It looks like it's over in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, but wait -- West Virgina and Kentucky haven't voted yet, and they are prime Hillary Clinton territory. Jay Cost of realclearpolitics.com argues that there's still a path to victory for her.

It is possible that she could counter Tuesday's blowout with two big blowouts of her own in the next two weeks. This could undo most of the damage done by her big loss in North Carolina, and put her back on track.

The Los Angeles Times continues to plumb former SeaTac Airport Director Gina Marie Lindsey's past to gain insight into the allegations that she improperly steered $66.5 million worth of contracts to two preferred companies in her current job as head of LAX and three other LA airports.

The Los Angeles City Council and the city controller's office are reviewing whether Lindsey gave the contracts to favored firms after airport review panels first recommended other companies for the job. On Tuesday, the council asserted jurisdiction over one of the contracts, giving it the power to recommend that the agreement be approved or rejected.

Lindsey demurred when asked about the Washington state audit of the Port of Seattle's procurement and construction management which discovered similar and much more egregious abuses of power which violated state law and port policy, some of which occurred on her watch, which ended in 2004. The audit has spurred a federal criminal investigation.

Lindsey, who was appointed the executive director of Los Angeles World Airports in May, on Tuesday defended her 11-year stint as Seattle's aviation director, saying the port agency had wide discretion on contracts and the agreements in question were either approved by the port commission or her boss, the chief executive of the port.

"If there was something I had done outside my authority, I would have been contacted as part of the audit. No one has ever contacted me," said Lindsey, who directed the renovation of the Seattle airport. "No one has done a major program without doing things that can't be improved upon. There are things that can be learned from the audit."

But Lindsey said that she has been gone so long from Seattle that she was no longer "competent or able to address the details of the audit."

...

Mindy Chambers, a spokeswoman for the Washington state auditor, said Lindsey and port officials are not specifically named in the audit and that the day-to-day contracting work was often delegated to lower-level contract supervisors.

But she said that Lindsey would have had some responsibility over procurements and knowledge of contracts awarded by her division.

Most of the L.A. port commissioners, who like Lindsey are appointed by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said they were satisfied with her denial of any impropriety at LAX. Lindsey said the review panel wanted more information about the bidders and requested a second review which reversed one of their endorsements.

Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., on Thursday became the third member of Washington's congressional delegation to endorse Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The no-holds-barred campaign leading up to the North Carolina and Indiana primaries showed that Obama is "tough and resilient," that he can "take a punch," and yet successfully deliver his message to the American people, said the four-term congressman from northwest Washington.

"Tuesday was a game-changer even though Obama didn't win both states," Larsen said.

Larsen joins Reps. Adam Smith and Brian Baird, D-Wash., in the Obama camp. Smith has chaired the Illinois senator's campaign. Gov. Christine Gregoire has also endorsed Obama.

Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, along with Reps. Jay Inslee and Norm Dicks, D-Wash., are in the Hillary Clinton camp.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., has yet to announce a choice, other than to say last year that he hoped Al Gore would run.

Larsen represents the 2nd District, which stretches from Mukilteo to the Canadian border. It is a classic "swing", won narrowly by Larsen in 2000 after Republican Rep. Jack Metcalf retired after three terms. Larsen won handily in 2006 even though Vice President Dick Cheney and three Bush cabinet secretaries campaigned in the district for his opponent.

Larsen praised Obama for "truthtelling" when Clinton proposed a summer "holiday" in the 18.4 cent a gallon federal gasoline tax. The "holiday" would have made "little or no difference" for the hard-pressed motorist, he said.

The 2nd District spans the realm of American activism. Concerned Christian Women of Lynden, Wash., predated the Moral Majority, while the Rainbow Coalition carried on in northwest Washington long after the Rev. Jesse Jackson stopped running for president.

"He (Obama) has inspired and motivated my constituents like no other candidate," Larsen said.

Larsen is the sixth so-called Democratic "superdelegate" to endorse Obama in the last two days.

Stumbling downstairs early this a.m., I was tempted to tell off in salty tones whoever it was who was calling at 6:30 a.m.

'Glad it didn't happen. The caller was Sen. Patty Murray, joyous with the news that President Bush had just signed into law legislation creating the 106,000-acre Wild Sky Wilderness Area.

Murray is already planning a celebration, tentatively slated for May 30th, and harkened back to her first trip to the now-preserved valleys and peaks in eastern Snohomish County.

Funny, but last week I get together with Jim Young, the Sierra Club staffer who set up that visit.

It was an advance job made in heaven. Murray and Rep. Rick Larsen walked a nature trail beside deep green pools of the north fork of the Skykomish River. Ancient trees shaded the scene, but peaks peeked out through the canopy.

Back at the Bush House in Index, the politicians met with local folk, including council members and the mayor, supporting preservation of the area. This was a wilderness with local support.

