John McCain

This week's Winners & Losers are now posted.

Gov. Chris GregoireA new Rasumussen Poll show Governor Chris Gregoire with a comfortable eleven point lead over her opponent, Republican Dino Rossi. The poll has Gregoire leading Rossi 52 percent to 41 percent. The last two Rasmussen snapshots, conducted in March and in February, showed statistical dead heats of 47-46, with Rossi leading in February and Gregoire on top in March.

The same pollster also shows Democrat Barack Obama leading Republican John McCain 51-40 in a presidential matchup here in the Evergreen State. This, too, is a marked increase for the Democrat from earlier polls.

Time's Mark Halperin, who runs their political website, The Page, unleashed his campaign season calendar highlighting what he predicts to be the most important dates in the presidential race. Worth noting for followers of Evergreen State politics is the final date on the calendar, Nov. 4, 2008. That's Election Day, on which he calls Washington one of 14 "states to watch."

Fourteen is too large a number to get terribly excited about, given that it puts Washington only in the top 30 percent of battleground states. But still, included in the same group are notorious win-or-go-home states as Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Pennsylvania.

In other words, get those hiking boots out. John McCain might just be coming back to the woods.

When Republican presidential candidate John McCain came to Washington on Tuesday, state Democrats were poised and ready to hit back on his stance on Iraq and his connection to the French-American firm that won a hotly debated Air Force contract earlier this year. While the state party mocked McCain and Dino Rossi for supporting him, one Democrat was more straightforward.

Attorney General candidate John Ladenburg directly called on his Republican opponent, Attorney General Rob McKenna, to disassociate himself with the McCain campaign. McKenna is the McCain's Washington State Campaign Chair.

More PolitickerWA.com coverage: McCain, in North Bend, talks energy, environment with local leaders

NORTH BEND -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain participated in a roundtable discussion on environmental issues today at the Cedar River Watershed Education Center in Eastern King County. McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona, was joined by a wide slate of interested parties, ranging from Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland to REI CEO Sally Jewel, former Gov. Dan Evans and Mercer Island City Councilman Steve Litzow along with a handful of local business and non-profit group leaders.

Local Republicans in attendance at the event included Attorney General Rob McKenna, who is McCain's state chair, former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, former Secretary of State Ralph Munro, state Sen. Cheryl Pflug and party Chairman Luke Esser. The first thing off their tongues was their excitement at having such a prominent national figure in town.

Sen. John McCain leads a roundtable discussion

On the day that Republican presidential candidate John McCain comes to Washington for the first time since becoming the GOP's presumptive nominee, the state Democratic Party is doing its best to run interference on his visit. Today they released a video highlighting Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi's reference to McCain as "my guy" in an Aberdeen Daily World article earlier this year along with the Air Force tanker contract that McCain helped guide to a foreign competitor of Boeing.

"Republican Dino Rossi has demonstrated that his partisan GOP allies in Washington DC are more important than standing up for thousands of jobs here in Washington state," said Washington State Democratic Party Chair Dwight Pelz in a statement. "While Gov. Gregoire has sharply criticized the contract that shipped our jobs overseas and supported an appeal of the decision, Rossi stands by his man - further evidence that Washingtonians simply can't trust Rossi with our future."

Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain  will be in the Evergreen State today to continue his discussion on environmental issues and climate change. He will participate in a roundtable discussion in North Bend this morning before heading into Bellevue later on for a high dollar fundraiser.

The Seattle Times' David Postman has a rundown of the roundtable here.

Check out PolitickerOR.com's coverage of McCain's major climate change speech in Portland, Ore. yesterday here.

We can't get to North Bend for the environmental roundtable and we can't afford the entry fee in Bellevue, but we would love to hear about John McCain's visit to Washington. If you're going, drop us a line here.