Which Side is Susan Hutchison on?

Susan Hutchison is a former news anchor at KIRO-TV in Seattle.

There’s some drama in her life, but what’s relevant here is that she’s running for King County executive (similar to a mayor).

Mountain Humanist noticed something odd in her bio, though.

Since leaving KIRO Hutchison has been very, very busy. She has her own consulting business. She is the executive director for the Charles Simonyi Fund for the arts and sciences which among other things, supports the work of atheist Richard Dawkins. She’s also served on the board of the Discovery Institute, which promotes the idea of intelligent design…

So Hutchison directs the program that funds Richard Dawkins‘ former post at the University of Oxford… and she supports the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which actively tries to discredit the science that Dawkins spends his life advocating?

That’s like being on the boards of both Planned Parenthood and Focus on the Family.

Which side is she on when it comes to good science: Is she for it or against it?

Adam

It’s possible that her support for the Discovery Institute only extends to their work with stuff like Cascadia – the passenger train system. They actually do a lot of weird stuff at DI that has nothing to do with creationism. Just a guess though. http://www.cascadiaproject.org/
MacCrocodile

She’s been trying her damnedest to keep the people of King County ignorant of her political affiliations, because she is a Republican, and Republicans just don’t get elected here. She put a lot of money and time into getting a referendum passed last year that makes all county jobs “non-partisan,” meaning she is not obligated to assign herself a party affiliation when she runs for county executive.

She’s been denying and covering up her past, but the local press (particularly The Stranger) has been pretty diligent in exposing the money she has paid to get people like Bush elected (and re-elected) and the time she spent at the Discovery Institute. If her bio says something about a tenuous connection to Richard Dawkins, it’s probably just there to throw you off the scent of her super-conservative, Republican leanings. I wouldn’t trust that woman as far as I could throw her.
The Other Tom

The bit about Dawkins is phrased in the present tense, while the bit about the Discovery Institute is phrased in the past tense… so it’s possible that she used to be associated with DI but has seen the light, as it were. I suppose the best thing to do would be to, politely, ask her.
Amanda

That’s really not news here. Anyone who knows anything about her knows that the DI is where her allegiances lie. She’s a conservative religious whack-job.