Dino Rossi will win out in his challenge over his defeat to Christine Gregoire in the governor’s election now being heard in Chelan County Superior Court in Wenatchee, and, eventually, in the state Supreme Court.

He lost in Seattle due to the efforts of King County Executive Ron Sims, elections head Dean Logan and the King County elections apparatus, just as U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton lost his seat in the same place in 2000.

Who says so?

Not me, although I hope for the court win and have begun to incline toward believing it wasn’t just stupidity or carelessness that made King County the Pandora’s box of the 2004 election. Logan is taking the heat for Sims. I thought Gorton lost because there was a third party candidate siphoning votes out that might have gone to him, and the then state GOP chair hid nearly a million dollars from the Gorton campaign because he wanted to buy a new headquarters building with it.

No, the optimism and suspicion-laden predictor was a gorgeous Mexican dish named Fredi Simpson from Wenatchee who earlier this year became vice chair of the state Republican Party.

“I truly believe we will have Dino Rossi for governor in November,” she told a gathering of Republican women in Silverdale. And he will win, she said, because of the fact the Republican party exposed the goings-on of Sims, Logan and King County in seeing to it that he lost in the last vote count.

But Republicans have a lot to learn if they’re going to win next year, Mrs. Simpson said.

“We have to start working better as a team. Now, one club thinks it’s better than another club. the state is versus the central committees. We have to stop the internal bickering. Our candidates all have to be talking off the same page next year.”

Democrats win, said Mrs. Simpson, “because even when they don’t like each other, they stick together. The Reagan rule is if 80 percent of the time you agree, that was enough for him. The only reasons people run for office are to feed their egos or to serve the public. Candidates can be nice people but when they get to Olympia, the dark side takes over. They forget the Constitution, they forget the promises they made. Something happens when they get to Olympia.”

There’s a difference between men and women politicians too, she said. “Men know how to kill each other during the day and then have a beer together at night. Women haven’t learned to do that. Women talk about each other, back stab. We do have thicker skins, however.”

When Jim West, the Spokane mayor accused of child molestation and illegal use of his office to lure young men, was in the Legislature, everybody knew he was gay, Mrs. Simpson said, “but nobody said anything. If that had been women, do you think it would have been hush hush?”

Asked how much internal bickering she thought would be caused by the party’s lawsuit to eliminate the top two primary, considering many prominent Republicans such as Gorton endorsed it because it virtually wiped out third party candidates, she said, “If my candidate can only win by eliminating the little guy, I don’t want that candidate. Slade didn’t lose because of the third party. He lost in King County, just as Dino lost in King County. Actually, Dino won King County. He only lost Seattle.”

I called the King County elections office and asked for the totals for governor in Seattle and in King County. They didn’t have Seattle broken out, they said, so I had to settle for the whole county. King County has 1,082,406 registered voters of which 898,633 voted. Of these, 504,883 voted for Gregoire, 351,115 for Rossi, 18,926 for Libertarian Ruth Bennett and the remaining were listed as write-ins, under votes or overvotes. Seattle’s population is 571,900 and there are 38 other cities in King County. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.).