Gregoire's dilemma: fight or settle?

By Ralph Thomas
Seattle Times Olympia bureau

	Christine Gregoire
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Four years ago, Gregoire called the bungled appeal in the so-called Beckman case the low point of her professional career — "nothing else approaching this," she said. To make matters worse, it happened just as she was launching her campaign for a third term as attorney general.

Now Gregoire is heading into the election of her life — trying to become Washington's next governor — and the Beckman controversy is roiling again.

A lawsuit filed last year by former assistant attorney general Janet Capps, the only person who lost her job over the missed appeal deadline, is coming to a head. Capps claims she was unfairly scapegoated by Gregoire and her top deputies.

With the two sides heading into mediation talks tomorrow, Gregoire faces a dicey legal and political dilemma: Would it be better to settle with Capps or go to trial?

If the state pays a big settlement to Capps, it "would be viewed as hush money" to prevent more bad Beckman publicity, Anne Bremner, Gregoire's attorney, said last week to the federal judge handling the case.

But going to trial — and having the Beckman ordeal replayed in painstaking detail — isn't a very appealing alternative. The case is scheduled to run for two weeks in July, two months before the primary election.

Regardless of whether the case goes to trial, Gregoire's political foes aim to make the most of Beckman, a case that involved three developmentally disabled men — Eric Busch, Damon Beckman and William Coalter — who had been sexually and physically abused in a state-licensed adult family home.

Earlier this month, the campaign for King County Executive Ron Sims, one of Gregoire's opponents for the Democratic nomination, gave The Seattle Times a stack of documents that surfaced recently in the Capps case.

The documents, including internal e-mails and notes from phone conversations, indicate Gregoire's top deputies influenced the outcome of an investigation into the missed appeal, an inquiry Gregoire's office had billed as independent. The report was shaped to downplay broad management problems and to pin most of the blame on Capps.

Gregoire has called the accusations ridiculous and says her political rivals risk alienating their own supporters by making it a campaign issue.
 
Tim Hatley, Sims' campaign manager, said Sims does not plan to talk about the Beckman controversy in public. But Phil Talmadge, the other Democrat in the gubernatorial race, does.

Talmadge, a lawyer and former state Supreme Court justice, has been Gregoire's most outspoken critic throughout the campaign. He said the new documents fit into what he calls a pattern of "ethical lapses" by Gregoire and leave her more vulnerable than ever.

"You've got to believe that the Republicans are licking their chops to bring this out," said Talmadge.

They are.

"Cover-up" alleged

Earlier this week, the state Republican Party put out a news release accusing Gregoire of a "cover-up" on the botched Beckman appeal. And leaders of the Republican-controlled state Senate announced last week they plan to hold a hearing on the matter.

For now, Republican Dino Rossi, who left the state Senate last year to run for governor, plans to let party leaders and his former legislative colleagues take the lead in haranguing Gregoire over Beckman. But if Gregoire wins the primary and it comes to a showdown with her in the fall, the Beckman fiasco could bolster Rossi's attempt to portray the attorney general as a bad manager.

In 2000, Gregoire weathered the Beckman storm, attracted only nominal opposition and was re-elected by a comfortable margin.

Will her opponents make it stick this time around?

Seattle pollster Stuart Elway said Gregoire has a lot of cushion in early polls, especially over her Democratic opponents. Elway speculated that's why the Sims campaign publicized the documents in the Capps case.

"They've got to make up some ground somehow," Elway said.

But Tim Zenk, Gregoire's campaign spokesman, predicted Sims is the one who will suffer.

"It's going to kill Sims in his base," said Zenk. "Democrats don't like other Democrats beating up on one another."

Zenk said Beckman is an old issue that most voters have "already factored into their decision."

Even if Gregoire winds up embroiled in a high-profile trial against Capps, the issue won't resonate with voters, said Blair Butterworth, one of the state's most prominent Democratic campaign consultants.

"The more turns it takes, the more people are going to say, 'It's just politics,' " said Butterworth, who for the first time in two decades is not working for any of the candidates for governor.

Besides, Butterworth said, the Beckman controversy has grown extremely complex and won't fit very well into 30-second TV ads.

Randy Pepple, a Republican campaign consultant, disagrees. "Mismanagement is a relatively easy concept," he said.

Now, with documents that suggest Gregoire's office tried to "manage the controversy for political purposes," Pepple said Beckman could pose a much bigger problem for her.

"This goes to character and credibility," he said.

"The buck stops here"

To confront the Beckman issue, Gregoire is taking a tack similar to the one she used in 2000 — accepting responsibility but not blame.

Her campaign sent out talking points that recycle a quote from last year: "At the end of the day, the buck stops here."

And they are highlighting the "dramatic steps" her office has taken since Beckman to prevent another missed appeal. A review completed last year by a committee of outside attorneys found that the attorney general's Tort Division had made "significant improvements" and concluded it was unlikely that another mistake like Beckman could happen again.

"Chris Gregoire stood up and took responsibility," said Zenk. "So let's move on."

Ralph Thomas: 360-943-9882 or rthomas@seattletimes.com

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