Washington: Governor

Gov. Christine Gregoire (D)

Christine Gregoire (D) Elected 2004, 1st term up Jan. 2009
Born:	03-24-1947, Adrian, MI
Home:	Olympia
Education:	U. of WA, B.A. 1969; Gonzaga U., J.D. 1977
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Mike)
Elected  Office:	WA Atty. Gen., 1992-2004.
Professional Career:	Dep. Atty. Gen., 1982-88; Dir., WA Dept. of Ecology, 1988-92.
DC Office	P.O. Box 40002, Olympia, 98504 360-902-4111 Fax: 360-753-4110 Website: www.governor.wa.gov
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Christine Gregoire is a Democrat elected governor in 2004 in the closest race in Washington history. She was born in Adrian, Michigan, but grew up on a small farm in Auburn, Washington, just south of Seattle. Her mother was a short-order cook who moved west to escape an abusive husband. Christine Gregoire graduated from the University of Washington and, unable to find a teaching position, took a job as a clerk-typist for the state parole board. She worked as a welfare caseworker, attended law school at Gonzaga University in eastern Washington, then worked for Republican Senator Slade Gorton in his Spokane office. There she drew the attention of another Republican, Attorney General Ken Eikenberry, who hired her as a deputy attorney general in Olympia. In 1988, she was Democratic Governor Booth Gardner’s unexpected choice to head the Department of Ecology. In 1992, nationally a good year for women candidates but especially good in Washington where Patty Murray was elected to the Senate and Maria Cantwell to the House, Gregoire ran as a Democrat and won election as attorney general.

She served three terms in that office and won national headlines as the lead negotiator in 1998 for the 46-state, $206 billion settlement with the tobacco industry. With high name recognition from her role in the tobacco settlement and three successful statewide races behind her, Gregoire came to be viewed as a governor-in-waiting. When Democrat Gary Locke, elected governor in 1996 and 2000, announced in 2003 that he would not run for a third term, Gregoire became the frontrunner to succeed him. But Gregoire almost didn’t run. One week after announcing her candidacy in July 2003, her doctors told her she needed a mastectomy to remove an early form of breast cancer. She considered dropping out of the race, sought counsel from Janet Napolitano and Heidi Heitkamp, both former attorneys general and breast cancer survivors who had run for governor (Napolitano won in Arizona in 2002; Heitkamp lost in North Dakota in 2000), decided to have the surgery and then returned to the campaign trail a month later.

Gregoire figured to have tough primary opposition from former state senator and state Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge and from King County Executive Ron Sims in the September 14 primary. But Talmadge dropped out of the race in April for health reasons. That left Sims, who ran to Gregoire’s left and whose political base was in the state’s most populous county and biggest media market.

Washington’s economy was hard-hit in the economic downturn; the industries that are central to the state economy—high-tech, aviation and natural resources—were slow to recover, leaving the state with the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate in 2003. That made jobs, education, taxes and the environment the staples of the primary debate until August, when it was reported that Gregoire’s sorority at the University of Washington excluded African-Americans. The Gregoire campaign charged that the Sims campaign was behind the story; Sims, who would have been the state’s first African-American governor, denied being the source. Local black leaders harshly criticized Gregoire. She responded angrily to the charges of racism and claimed that she fought within the system to eliminate the sorority’s exclusionary policy. Voters didn’t seem to hold it against her: She defeated Sims 66%-30%, carrying every county in the state including Seattle’s King County, which she won 59%-38%.

Republicans nominated state Senator Dino Rossi, a former Senate Ways and Means Committee chairman from the Seattle suburbs, who billed himself as a “fiscal conservative with a social conscience.” He credited his outlook to a humble background: The grandson of an Italian immigrant coal miner, he grew up in a family that endured financial hardship while living through the alcoholism of his mother. Rossi, the only serious candidate in the Republican primary, had been personally lobbied to run by George W. Bush in 2003 when the state party was scrambling to come up with a viable candidate.

