Fully a quarter of voters in this state seem to be ignorant of the fact that "GOP" is a nickname for the Republican Party. This means that Dino Rossiapos;s pathetic ruse of running for governor under the "Prefers GOP" banner instead of what he really is, a Republican, is actually working. I find it distasteful, but Iapos;m not a Republican. Itapos;s hard to imagine a Republican finding this anything other than offensive, unless they subscribe to a win-at-any-costs mentality. Anyone here a Washington State Republican? What do you think of this little feint? Do you know any Republicans in Washington State? What do they think? If youapos;re a regular reader (Iapos;ve got, like, three, right?) then feel free to comment here directly. If youapos;re soliciting someone elseapos;s opinion, Iapos;d appreciate if you just reported on it. Iapos;m not so attention-starved that I need transient readers.
Overall, Iapos;m getting pretty bummed with the Rossi campaign. The Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) has spent more on its front group "ChangePAC" then either gubernatorial candidate has on their respective campaigns ChangePAC in turn spends its money on blatant attack ads against Gregoire while Rossi can conveniently look the other way. One of the ads accuses Gregoire of claiming that weapos;re in a budget surplus weapos;re in a budget shortfall. The trouble is, we -are- in a budget surplus. The shortfall that the ad speaks of is our projected budget for next year. If Gregoire had actually said that we were "right now" (her words) in a budget deficit, that would be untrue. The ad is attacking her for stating facts on the ground and lifting a single sentence of hers for a convenient soundbite.
Just yesterday, BIAW dumped another four million dollars into ChangePAC. To put that in perspective, weapos;ve never had a governorsapos; race cost more than 30 million from all sides. Thatapos;s more than ten percent of this raceapos;s funding in the past twenty-four hours.
To make matters even better, thereapos;s good reason to believe that this funding is actually illegal. Rossiapos;s talked over the phone with the coordinating council for BIAW. The whole justification for their unrestrained spending is that they are supposed to be -independent- of the candidate, with absolutely no coordination between the two. If Rossi can casually chat them up, it would be pretty easy for him to run a left-hand/right-hand operation, and it looks like heapos;s doing just that. Right now BIAW is facing two lawsuits concerning this, one from our conservative Attorney General, even. However, the money still flows into those attack ads.
If you want to know why Gregoire is the single-most-threatened incumbent among all the governors, congressional representatives, and senators this election, look no further than the BIAW funding machine.
Having reviewed the issues and the candidatesapos; stands on them, Iapos;m seriously thinking about donating something to Gregoire. Iapos;ve never been too enchanted with her personally, but sheapos;s mostly batting on my side, while Rossi is pretty much for everything Iapos;m not, and against everything Iapos;m for.
Gregoire has been a fairly low-key governor, but only in publicity, not accomplishments. Her whole term was in doubt until spring of 2005 due to the vote-counting fiasco that was like the 2000 national election in miniature. Sheapos;s more draconian than I like when it comes to law enforcement, but thereapos;s zero chance Rossi would be any different. She has signed into law important anti-discrimination, traffic improvement, conservation, anti-pollution, and education bills, that I have all supported. All the while, sheapos;s managed to balance the budget or leave surpluses. Frankly, I have no problems with another four years under her.
The rest of this will focus on what concerns me about a Rossi governorship.
Rossi claims that his ultra-conservative social politics wonapos;t influence his role as Governor. Okay, fine, I donapos;t believe a word of that, Iapos;ll ignore it and focus on whatapos;s to look forward to on a purely nuts-and-bolts level:
1. Rampant Development (Corrupt)
Thereapos;s no question that Rossiapos;s not deeply in the pockets of BIAW, and what do they want? To build buildings, of course Whatapos;s wrong with that? I donapos;t have to drive more than a couple miles to see what corrupt developers can do. Every major building development around here has had fraudulent environmental impact reports, blatantly-false traffic impact reports, and can generally ignore the building codes if they can keep the kickbacks flowing. Sure, some people may not be overly concerned about "environmental impact." Thatapos;s like, salmon, right? Environmental impact is also about things like the next heavy rainfall sending an avalanche of eroded hillside down into the homes and businesses below. If youapos;re going to be voting for Rossi, better live at the top of the plateau already.
2. King County (Doomed)
If the top of your plateau happens to be in King County, you might want to consider moving, anyway. Despite the fact that Rossi has been your next-door neighbor up until now (yeah, he lives in Sammamish), he despises this place. For one thing, he knows that heapos;s never, ever going to win it. If King County were wiped off the face of the Earth, Washington State would be a deep shade of red. If youapos;ve seen any of the billboards in Eastern Washington, Iapos;m sure youapos;re aware of how much the outliers blame King County in general, and Seattle in particular, for all of their real and imagined woes. As far as Rossiapos;s supporters are concerned, once heapos;s ensconced in Olympia, it will be payback time.