Dating back nearly a half-century, every major land use battle has had its political and citizen champions. An informal list:

-North Cascades Act (1968): The creation of Washington's third national park, and two big wilderness areas, was overseen by Sen. Henry Jackson. Rep. Lloyd Meeds, from a timber district, carried a heavy load in the House.
Dr. Patrick Goldsworthy, of the North Cascades Conservation Council, caught the ear of U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall when the latter visited Bainbridge Island. He gave Udall a quick education in the "American Alps" and helped win a supporter.
David Brower, then boss of the Sierra Club, did a movie entitled "The Wilderness Alps of Stehekin" that introduced the country to our mountains.

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Time magazine's Karen Tumulty looks at Hillary Clinton's missteps as she stumbled from front-runner to also-ran in her nomination fight against Barack Obama.

In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent's strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability - and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics.

Over the course of the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama's support has come increasingly from the party's left wing, writes John Judis of The New Republic:

During the last two months, Obama has faltered as a candidate. He has seen his political base narrow rather than widen, and some of his strengths turn into weaknesses.

David Brooks of The New York Times agrees, but says Republicans shouldn't be fooled into thinking that makes for easy pickings in November:

Republicans are going to take a look at Obama's liberal profile and they're going to be tempted to run a traditional right versus left campaign. They know how to beat Dukakis-McGovern candidates.

That would be a big mistake. Traditional Republicans can beat liberal Democrats when the Republican brand is in healthy shape. That is not the case now.

Roll Call, the Congress-watching D.C. newspaper, says Eastside Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert is one of the the 10 most vulnerable House incumbents in 2008.

It's tough to go from hero cop to endangered incumbent in such a short
stretch of time, but that's the former King County sheriff's fate in a suburban
Seattle district that is steadily becoming more Democratic. Reichert still has a
reservoir of good will to draw from as he fights off Democrat Darcy Burner for
the second straight cycle. But Burner has become a more polished and confident
campaigner -- and has outpaced the incumbent on the fundraising front for the
past few quarters.

Full article avialable online, but only to paid subscribers.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are mixing and matching traditional Democratic constituencies in new ways, writes veteran poltico (and Clinton loyalist) James Carville, filtered through the English screen of the Financial Times (note "labour" and "programmes").

...(A)ll of the coverage is missing what is most fascinating about this race. It is not the biographies of the two remaining Democratic candidates, or the number of voters who have been energised by the primary process, but the way in which the rivals are erasing and redrawing the lines of demarcation that exist within the Democratic party.

Can the winner put the pieces back together?

Wellesley alumna Hillary Clinton's reincarnation as the "Democratic Rambo," as David Brooks of the New York Times puts it, has fired up her campaign:

The Clinton campaign seems to want to reduce the entire race to one element: the supposed masculinity gap. And so everything she does is all about assertion, combat and Alpha dog dominance.

But E. J. Dionne writes that Obama can get off the ropes against Hillary-as-Rambo if he can get back to appealing to the better angels of our nature:

The pugilistic Clinton turned the recently listless Obama into a pushover. But a contest between the old Obama and the new Clinton is a fair fight.

Fox New host Bill O'Reilly assumed full dimensions of self-importance last summer and condemned the Seattle P-I for choosing not to publish pictures circulated by the FBI of two "suspicious" ferry passengers.

The chief commentator at the "fair and balanced" network followed up by making the P-I chief villain of a November commentatary entitled: "Why is the far left putting the military and all Americans in danger?"

O'Reilly sent out an aspiring slayer of straw men, his producer Jesse Walters, to conduct an ambush interview with P-I publisher Roger Oglesby, outside the latter's Seattle home.

"Are you proud of that decision, sir? I mean, they still haven't found those guys," Walters sneered at Oglesby. A few moments later, Walters said the two men were "still on the loose."

On the loose? No crime was committed. No illegal act by the two men was ever alleged or attributed. No effort to sabotage Washington's marine highway was ever found.

The two men were identified and photographed by a fellow passenger for a simple reason: They looked Middle Eastern.

Should a newspaper --in a free country, proud of its history as a melting pot - be stereotyping people as "suspicious" by the pigment of their skin?

Well, the story has a predictable end. The FBI disclosed Monday that the two men came in from the cold, as it were, by visiting a U.S. embassy recently. They were European business consultants on a Seattle trip.

"It appears they were in the area for legitimate reasons," reported the FBI.

We are an international city. At least a quarter of Washington's jobs depend on exporting goods to other countries. We naturally need to entertain buyers, even - and especially, say, in the case of Saudi Arabians buying jets - people whose skin looks like the two guys on the ferry.

O'Reilly ought to apologize, like right now.

He condemned the paper for refusing to stereotype and contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion.

It may be Fox News' goal to whip up hysteria: It's good for ratings. Our town, by contrast, is a "Hate Free Zone."

Fox News also has a record of broadcasting stuff that turns out to be untrue, such as the claim that Sen. Barack Obama attended a madrass (Muslim religious) school as a boy in Indonesia. CNN actually visited the school, checked out the rumor, and verified that it was false.

Does Fox ever apologize for this stuff? In muffled undertones, with the madrassa story.

