Manka Dhingra is the far superior candidate | Letter

I am amazed at a competitive King County print media’s editorial board endorsement for the 45th Legislative District candidate for the Washington State Senate. Fortunately an-eight person board, three with the same last name, can hardly be considered an “independent” editorial board.

Their chosen candidate only moved to the 45th when she decided to run for office. Much like Donald Trump, she affiliated with the Republican Party as a business deal: They needed a candidate, she needed a party. Her experience of assisting for a career politician and as a volunteer developing a phone app for the Marines are certainly not the equivalent to the 20-plus years of community service of Manka Dhingra, let alone her 20 years of Redmond residency.

Ms. Dhingra’s contribution to formation of the King County Mental Health Court demonstrates her: ability to recognize a issue that affects us all, commitment to the community, leadership abilities, exceptional organizational skills, extensive legal experience, outside the box thinking (the KC Mental Health court is a precedent setting program that has spread nationally) and ability to work collaboratively with multiple silos.

An easy measure of a candidate’s strength and qualification is how much energy, time and money are they spending on the negative campaigning about their opponent verses hyping their own qualifications. Prior to endorsing did they even check the spending ratios? How about the sources of the funding? There are very few advertisements touting the strong qualification of their candidate… because there are few.

That old “balance of power” argument becomes weaker daily as the two major political parties move closer to the middle. We need proven thinkers and doers in these elected positions with hard-stop term limits. Manka Dhingra is the far superior candidate.

Paul Beatty

Woodinville