Rossi campaigned as a moderate and as an agent of change in a state where Republicans had not won the governorship since John Spellman’s victory in 1980. He portrayed Gregoire as the representative of “a failed status quo.” Business interests lined up with Rossi, a successful commercial real estate investor who said he wanted to change the culture in Olympia to a “free enterprise model” and promised to create a cabinet-level office of regulatory reform. Gregoire, who ran as a fiscal moderate, received strong support from the state’s largest labor unions. Rossi’s support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and his opposition to abortion spurred abortion rights groups to donate heavily to Gregoire’s campaign and led Democrats to characterize him as a right-wing extremist – the same tactic that worked against the last two Republican nominees. But as a youthful suburban legislator with four children who focused on economic, rather than social, issues, Rossi was not so easily caricatured.

The 2003 budget that he helped draft as Ways and Means chairman was a matter of contention. With the state facing a $2.6 billion deficit, Rossi won praise for brokering a deal with Locke that did not raise taxes or inflict severe cuts to social programs. Gregoire claimed the budget favored business interests over funding for social programs. Rossi framed it as a move designed to make the state more business-friendly. Each continued to take aim at the other’s record in office, with Gregoire accusing Rossi of voting to cut health care benefits for children and Rossi lobbing charges about Gregoire’s stewardship as attorney general.

By October, the race seemed to be moving in Gregoire’s direction. She had built a double-digit lead in most public polls and national Republicans, who early in the campaign had high hopes for the ticket of Bush, Senate nominee George Nethercutt and Rossi, began to write off the state as a lost cause. But Rossi’s change theme gained traction in the final weeks against Gregoire, a cautious candidate who had spent nearly her entire career in one government job or another.

Washington is one of just two states that allow absentee ballots to be postmarked as late as Election Day. So it took nearly three weeks for all the votes to be counted. Rossi was up by about 1,000 votes the morning after the election, but by evening Gregoire was ahead by 14,000. The lead see-sawed for days and in the ensuing weeks the election began to take on an eerie, Florida-like hue, replete with protesters, legal challenges, allegations of ballot fraud and the intervention of national parties. On November 12, the state Democratic Party sued the King County Elections Department over its handling of provisional ballots, seeking the names of those whose ballots were invalidated. Three days later, Seattle’s King County, the state’s Democratic stronghold, discovered 10,000 uncounted ballots and Gregoire took a 158-vote lead. Republicans sought a restraining order to stop the counting of provisional ballots; a King County judge denied the request. On November 17, after all counties had reported their results with the state, Dino Rossi was the winner by just 261 votes out of 2.8 million cast.

Washington state law requires a machine recount if the margin of victory is under 2,000 votes and half of one percent. Here the race was decided by 0.0093%. So a machine recount began and on November 24 Rossi was again the winner, this time by 42 votes. Rossi called on Gregoire to concede, but she refused; on November 29, he was certified as governor-elect. Gregoire still had another option for contesting the results. State election law allowed for a hand recount under the circumstances, provided that the party requesting it pays the costs. The state party wanted to do just that, but only in the counties where Gregoire stood to gain the most votes. This made it look as if Democrats were planning to cherry-pick only Democrat-friendly counties and Republicans were quick to criticize them for it. Gregoire would not go along with the party’s plan; she said she would concede the race unless the party could raise enough to do a full statewide recount. State Democratic Chairman Paul Berendt responded, “That would be irrelevant. Concessions have no legal standing.”

