Posted by news intern Garrett McCulloch

King County Executive candidate Dow Constantine is pushing back against the vicious third-party attack ad from supporters of Susan Hutchison, saying at a press conference this morning* that the $150,000 for Hutchison's ads come from “a rogue’s gallery of special interests,” including Kemper Freeman, the BIAW, and other "right-wing Republican interests."

He used these connections to attack Hutchison for her anti-transit and anti-environmental positions, later trotting out a phalanx of environmentalists and transit advocates to back him up. Constantine took Hutchison to task for supporting a lawsuit to prevent light rail from crossing the Interstate 90 bridge over Lake Washington (she said it should cross a new 520 bridge instead during Sunday's debate).

"She’s trying to fool the voters of King County into believing she will protect the environment, and stand up for transportation choices, but her actions and those of her backers contradict that story," Constantine said. "Susan’s not an environmentalist. She’s not a supporter of mass transit. She’s just the opposite."

Officially, Constantine leads Hutchison in fundraising, but her biggest right-wing supporters have deep pockets—Affordable Housing Council, Eastside Business Alliance, Kemper Holdings, Bruce and Jolene McCaw, and CalPortland appear to be funding the anti-Constantine commercial. It accuses him of the usual vaguely-defined liberal crimes against nature—raising taxes, for instance. It also accuses him of threatening to block flood control in South King County if his ferry to "nowhere" (West Seattle is dull but it's not exactly "nowhere," Ms. Hutchison) wasn't funded.

* Apologies for the occasional shakiness in the video. My tripod was missing three legs.