Armageddon for the GOP

As the election campaigns enter the final week, GOP consultant Dave Mortenson echoes the sentiments of candidates, operatives, and voters alike: "One woman compared it to childbirth. When you get to the end, you just want it to be over with."

While momentum can shift in as little as a week, Nov. 2 still, as it has for months, looks good for state Democrats. Last week, the GOP received bad news from some of its own. First, on Tuesday, Oct. 19, Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed predicted a staggering turnout of 84 percent of the state's voters in the general election—the highest in 60 years. Says fellow Republican Randy Pepple, CEO of Rockey Hill & Knowlton: "When you get above 80 percent, that's dangerous for any Republican." That's because as turnout increases, the electorate becomes more inclusive, with more low-income and minority voters—two groups that favor the Democrats.

Then on Wednesday, Oct. 20, the GOP firm Strategic Vision released a poll of state voters that showed Democratic Sen. John Kerry leading President George W. Bush in Washington 50 percent to 45 percent; Democratic Sen. Patty Murray was ahead of her challenger, GOP U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt of Spokane, 49-41; and Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Attorney General Christine Gregoire was besting her Republican opponent, former state Sen. Dino Rossi of Sammamish, 48-42. All the leads were outside the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. In fact, all the polls released publicly by any campaign or independent group in the past two months have shown Kerry, Murray, and Gregoire ahead, although not always beyond the polls' margins of error.

Many Republicans were left hoping that Bush would have such a decisive victory elsewhere in the country that the TV networks would declare the president the victor before the polls close in Washington. "Bush is going to win a lot of states back East," says GOP consultant Mortenson. "What ramifications will that have on voting in Washington state?"

Democratic consultant Christian Sinderman responds: "If that's their talking point, they must be worried about Armageddon."

It is hard to see any signs of Republican victory in the Washington races for president or U.S. Senate. The GOP got boosts, however, when Rossi was endorsed by five daily newspapers: The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, The News Tribune of Tacoma, The Herald of Everett, and The Columbian of Vancouver. In the wake of those, The Cook Political Report, the newsletter of a respected national political analyst, changed the race from "lean Democrat" to "toss-up." The Gregoire campaign responded by pointing out that the attorney general had received endorsements from six dailies (the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Tri-City Herald, The Daily World of Aberdeen, The Olympian, The Sun of Bremerton, and the Skagit Valley Herald), and that the most recent polling had the Democratic candidate anywhere from 6 to 12 points ahead.

Jennifer Duffy, The Cook Political Report's managing editor, says she changed her analysis of the race's competitiveness based on her instincts about national trends. She notes that in states where one party or another has dominated the governor's mansion for a number of years, voters lately seem to favor a change of parties. "Every once in a while, voters rotate the tires."

This argument mimics Rossi's central pitch: Democrats have controlled the governor's mansion in Olympia for more than 20 years; the state's business climate has deteriorated; it's time for a change; as a businessman, he understands that regulation is strangling entrepreneurial opportunity.

GOP consultant Pepple admits, however, that Gregoire has effectively countered Rossi's pitch by casting her opponent as an "Olympia insider." Gregoire pointed out that Rossi served as a state senator for seven years and rose to the powerful post of chair of the Senate's Ways and Means Committee. "That's a very good move on her part," says Pepple.

Rossi's argument was further weakened this week when the state's unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent, the lowest in three years and only slightly higher than the national rate of 5.4 percent. Not long ago, Washington had one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Rossi's campaign downplayed the good news by pointing out that much of the job gain was in the state government and education sectors. But Rossi's argument that the state economy has been in tough shape because the Democrats have been making life hard for business just doesn't stand up.

Dick Conway, a private, consulting economist in Seattle, says the state's recession had to do with three factors. First, Boeing went through one of its cyclical downturns and laid off around 25,000 people in 1998. Then a number of dot-coms—metro Puget Sound had a higher concentration of them compared to many other cities—went bust. Finally, terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and in 9/11's wake, Boeing cut another 25,000 jobs. The resulting recession was the worst in state history since the famous Boeing bust that began in 1969. The reasons for the recession were beyond the control of state government, says Conway. He adds, "I read nothing in those developments that say we should be doing something differently than we were."

Conway says the state's economic recovery is under way. "We would expect pretty good job growth for the next two to three years," he explains. "A lot of what happens over the next few years has nothing to do with one governor or another."