SEATTLE -- The 46th Legislative District state Representative, position 1 candidates, Seattle Democrats Gerry Pollet and Scott White, met in a candidate forum in Seattle’s Maple Leaf neighborhood Wednesday night.

It was a relatively short forum, with each of the candidates given three minutes to make an opening statement, followed by time for three questions from the audience.

The forum was also light on fireworks, despite the 46th race turning out to be one of the state’s most heated, dating back to a highly contested endorsement meeting and a lawsuit filed by Pollet in order to make White’s resignation letter hold up despite being received two minutes late.

Pollet’s opening statement highlighted his background as a public interest attorney working toward cleaning up the Hanford nuclear reservation and enacting the Growth Management Act. He also brought up the issue of White’s contributions from the Affordable Housing PAC, which is the PAC for the King County Master Builder’s Association, an independent affiliate of the Building Industry Association of Washington.

“I believe that you have to practice what you preach when you run a campaign,” he said.

Pollet further added that he was on the board of Washington coalition for open government, and said that in an elected official, “ethics and integrity is vital”.

White also touted his background in nonprofits, as well as his fifteen years of work in state and local government where he had written a lot of legislation. He said the crux of legislator’s job was to be able to succeed in tackling the challenges in Olympia.

“Every challenge our state faces, you have to think of it as opportunities,” White said.

White also made a plea to serving everyone in the district, and implied that he expected to receive planted questions from his opponent in the Q&A session.

There were so-called planted questions, or at least partisan questions, but they came from White’s supporters. The first question asked Pollet why he was accusing White of taking money from the BIAW, when the MBA was in fact a separate entity.

Pollet began by asserting that “neighborhood activists know that BIAW and master builders are the same,” and argued that the group was the same who advocated for larger housing limits in neighborhoods and oppose environmental regulations.

White then said that Pollet dodged the question, and reiterated the fact that he has never received a check from the BIAW. He then said that the MBA had repeatedly given to progressive candidates and elected officials like King County Executive Ron Sims and King County Councilmen Bob Ferguson and Larry Phillips.

Pollet later countered by suggesting that those candidates would not take the money in this political climate, after the amount of money being spent to oppose Gov. Gregoire.

The next question came from someone who noted that Scott White stepped down from being 46th LD Democratic Party chair before running for office, and asked why he had done that, then continued to ask why Pollet had not stepped down from his role as vice chair of programs, then effectively accused him of creating a conflict of interest.

Pollet disputed the notion by saying that White had endorsements from 14 of 17 executive committee members, then accused White of self-promotion during his days as chair by placing his photo on the cover of district newsletters.

Finally, the two were asked about some successes they had in accomplishing things. This gave them the chance to repeat a lot of what they had said in their opening comments, with Pollet again bringing up his work on Hanford and on regulating the telecom industry, and White predominantly talking about working on education funding.

Surprisingly, the news of White’s King County ethics breach, which had broken earlier in the day, scarcely breached the surface of the forum aside from a brief implication of the importance of ethics in a legislative candidate made by Pollet in his opening statement.

Afterward both candidates acknowledged that they wished more time was spent in the Q&A on more substantive issues, but neither was totally disappointed with the outcome.