It's not what I said, it's what I meant.

That, in essence, was the case made Thursday in the state's highest court by proponents of a ballot measure that would require more paid training for home health-care workers.

In what could turn out to be a very expensive glitch, a Service Employees Intentional Union local and its allies spent months and more than $450,000 to put Initiative 1029 on the fall ballot, only to discover at the last minute that some wrong wording in the text could derail the entire effort.

The petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of voters wrongly say that it's a proposal for state lawmakers, rather than straight to voters.

“You've got to admit, your folks made a bit of a mistake here,” Chief Justice Gerry Alexander told a lawyer for the initiative's backers.

“And that's all it was,” responded attorney Mike Subit.

Sitting in the gallery,

Some records-request sleuthing by the Washington Policy Center's Jason Mercier reveals that the University of Washington has hired a $175-an-hour consultant to help win legislative approval for millions of dollars in public financing for a major overhaul of Husky Stadium.

Olympia consultant Robert Longman's contract, originally for $10,000 last fall, has been extended twice. It now runs through mid-2009, with a cap of $50,000. Longman, a former staffer on the House revenue committee (now called the finance committee), is "provid(ing) legislative drafting and fiscal analysis" related to the university's request for state dollars to help with the $300 million remodel.

In an op-ed piece in the Seattle P_I today, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, and House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, take umbrage at the suggestion that state-employee support for Gov. Chris Gregoire is driven by the substantial pay increases that many workers have received since Gregoire took office.

The law allowing state workers to collectively bargain for pay and benefits dates back to 2002 -- two years before Gregoire was elected -- and has improved government efficiency and reformed the state's arcane civil service rules, the two lawmakers write.

It's no great surprise that working people support Gregoire. That's because she's honest about the important role that government services play in the lives of Washingtonians and because she understands what it takes to ensure the greatest efficiency and effectiveness of those services.

A big part of that is attracting and retaining talented and dedicated state employees, they write.

After all, those are the people who teach the ABCs to children, prepare young adults to enter the work force and patrol state roads. They ensure the safety of the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. They stand guard in prisons, provide help to families in need and assist honored veterans in finding health care.

If unions back Gregoire, they maintain, "it's because they share a basic philosophy about employment issues, not because they are using the campaign to buy a better contract."

The left-leaning group Fuse has put up an online game in which you can throw pies at a bobbing-and-weaving Tim Eyman.

Click here to play.

"Tim Eyman met a pieman
and began to boast
Says the pieman
to Tim Eyman
You are a fraud at most."

reads the intro.

Eyman, an anti-tax activist who now makes his living as a paid promoter of ballot measures, was actually attacked by two pie-wielding men while filing signatures at the state capitol in June of 2000.

The men fled, and Eyman was reportedly left with a black eye and covered with an unidentified red fruit filling. Eyman promptly went to the press houses near the capitol to show reporters both.

From the Department of Natural Resources this afternoon:

"Subject: BNR Approves Hamma Hamma Balds NAP"

Duly noted.

Mike Bernard doesn’t mince words when asked what he thinks of the University of Washington’s request for $150 million in tax dollars to remodel Husky Stadium.

“It’s really just a brazen money grab,” he said recently. “There’s really no reason they need public money to rebuild their stadium.”

The Bellevue tax adviser — a proud alumnus of UW arch rival Washington State University — has launched a campaign with a handful of other WSU Cougar fans to try to stop tax dollars from helping pay for the $300 million stadium overhaul. Through an e-mail campaign and fan sites, they’re trying to answer the Huskies’ request with a chorus of Cougar “no”s.

Proponents of the Husky Stadium project argue that it’s a critical safety project on a stadium that hasn’t seen a substantial renovation in decades.

“I just think this is pretty pathetic,” state Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, said of the efforts of Bernard and his Cougar allies. “The president of WSU should contact this guy and put a stop to it.”

Prentice was prime sponsor of February’s Senate Bill 6848, which would have steered millions of tax dollars into the project. She says it’s purely a safety issue. Built in 1920, the facilities are aging and the stairs literally crumbling.

“It’s a horrendous state of affairs,” Prentice said of the stadium’s condition, “and it’s not something that we can just let go. No responsible person would say ‘let it be.’”

After a late start, the bill died in committee. But Prentice and other state officials say UW’s proposal remains very much alive.

“I had folks from the athletic department visiting me yesterday,” Gov. Chris Gregoire’s legislative director, Marty Brown, said last week.

