Gregoire heads over Cascades in quest for votes

By Ralph Thomas
Seattle Times Olympia bureau

GORDON KING / AP State attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire emerges from her motor home as she makes a campaign stop in Yakima yesterday. Gregoire kicked off her bus tour in Eastern Washington because she went to law school at Gonzaga University in Spokane.

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"We don't have too many Democrats here," Janzen said to Gregoire, gesturing toward 20 or so supporters mingling about the picnic tables. John Mellencamp's "Small Town" blared over the loudspeaker.

Ritzville, population 1,750, was the second stop on a 10-city Gregoire-for-governor bus tour that started Thursday in Spokane and will end Wednesday in Seattle.

Like many towns in Eastern Washington, Ritzville is hurting. Its wheat-based economy has withered. The town has gone from several grocery stores down to one, and recently lost its only clothing store.

"The city itself is just dying," Janzen said. "There's nothing to keep people here."

Democrats are getting most of the blame, while Republicans get most of the votes.

Gregoire, the state's three-term attorney general, has seen her own support in Eastern Washington slip since her first election victory 12 years ago. Should she win next month's Democratic primary, the general election in November could be the closest in a long time, and she'll need to squeeze every vote she can out of Republican strongholds such as Ritzville.

After pulling up at the city park, Gregoire, her husband, their two daughters and an entourage of campaign staff members immediately fanned out among the tentative-looking crowd.

As Gregoire mingled, local fans and her campaign staff seized the photo opportunity.

While she chatted with a man in a western shirt, campaign manager Tim Zenk directed a camera-wielding aide to get a shot that showed the printing on his hat: "East Columbia Basin Irrigation District."

Ritzville's mayor and the local Chamber of Commerce president also took advantage of the chance to chat with the possible next governor. Over sandwiches and potato salad, the mayor filled her in on the big problems the town is having with its new sewage-treatment system.
 
Ted Porter, a retired commercial painter who needs a walker to get around, said the Gregoire reception was the most Democrats he's seen in one place in a long time.

"They're rare critters anymore," said Porter, who has lived in nearby Othello since 1955. "There used to be lots more of them."

Porter, a lifelong Democrat, said his own two sons became Republicans. He said he blames conservative "trash talkers" such as Rush Limbaugh.

But local Democrats are feeling more and more emboldened, said the mayor, Craig Ulleland. For the first time since 1963, Ritzville Democrats recently formed a local party organization.

"You're starting to see it, they're poking their heads out of the hole a little bit," said Ulleland, who labels himself an independent.

Gregoire said several people at the park told her that local Democrats are more fired up because of their disdain for President Bush.

Back up the road in Spokane, more than 200 supporters showed up on the front lawn of the Gonzaga University School of Law for the bus-tour kickoff rally.

Gregoire said she chose Spokane as the starting point because that's where she got her law degree and landed her first job, and where she and her husband bought their first home and started their family.

She was joined on stage by Jim Murphy, who hired Gregoire to her first job in the state Attorney General's Office nearly 30 years ago.

"I hired Chris as my law clerk, and I watched that meteor fly across the sky ever since," said Murphy, a retired judge.

Once on the bus — actually, a bus-sized RV adorned with several dozen campaign placards — Gregoire's daughters went hunting for their mother's favorite road-trip CD, Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours."

The music had to be turned down when Gregoire went to the back of the RV to make a pre-scheduled call to a prospective campaign donor.

The conversations bounced from music to fishing to soccer, but always back to politics.

As the rig rolled past the quiltwork of wheat fields, campaign manager Zenk whipped out a stack of charts that illustrate Gregoire's track record in Eastern Washington against Republicans.

"[Republicans] think they own Eastern Washington," Zenk said. "They don't."

During her first two elections for attorney general, Gregoire won all but four of Washington's 39 counties. But in 2000, she lost in 15 counties — and all but one of those were in Eastern Washington.

Thanks to strong support in Spokane and the Yakima Valley, Gregoire still beat her GOP opponent east of the mountains as she easily defeated Republican Richard Pope with 56 percent of the vote statewide. According to Zenk's charts, she has consistently fared better here than other top-of-the-ticket Democrats.

To win this general election, Zenk figures Gregoire will need slightly more than a third of the votes in Eastern Washington.

As the RV neared Walla Walla, the third stop of the tour, Gregoire said that, regardless of all the political calculations, she needs to campaign across the entire state if she wants to be an effective governor.

"Even if I don't win [Eastern Washington], I want everyone to know in January, when we go through the healing process, that I'm the governor of one Washington," she said.

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