Two years after suffering a bitter political defeat in the apple capital of Wenatchee, some of the state's best-known Republicans gathered here Saturday to discuss their party and the battle for independent-minded voters.

"This is the future of the party," said Secretary of State Sam Reed, one of the Republican moderates who helped organize the two-day Mainstream Republicans conference. "Most voters are centrists, when you come right down to it."

If any place should prod Republicans into expanding their tent, it's Wenatchee. It was here – after three ballot counts and a monthslong court fight – that Republican Dino Rossi's campaign for governor fell a whisker short of victory. A Chelan County Superior Court judge, unconvinced by conservative assertions of ballot fraud in the race, refused to invalidate the election. Democrat Chris Gregoire won by 133 votes.

Now, as the GOP tries to regain lost ground in the Legislature and elsewhere, moderates like Reed say they can show the way.

"The party needs to expand," Rossi said in an interview. "We need to welcome anybody into the group and stop putting up walls."

Asked if he'll run again for governor next year, Rossi said he'll decide by the end of this year. He said he wants to be sure it's the right decision for his wife and four children.

The weekend conference drew only about 75 people, but among them were Rossi, Attorney General Rob McKenna, Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland, congressman Doc Hastings, former congressman Sid Morrison, former Secretary of State Ralph Munro, GOP chairman Luke Esser, and more than half a dozen state lawmakers. Fired U.S. Attorney John McKay, locked in a very-public clash with the Bush administration, is slated to speak to the group today.

On Saturday, panelists discussed – and occasionally clashed over – immigration, the war, school testing and the cleanup of Puget Sound.

Some in the party disagree that moderates show the way to victory.

Doug Parris, a conservative who runs a blog called The Reagan Wing, argues that the party has weakened itself by softening its stances.

"The idea that a Party that has been moving left for 27 years and losing progressively more and more each year has found a solution in moving further left," he wrote in an e-mail Saturday night, "strains all possible credibility." Only when the party returns to staunch conservatism on matters like illegal immigration, abortion and homosexuality, he said, will it see the groundswell of grass-roots activists that it needs.

"'Mainstream' not only cannot lead," he wrote, "they haven't got a clue."

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