Tom Mielke nailed it: It's time to get past Dino.

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I've been writing here for some time that Dino will not be running for the Senate. His intransigence and arrogance has actually, IMHO, cost the GOP any reralistic chance of winning.

I wrote one client this morning in response to something Dick Morris wrote in an article:

Rossi continues to avoid the issue.

Ultimately, there’s still no good scenario for the senate in this state.

Dino’s foot will remain, directly or indirectly on the money hose. That is; if he announces for the Senate, people will give him money and the big donors in particular will dry up for anyone else. If Gregoire gets the Solicitor General gig (And I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard even more noise about that soon… not that she will get it, but the dems want Rossi to chase his tail while continuing to shut off the money flow to the rest of the field) I seriously doubt that the announcement would be made at any time that would elevate Owen before October 4, when he would get 25 additional months to hold Rossi (and everyone else) at bay.

If, for whatever the reason, such an announcement is made sooner; the people who would have given money to Rossi for his Senate run will now do it for his Governor’s run, although with smaller limits for the governor’s race, (Looks like $3200 total,
split in half for the primary and the general) that would still leave $1600 to donate for a senate race (Federal limits to $4800.)

Either way, the clamp remains firmly in place, and unless one of the GOP candidates wins Power Ball, there isn’t going to be the where-with-all to get this done.

You can always have the fastest car in the race. But without the gas to run it over the finish line… you finish last. The only way this would work would be for Dino to hold a press conference announcing he was running for anything (Senator OR Governor), while endorsing (and working hard for) a candidate he wanted to win.

And how likely is that?

Morris probably doesn’t know about the stranglehold Rossi and the Bellevue Mafia have on the cash. In an otherwise equal world, Rossi’s failure to act could be overcome. But at this point, the GOP candidates are “squabbling for the crumbs off Longshank’s table,” so to speak. And because there are so many other candidates, and the one with the possibility of self-funding (Aker) has his overseas manufacturing exposure (40% of his product comes from China) and Didier politically to the right of Genghis Khan (ala Ellen Craswell) there appears to me to be little else left.

The GOP has had a golden opportunity here. Bungling, the parochialism of the Bellevue Mob and blinders as to the political reality has taken this seat out of play… no matter what Rossi does. If he were going to announce… the King County Lincoln Day Dinner (Saturday) would have been a time to do it. Had he announced back in February, this would be a completely different discussion

Mielke, on the other hand, took a different tack:

Dear Members of the State Committee

I am very disappointed that Dino Rossi is playing political games with the Republican Party.

We have the ability to take this seat in the Senate away from the democrats, but Rossi's failure to make a decision has badly hurt our chances.

We have other candidates who've been in the race for a long time now and who've been taking Sen. Patty Murray to task over and over on the things she is doing and not doing. Some have been paying for TV in Seattle and other areas exposing Murray's voting record. I am concerned that Rossi's failure to make a decision has been holding up contributions that would normally be going to other viable candidates. Rossi has held back with his finger in the wind long enough and it is hurting and jeopardizing good Republican candidates who can actually win this
race.

Enough is enough, Rossi would be getting started way too late to have a successful campaign himself if he announced now... He needs to get out of the WAY and let others run... or we will have lost any chance to take this seat away from Murray when she is the most vulnerable she is ever likely to be.

Dino has hurt us all by waiting for no good reason; financial, political or strategic. All he's done is anger a lot of the base because he refuses to make his plans public and that makes him look indecisive while a lot of us see this fantastic opportunity slipping away because of Rossi.

I, for one have had enough.

Tom Mielke
Clark County Commissioner
District 1
(GOP)

I know Tom. I was his consultant in his successful 2008 run where the GOP took control of the county commission for the first time in 30 years... and did it in a county that went for Obama roughly 52-46% in a campaign where he was outspent about 3 to 1. I know him as both a rabid Rossi supporter and a politically pragmatic figure in elected office for four terms in the Legislature and in his first term as a commissioner.

I am in complete agreement with his observation that we've let this opportunity slip away. And unfortunately, nothing can be done to get it back, thanks to Rossi, his intransigence and his arrogance.
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