When it comes to the new Washington Huskies and Washington State Cougars license plates, Gov. Mike Lowry and his wife, Mary, are ticket-splitters.

Lowry, a Washington State graduate, took time during his lunch hour Monday to buy a Cougar plate.

It was the first day the new quasi-vanity tags were on sale, said Dan Tritle, a spokesman in the state Department of Licensing.

Lowry also said he’d be back sometime soon to get a Husky plate for his wife, a Washington grad, Tritle said.

The plates sell for $35, of which $28 goes to scholarship funds at the designated school. Regular vanity plates sell for $45.

First-day sales at the department’s Olympia regional office, the only one where the plates can be purchased on site, totaled about 115 Cougars and some 30 Huskies, Tritle said.

The plates, designed at each school, are sent by mail to buyers who order them from other regional licensing offices and agencies.

Official first-day order totals were not immediately available at the close of business Monday, Tritle said, but he described sales as “very, very, very brisk.”

Cougar plates were outselling Husky plates in King County as well as in the Olympia office, he added, although he did not have King County figures.

The Washington State plates feature a cougar over the words “Go Cougars” and four numbers. The Washington tags show a purple husky dog, the word “Huskies” and five numbers.

Special plates also were authorized by the Legislature last year for Eastern, Western and Central Washington universities and The Evergreen State College, but so far only Western has submitted a design and that plate has yet to go into production, Tritle said.