Candidates are always griping about bad press, but former judicial candidate Michael Morgan has taken the next step: He has initiated a formal complaint with the Washington News Council about a story in the Seattle Gay News. Formed three years ago with the goal of mediating disputes between the media and the public, the news council hasn’t quite been able to live down the conservative bent of some of its founders. In the group’s single hearing to date, the Daily Olympian refused to send a representative to defend the fairness of a disputed editorial (the council found against the paper).

To say Morgan is unhappy with the September 1, 2000, SGN story that is the subject of his complaint would be an understatement. On the news council’s complaint form, he checked six of the nine adjectives offered to describe the story’s failings: incomplete, sensationalized, misleading, inflammatory, biased, and unfair.

In the piece, writer Tom Flint alleges Morgan was part of a Republican conspiracy to run candidates against four openly gay jurists, based on comments from an unnamed member of the Seattle Municipal Election Committee, a gay political group that releases annual candidate ratings.

Veteran public defender Morgan tells Seattle Weekly he didn’t even know the sexual orientation of his opponent, King County Superior Court Judge Mary Yu, until after he entered the race. And, once he learned that rumors were spreading that he was in cahoots with three other candidates to force gay judges out of office, he says he immediately confronted the issue.

It didn’t work. After his brother, an openly gay Seattle resident who was also upset by the rumors, accompanied him to a Democratic Party meeting to denounce them, the SGN‘s secret source argued that denial is a sure sign of guilt. “He is making sexual orientation an issue in the campaign by introducing his gay brother and denying he is homophobic,” the source told the SGN.

Morgan, who says he was never contacted for comment in the SGN story (although the piece states otherwise), further charges that Flint promised him the story would be retracted before the primary election. No retraction was printed.

The Seattle Gay News didn’t respond to requests for comment on the controversy. The paper also hasn’t told the Washington News Council whether or not it will send a representative to the scheduled hearing, set for April 21 at 9 a.m. at Town Hall.

Morgan says he simply wants the paper to admit that its story was inaccurate and unfair. “The only way I know how to deal with [this issue] is to address it.”

JAMES BUSH jbush@seattleweekly.com