In Rematch, Rivals Again Tied in Polls
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 1, 2008
SEATTLE -- In Washington state, all the elements are in place to make Nov. 4 feel a lot like Feb. 2. Chris Gregoire and Dino Rossi are running for governor, and polls show a dead heat.
"It's pretty amazing. It was a dead-even tie four years ago, and most polls show it a dead-even tie this time," said Todd Donovan, a political scientist at Western Washington University. "There's a 'Groundhog Day' kind of thing to it."
In 2004, it took two months and three recounts to determine which candidate Washington voters had selected as their governor. Rossi, a Republican, was certified the winner first. But it was Democrat Gregoire who went on to spend the next four years in the governor's mansion, after a judge ruled that the final recount could include ballots discovered six weeks after voting ended. The official margin of 133 votes was .00475 percent of the 2.8 million ballots cast.
Rossi retreated to his commercial real estate business, wrote a book and awaited the rematch now unfolding across a state that has seen it all before. "Re-elect Rossi," read buttons in the overflow crowd that recently greeted the candidate in Silverdale, across Puget Sound from the governor's Seattle stronghold.
"We're going to finish what we started, folks," Rossi told the crowd. "Because of your help, we're going to win."
"Again."
Gregoire smiled a knowing smile in the booth of the diner where her mother worked as a short-order cook in what remains of downtown Auburn, now a Seattle suburb.
"Anger is a powerful incentive," the incumbent said, noting that Rossi's supporters spent four years simmering with him. "In June, people were pretty well locked in to where they were four years ago."
"It never ends -- literally," said Stuart Elway, a Seattle pollster. "This is a governor's race that's been going on for five years!"
In fact, a fair amount has changed since Round One. Gregoire has a record to defend. As governor, she has increased spending on education, health insurance for children and the environment. The expansion in government, including a rainy day fund, accompanied a surging state economy that added a quarter-million jobs and doubled exports.
The irrepressibly cheerful Rossi highlights his experience as a businessman and a successful budgeter, citing his work as chairman of the state Senate Ways and Means Committee. He calls Gregoire, who has worked only in state government, a captive of unions. She casts him as a hard-hearted conservative whose amiable sales patter obscures a social agenda out of line with the state's residents.
With the state government facing a $3.2 billion deficit amid falling tax revenue, the race sizes up as yet another referendum on whom to blame for the hard times voters see rumbling toward them.
"That's the million-dollar question," Donovan said. "How much are people going to blame her for the economic conditions, which aren't as bad here as they are in other states but are still down."
The ballot is also different. In the latest incarnation of Washington's ever-changing electoral system, candidates now appear on the ballot not as representatives of a party but as individuals who "prefer [fill-in-the-blank] party." Gregoire filled the blank "Democratic."
Rossi opted for "prefers GOP party."
"That is way smart," said Ryan Yokoyama, 23, from his perch at a seafood stand in Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. Polling shows that a significant number of voters do not know that the abbreviation stands for Grand Old Party, a nickname for the Republican Party. Political professionals, including Gregoire, say that in a cycle in which President Bush has so degraded the value of the Republican brand, Rossi's choice of words could bring him as much as an additional 2 percent of the vote.
But the 2008 ballot also harbors potential for Gregoire. Because the Nov. 4 ballot is restricted to the top two vote-getters in the state's sole primary, the general election includes no third-party candidates who might bleed support from her Seattle base.
Rossi said the tight 2004 race was evidence of his crossover appeal, coining the term "Rossi-crats" years before "Obamacan" had entered the political lexicon.
"People have a different relationship with their governor than other offices," Rossi said in an interview. "They want to like their candidate for governor."
He offered the remark after listing liberal states -- Vermont, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Rhode Island -- that have Republican governors. But it also underscored misgivings about Gregoire's persona. Widely viewed as austere and even stern on camera, Gregoire is campaigning as "Chris" this time around; in 2004, she was "Christine."
Rossi still calls her that.
"He's a salesman," Gregoire said. "That's his profession. He keeps talking about change. Tries to saddle up next to Obama."
Gregoire's approval ratings, which started low after the recount soap opera, climbed above 50 percent early last year and have held steady. Public opinion surveys show voters' evaluations of state government as "not great, but the point is no clamor for change," said Elway, the pollster. "There's no throw-the-bums-out atmosphere."
Tough ads from both sides saturate Seattle television and provide grist on the stump. Gregoire tells of comforting an 8-year-old girl frightened by a "fearmongering" Rossi spot that said the state lost track of 1,300 sexual offenders. Rossi says Gregoire's spots distort his views on reducing the minimum wage, a potent issue in hard times.
The latest poll, released Monday by the University of Washington, showed the dead-even tie loosening and Gregoire ahead by six points.
The survey put Sen. Barack Obama's lead over Sen. John McCain at 21 points, or three times the margin Sen. John F. Kerry had over Bush in 2004. That theoretically offers down-ballot Democrats coattails three times as long.
Gregoire said she has learned the hard way to take nothing for granted.
"I know best," the candidate told volunteers setting out to canvass the suburb of Des Moines on a recent afternoon. "Every vote counts."
Rossi, cheered by the full house at the Silverdale community center, said he expects a different outcome from voters and the state's revamped electoral apparatus.
"It's the number one question I get all over the state," he said. "If I win it again, is the same thing going to happen?"
"I tell people, 'There's no way I'd do this again on the same playing field.' "
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