Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin is running for reelection, gunning for a fifth term in office. The Stranger endorsed Conlin in 2009, but not this year; this year we're endorsing Kshama Sawant, a smart socialist and college instructor with a PhD in economics. Sawant wants to raise the minimum wage, expand worker rights, prevent dubious home foreclosures, and bring a progressive vote to a moderate council. But that's not what you'd think if you read Conlin's website.

Conlin's website has a media page that features "The Stranger Endorsement," which several folks pointed out on Twitter and Facebook (including me) looked like a current endorsement. Some other media on that page is from 2013 and the press release on the website is current, so it looks like we endorsed him this year. Even though we didn't.

It wasn't a big deal, but lots of people shared it on social media, and this morning, Conlin posted this:

We are adding the 2009 date to make it clear that this is in a set of 2009 endorsements. But we are leaving it up to show how dishonest The Stranger is. I'm the same candidate doing the same things but The Stranger is hypocritical in refusing to acknowledge all the great things they welcomed in 2005 and 2009.

Indeed, Conlin updated his website to acknowledge that it was a 2009 endorsement—which is nice—but he claims changing our endorsement since then is "dishonest" and "hypocritical"? Endorsements aren't diamonds, dude. When we gave Conlin that endorsement four years ago, we gave him the benefit of the doubt against a challenger who wasn't very serious. Also, we scraped the bottom of the barrel to praise his support for a parks levy and backyard goats. Conlin may not fully grasp what happened next, but newspapers hand out brand new endorsements when there's a brand new election.

And since that last election, Conlin has: (1) voted to fine panhandlers against the unanimous advice of the Seattle Human Rights Commission, which said the bill violated human rights standards; (2) backed a lawsuit to prevent a ballot measure from reaching voters, and then a judge said the city had no such authority; (3) boosted a half-funded 520 Bridge that still lacks billions of dollars for Seattle's side of the project; (4) was city hall's prime backer of the state deep-bore tunnel that still lacks any traffic mitigation plan, or funding, for city streets; (5) voted to leave homeless encampments unregulated and dangerous, and (6) was the only council member to oppose paid sick leave.

Conlin did all of that shitty stuff in the last four years. The fact that we didn't endorse him in 2013 doesn't mean we're "dishonest" or "hypocritical." It means we haven't been lobotomized.