A year and a half ago, when the 2012 campaign kicked off in earnest, the conventional wisdom was that Republican Rob McKenna had a virtual lock on the governor's mansion. That was the chatter in the press section at McKenna's kickoff, and while I argued that Jay Inslee was a better candidate than my colleagues were giving him credit for, even I thought that McKenna had the edge. Inslee went on to win by almost 100,000 votes, a comfortable margin by Washington gubernatorial standards.

Just something for folks to keep in mind before they write Mayor Mike McGinn's political epitaph.