The latest Rasmussen Reports poll, released June 11, found that Gregoire’s lead over Rossi had narrowed to seven points, with 50 percent supporting the incumbent and 43 percent favoring Rossi. Gregoire enjoyed an 11-point lead over Rossi in a May poll conducted by the same firm.

According to Rasmussen Reports, the poll has a margin of error of 4.5 percent. 

Rossi lost to Gregoire by 129 votes in 2004 after a third recount.

Rossi’s campaign reported $5.1 million in contributions as of May 31 and now says it has raised $5.3 million. In 2004, it was mid-October before he reached the $5.3 million mark, his campaign said.

Gregoire’s campaign reported raising nearly $6.8 million as of May 31.

Delivering to a friendly crowd what has become his standard stump speech, Rossi attacked Gregoire for increasing state spending by 34 percent since she took office in 2005, failing to solve traffic congestion and being an Olympia insider who has spent her career in state government.

If elected, he said, he would cut spending as he did in 2003, when he chaired the Senate Ways and Means Committee during the worst budget deficit in state history, without raising taxes or cutting services to the state’s most vulnerable adults.

“You can be conservative and still have a social conscience,” he said.

Rossi, who built a career in commercial real estate after working his way through college, said he has been gratified by the response to his second campaign for governor.

He took at jab at the state’s largest teachers union, which supports the governor, noting, “The state of Washington just lost a $13 million grant to improve math teaching” because Washington Education Association officials “were concerned the math teachers who did well would get more money.”

He was referring to the cancellation of a $13.1 million, five-year grant from the National Math and Science Initiative designed to add Advanced Placement teachers, courses and exams for thousand of high school students in Washington. In May, it was announced the grant would be canceled in part because of the state’s rule against merit pay for teachers.

Among others statewide, Evergreen and Union high schools stood to benefit from the grant.

Congestion relief

Rossi also touted his transportation funding plan, which would tap 2 percent of the state’s general fund to pay for nine major projects to relieve the state’s chronic traffic congestion, including the Columbia River Crossing.

His proposal would dedicate 40 percent of revenue from the state sales tax on new and used vehicles for the next 30 years — an estimated $7.7 billion — to projects to relieve traffic congestion, including $870 million toward construction of the Columbia River Crossing. An additional $2.43 billion would be raised by eliminating the sales tax on transportation projects.

Democratic legislative leaders have said they will not divert money from the general fund, which supports education and social services, to pay for transportation projects, which have traditionally been funded by the state’s gas tax.

But Rossi called the gas tax “a losing proposition” that is declining as a source of revenue as people drive less in response to rising costs at the pump.

As governor, he said, he would look for efficiencies in state spending to cope with a projected $2.5 billion deficit in the 2009-11 biennium, but he would not raise taxes.

Rossi also repeated an allegation that Gregoire told The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board in Spokane that she believes Washington residents need to be “educated about the income tax.”
Gregoire has repeatedly denied it. After Rossi made a similar comment in Vancouver last November, her spokesman told The Columbian, “The members of the editorial board brought the subject up and she said there was not support for an income tax; it was not politically viable.”

Rossi also promised that if elected he would make sure the departments of Ecology and Labor and Industries are more friendly to the state’s businesses.

“Rarely in life do you ever get a second chance at things that are truly important,” he said. “With this race for governor, Washington gets a second chance.”