Edged out of the closest governor’s race in state history, Republican Dino Rossi urged his opponent to accept a revote, saying the uncertainty surrounding the back-and-forth election was bad for the state. Democrat Christine Gregoire’s camp immediately rejected the idea as “irresponsible.” <\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
“This ain’t golf. No mulligans allowed here, folks,” said Gregoire’s spokesman, Morton Brilliant. “It’s irresponsible to spend $4 million in taxpayer money on a new election just because you don’t like losing this one.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This isn’t going to happen. Worse (for him), it makes Rossi look downright desperate and damages his future prospects.
\n
\nWhen Viktor Yushenko loses in Ukraine to Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, in an election that was clearly fixed and denounced by international observers, a re-vote became necessary to maintain the integrity of Ukrainian democracy (and to avoid a civil war). Rossi’s loss, on the other hand, wasn’t driven by fraud; it was caused by receiving fewer votes. It was a close one, but a ballot-by-ballot hand count showed Rossi came up short. Time to move on.<\/p>\n
Yes, there are some contested ballots that were included in the count by the Washington Supreme Court recently, which Rossi’s campaign insists should be excluded. But even if the matter were to go to court again, Gregoire’s margin is high enough to win in either case.<\/p>\n
“The uncertainty surrounding this election process isn’t just bad for you and me it is bad for the entire state,” Rossi said, reading from a letter he said he sent to Gregoire. “People need to know for sure that the next governor actually won the election.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The parallels to Bush v Gore are just a little too easy, aren’t they? Now, however, it’s time for Rossi to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve hesitated in weighing in on the messy gubernatorial race in Washington state, but, fortunately, it appears to be near a welcome conclusion. Just as soon as the Republican candidate can compose himself. This, as you’ve probably heard, is one of the closest gubernatorial races in American history. The count on Election Day showed real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}