Washington State Democratic Party

Dino RossiThe Washington State Democratic Party released a video today shot before a Dino Rossi campaign event in Ellensburg over the weekend, where Kittitas County Republican Party Chair Dr. Mathew Manweller, a Central Washington University political science professor, unleashed a tirade on Democratic Party volunteers protesting Rossi's stance on the minimum wage.

"Only somebody as dumb as Gregoire would endorse it," Manweller said at the beginning of the confrontation. When told by the Democratic volunteers about  single moms trying to make ends meet on a meager salary Manweller shot back, "This policy hurts single moms. There would be 100,000 more single moms with a job."

Later on, when told there were over 300,000 people who supported increasing the minimum wage, Dr. Manweller responded with an insult.

"You and 300,000 people are dumber than a post," he said. "Your stupidity is harming my county."

State Democrats sent out a memo of their own today that calls into question the validity of the pre-primary memo sent out by the Dino Rossi for governor campaign earlier this week, thus playing their own version of the expectations game.

Citing the boost Democrats hope to get from Barack Obama in the general election, they suggest Tuesday's primary is Rossi's best chance for a victory at the polls. "Between next Wednesday and November," the memo states, "Rossi's electoral prospects will become substantially worse."

Democrats point to two major factors in their memo, voting demographics and alternative views of past results.

With the Democratic National Convention kicking off in just eleven days, the state Democratic Party is doing its part to let Washingtonians know who their delegates are to the big show in Denver.

Today they unveiled a flickr page with photos of all of the delegates and superdelegates, icluding 64 Obama supporters, 26 Clinton supporters and 15 automatic delegates. Many of the photos are accompanied by a statement from the delegate on what the event means to them.

Read below for a statement on the delegates from the press release.

The Washington State Democratic Party released two videos on Wednesday to highlight the differences in the campaign styles of Gov. Chris Gregoire and her opponent Dino Rossi. Specifically, they try to mock the exclusive nature of Rossi's campaign events that are otherwise billed as being open to the public.

In the latest example they show Rossi's campaign, with the help of the Washington State Farm Bureau, roping off an event in East Wenatchee's Hydro Park with yellow caution tape which the Democrats say suggests a police crime scene. To hammer home the point they open and close the video with the theme song to television's "Law & Order". This is the second such video they have released showing Democrats being turned away from Rossi events.

Solicitor General Maureen Hart wrote a letter Friday on behalf of Secretary of State Sam Reed to lawyers from the state Democratic and Republican Parties sticking up for the legality of the state's "top two" primary. Earlier in the week Democrat David McDonald and Republican John White wrote to Reed suggesting that a 9th Circuit Court injunction banning the primary was still in place despite the Supreme Court's decision that it was facially legal.

"Wholly aside from the practical impossibility of your suggestion, there is no legal basis for it," Hart said of the lawyers' claim that the state should cease with the top two primary. "The injunction was based entirely upon the District Court's conclusion that I-872 would facially violate the constitutional rights of the plaintiff political parties - a judgment that has been reversed. An injunction must be obeyed until it is ‘reversed by orderly and proper proceedings.'"

State Democrats are once again seeking to tie Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi to President George W. Bush, one of the most unpopular elected officials among Washingtonians. This time they are doing it by way of a web video that shows Rossi staffers barring someone with a video camera from entry to multiple Rossi events.

This is all the while juxtaposed with clips of Rossi touting the need for more transparency. The video is below.

Although Governor Chris Gregoire led the May fundraising battle between her and opponent Dino Rossi, $785,000 to $701,000 and the overall matchup $6.8 million to $5.15 million, the Rossi campaign is claiming that it has raised more money, both in May and throughout the campaign, from in-state individuals and businesses.

The Seattle Times' David Postman first reported this morning that Gregoire received $200,000 of her $785,000 in May from the state Democratic Party. Postman also notes that Gregoire has received $511,000 of the $2 million she has raised since officially beginning her campaign two months ago has come from the state party.

The Washington State Democratic Party has released a video on youtube today mocking Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi's ambivalence on climate change. Recently, he has made remarks in support of the existence of gloabl warming, but as recently as two months ago in Kitsap County and two weeks ago in the Seattle Times he was not so clear.

The Democrats focus on statements Rossi made at a meeting with the Port Orchard Chamber of Commerce in March where he was asked his position on global warming. They have video of Rossi's response where he says, "There is still a lot of debate going on on this. There is going to be a big debate on this coming up in the next two or three years...We'll see how this debate goes, but I don't think anybody should panic at this point."

As PolitickerWA.com's own Wally Edge suggested earlier, 2008 could be the year of hardball politics in the Evergreen State. Today the Washington State Democratic Party has created a website, http://www.therealrossi2008.com, knocking Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi on everything from his past statements to his policy positions and his association with national Republican officials.

The site banner contains a flash image that shows Dino Rossi morphing back and forth into President George W. Bush and the mp3 of Rossi's statement of September 11, 2007, "I've found you can do pretty much anything you want if you do it with a smile on your face. It's amazing what you can get away with if you do it with a smile on your face."

It also links to critical news stories in the local media as well as many of the Democrats' attacking press releases and youtube videos and the Gregoire campaign website. Politics, as they say, ain't bean bag.

First it was the 36th and 10th Legislative Districts. Now, a county in Eastern Washington has added themselves to the list of Democratic jurisdictions refusing to follow state party rules of nominating candidates. Hillary Hamm at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News reports that Whitman County Democrats have decided not to nominate candidates by way of a Precinct Committee Officer vote.

"It's not a democratic process," said Whitman County state committeeman Nathan Horter, who sponsored the resolution to buck the rules. "We don't think someone who sits in an office on the west side should make decisions for people in Whitman County."