Hard Charging Nepotism

As she showed last year, Queen Christine, for all her faults, is no ingrate:

Gov. Christine Gregoire polished her credentials with organized labor on Saturday with an appearance before a boisterous annual meeting of local Teamsters leaders.

With Teamsters national President James Hoffa Jr. looking on, Gregoire thanked the 300 or so Teamsters shop stewards assembled at the Washington Convention and Trade Center for helping her win the 2004 election.

"I know, my friends, I would not be here without you," she said.

Gregoire helped defeat I-912 to ensure plenty of fat state highway contracts for the trade unions, presided over the firing of state workers who refused to pay union dues and promised to join in the union-sponsored lynching of Wal-Mart.

Senator Candtdowell apparently is no ingrate either.

Courtney Gregoire, the hard-charging [Can you imagine the adjective the Times would have used for a Republican gov's son? - TF], Harvard-educated daughter of Gov. Christine Gregoire, is joining the top staff of Sen. Maria Cantwell.

Gregoire, 27, will become Cantwell's legislative director and general counsel later this month, leaving a post at the Washington, D.C., law office of Seattle-based Preston Gates.

Cantwell's office confirmed the hire on Friday. The senator was re-elected in a landslide in November and was rewarded with a seat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee and the Coast Guard subcommittee chairmanship.

Courtney Gregoire, who grew up in Olympia with her parents, Christine and Mike Gregoire, and sister, Michelle, while her mother was state Ecology Department director and state attorney general, is a graduate of Willamette University and Harvard Law School. Before joining Preston Gates two years ago, she was a policy aide to Cantwell and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Although her mother is a friend and ally of the senator's, the younger Gregoire's résumé alone would have landed her the job, said Katherine Lister, Cantwell's communications director.

Riiiiighhhht.