Biography:

Chris Gregoire was born in Adrian, Mich., on March 24, 1947, but moved to Washington state as an infant after her mother, Sybil, filed for divorce from an abusive husband.

Mother and daughter settled on a small farm in Auburn, Wash., where Gregoire lived until she went away to college at the University of Washington. She received a bachelor's degree in speech and sociology, but couldn't find a job in teaching, so she became a clerk-typist in a state parole office.

She later moved to Everett, north of Seattle, where she met her future husband, Mike, when both worked with the state welfare investigation unit. She went to law school at Gonzaga University in Spokane and after a year, was married.

After graduating from law school in 1977, she was hired for the state attorney general's Eastern Washington office in Spokane. She later became the first woman deputy attorney general and moved to Olympia, where the family still resides.

In 1988, she was tapped as director of the state Department of Ecology. In 1992, she won the first of three terms as state attorney general. When her longtime ally Gov. Gary Locke announced in the summer of 2003 that he wouldn't seek a third term in 2004, fellow Democrat Gregoire jumped into the race.

Gregoire and her husband have two daughters.

Past Campaigns:

Chris Gregoire bounded to the state's political stage in 1992 by winning an open seat for attorney general in her first bid for public office. She defeated a popular prosecutor, John Ladenburg of Pierce County, for the Democratic nomination, and the state's senior prosecutor and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Norm Maleng in the general.

She was re-elected in 1996 and 2000 by wide margins. She declined entreaties to run for the U.S. Senate in 2000 against Republican incumbent Slade Gorton, who had hired her when he was attorney general.

But by the time her longtime ally Gov. Gary Locke announced in the summer of 2003 that he wouldn't run for re-election in 2004, she jumped into the race. She easily won the Democratic nomination in September, 2004, defeating King County Executive Ron Sims 67 percent to 28 percent, with four others far back.

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