Here in Washington State, we have a close Governor's race between Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire and her Republican challenger Dino Rossi. Although he shuns the Republican label in favor of "GOP", Rossi promises to bring a George Bush regime to our beautiful State: he will cut taxes and decrease spending without cutting services and, at the very same time, take care of the most vulnerable, aka, "compassionate conservatism". We have all suffered the disastrous results of electing such a façade to the White House, and yet Rossi seems to be determined to inflict it upon us.
Like Bush, Rossi's real agenda is quite different. In the State Senate, he cut 40,000 uninsured children from the healthcare rolls, he supports pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for oral contraceptives, he opposes embryonic stem cell research, and his one solution to our nightmarish transportation problems is to build more roads. Bush and Cheney were strong supporters when he ran for Governor in 2004.
But Rossi now may also be channeling Nixon, or at least his disgraced vice president, Spiro Agnew, the only person to resign the vice presidency since John C. Calhoun. Politicians who get caught up in campaign finance scandals are lucky; their deeds go underreported and undiscussed. Let's face it; given the past few years of Republican scandals, misappropriation of campaign funds doesn't score too high on the moxie meter.
Nevertheless, illegally juicing up an attack ad campaign war chest for Governor of the 18th most populous state is a far bigger threat to democracy than how the Senator from our neighbor to the East shuffles his feet in an airport bathroom. So, long story short:
First, a little background: BIAW (the ultra-conservative Building Industry Association of Washington) administers workmen's compensation claims, and is paid to do so by the State based upon 20-year old actuarial tables of workplace injuries. Today, the injury rate is far lower [p.s., wanna know why? All those terrible government and union regulations protecting workers' health and safety], and thus the payouts are smaller, creating surpluses. In what must be one of political history's supreme ironies, BIAW retains the surpluses from this program that were created by government regulations, and a provision that allows them to charge "administrative fees", to fund political campaigns and ballot initiatives to enact a radical rightwing agenda of defunding government and deregulation. They have tried to take over the Supreme Court. They have opposed every environmental regulation in our very green state. They opposed a homeowners' bill of rights. They supported a state initiative that would have made enforcement of environmental regulations so costly that the state would be bankrupted.
BIAW is being prosecuted for generating a secret war chest to fund attack ads in the governors race without reporting or disclosing the fundraising or expenditures. A rightwing trade group not reporting expenditures is so common that it no longer qualifies for "news". However, new evidence that surfaced yesterday suggests that Dino Rossi himself helped coordinate this fundraising by placing calls to the top 14 BIAW officers asking them to redirect funds to a war chest that has been bankrolling a host of nasty attack ads against Gregoire that I won't dignify with a link.
If the allegations are true, it's equivalent to George Bush meeting secretly with donors asking them to fund the "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth", but denying any involvement so he can disassociate himself with the content of the ads from which he clearly benefits but doesn't want to look like the jerk that's responsible for them. Today's evidence suggests that Rossi did just that. It's scummy, underhanded politics, and it's illegal too.
And so, Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna should investigate Dino Rossi to get to the bottom of "Buildergate", as it is being called. FuseWashington.org has a list of questions they'd like this investigation to answer.
1. Did Dino Rossi help plan the BIAW's fundraising campaign and strategy, or did he just make fundraising calls?
2. Rossi made fundraising calls to all of the top officers for the only BIAW chapter that was investigated. How about the other 14 BIAW chapters? How many fundraising calls did he make to whom, and how much money did he ask for?
3. Is Dino Rossi willing to release his phone records for the months covering the illegal fundraising campaign?
4. Has Dino Rossi hired a defense attorney to represent him in this situation?
5. Does Dino Rossi believe the public has a right to know about his involvement in this secret and illegal fundraising campaign organized by one of the states most powerful and conservative business interests to build a war chest to support his run for Governor? If no, why not? If yes, why didn't he speak up about it when the illegal fundraising campaign became public?
Either we believe that our campaigns should be run legally, and that our right to vote is so precious that we cannot allow it to be diluted by chicanery, or we do not. We have a right to know the character of our elected officials.
Washington State has had a proud electoral tradition. We were one of the last oases of respectful campaigns before the Bush-Rove strategies were employed. If Dino Rossi is complicit, we ought to know before November. As a voter I want to know whether he was behind the scurrilous advertisements.
We need to know whether Dino Rossi broke the law, and whether he "approved this message".