I very much admire Judge Bridges for the political courage he
displayed.

He answers to an electorate in a county that is almost as "R" as King
County is "D".
(As you know, Kerry got 80% of the vote in King County).

At the time the Republicans filed they said there were two reasons they
selected Judge Bridges.

1) He is one of the few judges in the state who had previously heard an
election challenge.
(He overturned an election for Mayor of Wenatchee, IIRC)

2) They expected a "fair" (as in "friendly") hearing in the courtroom
of a judge with a conservative track record subject to removal by the
voters in an extremely conservative county.

That thing sticking out of his ear is a diamond stud. Just because a
guy is a conservative
doesn't mean he can't be stylish, or even a bit avante garde. Who do
you think is buying all those $35,000 motorcycles these days? A bunch
of the market is 60-year-old businessmen
and based on demographics alone most of them are probably
Republicans.......meaning, of course, that they only ride those
Harley's to church picnics. :-)

BTW, I considered voting for Rossi. I liked the guy on a personal
level. Gregoire was only so-so as an AG. In the end, I finally went for
Christine Gregoire because she had better initials. (just kidding). In
the end, I was turned off by the *very* dirty last minute campaigning
by the Rossi campaign and by the independent PAC groups supporting him.
Dino Rossi I could stand, but the people he was obviously going to
surround himself were not appealing at all. It was a race that boiled
down to the lesser of two evils- and the almost perfectly 50/50 split
across the state probably indicated that most people had a tough time
figuring out who the lesser evil was. In a county where Kerry took 80%
of the vote, I think Gregoire's percentage was down in the 60's, so a
lot of people with progressive preferences obviously struggled with the
same decision I did.

Judge Bridges showed a lot of guts, and did his job without caving in
to political pressure. If he ever runs for a statewide office I would
have to consider his candidacy very carefully.