US Rep. Dave Reichert’s spin on Democratic challenger Darcy Burner is that her campaign fund is bolstered by out-of-staters—those carpetbagging netroots folks. 

And the Seattle Times ran with that angle earlier this month:

The outpouring reveals an aspect of Burner’s rematch against U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert that is under the radar for many 8th Congressional District voters: While her campaign talks up her blue-collar roots and family life, online activists from all over the country see her as one of their own.

Her immense popularity among the netroots — an informal, progressive group of bloggers — has boosted her campaign and helped her raise more than $2.3 million, topping Reichert, the Republican incumbent.

But Burner’s critics, including the Reichert campaign, are using those ties against her. They argue that she can’t represent the interests of the 8th District when some of her biggest supporters are liberal bloggers who never have set foot in Seattle’s eastern suburbs.

“Darcy Burner is pretty open about the fact that she wants to go to Congress to represent the netroots,” said Reichert’s campaign manager, Mike Shields. “That is her constituency, and that is who she’s raised money from, and so that’s who she’ll do the bidding of.” 

The Seattle Times‘ sensationalized spin about carpetbagging left out some important context that shows Burner isn’t a puppet of funders from out of state. If you compare Burner’s and Reichert’s donations, you see that Burner has more in-district donors and more in-state donors than Reichert. 

According to analysis of Federal Elections Commission records of individual donors at $200 or above (the level at which biographical info is available) done by Dan Kirkdorffer, a Burner supporter from the 8th District, Burner has 581 in-district donors compared to Reichert’s 446 in-district donors. Burner has 1,311 in-state donors compared to Reichert’s 922 in-state donors.

Burner’s dollar totals from in the district and in the state are also higher than Reichert’s: $685,000 to $635,000 in-district and $1.3 million to $1.1 million in-state, respectively.  

Reichert’s rejoinder could be that a higher percentage of his donations come from in the state and in the district. And that’s true. But Burner has more local donors total, which is a far more significant statistic when making claims about hometown support. For example, she has 42 percent more in-state donors, and 30 percent more in-district donors, than Reichert.

According to Act Blue, the netroots fundraising site, Burner has raised $544,837 from their online donors.  She’s raised about $3.1 million overall, which means netroots donors account for only 16 percent of her money. 

Certainly, Burner has a large number of Act Blue donors, over 15,000 according to Act Blue. Some of these donors are captured in the analysis of FEC reports—others are not because many Act Blue donors fall below the $200 level. While those donors would certainly bump up the number of Burner’s out-of-state contributors, they’d also bump up her in-state donor tally, increasing her lead over Reichert on that score.  

Another important part of the fundraising story to consider is donations from PACs. Those donations are not figured into the in-state vs. out-of-state equation. 

PACs, political committees that represent corporations and unions, made up 31 percent of Rep. Reichert’s total campaign fund according to the latest online data at the FEC (which doesn’t yet include the most recent fundraising reports.) PAC giving makes up only 13 percent of Burner’s haul.

PAC donations can certainly come from local interests, like Boeing ($10,000 to Reichert) and Microsoft ($3000 to Reichert), but here’s the FEC list of Reichert’s PAC donations. With everything from General Electric to Goldman Sachs to Lockheed Martin to Pfizer Inc., it is hardly dominated by local interests.  

I have a call into Reichert’s campaign to ask them to address their claim that Burner’s financial support—which is deeper at that local level than Reichert’s—isn’t local enough.  

Meanwhile, here is what Mike Shields, Reichert’s campaign manager, said on October 3, in the comments thread on the popular local conservative politics blog, Sound Politics: 

There is a bigger issue at stake in this election that local SP readers should consider if they are not yet engaged in this race: if burner wins, she will prove that even a candidate with no experience, no real connection to her community, who is to the left of the local voters, can raise enough money from national activists that they can elect someone in YOUR local district. This will embolden them to futher this model nationally. Those activists may not have succeeded in winning any policy debates, but if they start overpowering local voters with money they can begin installing members who think like them who WILL win their policy debates for them. This is the movement they are openly trying to create and they will absolutely be emoldened if burner wins. She may not seem like she is conecting here, but she’s a national netroots celebrity. You can help stop them and disprove the paradigm by helping us at reichert’s campaign:www.davereichertforcongress.com.

Note: The possibility exists that this comment wasn’t actually left by the same Mike Shields who’s running Reichert’s campaign, but if that’s true, Shields has had nearly two weeks to correct the record.

