Camden: Despite talk of a blue wave, primary turnout sluggish

And the 2014 primary didn’t have a 29-candidate scrum for the U.S. Senate, or what may be the most competitive U.S. House race in Eastern Washington in decades.

This could all change, and primaries are not always predictive of general elections. But if you’re a campaign that’s counting on a Get-Out-The-Vote strategy, you may want to revisit your tactics.

Least surprising news

It’s a tie that goes to a pair of announcements of groups letting us know how they feel about upcoming political issues.

The Association of Washington Business says it will oppose Initiative 1631, the proposed carbon fee that would raise money for programs that would cut back on pollution. Considering AWB has opposed previous carbon tax plans, this was not a shocker.

Neither was the announcement that the League of Conservation Voters is endorsing Sen. Maria Cantwell’s re-election bid. The state’s junior senator generally likes the things the league likes, such as supporting parks and fighting climate change, and doesn’t like the things it doesn’t like, such as proposals to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Most disturbing news

The number of robocalls — those annoying taped phone messages that try to persuade you to do or buy something, or to vote for or against someone — rose in the first six months of 2018 compared to the same period last year.

This according to a report in Stateline, a news service for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Citing the YouMail Robocall Index, the number of robocalls went from 2.8 billion in January to 4.1 billion in June.

YouMail calculates 8.4 million Robocalls were made to the 509 area code in June alone. That’s pretty bad, but over in the 360 area code it was 10.2 million. Most of those were made to my house at dinner time.

Nuclear-free Spokane

The City Council was set to vote Monday on a resolution to make the city a nuclear-free zone.

Wait, what? Do we have ICBMs — inter-county ballistic missiles — to protect against an attack from Coeur d’Alene?

No. If anything, the Spokane area is less nuclear-laden than it was during the Cold War, when bombers armed with hydrogen bombs and cruise missiles waited on the alert pads at Fairchild Air Force Base and the Pentagon was talking about routing the MX missile through here. Washington, which once had all three legs of the triad, now is down to one leg: the missiles in the Trident submarines that come and go from Bangor.

But the resolution introduced by Councilwoman Kate Burke contends nuclear weapons and parts still come through the city on Interstate 90, and there are concerns about the production, cleanup and testing of weapons. It says the nation should make “elimination of nuclear weapons a central component of our national security policy.” It also sets aside Aug. 6 as Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembrance Day, to mark the dropping of the atomic bombs at the end of World War II.