Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 11, November 2003
Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
The colorful business of elections
By JAMES BUSH
With the Nov. 4 final election fast approaching, the campaign season is in high gear.
Along with the many candidates, volunteers, and political observers, many North End residents are hard at work in jobs related to the election. This article profiles three of the most prominent members of these fields.
The Sign King: Art Boruck
After 35 years as Washington's king of political signs, it took Art Boruck just 20 minutes to go international.
That's how long it took him to design the red-white-and-blue "No Iraq War" placards which became a familiar sight across the United States and Europe. Almost 100,000 of these signs were created at Boruck Printing and Silk Screen near Green Lake. "It was a lot of publicity, we were on TV a whole bunch of times," says Boruck. "It was cool. It took 35 years but I finally got my 15 minutes of fame."
It figures he would get there through a political sign. Over his career, Boruck has designed and printed the majority of the signs used in Washington political races. Armed with the coveted union bug (the tiny logo union printers include on their work), printing skills, and an eye for creating signs designed to be read at 40 to 50 miles per hour, Art Boruck's shop has become the first stop for candidates across Western Washington.
His designs adhere to a simple rule: make sure everyone can read the candidates name. No slogans, no pictures, he says, because if you include extra information "you're taking away from your name." When people go into the voting booth, they're generally voting for just one or two issues or candidates, Boruck reasons. After that, it's straight name-recognition.
The political sign business isn't a graphic design contest. Perhaps Boruck's most famous design was the fluorescent orange and blue signs he created for Mike Lowry, then a candidate for Congress. "We did everything against the rules two fluorescent colors but it worked," he says. The orange signs remained a Lowry trademark for the rest of his political career.
Boruck says the trick is to stay non-partisan. Customers are customers, and everyone gets the same good service and quality product, he says. "We've never turned anybody down." In the competitive political world, some people still can't believe that Boruck routinely prints signs for multiple candidates in the same race.
Although political sign printing is seasonal work, Boruck makes up for it in volume. He probably will produce 300,000 political signs this year. Our state's laws encourage cities to incorporate, and Boruck jokes that he prints the signs for the incorporation campaigns, so the future candidates for city offices "are already with us."
Boruck, who still designs 150 to 200 signs a year, says that's the only part of his business that's slowing down. "Things are changing," he says with a sigh. "Everybody has a computer and thinks they're a graphic artist."
The Pollster: Stuart Elway
Not too many political observers can tell you his full name (H. Stuart Elway) or even that of his business (Elway Research, Inc.). But just say "The Elway Poll" and politicos pay attention.
Likewise, the Greenwood-based pollster has many clients (he's done the Seattle Times polls since 1984; he recently worked the California recall election for the Knight-Ridder Newspapers and NBC), but it's his monthly subscription poll that usually has tongues wagging around Seattle. That's especially true this month, as Elway focused on the Seattle City Council elections.
A couple hundred people shell out $525 annually for a subscription to The Elway Poll, generally a monthly statewide survey with a sample of 400 state voters. Founded in 1992, The Elway Poll provides a scientific look at state residents' opinions on a range of political issues. Subscribers can also add proprietary questions to any month's poll at $500 each (with results given only to the purchaser). Given that more extensive polls can cost campaigns thousands of dollars, there are no shortage of takers.
The actual phone calling is subcontracted to a Denver-based firm, says Elway. He originally ran his own phone bank, until he realized it was essentially a second business (and one which kept him tied up in various personnel matters). Using trained phone interviewers is important to compiling a valid survey, he says. "What you're really doing is having a structured conversation with the respondent," he says. "Our side follows a script, but we want it to be as conversational as possible."
The Seattle edition of The Elway Poll already has people talking. The poll showed two City Council incumbents (Heidi Wills and Judy Nicastro) trailing their final election opponents among likely voters. It also showed solid support (45 percent for; 39 percent opposed; 16 percent undecided) for an initiative to elect council members by geographic district. Elway says one reason he decided to take a closer look at the Seattle elections is that some people assumed that final election voters (a far larger group than the hardcore primary participants) would be easier on the embattled council incumbents. Not so, he found. "Most people think the council is focused on the wrong things," he says.
A series of questions on Mayor Greg Nickels showed that he is somewhat more popular than the council, although he seems to have trouble charming certain constituencies. Elway could offer no explanation for the mayor's unusually low popularity among voters over age 65. "One of the first things you learn when you look at poll results," he says, "is the questions you should have asked."
The Consultant: Christian Sinderman
As an employee of the state Democratic Party, Christian Sinderman was handed a tough job. "One of my jobs was to find a suitable challenger for (veteran Republican US Senator) Slade Gorton," he says, "and that's how I met Maria."
That's Maria as in Maria Cantwell, the challenger who ended Gorton's career in 2000. Sinderman, the Cantwell campaign's communications director, didn't flee for the Beltway after the election. Instead, he stayed at home and hung out his shingle as a political consultant.
His eventful first year saw him working on the legislative campaign of Brian Sullivan, whose win in Snohomish County's 21st District returned control of the Washington State House of Representatives to the Democrats. He helped Seattle City Council incumbent Jan Drago gain reelection.
But the most memorable part of the 2001 campaign was his work against Initiative 747, a Tim Eyman-penned ballot measure to slash the ability of local governments to raise property taxes without a public vote. Sinderman took on the role of Eyman critic so effectively that media reporters continued to come to him after the election for comment on the Mukilteo activist's latest doings. Sinderman also encouraged reporters to investigate Eyman's own company, which he claimed was profiting from his initiative campaigns.
His hunch proved correct, and Eyman ended up paying state campaign regulators $50,000 to settle the case.
Sinderman admits to enjoying his role as the anti-Eyman. "It's strange, but someone has to do it," he says. "It's not a personal thing: [Eyman] has a right to make a living. he has a right to any wacky idea he wants to run up the flagpole. It's just the fact that he's incredibly dishonest."
The Michigan native, whose first exposure to Seattle came through a 1994 summer job as a Discovery Park ranger, now lives with his wife and children in the Bryant neighborhood. He's currently working for Tom Rasmussen, a challenger to City Council incumbent Margaret Pageler.
Sinderman says his Bryant neighbors provide an excellent indicator for how Seattle residents feel about any upcoming election. Sometimes they deliver bad news: Sinderman was the consultant for King County Council President Cynthia Sullivan, who lost to hard-working challenger Bob Ferguson in the primary. "When the folks in our baby group had all been doorbelled by Bob Ferguson, I knew he was for real," says Sinderman.
The couple who live next door have been 100 percent reflective of city residents in every election so far, he adds. "When my neighbors both told me they had voted against the Latte Tax, I was able to predict with some comfort that it was failing."