Here is Kirkdorffer’s analysis. (These numbers include local Bush fundraisers for Reichert, which may artificially inflate Reichert’s local donor numbers. Also, Burner’s number of “In-District Maxed Out” Donors, 54, should be in bold, not Reichert’s lower number of 49.) :

 

State Rep. Sharon Nelson (D-34, Vashon) sent a letter to Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland on Monday, October 13, asking him “to clarify your current plans for the issuance of the aquatic lands lease” to Glacier Northwest for the company’s mining work on Maury Island.

In the letter, Rep. Nelson says, “I recently learned that Glacier has communicated to King County’s Department of Development and Environmental Services that your office [Department of Natural Resources] has given them [Glacier Northwest] assurances that their lease will be granted around the first week of November.”

Republican Sutherland is locked in a tight reelection bid against Democrat Peter Goldmark, a left-leaning, environmentalist rancher from Eastern Washington. If, as Nelson fears, Sutherland plans to issue the controversial lease to Glacier right after the election in early November, it would be a way to reward one of his biggest financial supporters—Glacier has given $50,400 to reelect Sutherland so far this year according to the most recent Public Disclosure Commission reports—without raising the ire of environmental voters before November 4.    

Goldmark has already made a big deal out of quid pro quo campaign finance during this election season, asserting that Sutherland does the bidding of corporate donors like Weyerhaeuser. 

Sutherland fought a contentious battle in the state legislature earlier this year when environmental legislators, like Nelson and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3, Spokane), fought against Sutherland’s plans to give Glacier the go ahead to expand its mining on Maury Island.

The issue put the spotlight on Sutherland last session and caused him high-profile political headaches. 

Jim Chan, at King County’s Department of Development and Environmental Services (DDES), told me the County met with Glacier last week to get the project on Maury started (DDES oversees the local permitting on the work). However, he said when DDES later learned that Glacier actually didn’t have the required aquatic land lease from DNR, they called Glacier to say the planning was “premature.”  

Fran McNair, DNR’s Aquatic Land Steward, says, “No decision has been made [on the lease].” She reports that it’s a “really high bar” to get the lease and there’s “no estimated timeline” on when it might be granted because her staff is still in the fact-finding  stage of reviewing the application.  

Glacier Northwest did not return calls. Nor did Fred White, the DDES staffer who reportedly originally heard from Glacier that the DNR lease was a done deal.

While the BIAW is downloading an additional $4 million (total $7.2 million) into independent expenditure ads supporting Dino Rossi’s campaign for governor, K.C. Superior Court is moving forward on a case that could find the BIAW’s ad campaign is illegal. 

The Court will hold a hearing tomorrow at 3pm to determine wether Rossi will be deposed in a lawsuit filed by two former State Supreme Court justices (both Gregoire supporters) that alleges Rossi worked in concert with the BIAW to raise money for the BIAW’s Rossi fund.

Unlike candidates, independent expenditure groups have no fundraising limits, but independent expenditure groups are not allowed to coordinate with the candidate.

If K.C. Superior Court judge Paris Kallas rules the plaintiffs can depose Rossi, attorney Knoll Lowney will question the candidate on Monday morning.

Over on his campaign website, Dino Rossi posted a letter that Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels sent to Seattle state legislators complaining about the state’s lacking attention to sex offenders.

Rossi’s site proclaims: “Even Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is Worried about Homeless Sex Offenders,” before quoting Democrat Nickels’s complaints about the state: 

“More worrisome still is that 351 sex offenders in Seattle are registered homeless. Of those, 119 are the most serious level III sex offenders who have been released by the State directly to the streets of Seattle. These statistics highlight the need for the state and the region to step up to the problem…”

This is a gem for Rossi. An overture to Seattleites to vote for him. Heck, even big Democrat Nickels is frustrated with Gregoire. 

But here’s the interesting thing: If you look at the copy of the letter that Rossi posted, it came from Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36, Seattle). Rossi didn’t black out the name too well.

Why is Mary Lou Dickerson providing campaign fodder for Rossi? 

Dickerson’s office says Dickerson did not give the letter to Rossi’s campaign. Dickerson aide Melissa Bailey says Dickerson hasn’t even seen the letter yet herself.

