Governor’s race heats up again
OLYMPIA – The battle to be governor flared up on three fronts Thursday, as Democrats raced to raise money, argued to revive rejected ballots, and scoffed at Republican charges that they’re trying to lawyer their way into the governor’s mansion.
“If you thought Florida 2000 was bad, wait ‘til you see what Christine Gregoire might have in store for Washington,” said Mary Lane, spokeswoman for Republican candidate Dino Rossi. Both sides said the election, which should have ended nearly five weeks ago, could remain up in the air into January.
After days of shaking the trees for cash to pay for a second recount in the race, Democrats got a big boost from former presidential candidate John Kerry, who sent $250,000. Democrats are trying to raise at least $750,000 by 5 p.m. tonight – enough of a deposit to trigger a recount, by hand, in every county in the state. Tens of thousands of dollars have been rolling in daily from Democrats across the country.
“We are planning right now to have well over a million dollars,” state Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirstin Brost said Thursday night. “But at this point, it’s us trying to see what we can get.” She said the party had about $500,000 in the bank.
The margin of victory in the race – just over 1/1,000th of a percent – is believed to be the slimmest in any similarly sized race in American history. In the initial tally of votes after Election Day, Rossi beat Gregoire by 261 votes out of nearly 3 million. That triggered a mandatory automated recount last week, which narrowed Rossi’s victory to just 42 votes.
Strapped for cash after the unexpectedly close race, Democrats were considering asking for recounts only in certain counties. Reed, a Republican, said this week that he worried that Democrats would try to “cherry-pick” the recount, trying to turn up problems in counties most likely to favor Gregoire.
But Gregoire said Thursday that she doesn’t want to win like that.
“Count the entire state or don’t count at all,” she said. “Counting every vote is the only right thing to do.”
Over the protests of Democrats, Reed this week certified the results of both the initial count and the first recount, meaning that Rossi is officially the governor-elect.
Democrats, however, are unwilling to give up. They’re pushing for a hand recount of all the ballots – including those that were rejected as invalid during the previous two counts.
“All we’re asking for is that if there’s a hand recount, we look at every single vote,” said Brost. “If in fact these are not valid votes, then another count is not going to change that.”
In a letter to Secretary of State Sam Reed on Wednesday, a lawyer for the Democrats said that different counties were inconsistent when deciding which ballots were valid and which weren’t. In some counties, some provisional ballots were rejected because the voter’s signature didn’t match the one on file with the elections office. In other counties, attorney David Burman said, election officials didn’t even bother to check the signatures. Deadlines for updating signature cards varied from one county to the next, and one county was hours late certifying its results from the recount. (If those votes were deemed to be too late, Burman said, Gregoire would have won.)
“We want to be sure that votes in Okanogan are counted the same as votes are counted in Spokane, the same as votes are counted in Bellingham,” said the Democratic chairman, Paul Berendt.
If a muddled race ends up in court or having to be decided by the Democratic legislature, Burman wrote to Reed, “that would inevitably drag into the early months of next year.” He also said that “pre-recount litigation is an option” if Reed doesn’t allow for the re-examining of those ballots that were rejected.
Republicans – who’ve been fruitlessly urging Gregoire to concede for more than a week, were livid at the threat of lawsuits.
“This letter raises the specter of Christine Gregoire, frustrated at not being able to win the election fair and square, trying to grab the governor’s office by lawsuits and illegitimate ballot-counting,” said Lane, Rossi’s spokeswoman.
“It’s sort of the equivalent of an electoral nuclear weapon,” said former Gov. Dan Evans, a Republican. “They’re trying to rewrite the rules of the game halfway through the game.”
If the election ends up contested in court, he said, “Lord knows what would happen. There would be legal fights down to single votes in some counties.”
Democrats pointed out that Republicans went to court three times during the election so far.
“They (Republicans) have been talking about suing their way to victory,” Brost said. “They are just trying to muddy the waters right now.”