In an apparent attempt to cash in on the popularity of the late Seattle School Superintendent John Stanford, several prominent area politicians--including Mayor Paul Schell, Sens. Slade Gorton and Patty Murray, Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran, and Gov. Gary Locke--announced last week that they were suffering from serious and in some cases terminal illnesses. Despite their difficulties, each reassured the public that, like Stanford, they would continue to serve in their public positions throughout their illnesses, taking time between treatments to make inspirational public appearances and marshal parades.

The afflicted include:

Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran, who, it was announced last week, has entered Swedish Medical Center in preparation for a life-threatening empathy transplant. Doctors confirmed that for years Sidran has been congenitally unable to understand the impact of his actions on other people, leading to his remarkable reign of sociopathic policies. Sidran's condition had apparently become so severe that he was only prevented at the last moment in November from prosecuting himself for having a morning cup of coffee. The transplant procedure is widely used in Europe but rare in the United States, primarily because most insurance companies refuse to cover it and most HMO's will not authorize it, claiming it to be medically unnecessary in a capitalist system.

Doctors for Sen. Slade Gorton announced that x-rays taken at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C. have revealed that the senator's heart is three sizes too small. The 72-year-old Gorton is too old to be considered for a heart transplant, but doctors are hoping that aggressive drug treatments, including heavy applications of Miracle Grow, will help alleviate the condition.

In a tragic twist, the state's junior U.S. Senator, Patty Murray, suffered a clean psychotic break last week. The normally mild-mannered Murray, ranting and raving, reportedly had no knowledge of who she was or of her previous influential life. Murray's doctors are unencouraging about the senator's long-term prognosis, but philosophic, noting that a similar episode changed Sen. Strom Thurmond's life beginning in 1953 without affecting his political career in the least. Murray was recently elected to another six-year term in Congress.

Washington's photogenic Democratic governor, Gary Locke, has perhaps the most serious of the medical conditions revealed last week. In a remarkable, emotional speech, Locke revealed that he had no spine. A stiff 2x4 up his back has apparently served to keep the governor upright throughout his political career, but the splinters had become so unbearable that Locke felt he needed to go public with his disability. After the speech, the exhausted governor, murmuring his apologies to GOP legislative leader Dale Foreman for not having offered a more stringent budget for the coming biennium, slumped to the floor.

Finally, aides in the office of Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, in office for only a year, confirmed that he was shopping for an appropriate illness to bolster his sagging visibility and ratings, but had not settled on the right choice yet. "Paul is a wealthy man," said one anonymous source close to the mayor. "Only the best disease will do." While reviewing his options and summoning strength for the coming ordeal, Schell is resting at his private villa in the south of France with live-in nurse Bob Gogerty.