As expected, Dino Rossi is asking King County Superior Court to kill the subpoena that would force him to testify in the lawsuit filed by Faith Ireland and  Rob Utter, two former State Supreme Court Justices whose complaint states that Rossi worked with the BIAW to raise money for their independent pro-Rossi effort. (It’s against state ethics rules for candidates to work in concert with independent groups whose fundraising limits far exceed those of the candidates.)

The BIAW’s independent effort to raise money for Rossi is itself being challenged by the Attorney General’s office because the Public Disclosure Commission ruled earlier that the BIAW did not disclose its fundraising activity to the public—a major violation. But that’s—literally—another story.

The case that Rossi worked with the BIAW to raise money for Rossi’s gubernatorial run is laid out in the complaint , but perhaps the most compelling charge in Ireland and Utter’s case has not been picked up on in press accounts. Press accounts have focused solely on May 2007 minutes from a Master Builders Association meeting which report that Rossi called senior members of the Master Builders Association—a BIAW affiliate that was being targeted by the BIAW to raise money for the BIAW’s Rossi campaign—to ask if the MBA would contribute.

In the press accounts, Rossi disputes that the calls were direct fundraising asks.

However, the complaint adds this point: After the phone calls, Rossi followed up by taking two of the MBA officers he’d already called, plus the MBA’s executive director, out lunch. “At that lunch,” the complaint says, “Dino Rossi discussed the pending solicitation for the BIAW’s Rossi PAC.”

The press has not asked Rossi why he took the MBA members out to lunch. If Rossi has to comply with the subpoena, perhaps Knoll Lowney, Ireland and Utter’s lawyer, will get to.

An interesting moment at yesterday’s debate between Rep. Dave Reichert (R-8) and his Democratic challenger, Darcy Burner, came when panelist C.R. Douglas, reflecting on the projected $500 billion federal deficit (not including the $700 billion Wall Street bailout), asked both candidates what they would cut. 

Sounding like Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi (and just about every other Republican I’ve ever heard when asked a similar question), Burner did not specify what she would cut. Instead, she sounded a stern note about fiscal responsibility and “economic discipline.” She talked about “performance audits” and “pay-as-you-go” rules.

“If you increase the amount you’re spending,” she said, “you have to identify where you’re going to find the money. I you decrease the amount you’re bringing in, you have to identify what you’re going to cut.” 

And she ended with this line: “I demand that our Congress live up to the basic standards that every household in this country has to.”

Certainly, the fact that Burner sounds like she’s reading from the Republican playbook has a lot to do with the failed Bush years.  “Fiscal conservative” George Bush has actually saddled the country with the largest debt in U.S. history, between $500 and $600 billion.    

For his part, Reichert sounded more like a traditional Democrat. First, like Democrats always do when hit with vague GOP economic tough talk, he criticized Burner for skimping on specifics. 

He began: “I think what you didn’t hear from my opponent is what she would cut…”  

But then, rather than answering the question himself—and saying what he would cut—he started sounding like Barack Obama (or Al Gore).

“When you talk about what we need to do and what we might cut,” he said (without talking about what we might cut), “what we really need to do is infuse money into new energy. We need to excite our economy by investing money into the newest technology to provide us with the future of energy source that will fuel our economy…” 

As his time ran out, he did start drifting back to more traditional GOP talking points, saying sternly that we needed to look at how we were going to pay for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Another issue where Burner sounded like a Republican was on gun control. Audience member (and former Kirkland GOP state Rep.) Toby Nixon asked the candidates if they agreed with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller . Heller upheld the 2nd Amendment.

Burner was emphatic. “I had a stalker when I was in college who threatened to kill me,” she said. She then told the story of how when she went to the police to get a restraining order, they encouraged her to get a gun and “learn how to use it” because “they wouldn’t be able to protect me.”

She concluded: “People who face real threats have the right to defend ourselves. The 2nd Amendment guarantees us that right to defend ourselves, and I agree with the S.C. decision as it applies even in Washington, DC.” 

Her last caveat, “even as it applies in Washington, DC” separated her even further from the Democratic line. Many Democrats recognize that gun control in general is a losing issue, but stick to advocating targeted gun control in urban areas. 

Reichert, who answered the question first, said simply: “Yes.”

At the debate between U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert and Darcy Burner in Bellevue on Wednesday, both candidates were asked: “Are enemy combatants confined at Guantanamo Bay entitled to the rights described in the Geneva Convention?”

Reichert said, “To me that’s an easy question. The answer: ‘Yes.'” 

