A Microcosm, A Negative
Feb. 23rd, 2005 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saavedra77Thinking back to the 2000 presidential debacle, Washington State Democrats can find a little ironic satisfaction in how our state’s 2004 governor's race has played out (although some across the aisle would insist that it's still not over ...): Republican Dino Rossi saw his very narrow, 261-vote election-day win shrink to a mere 42 votes in the required machine recount, and then be overturned completely by a subsequent, also mandatory, statewide hand recount (that is, the kind of manual, statewide effort many Democrats advocated during the 2000 election dispute in Florida). The final count left Democrat Christine Gregoire with a 128-vote lead; she was consequently sworn in as Washington’s governor, in January. Almost four months after the election, however, Rossi remains mired in a court battle to force a statewide re-run of last year’s governor’s race ... much as some Democratics in 2000 fruitlessly called for a national “revote” of that year’s disputed presidential election.
While the final vote count gave Democrats a(n achingly) slight majority, Gov. Gregoire clearly presides over a state nearly as divided as the country as a whole has recently been. Here, too, the political division seems to correspond to underlying geographic, economic, and cultural differences: Support for Gregoire’s gubernatorial bid--like John Kerry’s presidential one--was concentrated in Washington’s populous coastal counties, while Rossi--and Bush--did best in the state’s agricultural interior. Predictably, there are now rumblings of “Red vs. Blue county" tension, with politicians from more conservative parts of the state chafing under the electoral dominance of Greater Seattle. Unintentionally echoing remarks by shellshocked liberals following President Bush's reelection (I think we all remember "Jesusland" and "the United States of Canada"), a few Washington legislators have called for splitting the state in two. I could be wrong, but I doubt that trying to jettison the most populous, affluent, and revenue-generating parts of the state will be a winning strategy for Republicans ...
Nonetheless, I'd like to remind my fellow Democrats that the Gregoire-Rossi contest has been the closest gubernatorial race in U.S. (let alone Washington) history--none of the three counts widening beyond the original 49% to 49% statistical tie. At the same time, the never-altogether-inspiring John Kerry substantially outperformed Gregoire in Washington, beating Bush by 205,307 votes, here (53% to 46%). This suggests that an energetic, seemingly moderate (Rossi’s actual degree of moderation was an issue during the campaign) Republican like Rossi has a real shot at Washington State’s governor’s mansion, in the future. And, along with the greater national trend toward conservative mobilization, it suggests at least the possibility that Washington might someday join the ranks of Deep Purple swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
While the final vote count gave Democrats a(n achingly) slight majority, Gov. Gregoire clearly presides over a state nearly as divided as the country as a whole has recently been. Here, too, the political division seems to correspond to underlying geographic, economic, and cultural differences: Support for Gregoire’s gubernatorial bid--like John Kerry’s presidential one--was concentrated in Washington’s populous coastal counties, while Rossi--and Bush--did best in the state’s agricultural interior. Predictably, there are now rumblings of “Red vs. Blue county" tension, with politicians from more conservative parts of the state chafing under the electoral dominance of Greater Seattle. Unintentionally echoing remarks by shellshocked liberals following President Bush's reelection (I think we all remember "Jesusland" and "the United States of Canada"), a few Washington legislators have called for splitting the state in two. I could be wrong, but I doubt that trying to jettison the most populous, affluent, and revenue-generating parts of the state will be a winning strategy for Republicans ...
Nonetheless, I'd like to remind my fellow Democrats that the Gregoire-Rossi contest has been the closest gubernatorial race in U.S. (let alone Washington) history--none of the three counts widening beyond the original 49% to 49% statistical tie. At the same time, the never-altogether-inspiring John Kerry substantially outperformed Gregoire in Washington, beating Bush by 205,307 votes, here (53% to 46%). This suggests that an energetic, seemingly moderate (Rossi’s actual degree of moderation was an issue during the campaign) Republican like Rossi has a real shot at Washington State’s governor’s mansion, in the future. And, along with the greater national trend toward conservative mobilization, it suggests at least the possibility that Washington might someday join the ranks of Deep Purple swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
