Sheriff Opponents Won't Shoot Each Other

Everyone and their mother are getting sick of recounts. First there was the debacle in Florida, then there was that whole governor's thing, and now we have the King County's Sheriff's race.

After a hand count of 18,000 ballots Police Lt. Greg Schmidt beat King County sheriff's Sgt. Jim Fuda by 62 votes. Schmidt will now face current King County Sherrif Sue Rahr who finished first in the primary.

But come on, this is a race for sheriff…sheriff, people. Can't we take this to the streets of unincorporated King County at high noon? Ten paces and then we'll find out who is the snarliest, rip-snortinest,
rootin-tootinist-fresh-and-fruitiest hombre this side of the Rio Grande.

We mean, when we read in the Times this morning that, "Upon learning that a recount is mandatory when the vote difference is less than 150 votes, the two men opted for a rarely used alternative. Schmidt and Fuda agreed on a machine recount of randomly selected precincts in each of the 17 legislative districts," we couldn't help but feel that we wouldn't want either one of these men guarding our stage coach or making sure that Old Two Tooth McCoy isn't playing with five aces.

These are tough times and quite frankly we'd feel safer if our sheriff spent less time opting for machine recounts and more time shooting varmints who were after their job.

Spit. Ding