With Gregoire, the situation is...more nuanced, shall we say? I have no doubt that King County will receive some preferential treatment, but why bend over backwards for a county that will probably turn out for you again and again? I imagine sheapos;d want to do something to bring the suburbs to her side. Theyapos;re the ones like Issaquah that pretend to be green but still turn out for Rossi (more on Rossiapos;s environmental record later). However, if Gregoire wins, it will be because of counties like Snohomish and especially Pierce going over to her side. Thatapos;s where Iapos;d expect the bulk of her favor to lie.
3. Deregulation (In Excess)
Rossiapos;s a big fan of this, though perhaps heapos;s not talking it up quite as much these days. National-scale deregulation is the reason why Seattle is no longer a regional center of finance, as of last month.
Gregoire a supporter of deregulation? It shouldnapos;t be surprising that for a Democrat like her, the answer is not so much.
4. Minimum Wage (Minimized)
Our minimum wage is the highest in the nation, but itapos;s still under $9.00 an hour. Itapos;s actually close to the level in real money of what the federal minimum wage was when it was first implemented. Itapos;s just that our minimum wage gets adjusted for inflation, while the federal one becomes worth less and less every year. Businessmen whine and moan about this ad nauseam, but so far our increasing minimum wage has never impacted our economy (which is rather healthy in comparison to the rest of the nation, you may have noticed) the way they said it would. I have a great deal of skepticism that arbitrarily reducing this, which is what Rossi supports, would benefit our economy the way they claim. If one doesnapos;t consider the economy to be an end in itself, and rather thinks of it as a tool to support the general welfare of the population at large, my skepticism of the benefits of lowering our minimum wage becomes magnified about twenty times. In particular, since Iapos;m an unwilling participant in our tipping culture, I think a healthy minimum wage would obviate the need for such baroque practices. I hardly need to add that Gregoire is a supporter of our minimum wage.
5. Honesty (A Shortfall)
In my opinion, Rossiapos;s entire "GOP" campaign is a fraud. Heapos;s probably in collusion with illegal "independent" donors. What does that say about how heapos;s going to run our government? I see him as person with zero respect for transparency. He thinks he going to win this campaign with a cheap trick and deep pockets, and maybe heapos;s right.
6. Gridlock (Plenty)
Rossi likes to talk up his bipartisan leanings. Our state house and senate is probably going to stay in Democratic hands, this cycle. They seem to like him about as much as I do. The good news is that a lot of his legislative initiatives are going to be stillborn, though he will still be able to wreak havoc with the executive branch. The bad news for all of us will be when it comes time to decide a state budget, that is, every year.
Gregoire was able to get major legislation passed when Republicans still controlled one of our houses. She was able to convince the Republican leadership to go along with the gas tax increase that has undoubtedly saved our stateapos;s budget from an even worse catastrophe. I think itapos;s a pretty good display of bipartisanship to accomplish that. Furthermore, if youapos;re still griping about a ten cent gas tax, with gasoline prices being what they are already, Iapos;d say youapos;re missing the forest for the trees. Iapos;d pay a fifty cent gas tax if I could get gas prices at the level they were when Bill Clinton was president. Remember 97 cents a gallon? That was only ten years ago.
7. Fiscal Policy (A Mystery)
Gregoire managed to overcome a 2.2 billion dollar deficit in her first term, by the way. Our projected shortfall was, when it was announced, 3.2 billion dollars. Sheapos;s already moved forward with cuts that have eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars from the projection. Rossi talks a lot about this deficit and his fiscal responsibility, but just what is it? I canapos;t answer that because I donapos;t know: heapos;s not talking about it. In my view, we have Gregoire engaged in action at this moment, and Rossi heckling her from the outside.
8. Environment (A Disaster)
Thereapos;s nothing nuanced about this. To Rossi, the environment begins and ends with his desktop wallpaper. He doesnapos;t even want to concede that Puget Sound has any ecological problems, probably because part of Puget Sound borders King County. Heapos;s stayed very quiet on the subject of global warming, which makes it obvious where his sympathies lie. The fellowapos;s whole campaign is run by developers and agricultural concerns, and we know what good friends of the environment they are. All in all, his record of voting on environmental issues has been rated at 32 while he was in the state legislature.
Gregoire was the director of the Department of Ecology who spearheaded the effort to get the federal government to actually cough up what they owed us for Hanford. Well, they never did, but not because of her lack of effort. That was back in the Bush One years, and yeah, those guys didnapos;t like the environment that much, either.
People are voting for Rossi for the same reasons they voted for Bush: heapos;s a likable guy, friendly smile, going to bring a change from business as usual, staunch family values. After eight years, donapos;t they regret this sort of decision-making already? Gregoire has done decently well as governor, better than she did as Attorney General, in my point of view. With Rossi, weapos;d get Bush on the state level for the next four years. Wouldnapos;t that be something?
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