Washington Swears In a Governor Amid Dispute

Democrat Christine Gregoire was sworn in as Washington’s governor Wednesday, as Republican lawmakers refused to applaud and their party’s candidate forged ahead with his legal challenge to her razor-thin victory.

Pledging in her inaugural address to work with legislators to improve the state’s ballot-counting procedures, Gregoire said: “We want every vote to count -- and to be counted right the first time.”

Former Republican state Sen. Dino Rossi won the initial vote count and a mandatory machine recount, only to lose to Gregoire by 129 votes in an unprecedented hand recount of the 2.9 million votes cast. Republicans on Wednesday again called for a complete revote.

“With thousands of questionable ballots, improperly cast ballots and disenfranchised voters still in question, most people believe that Washington does not have a legitimately elected governor,” Rossi said after the inauguration.

For the moment, state politics here look like an odd inversion of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, with Democrats saying the time has come to move on and accept the results of a painfully close contest, while Republicans are protesting and looking to the courts to keep the race alive.

The tumult also overshadowed the historic nature of the inaugural ceremony, in which Washington became the first state in the nation’s history with an all-female trio in its top elected positions. Its two U.S. senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, are also Democrats.

Rossi’s aides did not dispute that as of the swearing-in in the ornate House chambers of the state Capitol, Gregoire was officially governor. If they have their way in court, however, she could be forced to yield the office to Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, also a Democrat, sworn in to a third term Wednesday, while a new campaign and election took place.

On Tuesday, several hundred Rossi supporters, many wearing Ukraine-style orange caps, bands and scarves, gathered outside the Capitol, protesting the Democratic-controlled Legislature’s vote inside to certify the election victory for Gregoire.

“You can give us a revote, or you’re going to cause us to revolt,” the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, told the Republican crowd.

Democrats ridiculed the revote demand as sour grapes and of dubious constitutionality. Such a revote has never been held in the state. A judge will hear the GOP lawsuit beginning Jan. 20 in Wenatchee, seat of Republican-friendly Chelan County.

Legal experts said a revote might have to be considered a special election, open to any newcomers who wish to jump into the race.

Some Republicans have also threatened to mount a recall drive, but that strategy also appears problematic. Such a bid would require more than 700,000 signatures of registered voters, a nearly prohibitive number. And state law appears to bar a simultaneous new election for the office, as occurred in California in 2003, when voters threw Gov. Gray Davis out of office and installed Arnold Schwarzenegger in his place.

The Republicans could also prevail in the trial court in Wenatchee only to have the verdict overturned by the more Democratic-leaning state Supreme Court.

Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, said such an outcome could benefit the Republicans strategically as they seek to expand their appeal in a state the Democrats carried handily in the 2004 presidential race.

It could also cast Rossi as something of a martyr, helping him in a potential future bid for office, such as a campaign to oust Sen. Cantwell in 2006.

“Politically, there may be value in challenging the mandate or the legitimacy of Gregoire, regardless of what the outcome might be in the courts,” Buchanan said.

At the same time, however, Rossi could come off as a sore loser, and analysts in both parties agreed that for Gregoire or any other public figure, four years is a lifetime in politics. Thus, if she survives the legal challenge and runs for reelection in 2008, she is likely to be judged by voters on her accomplishments in office rather than on the 2004 controversy.

Gregoire, a three-term attorney general who was a key figure nationally in the $200-billion settlement between states and the tobacco industry, does not lack for an ambitious agenda.

Repeatedly saying “we have work to do,” as Democrats applauded her address enthusiastically and their Republican colleagues generally just watched, Gregoire laid out plans for providing health insurance to all children in the state, improving education and fixing transportation bottlenecks that plagued the Puget Sound region.

Gregoire, 57, also added personal touches to her half-hour address, noting her own experience as a breast cancer survivor, wife and mother of two daughters.

The Republican minority leaders in both chambers of the Legislature said afterward that they were not interested in clogging the gears in Olympia, and that they would look for areas of agreement with Gregoire if she survived Rossi’s legal challenge.

But these same GOP lawmakers a day earlier had castigated their Democratic colleagues for putting their legal imprimatur on the election results, which Rossi’s aides said had been marred by several factors, including provisional ballots, which they said had been cast incorrectly and should have been subject to closer scrutiny by elections officials. They also cited problems in sending ballots overseas that they said prevented many members of the armed forces from voting.

“The Legislature needs to ask, ‘Do we rush through? Do we quickly certify and ratify this election? Or do we wait and act deliberatively and get to the bottom of these issues?’ ” Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner, a Republican from the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, said in floor debate.