Apparently it wasn’t a very easy vote for Rep. Reichert, though. 

Reichert voted against the Intelligence Authorization bill in December 2007, which  included an amendment that made U.S. intelligence agencies abide by prohibitions in the Army Field Manual against torture, like waterboarding.  

The bill passed the House and Senate, though, and Bush vetoed it. Reichert voted against overriding Bush’s veto, preventing Congress from getting the two thirds majority it needed to make the anti-torture bill law.

Reichert’s votes contradicted what he told the Bellevue crowd. Talking about his career as sheriff, he said: “When you talk about torture … when you talk about bullying people into confessions. That’s something I never had to do. I know that all people need to be respected, must be respected. They’re all human beings inhabiting this earth together.”

Burner said the rights guaranteed in the Geneva Conventions, “are guaranteed to all people. Our government should be treating people fairly, even when it’s inconvenient. This is a country that was founded on the idea that every individual has fundamental rights that no government is entitled to abridge. So, do I think the people at Guantanamo have the right to basic protections of the Geneva Convention? Yes.”

At the luncheon debate between U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert (R-8) and his Democratic challenger Darcy Burner at the Meydenbauer Center in downtown Bellevue today, panelist C.R. Douglas asked what Congress’s response should be if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

Darcy Burner fielded the question first. After telling the audience that she and her husband decided to go through with her difficult pregnancy after her doctor told her if she continued the pregnancy she “might not survive it,” she said: “But that decision belongs to us. There is no politician on the planet that has the right to make it for me. The idea that there are politicians that think they have the right to tell people fundamental choices about what happens with their bodies is absurd.”

Okay, cool. But a predictable enough response from a pro-choice, Democratic female candidate.

But then she went on: “And I would support not only codifying Roe v. Wade into law,” she said, “but ensuring that the Constitutional right to basic decisions about oneself and one’s privacy is in fact a Constitutional Amendment.”

The 14th Amendment (equal protection), the 9th (rights retained by the people not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution), and the 4th Amendment (no unlawful search and seizure) have all been used by the Supreme Court to protect Americans’ privacy. But Burner is right that an explicit “right to privacy” is missing. Roe v. Wade is based on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

Guaranteeing the right to privacy in the Constitution is an unambiguous way to secure Roe v. Wade.

Her statement drew applause from the audience (a No No). The idea of a Constitutional Amendment may seem fanciful, but with polls indicating the Democrats might get up to 60 Senate seats after Election day, it could be a reality.

After the debate, I asked Burner spokesman Sandeep Kaushik why we hadn’t heard such a dramatic statement from Burner on this before. He said she really hadn’t been asked that direct question before.

Reichert told the audience: “I think everybody in this room knows where I stand on this issue.” In case they actually didn’t, he followed up by saying: “My religious belief is that life begins at conception. In this country we are all allowed to believe the way we want to believe. That’s why we call it a free country.”

He breezed over the obvious follow-up issue (should one person’s religious beliefs be allowed to determine the law for others?) and said simply, “My opponent wants to make this a major issue. When in fact, Congress has no say in Roe v. Wade.”

It was an interesting debate, covering everything from  the $700 billion bailout (which Reichert voted against twice and Burner was also against—saying she disagreed with Sen. Obama on it), the federal budget, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Guantanamo, trade policy, global warming, immigration, education, and even sex ed.  I’ll post a longer report tomorrow.

I will say: I ran into a Democratic operative after the debate, and he was crowing that when asked about the bailout bill, Reichert acknowledged that he wasn’t an economic expert. I expect the Burner campaign will jump on that.

I saw a great movie this weekend at SIFF Cinema’s current political (non) science series  (they’re showing a batch of political dramas in the run-up to Election Day, including The Candidate, All The President’s Men, Bob Roberts, The Parallax View, and Bulworth.)

On Saturday night, they played Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg’s A Face in the Crowd, an unbelievably prescient 1957 epic about mass media, demagogue populism, corporate power, and behind-the-curtain political wizardry.

Piggot Arkansas girl-reporter Patricia Neal (foxy!!) discovers Andy Griffith, a guitar-playing alcoholic hobo, when she shows up at the local jail to tape a spot for her weekly slice-of-life radio interview show, “A Face in the Crowd.”

