The morning of July 27 found Republican Senate candidate Dino Rossi in Washington, D.C.—a place that he likes to say "needs some adult supervision." On that day, however, it might have been Rossi who needed someone supervising his political decisions. He started out the morning at a fundraiser held for him by the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce political action committee and then headed off for a taping of ABC News' Top Line, where Rossi was pressed by the show's hosts on the politically combustible question of whether he supports a repeal of both the new health-care reform law and the new financial reform law.

Rossi has long said he wants to repeal health-care reform, and on this day he repeated that stance. "We need to repeal that bill," he said on Top Line. "I want as many health-insurance companies in my state chasing around my constituents as I can possibly get for their business. They can decide what they want in a plan, versus some bureaucrat in D.C. deciding for them." No surprise there. Rossi has been all about trying to capitalize on the backlash against President Obama's health-care reform law by deploying vague talking points about how he would replace it with more competition and less government regulation. But what came next was definitely a surprise.

Pushed by the host to answer the rest of the question—"Do you also repeal Wall Street reform?"—Rossi at first tried to artfully thread the needle. He seemed to know he was about to get into trouble. After all, not even Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, generally thought to be the most far-right of the major Republican Senate candidates, have called for the repeal of financial reform, too. "I think, first off, we need to make sure we do no harm," Rossi said. "What they did is create six superbanks and left the Fannie and Freddie, which were at the epicenter of the problem, out of the deal."

The host pressed him further. "Yes, that's a repeal?" And in reply, Rossi became the first major Republican Senate candidate in the country to embrace a double-repeal platform.

"I think we should," he said.

He continued: "I think we should put reforms in that actually protect the public." But the problem is, polls have shown the public to be broadly supportive of Obama's financial reform effort; before it passed, a Washington Post–ABC News poll found two-thirds of Americans supporting tighter regulations on banks and financial institutions. That's something Rossi's campaign clearly knows, since it immediately sprang into action trying to spin away his remarks as if they were a big gaffe (and not, say, a strategic attempt to win over any double-repeal voters who might be gravitating toward Rossi's primary rival, Tea Party darling Clint Didier).

Rossi spokeswoman Jennifer Morris sent multiple e-mails to The Stranger over the course of July 27, responding to a blog post in which we published Rossi's Top Line remarks while noting that he was diving into dangerous political waters. Morris first demanded that we publish Rossi's complete Top Line statement on our blog because, she said, his overall message "refutes" the conclusion that (a) Rossi wants to repeal financial reform and that (b) this position might be a problem for him politically.

In fact, The Stranger had already posted the entire video of Rossi's Top Line appearance. But when we posted Rossi's complete remarks in typed-out form, there was no refutation to be found. Not deterred, Morris sent a transcript of her own to members of the Washington State media—in which Rossi's statement that "we should" repeal financial reform was strategically edited out of existence. (You know the news cycle is not going your way when, in just over an hour, you switch from demanding that your candidate's every single word be transcribed to offering your own transcription—which ends up being significantly edited.)

What was Morris so nervous about? Exactly what ended up happening.

First, the Washington State Democrats blasted out a timeline titled "DINO ROSSI AND WALL STREET REFORM: FROM SILENCE TO REPEAL IN 63 DAYS." It showed how Rossi began his campaign, on May 25, declining to take a position on financial reform and then, after attending a fundraiser thrown for him by Wall Street hedge fund manager Paul Singer, came out against the reform effort—and then, ultimately, in favor of repealing the new reform law. The next hit: a commercial, quickly cut by Democratic incumbent Patty Murray's campaign and now airing around Washington State, which calls Rossi "the best friend Wall Street and big banks can buy" (it also echoes the Washington Democrats' timeline by accusing Rossi of ignoring questions about "bailouts, bonuses, lost savings, foreclosed homes" until his pockets were first filled with Wall Street cash).

How big a deal is this? In politics, you can often measure how vulnerable a candidate feels on an issue by how fast his or her response is—and the Rossi campaign continues to swiftly and intensely contest any effort to paint him as a Wall Street lackey. The morning after Murray's campaign released its attack ad, Rossi's people scheduled a conference call with reporters and issued a long statement trying to turn the tables.

"The contrast between Dino Rossi and Patty Murray could not be more clear," Morris wrote. "On the day Dino launches a positive ad to talk about issues like out-of-control spending which are important to Washington voters, Patty Murray goes on the attack with a false ad, which makes no mention of her 18-year record of growing government, raising taxes, and pushing job-killing legislation."

The only thing that could not be more clear, though, is that the candidate who is successfully painted as out of touch on financial reform—and, by extension, the all-important issue of the economy—is in serious trouble in this race.

On his conference call, Rossi repeatedly lamented all the growth-killing "uncertainty" that he feels the passage of health-care reform and financial reform created among Washingtonians. "The uncertainty is: What's next?" he said. However, he could not explain how launching an effort to repeal both laws would not create even more uncertainty. Instead, he dodged that question with a circular answer. "The uncertainty is already there," he said.