Rossi’s official winner, so far

OLYMPIA – Inside a nondescript gray office building, everything sits ready.

Copy machines hum quietly in dark rooms, beside unopened reams of paper. The conference room is silent, a blank paper pad ready on the wall nearby. A coat rack awaits raincoats.

There is no receptionist – or anyone else – in the building. But sitting at the receptionist’s desk are two letters from the Washington State Council on Aging.

One is addressed to “Office of the Governor: Christine Gregoire.”

The other is made out to “Office of the Governor: Dino Rossi.”

It remains to be seen which of those envelopes will get opened. On Tuesday, four weeks to the day after Election Day, Rossi graduated to “governor-elect.” Secretary of State Sam Reed certified the election and last week’s recount, both of which gave Rossi a narrow margin of victory.

Still, the race remains up in the air. Normally, the empty office in Olympia would be packed as the new governor’s transition team interviewed potential staffers, juggled budget plans and decided what laws need changing.

Instead, a handful of Rossi’s transition staff is working from small offices in another state building. They’re taking job applications but can’t offer anyone a job.

“We already have a book about 3 inches thick of resumes we’ve received already,” Rossi, a Republican, said in an interview.

Gregoire’s transition director, Jim Jesernig, said he’s also fielding calls from job-seekers.

“If she wins the hand recount, I’m sure it will be like a tidal wave” of applications, Jesernig said. Gregoire’s transition team includes Spokane auto dealer Chris Marr, an adviser on business and budget policy during the campaign.

Rossi said he feels like he’s the governor, but he stopped short of calling on Gregoire, a Democrat, to concede. The two haven’t spoken in four weeks.

“The bottom line is that we’ve won this election twice now,” Rossi said. Out of nearly 3 million votes, he won the initial tally by 261. In a machine recount that ended last week, his margin of victory shrank to 42.

With an official stamp and a signature, Reed certified both those counts Tuesday morning.

“We have checked with experts around the nation, and nowhere has there ever been an election of this magnitude that is this close,” Reed said.

Now, Democrats – who are frantically raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for a hand recount – have until 5 p.m. Friday to request that second and final recount.

“It’s just a matter of how much we can afford to do,” said Kirstin Brost, spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party. “All we need is 42 votes.”

Gov. Gary Locke, who decided not to run for a third term this year, said that any hand recount should include the entire state, not just certain counties.

“We need to resolve this as quickly as possible,” he said.

Asked if he plans to donate some of his personal money to the recount effort, Locke said he’s not sure. He hadn’t been asked, he said.

“I’ll have to think about that,” said the governor, the state’s highest-ranking Democrat. “It hadn’t crossed my mind.”

Cash is very much on the minds of the party, however, which is hitting up big donors such as the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors’ Association and EMILY’s List – a group that supports the campaigns of Democratic women who support abortion rights – to help pay the recount cost. State law requires a deposit of $700,000 for a statewide hand recount, and the requester is on the hook for any costs over that as well. If the recount changes the result, the government would pick up the tab.

Any recount would begin Dec. 8 or 9. The heaviest lifting will be in Seattle and the rest of King County, where election officials are trying to rent a warehouse to accommodate 300 people counting ballots for eight to 10 days. A court challenge could stretch things into January.

That could be a problem, because the new governor is supposed to take office Jan. 12. And nobody’s really sure what happens if no new governor’s been picked by then. The state constitution says that Locke would stay in office “until his successor is elected and qualified.” But Reed said that Locke’s office has a different interpretation, and that any decision would likely be up to the attorney general’s office. And the current attorney general is Gregoire.

Locke said Tuesday that he doesn’t plan on sticking around. He’s moving his family to Seattle in early January so his kids can start school, he said, and he’ll just be commuting to Olympia after that. “It’s time to move on,” he said.

Reed, a Republican, said he’s not sure whether the hand count will be more accurate than a machine count.

“I would be comfortable calling the race over right now,” he said.