Jay Inslee confirms he’s running for governor in 2012; kickoff to be on Monday

As reporters and activists have long expect­ed, Jay Inslee has decid­ed to run for gov­er­nor of our great state of Wash­ing­ton in 2012.

Inslee’s cam­paign issued a media advi­so­ry an hour ago invit­ing reporters to next week’s series of kick­off events, which will begin in Seattle.

Refresh­ing­ly, the release was very straight­for­ward. It did­n’t say, Jay Inslee to Make Spe­cial Announce­ment, or Jay Inslee to Dis­cuss Plans for 2012. It sim­ply said, Jay Inslee to Announce Run for Gov­er­nor.

The first kick­off event will take place Mon­day in Seat­tle’s South Lake Union neigh­bor­hood at 9 AM. It will be fol­lowed by an event in the Yaki­ma Val­ley (where Jay was first elect­ed to office) the same day. On Tues­day, Inslee will stop in addi­tion­al cities (Taco­ma, Van­cou­ver, and Spokane) to meet with supporters.

Inslee’s offi­cial entry into the race cre­ates a matchup with Repub­li­can Rob McKen­na that promis­es to be one of the fiercest con­tests for gov­er­nor Wash­ing­ton has ever seen. Inslee and McKen­na are wide­ly expect­ed to secure the nom­i­na­tions of their respec­tive par­ties pri­or to the win­now­ing elec­tion in August 2012, where they are very like­ly to be the two can­di­dates that advance to the runoff in Novem­ber 2012.

(I say runoff because the “Top Two” sys­tem the Grange and Sam Reed brought us in 2004 with Ini­tia­tive 872 is not a pri­ma­ry. In a real pri­ma­ry — whether open or closed — vot­ers iden­ti­fy­ing with a polit­i­cal par­ty get to do the nom­i­nat­ing for their par­ty’s candidates).

The advi­so­ry released by Inslee’s cam­paign notes that he will be unavail­able for inter­views or for com­ment until Mon­day. That makes sense, since oth­er­wise the offi­cial kick­off would be pre­empt­ed. A cam­paign has to be in con­trol of its own mes­sage, and it looks like Jay’s is.

We look for­ward to Jay out­lin­ing his future for Wash­ing­ton on Monday.

POSTSCRIPT: JayInslee.com has just been relaunched, and the ban­ner fea­tures the tagline, Build­ing a Work­ing Wash­ing­ton. That sounds like it just might be the cam­paign theme. If so, I’d say it’s a good choice.