November 9, 2004 in City

Gregoire leads governor’s race

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OLYMPIA – In what remains a tight race, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire widened her narrow lead Monday, ending the day 8,736 votes ahead of Republican contender Dino Rossi.

“It’s always nice to go to bed with your lead doubled,” said Gregoire spokesman Morton Brilliant. All weekend, Gregoire’s lead had stood at 4,001 votes out of more than 2 million cast – a margin of less than two-tenths of 1 percent. Now, she’s leading by about three-tenths of 1 percent.

Gregoire did particularly well Monday in King County, where she got nearly 60 percent of the vote. She also did better than expected in Spokane and Chelan counties.

An estimated 213,000 votes remain to be counted, including late mail-in ballots and so-called “provisional ballots” given to poll voters whose legitimacy could not be immediately determined on Election Day.

“We feel fine,” said Rossi policy director Mary Lane.

The reason for the relatively poor showing in King County Monday, she said, was that many of those ballots were from people who had voted early but forgotten to sign their ballots.

“Those earlier absentees tended to be a lot of the anti-Bush votes,” she said.

She said Republicans are now counting on the counties outside metropolitan Seattle to turn the race around. More rounds of counting are slated for nearly every day through Nov. 17. Gregoire’s strongest area – King County – has an estimated 46,000 votes to count. But Spokane, Snohomish and Pierce counties, where Rossi does better, have 60,000 left.

“It’s too early to call it,” said Brilliant. “We remain tentatively upbeat.”

As the days drag on, the wait isn’t just trying candidates’ patience. It’s quickly emptying their campaigns’ wallets.

On Monday, Gregoire’s campaign manager sent out an e-mailed appeal to supporters for donations.

“As I write to you today, Chris has a narrow lead over her opponent,” Tim Zenk wrote. “However, there are still over 300,000 votes left to count. We need to keep our campaign staff intact during this process so we can send people into every county in the state to ensure that all the votes are counted.

“We must be prepared for anything in the coming weeks,” he wrote. “We must leave nothing to chance. … This process can cost tens of thousands of dollars in staff, travel and legal fees.”

Lane said Rossi will probably send out a similar appeal. The Republicans also have a network of elections observers in place, she said.

Both campaigns spent heavily on what became the most expensive governor’s race in state history. The most recent campaign finance reports, filed a week before Election Day, showed that each campaign spent about $6 million. Gregoire at that time had $442,000 left in the bank; Rossi had $123,000.

Both Gregoire and Rossi have spent the days after the election with their families and friends. Rossi’s son Jake had a birthday Sunday, so Rossi took the family and a couple of friends to the movies.

Gregoire has been working with transition staff for Republican Rob McKenna, who was elected to replace her as attorney general.

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