Washington State Republican Party

Attorney General Rob McKenna has decided to sue the Washington State Republican Party for violating campaign finance law earlier this year, but will recuse himself from the case, the Seattle Times is reporting.

The suit comes from a complaint upheld by the Public Disclosure Commission that the Republicans had spent over $200,000 in exempt "soft money" on a mailer that directly advocated for gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi. The law stipulates that soft money may only be used for party building and administrative costs, not candidate advocacy.

McKenna then recused himself. Shortly after announcing the lawsuit the attorney general announced that his chief deputy, Brian Moran, will be responsible for the case in his absence.

State Democrats have called for Attorney General Rob McKenna (R-Bellevue) to seek an immediate injunction against the Washington State Republican Party to keep it from advocating illegally for Dino Rossi, as they were found to have done by the Public Disclosure Commission.

They have also asked McKenna to appoint an independent counsel to conduct the investigation against the party because of the potential conflict of interest that comes from an attorney general investigating his own friends and party.

"This is a clear conflict of interest," said Democratic Party attorney Kevin Hamilton.  "Without immediate action from your office, the Republican Party will be able to flagrantly abuse the law in the general election, just as they did in the primary. This is an unacceptable result for our electoral process."

Dino Rossi and state Republicans are pouncing on today's report stating that Washington's unemployment rate has risen to 6.0 percent, up from 5.6 percent in July and 4.5 percent in February, and just slightly below the national unemployment rate of 6.1 percent.

Washington State Republican Party Chair Luke Esser used the news to call Gov. Chris Gregoire "out of touch" for having said that Washington is the "envy of the nation."

Rossi's camp, meanwhile, calls Gregoire's claim that her administration has created more than 200,000 jobs a half truth because the state's unemployment rate is now higher than it was when she took office.

The Washington State Republican Party, back and rested from last week's Republican National Convention, is using multimedia this week to hit Gov. Chris Gregoire on transportation and taxes.

Yesterday the WSRP released a web video that highlights inaction under Gregoire on certain transportation issues, quoting Gregoire on what she has done and what needs to be done, juxtaposed with local newspaper clips disputing her notions.

The video focuses on the issues of traffic congestion, infrastructure and the ferry system, all three of which are discussed in the transportation plan that Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi released earlier this spring that has undergone its own fair share of media scrutiny.

The Washington State Republican Party has agreed to pay a fine of $15,000 for violations in 2004 and 2006 to the Public Disclosure Commission today, the Seattle Times' David Postman is reporting.

According to the story, the Republican Party spent nearly $300,000 on state candidates without notifying them of the money. That meant that the candidates themselves, like Dino Rossi whose 2004 campaign saw $92,000 in last minute spending from the party, did not show up on their PDC reports.

More PolitickerWA.com coverage: Parties attack: Dems mock Rossi on secrecy, Repubs hit Gregoire on children

Frequently the things politicians want to say wind up staying trapped behind their tongues in order to appear above the fray. That is where interest groups and state parties come into play.

Some of the hardest-hitting attacks so far in the governor's race have come from the state Democratic and Republican Parties, who have maintained their anti-Dino Rossi and anti-Chris Gregoire messages throughout the spring and summer. So it continues.

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.'"

The most recent Elway Poll, done June 18-22, followed up on its gubernatorial preference question by asking would-be voters what they thought "GOP" meant. Three fourths of the 405 registered voters knew that Grand Old Party stood for the Republican Party, but the other twenty-five percent of them got it wrong.

Fifteen percent of the respondents did not know what the acronym stood for while seven percent believed it represented the Democratic Party, and three percent thought something else entirely. Even more significant is that the sample of people who answered incorrectly fell relatively evenly across the political spectrum.

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.