Plain Talk

about matters of interest in Washington State and, often, elsewhere

November 2007

Well, here's the non-news: Dino Rossi is running for governor. Rossi has a mighty tough row to hoe: it's hard bordering on impossible to imagine anyone who voted for Gregoire in 2004 voting for Rossi in 2008, but not at all difficult to imagine folk who voted for Rossi then voting for Gregoire now.

In 2004, few voters really had much of a handle on who either Gregoire or Rossi were politically (or, for that matter, in any way). Rossi is said to be quite personable (I've never been in a room with the man, so can't say myself), and in 2004--with Boeing's move out of Washington still ringing in many ears--had a pro-business push that sat better just then than it might at almost any other time. Gregoire's campaign was not well run, her advisors foolishly emphasizing her as a "force for change" after years and years of highly successful management by popular Democrat Gary Locke; that, presumably, was to counter the traditional Republican cry of "time for a change". While telling a person who has been healthy and fit for many years that he or she should take up smoking, eat lots of saturated fats, and cease exercising because "it's time for a change" wouldn't even raise a laugh, apparently in politics it's enough to send presumably sane persons into paroxysms.

But all that was then and this is now. First off, how the two candidates comported themselves during and after the see-saw recounting process revealed a lot. Gregoire never lost her dignity, while Rossi (and the state Republican party) managed to turn his original voter sympathy to mud, looking in many eyes like petulant, playground-level sore losers. Since then, Rossi has chewed his cuds in relative silence, and now comes back with nothing new on the table. To quote the Wikipedia article on him, Rossi's campaign is centered on a belief that Washington voters are in need of change after 22 years of Democratic governors and has so far focused on many of the same issues he ran under in the 2004 election, namely controlling the spending of the state's legislature, tax cuts, and improving the business environment within the state.

A good early indicator of what's happening this time around can be found by applying the sacred political aphorism: Follow the money. As the Seattle Times reports in an article tellingly titled "Rossi donors from '04 contribute to Gregoire", "[A]s of the beginning of this month, Gregoire had taken in nearly $160,000 from individuals, businesses and political-action committees that gave to Rossi - and not her - during the 2004 election." Businessmen with thousands to throw around in political campaigns don't donate on a whim: they try to pick the winner (so that their little kindness may be remembered after the election).

And Rossi has other public-relations problems related to money. Most recently, he had to backpedal furiously, with a formal apology, from earlier claims of fund-raising successes that his campaign seriously misrepresented. But that's really small beer compared to Rossi's earlier adventures, by no means yet concluded, with dubious fund-raising. The State Public Disclosure Commission is taking a long, hard look into whether Rossi was running an unregistered or illegal campaign earlier this year while making appearances on behalf of the Forward Washington Foundation he founded. This one is by no means over yet, and could be a ticking time bomb set to explode in Rossi's face. But whether or not he can slip away from the legalities, the whole thing certainly says a lot to Washington voters about Rossi's style of operation.

Rossi seems determined to follow the national Republican trend of running more against a particular opponent than for anything in particular. As Joel Connelly asked in his Seattle Post-Intelligencer column, "If Rossi is a stand-up guy, why has he been reluctant to take stands? He was a non-combatant in the Initiative 912 gas tax battle of 2005. He hemmed and hawed . . . over the RTID-Sound Transit roads and light rail package." Rossi has also had nothing to say about S-CHIP and the presidential veto of it, a state-related matter.

Meanwhile, Gregoire has been on a non-stop rising arc. Her approval ratings, beginning low as she took office, have steadily ascended. And she has been recognized by important voices from outside the state as doing an excellent job. In 2004, Dino Rossi asked "Who is really going to be able to turn around the business climate in this state? Who is going to turn this around so companies can grow? Me or my opponent?" That's wonderful fodder for the Gregoire 2008 campaign, if they're sharp enough to seize on it, because it's like having a retrospective time machine: "Rossi said that, Chris was elected, and here's what really happened."

What did really happen? Things like these:

Forbes magazine, which politically floats somewhere to the right of The Wall Street Journal, in its latest annual survey of "The Best States For Business", jumped Washington up from its already thoroughly respectable #12 spot to the #5 spot, adding that "Washington is also the only state to finish in the top five in three main categories (labor, regulatory environment and growth). And Washington's numbers are up across the board when you look both backward and at projections into the future."

Meanwhile, Gregoire this year was literally the cover girl for non-partisan Governing magazine's "Public Officials of the Year" issue, the annual list being described as "the nation's preeminent honor for state and local officials." In their detailed article on Gregoire, they observe that "The list of her accomplishments would be the envy of any governor, ranging from budget surpluses to ambitious education and economic development initiatives to the resolution of some of the state's longest running legislative battles." And, as they further note, "Even Republicans are saying nice things about her these days. 'I've been in leadership roles under other governors,' says House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt, 'and they were very formal and process-oriented. She'll come in and talk to you one on one.'"

If her campaign has the wit to hit on that Rossi 2004 quotation and put up stuff like this as the response, it's going to make Rossi look pretty bad. And those campaign-finance matters are not going to just go away.

Plain Talk is a more or less monthly feature carried in the weekly Ritzville Adams County Journal.

The text appearing above is a substantially expanded version of the published feature, which is limited by word count.