R Is for Ready
I don't tend to care about what's going on in Adams County in Eastern Washington (total population 16,600), but last week at the American Legion Club in Ritzville--Adams County's second biggest town--Betty Hanes and the county Republicans held their Lincoln Day Dinner ($15 a ticket), an annual event for small donors. Now, 104 attendees is not a lot of people, but it's six percent of all the people in town. For Seattle, to match the Ritzville showing, the King County Ds would have to turn out 33,000 people. More telling about Ritzville: Attendance at the Lincoln Day Dinner was a 39 percent increase over last year. According to Hanes, the Adams County Rs didn't even hold the dinner two years ago because it's not really politically important ("We're all Republicans here"), but last year, and especially this year, Hanes said, they needed to hold it because "it was a point of unity."
The Ritzville dinner, which raised $700, was the latest sign that the state's grassroots Republican base is fired up: The Kittitas County Republican dinner drew 300 people (a 50 percent increase over last year), and the same event in rural Ferry County was standing room only with 90 people jammed into the Hitch in Post, where they raised $2,000. Meanwhile: A recent grassroots training seminar for Bush volunteers in Bellevue drew 500 people, Republican AG candidate Rob McKenna drew 1,400 people to his kickoff, and, most significantly, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi has already raised $1.6 million, $200,000 more than Democratic frontrunner Christine Gregoire. Eighty-nine percent of Rossi's donors are the $250 or less type.
The energy of the Republican grassroots base grabbed my attention because all I've been hearing about here in Seattle is how much Bush has fired up the Democratic base. Certainly, given Bush's war in Iraq, his drive-through service for corporate donors, his attack on gays, his attack on civil rights via the PATRIOT Act, and his arrogance toward other countries, there's plenty to be fired up about. But be forewarned all you Ds who were so impressed with yourselves for waking up early on a Saturday morning and showing up at your caucus on the heels of the Howard Dean adrenaline rush: The Rs are fired up too. They're itching to defend their man. "People are tired of seeing the president beat up," says Ross Marzolf, executive director of the King County Republicans, whose own Lincoln Day Dinner at the SeaTac Hilton last month drew 600 people, 50 percent more folks than last year. (Karl Rove spoke and Dino Rossi got an impromptu standing ovation.)
The R energy also grabbed my attention because, well, John Kerry has not. I'm willing to swallow Kerry's lame position on gay rights and his dumb corporate tax break just to get Bush out of office, but Kerry's anemic campaign is all the more troubling when my Seattle bubble is disturbed by the news that in every county in the state, Bush has his base in high gear.
