Politics from the Palouse to Puget Sound

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

DinoLand USA

Eric Earling has a post up today at Sound Politics about the number of contributors to Dino Rossi's campaign and what that means.
The rough math on Rossi's contributions thus speaks for itself. He has raised approximately $4.376 million in cash from about 30,000 donors as of the end of April. In that month, he pulled in nearly $630,000 in cash contributions from over 4,000 donors. That's an average contribution consistently in the ballpark of $150, i.e. grassroots support.
Eric is dead on. Dino just doesn't have grassroots support. At least here in eastern Washington, he is generating the kind of spontaneous enthusiasm we have seen previously reserved for Barack Obama and Ron Paul. The fundraising reception here in June is an example. And that my friends, for a statewide Republican candidate in the Evergreen State, is unprecedented.

In Whitman County, everyone from Ron Paulistinians to Mainstream Republicans are unified behind Dino in a way I have never seen before with any issue or with any candidate.

Democrats may point to the latest Rasmussen poll that shows the Queen up by 10 ponts and say that this time she will not take Dino so lightly. They claim the dead will not need to vote in King County this time. But I disagree. Ultimate party apparatchik Gregoire is not inspiring enthusiasm among anyone, even her own party. As liberal Seattle PI columnist Joel Connelly points out:
Gregoire has an activist record, but Rossi can point to a still cumbersome state government. He can, too, bring up the failure of King County's Democratic rulers to deal with transportation gridlock -- and their tendency to nanny-state excess.
Gregoire's "activist" record is almost exclusively paying off the union cronies that helped get her elected in 2004.

The only that might make the race close this November is the coattails from a Democratic presidential candidate. But in this year when "change" is the mantra, most voters in Washington will think it's time for a change in the Governor's Mansion in Olympia, which the Democrats have controlled for over twenty years.

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