As Republicans on the stage in Denver are giving speeches saying they plan to cross party lines and vote for Obama, in Washington state, Republican gubernatorial candidate is apparently hoping to get some Democrats going the other way.

Rossi will be airing this video on network and cable stations statewide before and after Obama's primetime speech at 7:15 p.m. tonight.

"Tonight the Democrats have a nominee. I agree with them on this: change is needed," Rossi says in the video. "But not just in Washington, D.C."

In the ad (and on the campaign trail), he makes an appeal for a philosophical majority behind fiscal responsibility, and pledges to reach across party lines.

In Denver, Gov. Chris Gregoire sends her congratulations for Obama.

"Sen. Barack Obama will bring the right kind of change to our country, the kind of change we've been working on in our Washington since I took office," she said in a press release tonight. "He will work with us, not against us, as we bring healthcare to all children, fund a world-class education system and fight global climate change. He will lead our fight to renew our country's economy."

"You can feel the electricity in Denver. People are united. People are hopeful and, most importantly, they are ready to win. Washington state is too. Together let's make history in November."

Forty five minutes before Barack Obama takes the stage in Denver, his campaign has sent out excerpts from his prepared remarks.

He talks about his background, about the nation's promise that hard work and sacrifice, each can pursue his or her dreams. But this is "one of those defining moments," the speech says, with a nation at war, an economy in turmoil "and the American promise...threatened once more."

He appeals to the struggles of families: "More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay and tuition that is beyond your reach...America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this."

"Next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third," the speech reads. " And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight."

John McCain has worn the uniform of the country with bravery and distinction, he says, but "voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time."

Democrats measure success by the progress of families and children, he says:

"We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President – when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush."

“We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job – an economy that honors the dignity of work."

He says he'll cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families, and sets a goal: "in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East."

“We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country. Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans -- Democrats and Republicans – have built, and we are to restore that legacy.

“As Commander-in-Chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm’s way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

“I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing so that America is once more the last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.”

Trailing his Republican primary opponent by more than 3,000 votes, Spokane's Mel Lindauer has conceded and is urging supporters to back rival Kevin Parker.

"With the majority of District 6 votes now tallied, it is clear Kevin Parker is the Republican candidate of choice to continue on to the General Election," Lindauer wrote in an announcement sent out late last night. "I want to congratulate him on a hard-fought campaign. He did an outstanding job."

With a small percentage of votes still left to count, Lindauer got 8,137 votes to Parker's 11,162.

The Democratic incumbent, state Rep. Don Barlow, D-Spokane, got 17,092. (A fourth candidate, independent Marcos James Ruiz Jr., received 1,089 votes.)

Lindauer said that although he's turning his attention back to his optometric practice and family, he intends to stay active in state and local politics.

"WIth the Primary Election over, it is important to now focus on the Republican Party winning back the District 6 legislative seat lost in 2006," wrote Lindauer. "I lend my full support to Kevin Parker and I urge my supporters to do the same."

Interestingly, the results in the primary track almost exactly with the battle for the district's other House seat:
-Parker and Lindauer combined got a Republican vote of 52 percent.
-For the other seat, incumbent Rep. John Ahern, a Republican, got a vote of...52 percent.

All of which suggests that Barlow -- who ended a long Republican run in that seat when he ousted incumbent John Serben two years ago -- has some work to do. As does John Driscoll, the Democrat who will challenge Ahern in November.

The hope -- or perhaps I should say expectation -- among Democrats is that Barack Obama's presence on the November ballot will spur a blue-voter tide that will lift all Democratic boats.

Catching up...

My colleague Jim Camden has worked his political-mapping skills and come up with a couple of graphics in the governor's race.

The upshot: the late-arriving ballots have been tilting slightly to Republicans.

"Dino Rossi has been gaining a bit of ground in the gubernatorial vote tally as the primary count continues," writes Camden. "His percentages are getting bigger east of the Cascades, while incumbent Chris Gregoire's percentages are getting smaller in most Western Washington Counties.

Here's a map of how the two candidates are doing, by county.

Here's a map of how the two did in the 2004 race in which Gregoire edged out Rossi.

Although the primary-to-general-election comparison is a little apples-to-oranges, the governor still looked strong in the Western Washington area, getting more votes in several counties that she lost in 2004. She also got 26,689 votes (as of this morning) more than Rossi in the primary. (Rossi's campaign argues that primary turnout favored Republicans by several percent.)

