Rob McKenna makes his gubernatorial ambitions official… as if he needed to

This evening, in front of a friend­ly crowd at Sam­mamish High School in Belle­vue, and with his fam­i­ly by his side, Rob McKen­na announced what we’ve all known for some time: He wants to be gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State.

In a long, care­ful­ly script­ed speech, McKen­na laid out his agen­da, which most­ly con­sist­ed of a series of poll-test­ed plat­i­tudes designed to appeal to bicon­cep­tu­als, con­ser­v­a­tives, and folks who learn con­ser­v­a­tive. Notably, he pledged to bol­ster fund­ing for Wash­ing­ton’s schools and uni­ver­si­ties, but offered zero specifics as to how he would accom­plish that with­out rais­ing revenue.

We can safe­ly assume that no specifics will ever be forth­com­ing, because what McKen­na wants to do is impos­si­ble. The real­i­ty that he is ignor­ing is that there is no free lunch. Pub­lic ser­vices cost money.

If there was a way to strength­en fund­ing for our schools and uni­ver­si­ties with­out rais­ing rev­enue — even a hard way — it would have been done by now.

It has­n’t.. and that’s because the only way we can solve our school fund­ing cri­sis is to rebuild our com­mon wealth, which has been bat­tered by a series of destruc­tive Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives going back to the Gary Locke era.

As a coau­thor of one of those ini­tia­tives (I‑747, from 2001), Rob McKen­na played a direct role in under­cut­ting our state’s fis­cal posi­tion. Now he is ask­ing vot­ers to trust him to repair the dam­age and make things bet­ter. It’s as if Phil Gramm were run­ning for pres­i­dent and promis­ing to fix our bro­ken reg­u­la­to­ry system.

The idea that there’s all this mon­ey avail­able to be redi­rect­ed to schools and uni­ver­si­ties is an utter fic­tion. We could dis­con­tin­ue just about every oth­er essen­tial ser­vice the state pro­vides, and we would still not be in a posi­tion to ful­fill our con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-man­dat­ed oblig­a­tion to the youth of Wash­ing­ton State.

I’m pret­ty sure that Rob McKen­na knows this. I’ve met him. I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty  to sit down across the table from him in his offices and ask him ques­tions. I know he has the abil­i­ty to look at issues seri­ous­ly (as opposed to Tim Eyman, who has to be dragged away from his sound bites kick­ing and screaming).

If Rob were a Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cian and he had a cred­i­ble plan to raise rev­enue to match his pro­fessed fer­vor for bet­ter­ing our schools, he’d be see­ing over­whelm­ing inter­est in his cam­paign from teach­ers, stu­dents, and parents.

But Rob McKen­na is a Repub­li­can who has aligned him­self with the right wing. The right wing does not want strong pub­lic schools. In fact, the right wing does not want pub­lic schools at all — as evi­denced by the many com­ments we often see on Seat­tle Times com­ment boards from grumpy con­ser­v­a­tives who say they should not have to pay one pen­ny for a ser­vice that they don’t believe should exist.

The right wing has been pur­pose­ful­ly try­ing for years to wreck Wash­ing­ton’s gov­ern­ment so that it can’t work. Though they have tried, they have been unable to elect a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor to do their hand­i­work, and unable to wrest con­trol of the Leg­is­la­ture. But they have been much more suc­cess­ful at forc­ing pub­lic votes on nefar­i­ous schemes intend­ed to shred pub­lic ser­vices and dis­man­tle our com­mon wealth. Many of these schemes, of course, have been spon­sored by Tim Eyman.

I cre­at­ed Per­ma­nent Defense in 2002 and then NPI in 2003 because I did­n’t see a suf­fi­cient response being mount­ed to com­bat this ongo­ing cam­paign of destruc­tion. I took the advice of that great Hopi poem, decid­ed that I was one of the peo­ple I had been wait­ing for, and became an activist.

In the nine plus years I’ve been at this, I’ve learned that actions speak much loud­er than words. Yes, I know, it’s a cliche, but it’s true. I know from expe­ri­ence that plat­i­tudes do not solve prob­lems and noble inten­tions do not improve lives. Progress requires courage and vision. If win­ning elect­ed office is hard, then gov­ern­ing well and lead­ing by exam­ple is unimag­in­ably difficult.

Rob McKen­na wants to be our state’s chief exec­u­tive, but noth­ing that he has done in his polit­i­cal career has con­vinced me that he is qual­i­fied for the job.

What McKen­na has proved is that he is as good at sell­ing him­self as Tim Eyman is at sell­ing real­ly destruc­tive ini­tia­tives. His P.R. machine is top-rate. If McKen­na were as tal­ent­ed at tak­ing on pow­er­ful inter­ests as he was at pro­mot­ing him­self, he’d be a heck of an attor­ney gen­er­al. But, in real­i­ty, he’s just been using the office as a stag­ing ground for his guber­na­to­r­i­al campaign.

I remem­ber watch­ing a debate in 2008 between John Laden­burg and McKen­na at Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty. The two men were asked if they thought the posi­tion of attor­ney gen­er­al was an appro­pri­ate step­ping-stone to the office of gov­er­nor. Laden­burg said no, and McKen­na said yes — to the amuse­ment of the audience.

McKen­na has been prepar­ing for today’s announce­ment for a very, very long time. As I said, he’s an incred­i­bly shrewd politi­cian, and I expect he’ll wage a for­mi­da­ble cam­paign. So does the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and its many cam­paign com­mit­tees, which wast­ed no time in respond­ing to McKen­na’s announcement.

“The vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton will have a long time to assess their can­di­dates for gov­er­nor and we are con­fi­dent that they will reject Rob McKen­na,” Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Colm O’Comartun said in a statement.

“The DGA is ful­ly com­mit­ted to keep­ing the governor’s man­sion in Demo­c­ra­t­ic hands and we will do what it takes to ensure that happens.”

The state Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty unleashed an even length­i­er broadside.

“Rob McKen­na has spent his time in pub­lic office tak­ing march­ing orders from the far right-wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty — head­lin­ing Tea Par­ty ral­lies, under­cut­ting work­ing fam­i­lies, and wast­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars on a high­ly par­ti­san effort to block Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from access­ing high qual­i­ty, afford­able health care,” said State Par­rty Chair­man Dwight Pelz, who once served with McKenna.

“As attor­ney gen­er­al and as a mem­ber of the King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Rob McKen­na con­sis­tent­ly opposed the rights of work­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, even fight­ing an orga­niz­ing dri­ve among his staff.”

And Fuse Wash­ing­ton has released a video rein­forc­ing the same point.

So we’re off. Rob McKen­na’s long-await­ed bid for gov­er­nor has begun. And now the oth­er domi­noes will begin to fall. In just a few weeks — pos­si­bly even with­in the next few days — Chris Gre­goire will announce she won’t be seek­ing reelec­tion in 2012, clear­ing the way for Jay Inslee to launch his own campaign.

Folks who thought the 2004 and 2008 guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paigns were hard fought may think dif­fer­ent­ly once the 2012 cam­paign is over. It looks like it’s going to be a lot fiercer and a lot longer. That’s because so much is at stake.