Berendt defends Gregoire, calls recent TV ad divisive, dishonest

OLYMPIA – Unhappy about the demise of Washington’s popular blanket primary? A new round of political ads tries to pin the blame on Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire.

The ads, bankrolled primarily by a conservative homebuilders’ group and prominent Republicans, claim that Gregoire – now a Democratic candidate for governor – “colluded” with party leaders to get the blanket primary thrown out.

The TV ads, reportedly airing statewide, claim that Gregoire “fought against our tradition of open primaries and signed the court order to end it.”

“That’s totally a blatant lie,” Gregoire spokesman Morton Brilliant said Tuesday. “It’s sort of like trying to call red the color yellow.”

He said that as the state’s attorney general, Gregoire and her office battled in court for years to save the blanket primary, not kill it.

State Democratic chairman Paul Berendt agreed, saying that party lawyers and Gregoire’s staff “were doing hand-to-hand combat,” with Gregoire trying to get the party to back off the lawsuit that ultimately killed Washington’s blanket primary.

“This is one of the sleaziest attacks I’ve ever seen, because it’s just mythology,” said Berendt. “They’re attempting to drive a wedge between Gregoire and leaders of the Democratic Party with false attacks.”

Washington’s blanket primary, later copied by Alaska and California, allowed primary voters to pick among candidates from the state’s three main parties. The political parties hated the system because it allowed Republicans, for example, to have a say in which Democrat would go on to the November ballot.

Last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared Washington’s blanket primary unconstitutional, and lawmakers and the governor reluctantly came up with a replacement.

Voters must now pick a party ballot and vote only among that party’s candidates. But which party you pick remains a secret.

The group running the ads, It’s Time for a Change, has raised $440,000, according to state campaign finance reports. More than $190,000 of that is from the political arm of the Building Industry Association of Washington.

The ads point to a Web site – www.changepac.com – that includes excerpts of a 2000 court order and a 2001 deposition.

In the deposition, Berendt testifies that he conferred with Gregoire and Gov. Gary Locke about the parties’ lawsuit before taking it to court. That’s the “collusion” that Gregoire’s critics cite.

Berendt said Tuesday that far from scheming behind voters’ backs, Gregoire and Locke wanted the parties to leave the blanket primary alone.

“It was a meeting at which they harshly pressured me to back off on this lawsuit,” Berendt said. Gregoire, he said, “was a thorn in my side.”

Shortly after that meeting, however, the Democrats, Republicans and Gregoire met in federal court in Tacoma, where they signed an injunction declaring Washington’s nearly 70-year-old blanket primary unconstitutional.

The move was an effort to delay an imminent lawsuit by the parties.

The July 20, 2000, agreement preserved the September 2000 blanket primary, which state officials had feared would be thrown into chaos by a party lawsuit.

“It was already summer, there was a big election coming and the state wanted to avoid absolute chaos,” said Jim Pharris, a senior assistant attorney general who defended the blanket primary for Gregoire’s office.

But barring changes by a judge or state lawmakers, the order Gregoire signed also contained a clause requiring election officials to provide the parties with lists of who picked which party’s ballot.

“Gregoire’s defense was zero. The order she was entering was giving away the blanket primary,” said Jim Johnson, an Olympia attorney who tried to defend the blanket primary on behalf of the state Grange. “That was bad enough, but that list thing – why did they do that? No one in their right mind would do that.”

“She sold her voters down the river,” said BIAW executive vice president Tom McCabe.

Pharris said the mention of a party list “wasn’t intended to concede that they were entitled to the names.

“If you want to go back to our state of mind in July 2000, we knew it would be tough to defend the blanket primary. I’m not going to deny that,” Pharris said. “But there was certainly no collusion to throw the case.”

As things turned out, the injunction didn’t kill the state’s blanket primary. A federal judge eventually dissolved the injunction and Gregoire’s office battled the political parties in court. After the 9th Circuit ruling, she appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case earlier this year. That’s what killed the primary and forced lawmakers to come up with a partisan alternative.

The ad portrays things differently, flashing a picture of Gregoire’s smiling face and the words “Fought against open primaries. Signed the court order to end it.”

“They couldn’t be further from the mark,” Berendt said of the ad. “They know they’re lying.”