President Obama releases statement on Gregoire’s decision not to run in 2012

Fol­low­ing Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire’s announce­ment this morn­ing that she would not be seek­ing a third term as Wash­ing­ton’s chief exec­u­tive, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma released a state­ment thank­ing her for her ser­vice and wish­ing her well in her future endeav­ors… which might include an impor­tant posi­tion in his administration.

I applaud Gov­er­nor Gre­goire for her decades of out­stand­ing ser­vice to the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton. From Seat­tle to Pull­man, Gov. Gre­goire has demon­strat­ed relent­less deter­mi­na­tion in her efforts to fos­ter eco­nom­ic growth, strength­en the com­mu­ni­ties she serves and improve the lives of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans. As a fierce advo­cate for Amer­i­can busi­ness­es, she con­tin­ues to work tire­less­ly to pro­mote Amer­i­can goods, open up new mar­kets and strength­en Amer­i­can busi­ness­es abroad. As chair­woman of the Nation­al Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion, Gov. Gre­goire not only fos­ters strong bipar­ti­san­ship among her col­leagues, she helps build com­mon-sense solu­tions to some of our nation’s tough­est prob­lems. Michelle and I, along with the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton, will miss her out­stand­ing lead­er­ship and thank her for her years of service.

We at NPI already miss Gov­er­nor Gregoire.

We miss the Gov­er­nor Gre­goire who shep­ard­ed the 2005 Trans­porta­tion Pack­age through the state­house. We miss the gov­er­nor who restored the estate tax. We miss the gov­er­nor who took on dif­fi­cult prob­lems, brought war­ring fac­tions to the table, and came up with solu­tions that did not just kick prob­lems down the road.

We wish that gov­er­nor were still in office.

POSTSCRIPT: The state Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has just released a state­ment thank­ing Gre­goire and promis­ing to oppose Rob McKen­na’s can­di­da­cy for governor.

“Today, we thank Gov. Gre­goire for her lead­er­ship and ser­vice to the state of Wash­ing­ton, espe­cial­ly as the coun­try faced one of the most dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times in our his­to­ry. We were for­tu­nate to have a leader with Chris Gre­goire’s val­ues help­ing us to make these dif­fi­cult deci­sions,” said Dwight Pelz, chair­man of the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

“We look for­ward to the upcom­ing gov­er­nor’s race, and will con­tin­ue to take on Rob McKen­na’s record of fail­ing to stand up for con­sumers and Wash­ing­ton’s mid­dle class.”