Neal is mesmerized by Griffith’s salt-of-the-earth  wisdom and, christening him Lonesome  Rhodes, offers him his own morning show. Griffith is an immediate hit. Using his subversive, folksy charisma—he sympathizes with beleaguered rural housewives, needles the stuffy sheriff, and even pulls a public prank on the station’s owner—Lonesome becomes a beloved local radio personality.  Meanwhile, Neal, a prudish college-educated girl, is quietly falling head-over-heels in love with this yahoo.  

Soon, Lonesome Rhodes is scooped up by a Memphis TV station. Neal decides to go with him.

Foreshadowing! When he’s given a hero’s sendoff at the Piggot train station, Neal catches Rhodes badmouthing the crowd under his breath.  

In Memphis, Rhodes’  populist wit and high jinks antagonism toward the show’s corporate sponsor, a local mattress company, catapults him into regional stardom.

Next, with the help of a scheming sycophant at the TV station, Lonesome Rhodes lands a national TV gig in New York City. From the Big Apple, Lonesome Rhodes becomes a coast-to-coast sensation, spouting his off-the-cuff rhetoric while pimping, this time in earnest, for the show’s corporate sponsor, Vitajex—a placebo vitamin that he skillfully transforms into a best-selling over-the-counter Viagra-type drug. (The sexual candor in this late-50s movie is startling.)

Griffith’s power-hungry character (Sarah Palin with a guitar, except he’s frighteningly bright) is soon a mover in the political machinations  of Vitajex’s CEO (retired WWII General Haynesworth) who wants to get right-wing Senator, Sen. Worthington  Fuller, elected President. 

Rhodes, whose show has morphed from a musical comedy hour into his own soap box nativist political talk show, makes Fuller—whom Lonesome has coached in made-for-television folksiness—into a regular guest. 

Suddenly, it’s not clear if Haynesworth is Fuller’s kingmaker—or if Griffith’s Rhodes, increasingly unhinged on power, sexual affairs, and alcohol, is.

Neal, who’s becoming aware that Griffith is a monster, but sticks with him on his rise from Arkansas to NYC for the money, eventually sabotages him by surreptitiously turning up the sound levels as the credits roll at the end of his program, catching Griffith ridiculing his slavish audience. (It’s an off-mic moment, and in 1957, I guess screenwriter Schluberg still thought off-the-mic moments could have an impact.)

When the hard hats, old ladies, families, and suits watching the program overhear their hero’s dark side, they turn on him, and Lonesome Rhodes is ruined.

When my friend invited me to the movie, I was psyched. I’d never seen it before, but I’d heard all about it. Ahead of its time. Prescient. Brilliant. And that’s all true.

I texted back: “Is that the Andy G. as Sarah Palin movie?”

And indeed, it is. But, hate to break it to you, the cult of personality stuff is total Obama as well. There’s even a scene when Haynesworth, espousing about “capsule slogans” recommends hyping the “Time for a change” sound bite.

You cannot watch this movie without getting creeped out by everything that’s going on today, mostly Re: Palin, but a little Re: O too.

One thing that stops this movie from being 100% prescient is this: In 1957, I don’t think it was possible to conceive of Lonesome Rhodes as the candidate himself—which is really the creepiest implication of the movie. In the world of 1957, the candidate still had to be the stentorian, elitist senator relying on an endorsement from the pop star. Rhodes’s ascension to kingmaker was apparently a scary enough conceit. Little did they know…

After two debates between Governor Chris Gregoire and former state Senator Dino Rossi, the budget has taken center stage. And even though we’re dealing in facts—straight budget numbers—the candidates have two completely different versions of the budget story. It’s a little maddening to listen to.  

Gregoire has repeatedly insisted that Rossi doesn’t  “understand the values of the people of the state of Washington,” pointing out that Rossi balanced the 2003 budget “on the backs of seniors and children.” And ultimately, she explains, Rossi’s budget created a $2.2 billion deficit anyway—which she had to balance.  

Rossi, for his part, has insisted that Gregoire is a “tax and spend liberal” and that her current budget is careening toward a $3.2 billion deficit.

Their respective responses? Rossi claims that he didn’t leave a deficit. Gregoire claims the state currently has a surplus. 

I tried to get to the bottom of this disagreement after their first debate. I’m not sure I was successful. 

Thank God then, that at their second debate last week, moderator David Postman pulled a question out of the hat (questions at the Association of Washington Business debate last week were submitted by AWB members) that addressed the budgeting stand off.

