‘Top two’ may have been Tuesday’s big winner

All the surviving candidates are happy with their percentages. All of them did better than expected, and all of their opponents did worse than expected. All of them have the momentum going into the fall.

Tuesday’s primary is being spun every which way by partisans using it to project victories in November and keep the campaign cash rolling in.

The returns may or may not say something about the general election – depending on the offices involved, the candidates on the ballot and other factors. But let’s take this primary at its face value: a snapshot of how politically engaged Washingtonians voted a few months before the final event.

Start with the governor’s race. Before the election, Dino Rossi’s opponents set a high hurdle for him: He had to beat or at least tie Gov. Chris Gregoire in order to have a chance in November. When the dust settled, he was trailing her by a few percentage points, and she’d done better in some counties – including Pierce – than she did in 2004.

But whatever they say publicly, Gregoire and her supporters weren’t resting easy Wednesday. She’s had four years in office, has genuine accomplishments to point to, enjoys all the advantages of incumbency and is a thoroughly known quantity. Yet Rossi – who fought her to a statistical tie in 2004 – remains within striking distance. If she were any kind of a shoo-in for re-election, it shouldn’t have been this close.

In the state’s only battleground congressional district – the 8th – Democrat Darcy Burner fell a bit short of U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert. Just like she fell a bit short in the final two years ago. Strong Democrats should be riding higher in this political climate, and Republicans should be playing catch-up.

Still, there’s always Barack Obama, who remains very popular in Washington. His presidential candidacy may well give both Gregoire and Burner a healthy bounce this fall – assuming the Democrats haven’t already gotten their bounce from the public’s disenchantment with George Bush.

There were no big surprises in other top-of-the-ballot races.

The most contentious has been the battle for superintendent of public instruction. Incumbent Terry Bergeson is almost synonymous with the roundly maligned Washington Assessment of Student Learning, which was developed on her watch and which she has outspokenly defended for years.

Anti-WASL forces have gravitated to her leading challenger, Randy Dorn. Given how loud they’ve been, you’d think the whole state was up in arms about the test. As it turned out, Bergeson easily outpolled Dorn. Washingtonians may be signaling – once again – that they want real academic rigor in the public schools and will vote for the candidate who looks most likely to deliver it.

The “top two” primary itself may have been the biggest winner Tuesday. Many citizens were gratified that they could again vote for anyone on the ballot regardless of party, as they could under the old blanket primary the courts threw out.

But again, primary results don’t automatically translate into final results. One of our concerns with top two has been the way it will limit political and philosophical choice in the November ballot. Virtually all minor and third party candidates will now be frozen out of the final election, and some voters will see only two Republicans or two Democrats on the ballot in certain contests.

So far, though, that’s a price Washingtonians appear willing to pay for a primary that mimics the one we loved and lost.