By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Dave Ross is a runner. As of now he is on leave from his popular radio talk show to make a pitch for the Democratic nomination for Congress. But to hear him tell it, he has been running for public attention for more than a quarter century.
“When I was working at KIRO, I essentially ran for election every day because I was evaluated by ratings dairies, which are filled out by listeners who either vote for you or not, depending on whether they like your show,” said Ross a few days after taking his leave-of-absence from his daily radio show.
“On that standard,” he noted, “I was able to beat Rush Limbaugh consistently, which is no small feat in today’s talk-show market.”
Ross is hoping to replace retiring Republican Representative Jennifer Dunn in the suburban-rural 8th District, which runs from Bellevue to Black Diamond, Hunts Point and parts of Redmond and Woodinville, to Mercer Island. Others on the Democratic primary ballot are three-time candidate and party activist Heidi Behrens-Benedict, and the only Jewish candidate on either side: Alex Alben, a retired technology executive and copyright lawyer from RealNetworks and Paul Allen’s StarWave.
Behrens-Benedict is a Bellevue interior designer in her fourth race for the 8th District seat, having lost three elections to retiring incumbent Jennifer Dunn. Before she ran for Congress in 1998, she chaired the Sammamish East King County Group of the Sierra Club, was a member of The Mayor Norm Rice’s Small Business Task Force and was the first Eastside Journal Editorial Board community representative.
On the Republican side, five candidates are vying for the nomination: state legislator Luke Esser, King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, retired U.S. Attorney Diane Tebelius, Bellevue City Council member Conrad Lee, and Howard Schmidt, formerly Microsoft’s top security officer.
At the center of Alben’s campaign is his record of corporate achievements. Alben and his wife Ellen, a former InfoSpace attorney, have assets of at least $9.5 million, according to federal election filings and property records. He has already loaned his campaign $200,000. Just 45 years old, the Mercer Island resident says he will bring his business insight to Congress. Alben has said he will not flaunt his Jewish background during his run for Congress, but he does point out his family’s long commitment to the Jewish State.
“We had some early chalutzim,” Alben told JTNews in an interview earlier this year, referring to the early settlers who immigrated to Palestine in the 1920s. “One of my mother’s cousins…helped build a collective farm that became part of the State of Israel in 1948.” His grandfather’s uncle, David Wolffsohn, was the second president of the World Zionist Organization. While doing his undergraduate studies at Stanford University, Alben spent his junior year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
While Ross was raised in a Catholic family, he claims a deep understanding and strong commitment to Israel, reinforced by his 2002 trip to the Holy Land.
“Israel is clearly one of our closest allies,” said Ross in a telephone interview in late July. “There is a historic bond here that I consider unbreakable. You can’t ignore the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. That’s an important example to set.”
At the same time, however, he is not uncritical of some of the actions of the Jewish State, though he said he considers the security barrier currently under construction a case of trying to “make the best of a bad situation.”
“They certainly don’t want to be on the West Bank having to do constant patrols. They’re trying to protect communities. And so the fence has made sense to me.” Ross said.
While it is unusual for a local radio talk-jockey to get to travel around the world, Ross said his superiors at the radio station have “given me everything I’ve asked for” in an effort to keep him and his listeners informed, including trips to Jerusalem, Baghdad and Doha, Qatar in the last two years.
“If you sit in a studio three hours a day and never get out, you can get stupider and stupider,” he said. “I’ve tried to get the show to the heart of the story as much as possible. I try to read as much as possible, but there’s no substitute for being there.”
With regard to what he learned from his visit to Israel and the territories, he said: “We were there for Independence Day. At noon, of course, everybody stops what they’re doing and I found it to be very moving and understood that we’re talking about more than just a country, but a movement, a fraternity, a state with a common Jewish character. It’s sometimes hard for us to appreciate that if you haven’t been there.”
As for the ongoing dispute at the heart of the problem, Ross said he found that “the animosity, in many cases had gone down to a personal level. There was mistrust of Palestinians on the part of Israelis and on the part of Israelis by Palestinians.”
“I think Israel would like nothing better than to have a two-state solution with a stable Palestinian state that lives side-by-side with them in peace,” he said. “I don’t think it will happen as long as Yasser Arafat’s in control because he can’t be trusted. He doesn’t keep his word.”
Having recently spent time in Iraq, Ross said he does not know what the long-term effects of the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein will be but that thus far, “it does not seem to have done what [Deputy Secretary of Defense] Paul Wolfowitz had predicted — moved the Israeli and Palestinian problem closer to resolution.
“I don’t know whether it’s made it better or worse,” Ross said of the war’s impact on Israel’s situation, “but it certainly hasn’t resolved it.”
Ross said his job at KIRO is waiting for him “as soon as I lose my first election,” something he said he has no intention of doing anytime soon. He indicated the statement on the station’s Web site that “Dave is on a leave of absence for the rest of the summer and we look forward to his return” is less a prediction about his electoral chances than wishful thinking.