Governor’s save staves off Cougs’ wrath

OLYMPIA – Washington State University fans are not the type to take a perceived slight lightly.

After all, these are the folks who buy cars in the school’s shade of crimson. They arm themselves with a vast array of Cougar paraphernalia and, Cougars at the ready, trundle to game after game to shout themselves hoarse. A few diehards have had the cougar logo tattooed on themselves.

So Gov. Chris Gregoire strolled into a political minefield Sept. 11 when she signed a short, boosterish proclamation declaring last Friday Purple and Gold Day.

It was the usual higher-ed boilerplate, something about the University of Washington “fostering growth of some of the brightest minds,” its “rich history of academic excellence” and so forth. At the end of it, Gregoire urged all citizens to don purple and gold for the day.

UW posted the document on its Web site. And the governor moved on to bigger affairs of state.

Gubernatorial proclamations, it should be noted, are about as common and substantial as M&Ms. Gregoire fields hundreds of requests for them, and they’re not even deemed important enough to post on the governor’s Web site. A day after signing UW’s, for example, the governor declared Ballroom Dance Week.

Still, in Pullman, it burned. The Daily Evergreen, Washington State University’s student paper, blasted Gregoire.

“Perhaps Gregoire sees WSU as the state’s ugly redheaded stepchild, but we, and the rest of this side of the state, can assure the governor we are real,” read the paper’s editorial. “What’s more, we really vote too.”

The “insufferable” proclamation of Purple and Gold Day, the paper said, was “essentially a slap in the face of every self-respecting Eastern Washingtonian. … Gregoire is saying, ‘Yeah, I don’t really need your votes we have enough people over here. Go Huskies!’ ”

The paper instead urged Cougar fans to wear black instead, for a day “marked by our inky disdain.”

This is, however, an election year. Democrats have been trying for years with some recent success to gain traction east of the Cascades. And the governor is again locked in a tight race with a Republican who four years ago lost by just 133 votes.

Gregoire’s office quickly ginned up another proclamation.

And that’s how last Saturday became Crimson and Gray Day.

“WSU will get its due,” the Daily Evergreen announced.

Gregoire spokesman Pearse Edwards said the governor is “equally proud” of the two schools.

Timber dollars loom over public-lands contest

An 11th-hour flurry of ads in the tightly-contested Lands Commissioner race? It sure looks that way.

Campaign-finance records at the Public Disclosure Commission show hundreds of thousands of dollars still unspent in the close race between incumbent state Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark.

The “Committee for Balanced Stewardship,” a PAC made up largely of timber and mining companies, has built a $595,000 war chest this year. But state Public Disclosure records early this week indicated that the group – which is clearly backing Sutherland – has spent only $19,000 of it.

A roll is hard to scrub

Last week, Seattle’s KIRO TV did some data cross-matching and concluded that the state voter rolls likely include thousands of felons who aren’t allowed to vote.

If so, that’s a problem. Unless a person has had his or her right to vote restored by a judge or the governor, it’s illegal in Washington for a convicted felon to vote. Even if the crime took place decades ago.

Writing on the Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s blog recently, Trent England called for people to urge Secretary of State Sam Reed’s office to do a better job culling ineligible felon voters.

“Every wrongful vote disenfranchises a legal voter who will never even know that his or her vote was illegally canceled out,” England wrote. “Even worse, it corrodes the faith of citizens in our democratic process.”

But what seems like an easy cross-match is extraordinarily difficult, says Reed spokesman Dave Ammons. Prior to 2006, he says, there’s no reliable list of which ones have had their voting rights restored. And since every voter signs an oath saying he or she is eligible, proving otherwise would likely entail sending workers to every courthouse in the state to pore through millions of criminal records.

“We’re doing the best we can with the resources and legal constraints we have,” Ammons said. “We have limited ability to reach back” in time.

Simply yanking the registration of everyone ever convicted of a felony, he said, would almost certainly disenfranchise some people who can, in fact, vote.

“Voting rights are a precious thing, and you don’t just willy-nilly remove them,” Ammons said.

Reed and his staff have purged the voter rolls of more than 160,000 people in recent years. Among them: voters who’d died, people who’d moved and forgotten to cancel and old registration, and more than 11,000 recent felons.

Unleashing the hounds

Saying that dog teams are expensive, the state Department of Corrections is paring its K-9 corps from eight teams to two. One will be at Airway Heights; the other will be at Monroe.

Despite prison movie clichés, these dogs are used primarily to search for drugs and other contraband.

The department says the remaining dog teams will be available to any prison in the state. The officers from the shut-down dog teams will move to other prison jobs. The retired dogs are eligible for adoption by their handlers.

Newspaper editorial boards switch to Gregoire

Last weekend, five more newspapers endorsed Gov. Chris Gregoire over Republican challenger Dino Rossi. The list: The Spokesman-Review, Everett Herald, Bellingham Herald, Kitsap Sun and Skagit Valley Herald.

Despite unhappiness with Gregoire’s spending, the S-R editorial described her as “a brainy, hands-on governor whose qualities are needed to deal with problems, both foreseen and unforeseeable, that confront the state.”

The Spokesman-Review and the Everett Herald both endorsed Rossi four years ago, as did the Tacoma News-Tribune and the Vancouver Columbian. All four of those have switched to backing Gregoire this year, as are the Seattle P-I, the Olympian, the Oregonian, the Inlander and the Stranger.

Not joining that chorus: the state’s biggest paper, the Seattle Times. Citing the rapid growth in the state budget under Gregoire, it recommended a vote for Rossi.

“It is now almost 2009, and Gregoire’s luck has run out: The downturn looks to be worse than anyone suspected,” the Times wrote.

Echoing a theme made famous this year by Barack Obama, the Times also said Olympia could use a shake-out.

“(Rossi) is the best Republican candidate for governor in a long time,” the editorial said. “He would bring change to the culture of Olympia, and change is good.”

Where everybody knows your name

This summer, a downtown Olympia tavern made international news when an overzealous tavern bouncer barred Gov. Gregoire – who is 61 – because the governor had forgotten her driver’s license.

To make amends, owner Todd Ruzicka asked the governor to return, which she did.

This was front-page banner news (“Governor allowed back in Hannah’s!”) for a quirky Olympia tabloid, the Sitting Duck. (Front-page slogan: “Featuring the most revolting writers in the West!”) It captured the moment in a photo. It shows Ruzicka frowning theatrically at the governor’s driver’s license as she stands at the door.

“We were happy she came back,” Ruzicka told the paper. “She’s done a lot for business in the state, and she’s a good sport.”