OK, I give in...

After all, if I'm going to make a map of Washington prominent in the logo of this joint, I suppose I'm obligated to talk about the Washington Governor's race.

As every sentient being must know by now, it's a mess. The election night results showed a meager 261 vote lead for Republican Dino Rossi over Democrat Christine Gregoire, which slipped to a 42 vote lead after a mandatory recount. The next step would be a hand recount, which the State Party is scrambling to raise money for by the end of business today.

I hope they pull together the $750,000 the Gregoire campaign needs to pay for the recount (you can help here, if you're so inclined), because a margin that slim could easily turn, and our new legislature, with a Democratic Governor, stands a chance of getting some good things done, and will be blocked from most of the productive, progressive ideas they put forward if Rossi's the new Governor.

But that's the problem, really. I'm a died in the wool, Yellow Dog, straight ticket kind of Democrat who supports our candidates at the polls regardless of intra-party factionalism or individual character or characteristics. This is a partisan political system, and I've chosen my party (an extended rant on the idiocy of 'non-partisanship' is always buzzing around the back of my mind). That, though, is really the only reason I voted for Chris Gregoire and the potential impact on the Democratic legislative agenda is the only reason I hope she wins.

I don't feel good about that. We had an excellent candidate, former State Senator and Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge, who had to leave the primary campaign for health reasons, and a better candidate, King County Executive Ron Sims, who sacrificed himself on the altar of honesty about the deplorably regressive tax code in this state, but we ended up with Chris Gregoire, who never put forward a single idea during her campaign that generated the least bit of enthusiasm even among the most stalwart Democrats I know. She's a nice person with a somewhat inspirational (not quite) rags to (almost) riches story to tell, but my highest hopes for a Gregoire Governorship is simply that she probably won't veto the good stuff.

In the end, though, that's enough. I hope they raise the money. I hope she wins the recount. And I hope somebody's looking for somebody better on the horizon...