After last night’s debate at KOMO TV, I got a chance to ask both Dino Rossi and Gov. Chris Gregoire a question during their respective post-show press conferences. (Each candidate gave the press about five minutes.)

During the debate, Rossi dodged a viewer question about mass transit by saying his role as governor was to oversee the state’s highways. Mass transit alternatives like buses and light rail, he said, were local issues. 

However, his transportation plan actually takes $650 million away from Sound Transit’s budget (putting the money toward state roads.) Sound Transit’s plan was approved by local voters.

I asked Rossi how that part of his plan—taking money away from a locally-approved transit option— jibed with his statement that local voters should be in control of transit solutions. 

Rossi said the money was for HOV-lane connections between 405 and 520, and if local voters didn’t like that part of his plan, he would take it out. 

I didn’t get to ask him if voters could also take out the $560 million in gas tax money that’s in his plan. Rossi has run TV ads lampooning the gas tax. 

During Gregoire’s Q&A, I asked about the $3.2 billion deficit. Gregoire maintained during the debate that Washington state has a surplus, but as has been widely reported, the state is facing a $3.2 billion deficit. 

Indeed, Rossi told the press corps that Gregoire was living in an “alternate universe.” He said it’s like she has $800 in her checking account now, but she’s ignoring the $4,000 worth in bills she has due in January. 

Gregoire said the $3.2 billion deficit was a projection for 2011, but currently, based on the budgets she has passed, we have “money in the bank.” That is true: $500 million; plus cuts she’s proposed that will put the 2009 budget in the black to the tune of $800 million, her campaign says. 

Gregoire differentiated this from the $2.2 billion deficit she inherited from the Rossi-Locke budget which, she said, was a literal deficit that “I turned into a surplus.”

Gregoire took the opportunity to blame the deficit projections on “the collapse that happened on Wall Street” and the “failed policies of George Bush” which Rossi supports.

I’m still mulling over the debate itself. Both candidates had their moments.

Gregoire used just about every question to attack Rossi for being “out of step with Washington values” by pointing to the 2003 budget which Rossi wrote as a state senator—cutting 40,000 kids off health care and raising fees on seniors in nursing homes. She got off her best line of the night by sticking to this theme of Rossi’s indifference to vulnerable Wahsingtonians when she noted that Rossi’s 2003 budget stepped on a voter-approved initiative for smaller class sizes. Rossi balanced the budget, she said, “by taking it out on the hides of our kids…That’s just not our values.”

Gregoire actually landed her best blow, though, when she directly addressed the day’s earlier dust up over her stem cell research ad, which The Seattle Times reported was misleading. She explained that Rossi was against embryonic stem cell research, which is the most useful field of stem cell research when it comes to finding cures for diseases such as diabetes and cancer and alzheimers. Rossi had opened the debate by seizing on the stem cell controversy, saying he supported stem cell research. But when Rossi tried to repeat the claim in his closing statement—obviously he senses that his socially conservative positions are out of synch with the independent voters both candidates are fighting for in this nail-biter—it rang hollow.  His statement that “we have to cure some of these terrible diseases” sounded pretty lackluster in light of how Gregoire had reframed the issue.

Without a doubt, Rossi’s best moment came when he recited (almost comically) a seemingly endless list of police guild endorsements, including Seattle’s.  

Although, Rossi’s best moments typically came through emotional appeals rather than when he got into the specifics. When he lowered his voice and talked about “cherishing” the teaching profession, explaining that his dad was a Seattle school teacher, he may have negated all of Gregoire’s wonky attacks about Rossi’s assaults on education funding.   

AP reporter Rachel La Corte filed a basic recap of the debate  which correctly captured Gregoire in her new-found attack mode:

Gregoire said it was important to point out the differences between herself and Rossi.

“We disagree on priorities, we disagree on values, from stem cell research to global warming,” she said. “Let’s move forward as a state. Let’s not compromise our values or our priorities.”

The debate covered several other issues, including transportation, the environment, crime and education.

Gregoire has made the health of Puget Sound a cornerstone of her campaign and as governor has signed several environmental bills into law, including the creation of the Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency responsible for determining the current health of the sound and setting priorities for meeting the goal of a healthy sound by 2020.

“We need a plan that is bold and is leadership-driven,” she said. Rossi “has no plan to do anything about Puget Sound and no plan on global climate change.”

Rossi said that his plan to improve the state’s transportation system will lower emissions. He didn’t offer any other specifics on Puget Sound or other issues but said he would be a “very good environmental steward.”

It’s worth noting: Rossi said he would be a “good environmental steward” because his grandmother had taught his family to “leave the campsite better than how you found it.” It was a sweet anecdote he repeated several times. Gregoire got fed up with the touching story and belittled it by tying Rossi to his financial patron the BIAW (perhaps $1 million this election to oust Gregoire),  the business lobby that Rossi voted with 99 percent of the time as a state senator.  

I do wonder what Rossi’s environmentally conscious grandmother would think of the BIAW’s agenda. The BIAW spent last legislative session fighting against environmental regulations such as the carbon cap plan and a bill to make carbon emissions a factor in land use decisions.

