incident way back in 1998 from the Seattle Weekly.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com

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