Meanwhile, at Politickerwa.com, Brian Bissell writes from Denver that DNC chairman Howard Dean stopped by the Washington delegation Monday for a pep talk that included marching orders: turn out Democrats in Eastern Washington.

How? The old fashioned way: by knocking on doors repeatedly and making a personal connection that outweighs conservative talk radio.

Dean "said that Washington Democrats needed `to begin to build [their] base in rural Washington. You have an immediate dividend. Every extra vote you get out in Eastern Washington is a vote for Chris Gregoire. It is a long term benefit as well. These people haven't voted for a Democrat in a long time. As soon as you get these folks to think about voting for a Democrat again, they start t consider voting for state legislature candidates. That is how you turn the country blue,'" reports Bissell, continuing to quote Dean: "`We are going to turn Eastern Washington blue.'"

(and yes, the state Supreme Court's office building is really called the Temple of Justice.)

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown is doing something that would make many a politician squirm: going to court to make it easier to raise taxes.

A 15-year-old law declaring that a tax increase requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature is unconstitutional, she argues. Her fast-track lawsuit will be heard by the state Supreme Court on Sept. 9.

Defenders of the two-thirds requirement – including national anti-tax groups, small businesses and farmers – say Brown's setting the state up for big tax increases.

Others call the lawsuit an act of political courage.

"Lisa, when she fundamentally feels that something's the right thing to do, she's willing to go out on a limb a little bit," said Marilyn Watkins, acting executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute. "Leaders have to be willing to take risks."

Politically, the lawsuit's probably of little risk to Brown. She's one of the state's most powerful lawmakers, has been in the Legislature since the early 1990s and is sitting on about $140,000 in campaign cash. She got 77 percent of the vote in Tuesday's primary.

But the case has drawn flak for months. "Why are you displaying such an arrogant elitist's attitude?" wrote Gary Lollis, of Mukilteo. "You work for the people of the state of Washington, not the Senate in Olympia. Remember where you came from."

Gov. Chris Gregoire, locked in a close race for re-election, has repeatedly declined to say if she supports Brown's case. She says she's not familiar with the specifics.

"I know that everybody thinks that's surprising. I have not studied it," Gregoire said in a recent interview.

The flak was no surprise, Brown said. But after 15 years in Olympia, watching lawmakers struggle to balance a budget in an up-and-down economy, she said, it just seemed like time to clarify the law. In a representative democracy there's a careful balance of powers, she said, and the two-thirds requirement threatens that.

The stage was set six months ago on a drizzly Friday in Olympia.

Not enough.

That was the message from more than 100 patients and advocates who crowded a state hearing room Monday to decry proposed new limits on medical marijuana.

“You're going to make every one of these people in this room a felon,” Kirkland activist Steve Sarich told a four-person Department of Health panel.

The state's medical marijuana law limits patients to a 60-day supply, but doesn't define how much pot that is. Amid a tug-of-war between patients, advocates, police and prosecutors, state health officials for months have been trying to figure out what's a reasonable 60-day supply.

Their proposal, patterned on Oregon's law, would allow possession of:
-24 ounces of processed marijuana, not including things like stems, seeds and roots.
-six mature plants,
-and 18 seedlings, each up to a foot tall.

NOTE: To read comments sent to the state on the proposal -- or add your own -- click on this link, and go to the UPPER RIGHT-HAND CORNER of the page. You'll find the appropriate links there.

Some patients object to the 24-ounce limit, saying it's not enough for patients who eat the drug in brownies, for example, or mix it into lotions to apply to aching limbs.

“It's unreasonable. They didn't even base it on any known science,” said Ken Martin, a Cheney man who brought his son to Monday's hearing. A former nuclear plant worker, Martin said he's battling a brain tumor that causes throbbing headaches so severe that he vomits. Marijuana helps ease the agony and restore his hunger, he said.

“I smoke a quarter-ounce a day,” said Sue Watson, a patient and director of Emerald Cross, a Seattle advocacy group. “That doesn't count what I put on my skin, the capsules I take, the tea I drink, the medicated foods I eat.”

But the biggest sore spot with patients

After an afternoon of phone calls and emails with political consultants, campaign managers, etc., it's nothing but day-after sunshine and candies.

Everyone I talked to claimed to be happy -- usually very happy -- with the results. Incumbents said challengers fell short of expectations, and challengers said incumbents should have done better.