With leftover money contributed from Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign and with the financial assistance of MoveOn.org and the Democratic National Committee, enough money was raised to pay for a full, $730,000 statewide hand recount. But before it was finished, the state Democrats filed another lawsuit, this one requesting that county canvassing boards be ordered to reconsider thousands of ballots rejected in the first two vote counts; Gregoire denied any involvement with that suit. Rossi said she was trying to distance herself from a legal action that “left a bad taste in the public’s mouth.” The vote-counting slogged on through December as the action shifted back and forth between county election offices and the courts. King County suddenly discovered 561 wrongly-disqualified ballots on December 13. The next day, the state supreme court rejected the state Democratic party’s request to order counties to reconsider rejected ballots. Then King County found even more uncounted ballots. Republicans filed suit in neighboring Pierce County, which they said was a fairer venue than King County, to prevent the counting of all the newfound ballots; a Pierce County judge found in their favor and kept the votes out. Democrats appealed to the state supreme court, which unanimously ruled that the disputed King County ballots could be counted. The votes were enough to put Gregoire over the top; on December 30, 58 days after Election Day, she was declared governor-elect by 129 votes. She won 48.8730% to Rossi’s 48.8685%.

In January, just days before Gregoire’s inauguration, Rossi and the Republican party filed suit in Chelan County Superior Court in central Washington asking that Gregoire’s victory be nullified and a new election held. They presented evidence of allegedly improper votes including hundreds of votes cast by felons ineligible to vote, votes cast in the names of dead persons, votes cast by non-citizens and double votes. But on June 6 Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges upheld Gregoire’s election, finding that while there was evidence of 1,678 illegal votes, there was no evidence that Gregoire benefited from them and thus the standard for court intervention in the election was not met. Later that day, Rossi announced he would not file an appeal. “With today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending this contest,” he said.

Working with solid Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, Gregoire had an accomplished first year. In one of her first acts as governor, Gregoire created an election reform task force; in March 2005, the task force findings called for a statewide voter database, mandatory audits of local election systems by the Secretary of State and an earlier primary date. She signed a controversial labor-backed unemployment insurance bill for seasonal workers, a mental health parity bill, and legislation requiring the state to adopt the same car emissions standards used by California, which are stricter than the federal government’s. She followed through on a campaign promise to create a $350 million Life Sciences Discovery Fund that would use tobacco settlement money for biotechnology research. But the big news was passage of a contentious $8.5 billion transportation package that paid for scores of highway and bridge projects with a 9.5-cent increase in the gas tax over four years. The measure generated considerable hostility and it didn’t take long for opponents to get enough signatures to place a repeal initiative on the November 2005 ballot. But the initiative—opposed by Gregoire, big business, labor and environmental groups—lost 55%-45%, thanks in large part to Seattle’s King County, where nearly half the money was to be spent on crumbling transportation infrastructure.

Gregoire had played a key role in getting the transportation package enacted. On that and a variety of other issues, legislators from both parties found themselves impressed by her level of engagement and her behind-the-scenes dealmaking skills. Yet by the end of her first year Gregoire’s job approval ratings remained low, a vestige of her tainted victory but also a reflection of a style that was not inclined toward glad-handing and a record marked by several tax increases. There was talk that Gregoire, who often came across as intense and stiff, needed a “makeover.” Her press releases late in the year suddenly referred to her as “Chris”, rather than the customary and more formal Christine; the state Democratic party commissioned focus groups to better understand and remedy negative impressions about the governor.

In 2006, Gregoire helped pass a compromise medical malpractice bill and signed off on a landmark agreement for water storage in eastern Washington, a gay rights bill and various environmental measures, including one that made Washington the first state with an electronics-waste recycling mandate. In 2007, Gregoire proposed a $30 billion budget, up $3 billion from her first two-year budget. But amidst criticism of the increase in state spending under her watch, Gregoire muted opposition by proposing a “rainy day fund” to put aside one percent of revenues each year to soften the blow during times of fiscal crisis. The legislation sets aside $134 million in 2008 if voters approve it as a constitutional amendment in November 2007.

By mid-2007, Gregoire’s approval ratings had finally broken the 50% mark, according to a SurveyUSA poll. It was widely assumed that Republican Dino Rossi, who wrote a book after the 2004 election and traveled the state giving speeches, would seek a rematch in 2008. He said he wouldn’t announce his plans until December 2007; if he does not run, Gregoire’s chances of winning reelection will improve dramatically.