"OLYMPIA — When majority Democrats wrapped up this year's legislative session Wednesday night, some of their biggest achievements read like a Republican Party wish list.
They took steps to resolve long-standing water disputes between farmers and environmentalists in Eastern Washington. They handed sizable tax breaks to farmers and the timber industry. They won a truce in the years-long war between business and labor over unemployment insurance. And they pushed through tougher penalties for sex offenders.
What's going on here?
Republicans say passing those bills was more about politics than policy — a strategic move by Democrats to take away GOP campaign issues ahead of the fall's legislative elections.
Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, said he doubts any of those bills would have gotten far this year if elections weren't a few months away. "You have to ask yourself why, in a short session, so many big things came out of here," he said.
"That's absolute nonsense," House Speaker Frank Chopp replied in an interview. "We were just trying to get things done."
Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire also shrugged off Hewitt's assertion, pointing specifically to the landmark bipartisan water deal.
"It wasn't some political strategy," Gregoire said. "We knew we had to do something about water."
Democrats did plenty to please their traditional allies. They put money in the budget for cleaning up Puget Sound and added thousands of children to state-funded health care.
But Democratic leaders acknowledge that the more centrist items on this year's agenda will leave little campaign fodder for the Republicans.
"What are they going to complain about?" Chopp asked.
Even some Republicans are grumbling about how difficult it will be to go after Democrats.
Chopp and the Democrats have been "eating our lunch," said Rep. Fred Jarrett, R-Mercer Island.
Lawmakers on both sides say the odds are good that Democrats will gain seats in the fall and return next year with even bigger majorities. That prospect worries Republicans and even moderate Democrats, who fear it could send the Legislature careening leftward.
But Democratic leaders insist that they won't let that happen.
"The only way we keep [the majorities] is if we govern from the middle," Gregoire said. "That's where the public at large is."-from today's Seattle Times.
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