Postman, in his last gig as chief political correspondent for the Seattle Times before starting his new job in media relations for Vulcan, by the way, quoted a question from AWB member Jim Suits, president of Summit Capital Advisors in  Tacoma.

Postman: “Governor Gregoire, you claim you inherited a  $2.2 billion deficit from the budget written by Senator Rossi. Senator Rossi you say the budget was balanced and you detect a current problem the same way you did back then. You can’t both be right.” 

(Big laugh from the audience)

 “Here’s your chance to each take two minutes to try and convince us all you’re right.” 

Okay, HA readers, take off your partisan hats. I’m going to print both candidates’ answers verbatim.  

 Gregoire:

Well thank you for the question. The record is clear. When I came into office in January 2005,  Washington state was sitting on a deficit, a $2.2 billion deficit that we had to balance the budget with.  Now, how did we do it? Well, we lived within our means, and we also made cuts, and we also had some new revenue.

Now, I noticed my opponent is constantly attacking me for this new revenue. In fact he’s attacking the people of the state of Washington. Because guess what? When it came to the transportation investment, it was voted on by the people of Washington who said, ‘Yes it’s time we got  our infrastructure up and growing. We want safety. We want congestion relief. Just invest.’ And that we have done. And we have shown results

 The other thing they said is, ‘You know what, we’re also going to agree we need to have an estate tax in this state, making sure that that top one percent are paying for education’ — that’s where the money is dedicated.  Sixty two percent of the people of the state of Washington said that’s what they wanted to have done.

So we balanced the budget then, we can balance it again.

But Let me be clear about the rhetoric you’re hearing from my opponent. Today we sit on a surplus. We are one of a handful of states that do. We have literal money in the bank. The projected, and I emphasize the word ‘projected,’ deficit is for 2011.  Who knows what happens between now and then, but I’ve already begun curbing spending. About $290 million. For example, I have said we will not be able to move forward with the Family Leave Act. It is suspended. I have made it clear that we are not going to continue to hire, and we are going to cut contracts. We’re going to save money and we’re going to continue because I want to continue to have one of the largest surpluses in the history of the state– which I left this last legislative session with. $850 million. Those are the facts. That’s the truth. I inherited a $2.2 billion deficit. And balanced the budget. And today we have a surplus.

 

Rossi:

Well, those aren’t the facts and this is the truth

(Audience laughs)

I actually resigned the state senate in December 2003—a year before she took office. And there were a couple more supplemental budgets written, and the incumbent, as AG, lost two lawsuits worth a half a billion dollars. So if there was a projected deficit, I think we need to look in the mirror.

The bottom line, though, is that an hour after she was sworn in as governor, even though during the course of the campaign she said, ‘Now is not the time to raise taxes, oh no we’re not going to raise taxes,’ one hour after she was sworn in, the Seattle Times asked her to repeat her no taxes pledge, [and] she says, ‘Oh well I never really meant no new taxes.’ Then she raised our taxes by $500 million including the death tax, which is chasing entrepreneurs out of our state. We need to eliminate the death tax in the state of Washington. 

(Audience applause)

Well, you know what. She’s going to raise your taxes again during the course of this effort, and it’s somewhat ridiculous, since I resigned a year earlier, [that] she blames me for somehow having a deficit.

What ended up happening, by the time the budget was written, money was flying into the coffers of the state. She raised taxes a half a billion dollars on the very same budget she was raising spending by 13 percent. That’s a classic definition of a tax and spend liberal if you ask me. That’s exactly what happened. There’s your truth.

Postman got the last word (and laugh): “Jim, I hope that cleared it up for you.” 

I’ll get to my footnotes (and my scorecard) on Gregoire’s and Rossi’s answers in a moment. But first, I checked in with Jim Suits at Summit Capital Advisors in Tacoma yesterday (who told me he’s a strong Rossi supporter) to see if he felt like the candidates answered his question. 

Nope.

“They both gave me what we often refer to at the office as an IRS answer,” Suits says, “100% correct and 100% useless.” Suits says that while both candidates are “good at spin,” neither one “got to the heart of the matter.”  And for Suits, “the heart of the matter” is: Why did balanced budgets, one balanced by Rossi and one balanced by Gregoire, both slip into deficits?  