I saw mustachioed-Eastern-Washington rancher Peter Goldmark, the Democratic candidate for Commissioner of Public Lands, speak at a Sierra Club event in downtown Seattle on Wednesday night. The Sierra Club has endorsed Goldmark.

It was the same day word got out that $16.8-billion-timber-giant Weyerhaeuser had dropped $100,000 into the Committee for Balanced Stewardship, the forest products industry PAC that’s supporting Goldmark’s opponent, Republican incumbent Doug Sutherland. And man, was Goldmark fired up about that.

“We will not allow the industry to buy another election,” he boomed, “I pledge not to take any money from the industry I regulate.”

He made the case, citing a report by the Seattle Times , that Sutherland’s lackadaisical oversight of Weyerhaeuser land had led to the devastating landslides in Lewis County in December 2007. “There is an obvious connection between campaign donations and lax regulations,” he told the crowd of environmental activists who were packed into the 1st Avenue loft.

Sutherland disputes the claim that he’s at fault for the devastation in Lewis County, recently telling the Seattle Times: “It’s hard to say I could have stopped that storm, through regulation, at the Washington border.”

Goldmark’s campaign manager, Heather Melton, scoffs at that, saying: “The storm made a bad situation worse. Rather than relying on Weyerhaeuser, the Department of Natural Resources should have had a state geologist come out and review that site before allowing a clear cut on a steep slope to identify if there was unstable soil.”

Goldmark’s strong showing in the August primary has turned this low-profile race into one of the sharpest showdowns this season: Doing better than any other challenger on this year’s ballot, Goldmark got 49 to Sutherland’s 51. On Wednesday night, he told his Sierra Club supporters that his campaign to unseat Sutherland was about “the public interest vs. the special interests” and that it was time to stop “doing political favors in exchange for campaign donations.”

His argument about political quid pro quos rang true. When I covered the legislature in 2007 and 2008, I watched a series of bills to prevent Glacier Northwest from expanding its strip mining work on Maury Island get gutted by Sutherland. Glacier Northwest, which gave $50,000 to the timber industry PAC the same day as Weyerhaeuser (September 8), also made a couple of handsome donations to Sutherland last year, totaling $2,800, according to the Public Disclosure Commission.

According to the latest numbers from the PDC, Goldmark has raised $629,000 (mostly from environmental groups, the Democratic Party, and unions). Not including the timber PAC, Sutherland has raised $502,000 (mostly from timber according to a recent Seattle Times article.)

Governor Sarah Palin isn’t the only first-term, female governor from a Pacific Northwest state.

Governor Chris Gregoire has similar stats. Add in the fact that Gregoire has tried to work with Palin on regional issues, and suddenly Gregoire becomes a valuable asset to the Democratic party: She has the credibility to weigh in on the national conversation about the famous governor next door.

Gov. Gregoire–who’s pro-Plan B, pro-choice, pro-accurate sex ed, and believes global warming isn’t a biblical plague, but rather a human-made mess that demands a real-life solution (like the carbon-cap legislation she passed last year)–should tell the press what it’s like to work with an arch-conservative like Palin. It’s likely Gov. Gregoire wouldn’t have very nice things to say. And it’s likely those not very nice things to say would get national attention.

That’s a golden campaign opportunity for Gregoire. She’d immediately become part of the national Obama story while undermining the Palin girl-power schtick and  the McCain/Palin “We’re good for the environment” schtick (lie).

Bingo, with a few national headlines–“WA. Gov. Slams Palin’s Environmental and Women’s Rights Record”–Gregoire would fire up her own otherwise blase base: Liberals in King County who she ignored (and who ignored her) in 2004. While these voters aren’t particularly enthused about Gregoire in 2008, they are ga-ga over Obama. It’d be wise for Gregoire to commandeer the microphone and talk trash about Palin.

For example, let’s look at  that global warming bill. It directed Washington state’s Dept. of Natural Resources to devise an emissions cap in concert with regional players like California, Oregon, and even Canada and Mexico. (That’s the only way a carbon cap is going to have a real effect.)

What about Palin’s Alaska?

MIA, according to environmentalists who worked on the bill last year. Why? Gov. Palin doesn’t believe humans have anything to do with global warming and so, she’s not interested in regulating emissions.

Gregoire should get on the horn with Newsweek about that. Sigh. Instead she’s issuing statements to the press like this:

“I congratulate my fellow Western governor, Sarah Palin, and her family. Last night Barack Obama made history and today Sarah Palin did the same, by being named the first female, Republican vice presidential nominee,” Gregoire said in a statement.

“She’s been a committed public servant and a dedicated mother,” Gregoire said. “As a mother myself, I sincerely commend her for that, knowing that it takes strong devotion and focus. Having worked with Governor Palin, I know that she truly believes in her work and has been a strong leader for Alaska and its people.”

But as an early endorser of Democrat Barack Obama for president, Gregoire also picked up on the talking points that many other Democrats had already began hammering away with on Friday’s announcement.

“When Barack Obama announced Joe Biden as his nominee for vice president, he said his decision was not only based on him being a good partner but also someone who was ready to lead. With Governor Palin only having two years of experience as Alaska’s governor and serving as mayor of a small city prior to that, it’s something the voters need to consider and weigh carefully as this election progresses,” Gregoire said.

Talk about human emissions.