Voice of the Mid-Columbia | Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Wash. |
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Chris Mulick has worked for the Herald since 1998 and has served as the statehouse correspondent covering state government and politics since 2000. He works year-round out of the Herald's Olympia bureau on the state Capitol campus. Have a question? Send Chris an e-mail and he'll answer the best questions regularly. |
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closeRenton attorney and poker enthusiast Lee Rousso has folded his Democratic gubernatorial campaign without ever showing his cards but it wasn’t Gov. Chris Gregoire who flopped the winning hand.
In Rousso’s book it was the U.S. Supreme Court that doomed his campaign when it upheld Washington’s top-two primary.
You may recall from our earlier report that Rousso thought he could knock Gregoire out by using the state’s pick-a-party primary. Under that scenario he figured he could land as much as 20 percent of the Democratic vote, get support for the Libertarians and then appeal to Republicans to pick a Democratic ballot and vote for him.
His pitch to GOP voters was “If you had two chances to vote against Christine Gregoire, wouldn't you use them both?" That was when Republicans were assured a place on the general election ballot.
But Rousso says his strategy would be largely scuttled under the top-two system, in which the top two vote getters advance to the general regardless of party.
So with a “heavy heart and great reluctance” Rousso is giving it up. What he isn’t giving up is his legal challenge to Washington’s Internet gambling ban, which was approved by the Legislature and signed by Gregoire in 2006.
“Even though I am dropping out of the political arena, I will continue to work to change the laws so that Internet poker players can enjoy the Great American Game from the privacy of their own home,” Rousso wrote recently on his campaign website.
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