Christine Gregoire Implosion

The Christine Gregoire for Governor campaign continues to implode this week as Attorney General Gregoire tries to suppress damaging public documents:

Lawyers for Attorney General Christine Gregoire yesterday accused political rival Ron Sims and an attorney for a former employee of leaking documents in hopes of damaging Gregoire's bid for governor this year.

Sims' spokesman, Tim Hatley, acknowledged that the campaign "came across" thousands of pages of documents and gave them to The Seattle Times.

The Times used the documents, some of which also are publicly available in a court file, as the basis for a story Sunday that showed Gregoire's office had shaped an "independent" investigation of the office by urging the author to downplay broad management problems. The investigation was conducted after the Attorney General's Office missed an appeal of a jury verdict, costing taxpayers more than $18 million

Gregoire has asked the trial judge to keep the rest of the documents under wraps. Of course, that only confirms the perception that the documents really are damaging to Gregoire.

Whatever those documents contain, Gregoire continues to build an impressive track record for opposing the public's right to view public documents. (see here and here).

UPDATE (4/22): An e-mailed press release from the state Senate Republican Caucus says that

Senate Majority Leader Bill Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland, has requested the Senate Judiciary Committee exercise its legislative powers to review allegations of questionable communication between Attorney General Christine Gregoire's office and an independent investigator hired to evaluate the circumstances surrounding [the] missed appeal

Yes, it's partisan, but it's also the right thing to do.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 21, 2004 11:54 AM