With the P-I, I would suggest that Bill O'Reilly present himself this week at Roger Oglesby's door, and apologize for harassing him.

It'll do him good to meet a civil, professional newsman. Perhaps Jesse Walters can tag along and learn some manners.

Of course, it'll never happen.

O'Reilly is simply too conceited to eat crow, even when he claimed falsely to have received journalism awards.

With respect to the P-I, then, I would suggest two words of advice that the boorish Murdoch hitman has spoken to guests on his show: Shut up!

Barack Obama is dropping huge, arena-rocking rallies in favor of small get-togethers with jes' plain folks in Indiana, reports Carrie Budoff Brown for Politico.com.

In the last several days, Obama sat among campaign-assembled hay bales in a barn to chat with farmers, visited a retirement home to sit with seniors, talked about the economy with steelworkers and dropped by a VFW post to drink Budweiser with veterans. At each turn, he was attempting to appeal to demographic groups -- white, working class and older -- in which Obama has been bleeding support.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton talks barbecue on the back roads of North Carolina to help his wife, reports Eli Saslow of The Washington Post.

By the time Clinton arrived at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Dunn, population 10,000, he had entered the sort of campaigning zone that has made him a legend at connecting with voters. He emerged onto the steps of a local museum to a standing ovation, his face sunburned and his pink tie flapping in the wind.

The Los Angeles Times has reported that the Port of Seattle's former aviation director Gina Marie Lindsey has gotten into some hot water down in Los Angeles, where she is director of LAX and three other airports.

The story credits Lindsey for pushing through some big projects at the aging LAX facilities. But the Los Angeles Times also described how Lindsey -- who oversaw SeaTac Airport during the period when the Washington state auditors found $97.3 million in wasteful spending and pervasive violations of state law and port policy in the improper award of contracts to favored companies - is accused of steering two LAX construction contracts worth $67 million to firms she had worked with in the past.

Lindsey was at the Port of Seattle from 1993 to August 2004, during which time many of the improper procurements found by the state's auditors occured. After Lindsey left the Port of Seattle, she went to work for McBee Strategic Consulting, a D.C.-based lobbying firm which subsequently received $600,000 in consulting contracts from the Port of Seattle.

From the L.A. Times:

Los Angeles airport director Gina Marie Lindsey - about to complete her first year overseeing one of the world's busiest travel gateways - will spend the next few days explaining to her bosses what role she played in the awarding of $67 million in LAX construction contracts.
...
The airport's $5-billion- to $8-billion master plan calls for adding a midfield concourse and making renovations to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, including creating gates for wide-bodied aircraft such as the new Airbus A380 and Boeing 787. It is the largest capital-improvement program in the city's history.

In the last two months, Lindsey has managed to get through the board of airport commissioners more than $106 million in engineering, architectural and project management contracts related to the modernization projects.
...
Lindsey has been dogged by accusations that she manipulated the contracting process in order to hire two companies that she previously worked with -- DMJM Aviation Inc. of Florida, and Fentress Architects of Denver. The companies were awarded project management and architecture contracts worth almost $67 million, although other companies were initially preferred during the selection process.

While Lindsey was at SeaTac Airport, she helped usher in a $3-billion capital improvement project, including the construction of the Third Runway, demolition and reconstruction of a concourse, and major refurbishments. The international arrivals hall was named the Gina Marie Lindsey Arrivals Hall in her honor.

Seattle City Councilwoman Jean Godden has agreed to pay $150 to settle a complaint she inappropriately directed her city staff to help coordinate her 2007 reelection campaign.

A backer of Godden's unsuccessful challenger, school teacher Joe Szwaja, filed the complaint last year. The Seattle Ethics & Elections Commission initially dismissed the complaint. Szwaja's friend appealed.

On Wednesday, the Commission is expected to approve the settlement that reads, in part:

Councilmember Godden acknowledges that she violated the Elections Code when
she authorized her staff to calendar campaign events in a manner that assisted her reelection campaign.

The drudge work of politics involves hours of making phonecalls and stuffing envelopes, which has prompted an outfit called Democrats Work to come up community service schemes that get volunteers out of the office.

U.S. House hopeful Darcy Burner will lead one such effort on Saturday, a cleanup at Flaming Geyser State Park, on the Green River just outside of Auburn.

It just so happens that the cleanup is in a corner of the 8th District where Burner needs to improve her vote total if she hopes to win a November rematch against Republican Rep. Dave Reichert.

"And that's exactly the point," said Democrats Work cofounder Thomas Bates, a recovering attorney, explaining that his group hopes to get party workers onto new and unfamiliar turf.

In addition to parks and neighborhood cleanups, Democrats Work has sent volunteers into food banks, sponsored tree plantings, honored veterans, and engaged in school support opportunities. It most recently had volunteers working with farmers to clear flood damage in Lewis County, the most solidly Republican county in Western Washington.

The Green River cleanup will begin at 10 a.m. and last three hours. For more information, go to www.democratswork.org