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.”)

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.

The Seattle P-I’s Neal Modie.  The Everett Herald’s Jim Haley.  The Columbian’s Gregg Herrington.  KING-5 News’ Robert Mak.  The AP’s Dave Ammons.  The Seattle Times’ Ralph Thomas and David Postman.  And that’s only a partial list of Washington state political reporters who have quit the business this year alone.  And in a busy, presidential election year at that.

Our state’s news industry is beginning to look like one of those post-apocolyptic movies:  a desolate, pockmarked, media landscape, largely devoid of people (especially those journalist/heroes of my own post-Watergate youth)… a chaotic scenario in which bloggers like me find ourselves playing the role of Mad Max.

Well… I may be mad, but I’m not crazy, and as sorry as I am to see the sorry state of political reporting in our region, I also see a tremendous opportunity to step into the void left by the departure of Postman and his colleagues, and help take independent media to the next level.  That’s why I am so excited to announce that Josh Feit is joining the HA team to lead our HA’08 Election Coverage from now through the November election.

Josh is a ten-year veteran of WA’s political press corps as a reporter and News Editor for the recently defunct soon to be struggling Stranger, and with his decade of experience HA now claims the weighty mantle of “Seattle’s Only Online Newspaper.” For the next two months Josh will be filing two to three major stories a week, plus numerous shorter blog posts, providing the kind of in-depth, independent coverage of Burner v. Reichert, Gregoire v. Rossi and other statewide races you won’t find anywhere else.  Really.

How did Reichert get the NEA endorsement?  What is Rossi’s exact position on choice?  What exactly does the Commissioner of Public Lands do, and is it really an elected office?  These are all questions to which the majority of voters don’t know the answer, because our state’s few remaining political reporters either don’t have the time or the curiosity to ask the pertinent questions.

Well, that’s now Josh’s job.

But it’s a job he can’t afford to do for free, and so after brainstorming the possibilities, I decided to roll the dice on the concept of “community-funded journalism” and promise Josh $2,500 I don’t have.  And that, loyal readers, is where you come in.

This is more than just an opportunity to get the in-depth political coverage you crave; it’s an opportunity to prove to the corporate media that there is still a viable market for this kind of reporting, and… an opportunity to prove to potential investors that online ventures like HA’08 can compete for audience and dollars in this new media paradigm.

And, at only $2,500 for two months of in-depth political reporting on the contests that matter most, Josh is coming at a bargain price.  That’s only one hundred $25.00 contributions… or fifty $50.00 contributions… or… well… you do the math, and then please give whatever you can:

Amount:

It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be scary. I’ve promised Josh complete editorial independence, while reserving the right to viciously trash his posts in my own. None of us know exactly what will come of this experiment, so stay tuned as we build out the HA’08 Election Coverage page, adding new content and features.

And please, show your support for independent journalism by giving today.