"It is clear we are on track for victory," said a memo from Superintendent of Public Instruction candidate Randy Dorn, who so far has gotten 31 percent of the vote in a six-way race.

Across the way, incumbent superintendent Terry Bergeson's campaign was equally pleased with her 36 percent. "By every honest analysis, Dorn suffered a crushing defeat last night," is how campaign guy Alex Hays saw the results. "I was amazed at how well it was for us."

At Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland's campaign, Todd Myers was "very pleased" with Sutherland's near-tie with Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark. "Four years ago we got 41 percent in the primary," Myers noted. And Sutherland polled about 5 points better than gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, he said, a fact not meant to knock Rossi but to suggest that Democratic turnout was higher in the primary.

Goldmark's campaign: equally happy. "We're the challenger," said campaign manager Heather Melton. "We've come a long way."

And attorney general? Incumbent Rob McKenna, with 56 percent, called last night to say how pleased he was. Challenger John Ladenburg "is throwing a lot of punches, but he's not landing them," McKenna said.

The Ladenburg campaign's take, with its 44 percent? "The results are good," said campaign manager David Sawyer. "We're at 45 percent without doing a thing. We have nowhere to go but up."

If a reporter shows up at some political event, unless you plan on committing felonies or appearing in blackface, it's probably a good idea to welcome the reporter.

It's a lot like when a bee flies into a room. Leave the window open and relax, and the curious bee will eventually get bored and find its way out. Flail around and swat at it, however, and...ouch.

Here are a couple of recent examples of ouches:

Brad Shannon, political editor of The Olympian newspaper, decided he'd like to drop in on a $150-a-head Dino Rossi fundraiser at a private home west of Olympia. Initially, the organizers and Rossi's campaign both said no. Then Rossi said yes but the organizers still said no. Then -- just before the thing started -- the organizers said OK. By then, of course, Shannon had made other plans.

All of which ended up on Shannon's political blog, under the boldfaced headline "Rossi backers bar press at Olympia fundraiser tonight."

Then there was The Stranger's -- see bee analogy above -- visit to the campaign party of Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson last night.

In a tough re-election fight, Bergeson and campaign consultant Alex Hays are apparently smarting over the alternative paper's Bergeson-bashing, including comparing her handwriting to a serial killer's.

A "visibly upset" Hays hustled the visitors out of the party and into the hall, where he offered my favorite quote thus far in the 2008 elections cycle:

"This is a place for a party and not for anything else."

Then, the Stranger says, Hays wouldn't let them talk to Bergeson or go back in the room.

All of which, of course, promptly turned into a 362-word post on the Stranger's blog mocking the event: BREAKING: SECB Kicked Out of Bergeson Victory Wake!. And revisiting the handwriting joke, plus new ones.

So far, the Democrats seem to be doing better at these things. When I turned up at a Peter Goldmark fundraiser in Seattle earlier in the campaign, the closest thing to a confrontation was when I had to decline the free tree seedling they wanted to give me. And the Gregoire campaign will be happy to tell you how they welcome even the Republican-Party-hired video cameraman at Gregoire's public appearances.

In fact, it's become almost a running joke: while Rossi's folks have been barring the Democratic video folks from one event after another -- clips which are promptly turned into what-is-he-hiding campaign videos -- Gregoire's have been greeting the Republicans' guy, clearing space for him on the camera platform, and -- I'm not making this up -- giving him a free drink coupon.

Can be found here.

In the sprawling 9th District, which covers the rolling wheat fields of the Palouse, scrubland farm- and ranch territory to the south and even part of southern Spokane county, Rep. Steve Hailey drew 64 percent of the vote to Democratic challenger Kenneth Caylor's 36 percent. They'll face off again on the November ballot.

In the district's second House seat, incumbent Republican Rep. Joe Schmick got a solid to 62 percent to Democratic challenger Tyana Kelley's 32 percent and 6 percent for the Green Party's Christopher Winter. Kelley and Schmick will be on the ballot in November.

Another very close race to the north, where it looks like Shelly Short and Sue Lani Madsen will face off in November.

The race in the rural northeastern Washington district is a rare five-way legislative battle with only Republicans in the ring. Three of them -- Mike Davis, Peter Davenport, and Kelly White -- did about equally, getting 14 to 17 percent each.

The numbers were equally similar among the apparent top two vote-getters, Short and Madsen. Each got about 26 percent, with Madsen leading tonight by about 60 votes.

Wow.

