With two recent polls showing Christine Gregoire with a commanding early lead in the 2004 gubernatorial contest and a flood of money pouring into her campaign coffers, the centrist state attorney general has settled comfortably into the role of cautious, safely bland front-runner.

An Elway Research telephone poll of 401 registered voters conducted between November 20 and 23 shows Gregoire with a double-digit lead over all other declared or potential candidates. With 47 percent of voters still undecided, Gregoire pulls 24 percent support, potential Republican candidate King County Sheriff Dave Reichert draws nine percent, Republican front-runner Dino Rossi is at eight percent, and Gregoire's Democratic rivals, King County Executive Ron Sims and former state supreme court justice Phil Talmadge, lag behind at five and four percent, respectively.

"I think it clearly shows Gregoire is in a very strong position," pollster Stuart Elway says. "She leads across demographic categories and in every region, including King County." That's bad news for Sims, who will need to win big in his King County base in order to have any chance of beating Gregoire.

A second November 21-24 poll for EMILY's List, the national women's PAC backing Gregoire, confirms her commanding lead. Among Democrats, Gregoire holds a 29-percentage-point advantage, leading Sims 48 to 19, with Talmadge at six percent. Head-to-head against Rossi, Gregoire leads 46 percent to 27 percent.

The failure of Sims and Talmadge to shake Gregoire from her front-running perch was apparent at a Washington Federation of State Employees and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees candidates' forum held Friday evening at the SeaTac DoubleTree Hotel. Facing a labor audience predisposed to support her more liberal opponents, Gregoire artfully fielded the audience's queries with rhetorically powerful, but substantively noncommittal, defenses of pro-labor positions.

Gregoire ducked giving specifics on tough questions regarding tax policy, corporate subsidies, and controversial business practices like outsourcing--she also avoided mention of her support for outgoing governor Gary Locke, whose no-new-taxes budget and pro-business agenda in the last legislative session enraged labor advocates--but it's not clear that many in attendance noticed, since Gregoire's impassioned if generic avowals of support for working people effectively gave her the outward appearance, at least, of being a staunch labor advocate. Gregoire's apparent election strategy of sticking to warm-and-fuzzy platitudes has also subverted her opponents' efforts to define her as a conservative out of step with the views of traditional Democratic constituencies.

Establishment liberal Sims seemed particularly stymied by Gregoire's all-things- to-everyone style. Unable to distinguish himself on the issues, he often fell back on sunny personal asides. He added unintentional levity to the proceedings, at one point stating to peals of laughter that "King County is one of the largest mental health facilities in our state," before sheepishly clarifying that he meant that the county's mental health facility was one of the largest in Washington.

Talmadge was less flummoxed by Gregoire's posturing. Running as a take-no-prisoners outsider, he won hoots of approval by pummeling Locke--and by implication Gregoire--for the governor's "stupid" promise not to raise taxes during the last legislative session. Violating the forum's format, he directly challenged Sims and Gregoire to back their verbal support for pro-labor initiatives with an explicit pledge to consider raising taxes to pay for their promises--and was met by embarrassed silence. And Talmadge slammed the state legislature's passage of more than $3 billion in tax breaks for Boeing.

But Talmadge has yet to prove himself a credible candidate. His candidacy has been hobbled by woefully inadequate fundraising--a total of only $74,046 by October's end. Sims, by contrast, had pulled in $283,433, while Gregoire has collected over $1.2 million overall.

At present, Republican Rossi seems like the greatest obstacle between Gregoire and the governor's mansion. Rossi campaign coordinator Aston Swift dismisses Gregoire's substantial current lead in the polls over the former state senator. "I'd have thought Gregoire's numbers would be higher," Swift declares. "She's had eight years for the voters to get to know her, and less than half the people want to elect her." Rossi, who only declared his candidacy on November 10, has already raised more than $300,000, and last week resigned his senate seat to concentrate on the race. He intends to raise $4 million to $6 million overall.

sandeep@thestranger.com