“What Gregoire said was absolutely right,” Suits says. “Today, September 29, we do not have a deficit. And what Dino Rossi said is also right. We had a balanced budget in 2003. The issue I was trying to get to was, if they’re both right, how could we end up with a deficit?“

Right. And the answer is this: Rossi’s budget wasn’t sustainable and Gregoire’s current budget isn’t sustainable. Democrats will tell you that these budgets aren’t sustainable because we have a revenue problem (thanks Tim Eyman), and we can’t meet all the needs that the public wants us to meet, like paying for quality education. And Republicans will tell you it’s a spending problem—because government is out of control.

The Democratic claim seems tied to a larger issue about Washington’s tax system: Our regressive sales tax doesn’t generate the kind of revenue that a progressive income tax would. It also seems subjective. For example, does everyone think spending $64 million to provide health care to 38,500 uninsured kids, as Gregoire did in 2007, is a state responsibility?

The Republican claim is inaccurate on its face. For example, when Rossi declared his candidacy in October 2007, he staked out his run on this fact: State spending had increased 30 percent under Gregoire. 

But his number didn’t address a relevant question to his “tax and spend” equation: Did spending increase because government raised taxes to get more revenues or did spending increase because a robust economy increased state revenues without a tax hike?

Guess what the numbers showed? The 30 percent increase in spending was directly tied to a straight up increase in revenues without a tax hike. Revenues were $22.5 billion in 2003 and they grew by 31 percent to $29.5 billion in 2007.   

As to the candidates’ answers to Suits’ question. Here are my footnotes and my scorecard.

1. Gregoire is absolutely right about the half-a-billion tax increase. According to Glenn Kuper at the state budget office, the estate tax—which voters reaffirmed in ’06—accounts for the tax hike. He says it brings in about $100 to $150 million a year. Score 1 for Gregoire.

2. Gregoire is technically right that we don’t have a deficit right now, and in fact, we have a surplus. But come on. The point is: Her program is not sustainable. Minus 1 for Gregoire.

3. The Family Leave Act is suspended? Okay, that sucks. And second: According to Sen. Karen Keiser (D-33, Sea-Tac)—Olympia’s leading advocate for family leave legislation—that’ll save us $72 million in the next biennium, knocking only about 2.2 percent off the projected deficit. Minus 2 for Gregoire.

4. Re: The $850 million surplus (a budget that included a heaping increase the state’s housing trust fund). Savvy budgeting. Plus 1 for Gregoire.

5.  Rossi: “We need to eliminate the death tax in the state of Washington.” Okay, all three people Rossi’s promise affects were in the fancy shmancy ballroom that night at the AWB debate. Meanwhile, 62% of the voters said they approve of the tax. Minus 1 for Rossi. 

6. Rossi says Gregoire raised taxes by $500 million and spending by 13 percent—making her a classic “tax and spend liberal.” Honestly, I don’t know what 13 percent  is a reference to. I emailed and called Rossi’s spokeswoman, Jill Strait, to get some clarity on that. (Rossi typically says Gregoire raised spending by 30 percent. I know 13 and 30 sound the same, but I’ve listened to the tape over and over, and he definitely says thirteen.) 

Strait has not responded. 

However, for starters, Rossi’s accusation that the $500 million in taxes is somehow odious doesn’t make sense. As Gregoire noted, the voters approved the money. Meanwhile, for his accusation to have any bite, there’s got to be a direct relationship between the $500 million in new revenue and the 13 (30?) percent spending increase. Namely, Rossi needs to show that the tax is burdensome and the spending is frivolous or out of whack. Given that Rossi hasn’t been specific about the fat in the budget, his point doesn’t track. Minus 2 for Rossi.

Around 10 o’clock last night, as Dino Rossi was leaving Blaine, Washington, a rural town 20-minutes north of Bellingham on the border with Canada—where he and Governor Chris Gregoire had just sparred in their second debate—the GOP hopeful stopped at the Yorky’s Grocery, a convenience store attached to an Exxon gas station.

Garner Palomata, the 36-year-old Filipino working behind the counter, recognized Rossi from the candidate’s TV ads. “Hey, you’re the Rossi guys,” Palomata said—a little awed that “someone famous,” with two other guys in suits and ties in tow, had just strolled into his brightly-lit gas station grocery. Thursday night mostly stars a stream of regulars from the fishing town buying beer and cigarettes.

Rossi told Palomata he had just debated Governor Gregoire, and he had won. “We’re in good shape,” Rossi said. Then he bought a king-size package of King Henry Boston baked beans, wintergreen Certs, and a Red Bull for $20 in cash (one of his entourage paid, actually) and headed out of town.