Both state Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane, and Democratic challenger John Driscoll are guaranteed a spot on the November ballot, and it looks like it will be quite a race.

The numbers tonight show less than two-tenths of a percent difference between the two. In tonight's two-person faceoff, Ahern's ahead -- barely -- with 11,937 votes to Driscoll's 11,896.

A surprisingly sharp open-seat battle between Republicans Mel Lindauer and Kevin Parker seems to have ended with Parker facing off in November against Democratic incumbent Rep. Don Barlow.

Parker got 28 percent to Lindauer's 21 percent in tonight's returns, a roughly 1,500-vote gap that will be hard for Lindauer to overcome. Barlow, the lone Democrat in the race, got 48 percent. Independent Marcos James Ruiz Jr., an ex-Marine and home health aide who saved for years to pay for the race, got less than 3 percent.

Interestingly, the Republican votes and Democratic votes are nearly equal in this race, suggesting that the next round is going to be pretty fierce as well.

Sen. Bob McCaslin, R-Spokane Valley, got 57 percent of the vote to Democratic challenger Judi Owens' 43 percent. They'll face off in November.

So will another Republican incumbent, Rep. Larry Crouse, who got 55 percent to Democrat Linda J. Thompson's 45 percent.

But the big race to watch in the 4th was the three-Republican, two-Democrat race to replace retiring Republican Rep. Lynn Schindler.

Schindler's pick, conservative lawyer Matt Shea, outpolled his closest Republican challenger, Diana Wilhite, nearly two to one in tonight's results. (The third Republican, Ray Deonier, got less than 3 percent.) On the Democratic side, Tim Hattenburg easily outdistanced fellow Democrat Anthony Honorof, 36 percent to 3.

As expected, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, steamrolled independent challenger John Moyna, a night janitor at a hamburger eatery in Spokane. The two will face off again in November, but the early returns show Brown with 78 percent to Moyna's 22 percent.

In the same central-Spokane district, Rep. Alex Wood far outpolled two Republican challengers, 64 percent to their COMBINED 27 percent. But the GOP's Laura Carder and Chris Bowen were in a tight race for who will face off against Wood in November. Bowen led by 1,835 votes to Carder's 1,781.

The final Legislative District 3 seat featured incumbent Democratic state Rep. Timm Ormsby, with 70 percent to the GOP's Mike Novak, with 30 percent. They'll face off again in November, but at this point it seems hard to imagine how Ormby could lose.

--The Democrats, according to Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna: "Primaries in Washington state invariably favor Democratic candidates," he said by phone earlier tonight.

More voters in Washington call themselves Democrats than Republicans, he reasons, and independents tend to vote less in the primaries.

--The Republicans, according to Kelly Steele, spokesman for the state Democratic Party.

"The primary electorate substantially favored (Rossi)," Steele said. "It's a more conservative electorate, an older electorate."

All of which, he argues, bodes well for Gregoire, a Democrat, particularly in light of expected Democratic voter enthusiasm in the presidential race.

Rossi's "electoral prospects get substantially worse starting tomorrow," Steele said, "when the next ballot has Barack Obama's name at the top of it.

Rossi 46 percent, Gregoire 48 percent.

In a press release a earlier this hour, Rossi called that a "strong showing" and pointed out that he got just 34 percent of the vote in 2004. (Note: Although in 2004, Democratic turnout in the primary was spurred by a heated Democratic faceoff between Gregoire and King County Executive Ron Sims.)

Rossi said he's happy with the outcome and looking forward to the next few months. And then came a preview of what we'll hear a lot of between now and November:

“Christine Gregoire sees Washington state the way it is today and she is satisfied. In Christine Gregoire’s Washington our economy is fine, there is no transportation crisis, she is satisfied with the education of our children, and she believes we are safe enough. In the end, Christine Gregoire is so satisfied with how things are today in Washington, that she wants us to have four more years of the same thing. I believe we can and must do better.”

Gregoire's take?

We're feeling good; we take nothing for granted,” Gregoire said in a phone interview from a campaign party in Seattle. “We've got momentum.”

She said she feels the voting suggests that her message of positive results for all Washingtonians is resonating across the state.

Asked if she's disappointed to be polling below 50 percent, she said no, and noted that there were nine other candidates for governor in this primary.

Also, she noted that vote counting will continue for days to come.

“It's not over yet,” she said.

From the Secretary of State's election website:

"VOTE.WA.GOV is currently down for system maintenance and should be available shortly. Please check back later."