Washington State: Out of Step With America (Vanity)

You're quite right about us living exemplary lives and that us Republicans/conservaties are good people.

I live on the Issaquah plateau and haven't seen many yard signs in my neighborhood. It has been interesting driving to/fro work on East Lake Sammaish. There had been a lot of Republican candidates signs out and all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago, there were some K-E's signs, too (but some Bush-Cheney signs as well). I've not seen many bumper stickers in my area, but the ones I have, my best guess is that it has been about 50-50 or 60 (K-E).
I don't get into Seattle much, but my guess is that there were far more Kerry suppoters there (I did wear my B-C pin to a Seahawk game and was prepared for some confrontation, but didn't get any).

I don't know much about Ms. Strong. Does she live up to her surname? Will she play hardball with the opposition? What we need is a strong, principled leader with backbone. What we need are more Dave Reickerts to run at the national level.

As far as Seattle, what can we say? The entire state is extreme and out of step because of one city with 550,000 people - 80% of the voting popluation of which re-elected McDermott. The fervor in the city is strong - one could not help to see it, and get caught up in it because of simple population density. The rest of the state has to find a way to get equally fired up. And, we need more of "us".

I worked so hard on the Rossi and Bush campaign that I am spent. However, I have to chime in because I think you are only seeing the negative side of things.
Bush did get 46% of the Evergreen State vote and that is not bad considering he is not moderate (Thank God!)
Rossi still might win the battle for Governor.
Our AG is now Republican.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that those Seattle radicals are not a majority. They are just loud.
Let not your heart be troubled: there are some changes to this state coming. The Republicans are getting much more organized! I can see it from here in tiny Bothell.
Take care and please know this: Nethercutt will take out Cantwell next time.

Your words are encouraging. Judging by the signs in Bothell (where I presently work), the playing field looks about even: I saw about as many Merril/Freed/Bontrager/Eastman signs as O'Brien/Ericks/etc (not sure who ran against whom.)

That would be humbling if Rossi does indeed come out the winner, and I was quite pleased about McKenna, first by his victory over Mike Vaska and then of course cruising to victory over the abominable Deborah Senn. So I guess that's something to build from.

I posted the following on another thread, but reposting here for my WA friends as the figures may be of interest to you:
You're right about the unfriendly biz environment here - and we have only the Dem stronghold on the Govenor's office for about 20 years and the state legislature to blame (the Seattle City Council and King County Council haven't helped).

Based on figures I've pulled from the WA Sect'y of State's Web site, there are 6,686 precincts in the state of WA and 2,616 of them are in King County (the Seattle Metro area)(which is a little over 39% of the precincts in the State).

If we further look at the counties & precincts that have a negative Bush/Kerry number it breaks down to 12 counties (out of 38 for the state) and 4,581 precincts (out of 6,686) - -996864 votes for K and 700408 for Bush (out of 1,305,868 for K and 1,130,537 for B statewide). Rossi is only about 4K votes behind Gregoire and there are still about 332K votes to be counted (only about 119K are in King County) so we can keep our fingers crossed for him. I was also thrilled about McKenna.

Here is some additional info from my spreadsheet:

County Kerry/Edwards Bush / Cheney
Cowlitz 18856 17470
Grays Harbor 15707 14029
Jefferson 10427 6055
King 498782 264757
Kitsap 53548 48995
Mason 11331 10484
Pacific 5538 4614
Pierce 138119 131548
San Juan 5784 2904
Snohomish 145434 125380
Thurston 57551 44190
Whatcom 35787 29982
Total-above
counties 996864 700408

State Totals 1305868 1130537
-52.81% -45.72%
Diff above/state 309004 430129

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