• The only candidates forum for the Aug. 1 primary is tonight, 6-8pm at Sammamish City Hall. The event will be taped for broadcast later on Sammamish TV21 and Youtube.

Recommendations

Sammamish Comment will begin making its recommendations for the City Council primary on Wednesday, July 19.

There are four seats up for election, Positions 1, 3, 5 and 7, but only the latter three will be on the primary ballot. These races have three candidates, necessitating a primary. (Position 7 has four names listed on the ballot, but Roger Chapanis dropped out too late to remove his name.)

Position 1 has only two candidates. They will go straight to the Nov. 8 general election. The top two vote getters in the other three races will advance to the general.

Here’s how The Comment will make its recommendations:

Sammamish Comment

This year, Sammamish Comment is represented by founder Scott Hamilton and Jen Baisch. We share the decisions on recommendations for Positions 5 and 7. Baisch makes the decision on Position 3; Hamilton has a conflict of interest in this race and recused himself from coverage of Position 3 throughout the primary.

Candidates Questionnaire

The greatest weight will be placed on the answers received from the candidates in response to Sammamish Comment’s three-page questionnaire. These ran last week, beginning July 12. Even though Position 1 is not contested in the primary, we included them in asking for their responses and publishing their answers.

Because of the detail in these questionnaires, the homework and the thought required to answer the questions, these carry the greatest weight.

Candidate websites

What the candidates say about themselves and the issues on their websites will be a factor. Unfortunately, at this writing and as we make our decisions, most of the candidate websites were embarrassingly thin on useful information. The candidates who advance to the general election need to do better.

PDC filings

We place a fair amount of weight on the filings with the State Public Disclosure Commission. We look for who is supporting and contributing money to the candidates. We look for where they live or have their place of business. We consider what companies, unions or special interests are contributing.

Finally, and most importantly, we consider how many contributors are residents of Sammamish, with the more the better. This tells us the candidate reached out to local residents and connected with them.

If the majority of the contributors and money come from outside Sammamish, this scores down in our evaluations.

Candidates Forum

How well the candidates do in tonight’s forum will be a factor.

Other

There may be other factors that influence recommendations: community participation, outside controversies (which can either weigh favorably or unfavorably), etc.

Two out of three

We expect to recommend advancement for the general election for two out of three in the primary. When the November election is upon us, we will then narrow the recommendation to a single candidate.