Later that night at Yorky’s—I was on a junk food run— Palomata said he planned to vote for Rossi. “I’m a Republican. I like the Palin thing.” He was glad that Rossi thought the night had gone well.

I told Palomata about one of the main standoffs in that night’s debate, a point that seemed germane to the clerk. Both candidates were asked if they thought the minimum wage was supposed to be a “living wage” and would either one consider scaling it back.

“I don’t know of anybody getting rich on the minimum wage,” Gregoire told the hostile crowd (the debate was sponsored by the Association of Washington Business and the questions came from their membership). “The people of Washington are struggling. They go to the gas pumps and can’t afford to fill up the car, they go to the grocery and can’t afford to put food on the table…Washingtonians need to be able to provide for their families. Plenty of people are working minimum wage jobs that need to provide for their families, and I want to stand with Washingtonians.”

She said she supported the voter-approved minimum wage, $8.07 an hour. She also said she supported training programs for teen workers.

Rossi took the opposite point of view. Touting his Washington Restaurant Association endorsement (the most adamant opponents of the minimum wage), he said:   “The minimum wage was not meant to be a family wage. It’s meant to be an entry level wage.”

The news pissed off Palomata. “If he lowers it,” he said, “I don’t want to vote for him. I’d be cutting my head off. I don’t want to demote myself.” Palomata and his girlfriend live in a rented cabin in Birch Bay, just south of Blaine, where the median family income is $44,000. (By way of comparison, the median family income in Seattle is $65,000.)

While Rossi’s line on the minimum wage didn’t play well with the Blaine convenience store clerk, it did play well with the crowd on the right side of the tracks in the 6,500-square-foot Semiahmoo Grand Ballroom at the Semiahmoo Resort Golf Spa, the classy hotel tucked away on the northern shoreline of the Puget Sound where AWB members drank red wine and nodded in approval at most of Rossi’s answers.

If you were to judge by the crowd reaction—the AWB gave Rossi an award earlier in the day and interrupted him several times during the debate with applause—Rossi was right when he boasted to Palomata about his successful night. He hit the themes he has hit before: Gregoire has increased spending 33 percent, created a $3.2 billion deficit, and raised taxes by $500 million. He also points out that Washington has one of the highest rates of small business failures in the U.S.

In contrast, Rossi says he will create an “entrepreneurial state,” balance the budget (“I’ve done it before and I will do it again”), and scrap all the requirements that he says are keeping insurance companies from coming to our state and creating a competitive health care climate.

Rossi’s most successful turn came when he accurately busted the governor for not being the deciderer on the Viaduct. “The big problem we have with transportation in this state is that we can’t make a decision until everybody is holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” he said. “Sometimes you just have to make a decision.”

While Gregoire wasn’t an audience favorite, she was authoritative and forceful and certainly landed some blows herself. She unraveled Rossi’s talk of deregulating health care by linking Rossi’s GOP philosophy to the Bush-era disaster on Wall Street saying: “His other solution is deregulation, well, that worked great for the financial institutions of America.”

She also scored points (and even got a laugh from the otherwise unfriendly audience) when she answered a question posed by Rossi about her budget. Each candidate got to ask the other a question and Rossi asked if Gregoire had the chance, would she do her budget differently? The laugh came when she started by saying “unlike you” she would answer his question—Rossi had just dodged her question to him which asked what policies he disagreed with President Bush on.

Then she hit her main anti-Rossi theme (that his values are out of sync with the voters), saying she stood by her budget: “I balanced the budget and I will do it again…and not on the backs off children and seniors like he did, but by understanding the values of the people of Washington.” Rossi’s 2003 budget raised taxes on seniors in nursing homes, cut education funding by almost $1 billion, and threw 40,000 low-income kids off health care.

As they did in their first debate, the pair continued to fight over the projected $3.2 billion budget deficit. Gregoire maintains the state has a surplus and Rossi maintains Gregoire has spent the state into the red.

One final note that I found newsworthy in its own right beyond the debate: Governor Gregoire said the family leave act, a pet project of the liberal Senate, including Democratic Senate Majority leader Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3, Spokane), was “suspended.” Gregoire noted this when she was asked to detail her plans to deal with the projected deficit. (Rossi’s only specific to the same question was that he would cut the governor’s office budget, which he said Gregoire had increased by bulking up her “entourage.”)