Governor's race: final days

With their fierce rematch winding down, Gov. Christine Gregoire and challenger Dino Rossi are offering voters two very different lenses through which to view the contest: the wide-angle or the close-up.

Gregoire wants voters to remember she's part of a national Democratic ticket. With supporters waving "Obama-Gregoire" signs, she recently has shared the stage with a stream of big-name Democratic endorsers: former Vice President Al Gore, current VP pick Joseph Biden, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, and much of Washington's congressional delegation.

To hear Rossi's closing days' stump speech, you wouldn't know there was a national election going on. At stops in Everett and Mount Vernon last weekend, part of his statewide "Victory Tour," Rossi didn't mention John McCain or Sarah Palin. But he did try to hitch himself to the mood for change — noting that a Republican has not been elected governor here since John Spellman in 1980.

Along with their competing narratives, Gregoire and Rossi have spent their final days on the campaign trail offering clashing views about the most pressing issue that will face the next governor — the state's projected $3.2 billion budget shortfall, and who can be trusted to fix it.

National change — Gregoire

At a Lynnwood rally for Gregoire attended by a few hundred supporters last weekend, there was plenty of talk about McCain, Palin, and — most of all — President Bush. Many of the loudest cheers came when Gregoire's re-election bid was cast as part of that national partisan context.

"Your efforts today and over the next several days will make sure that not only Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George Bush are swept into the trash bin of history, but that their pal Dino Rossi goes with them," said U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island to a loud ovation.

Gregoire argued that Washington is doing pretty well despite the national economy. She boasted that her creation of the $700 million "Rainy Day" fund has left Washington in much better shape than many other states.

"We uniquely have a surplus. We have money in the bank," she said, noting a Pew Research report this year ranked the state one of the top three best-managed in the country.

"Now that's not to say that the failed economic policies of George Bush and what's happened on Wall Street and the mortgage meltdown and the credit crisis has not impacted our state," Gregoire said.

She portrayed the projected budget shortfall as a temporary hitch, almost an annoyance.

"Yeah, we've got to build the budget and yes I'll do that and I'll do it with the fairness and compassion that I did four years ago," Gregoire said. She already has ordered state agencies to make cuts to prepare for the shortfall.

But her real passion, Gregoire made clear, is finding ways to "rebuild this economy" with "good family-wage jobs" so the state can resume spending money on her priorities like schools, health care and the environment.

Even as the economic forecasts have worsened, Gregoire touted new spending, such as her goal of guaranteeing health insurance for all low-income children in the state by 2010, a plan that is expected to cost the state more than $120 million over the next two years.

Rossi, she argued, would only make the budget problem worse with his plans to eliminate the estate tax on the state's wealthiest families and siphon off money from the state general fund to build roads.

And she said Rossi, a millionaire businessman, has shown he's out of touch with comments about cutting unemployment benefits and lowering the minimum wage.

Gregoire said that she got "working-family values" from her mother, a single-parent short-order cook. What Rossi proposes, she said, are "not working-family values."

State change — Rossi

Rossi has been telling a much different story about Washington's fortunes in the final days of the governor's race.

Speaking to a small group at Mount Vernon mortuary last weekend, he laid the blame for the state's budget woes not on Wall Street or national trends, but on Gregoire's spending decisions.

Rossi noted the state budget grew 33 percent during Gregoire's first term, outpacing the growth during liberal Democrat Mike Lowry's single term as governor.

"If she was as fiscally conservative as Mike Lowry there wouldn't be a deficit today," Rossi said. "It's not a revenue problem, it's a spending problem. That's what's going on in Olympia right now."

Despite Gregoire's repeated promises that she won't raise taxes, Rossi insisted that she will, pointing to similar statements she made four years ago before implementing taxes on wealthy estates, cigarettes and liquor.

"I know when the right time for Christine Gregoire to talk about raising taxes is: one hour after she gets sworn in again," Rossi said.

As he has throughout the campaign, Rossi declined to offer any detail about what portions of the state budget he would target for cuts.

He recently acknowledged he might have to delay some of his own goals, such as elimination of the estate tax and diverting sales-tax money from the general fund for his $15 billion road-building plan.

Instead of specifics, Rossi promised to scour the state budget from top to bottom with the aid of a fresh set of eyes in the state bureaucracy.

While Rossi said he met many dedicated state employees during his time as a state senator, he added: "We also have a lot of people who have been appointed down there that have been shifting around for a generation, smoking each other's exhaust."

As governor, Rossi said, he'd get to appoint more than a thousand people to run state agencies, and even select a replacement for state Supreme Court Justice Gerry Alexander, who will reach the mandatory retirement age.

"This election is not about Christine Gregoire. It's not about me. It's not about the '04 election," Rossi said. "What this is about is changing the culture and direction of state government for a generation."

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published October 31, 2008, was corrected October 31, 2008. A previous version of this story incorrectly misspelled the first name of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.