Too Close To Call In Wash. State

Never in Washington state has a governor's race been so close. Only 261 votes separated the two candidates after a painstaking tally that triggered an automatic recount, required whenever the margin of victory is fewer than 2,000 ballots.

For the time being, Republican Dino Rossi is out in front of Democrat Christine Gregoire. They should know by next Wednesday — so says Secretary of State Sam Reed — who will replace outgoing Democratic Gov. Gary Locke.

A statewide recount has never reversed the outcome of an election, but Reed isn't saying that won't happen after the 2.8 million ballots are tallied — again.

"We really aren't going to know before we do this recount who the governor is going to be," Reed, a Republican who will oversee the recount, said Wednesday as the counties reported their final tallies.

CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen reports it was the closeness of the race and Washington's law allowing voters to mail their ballots in on Election Day that slowed the outcome.

Results were further delayed when Republicans went to court to throw out provisional ballots, which they alleged could be fraudulent. To the obvious relief of Democrats, a judge said no.

Gregoire, the state attorney general, isn't giving up.

"We're going to make sure, in this recount, every single vote counts," Gregoire told cheering supporters in Seattle. "This is not about Republican or Democrat, Libertarian or Independent, this is about all of us as Washingtonians, standing up, casting our ballots."

At his Bellevue campaign headquarters, Rossi told supporters he hopes to take his family on vacation during the recount, "somewhere quieter than here." He went on to thank his wife, four children, brothers, sisters and cousins. "I've got a lot of relatives," the state senator joked, "probably about 261."

The breathtaking closeness was reflected in Wednesday's horse race. Rossi began the day 19 votes ahead, but King County's 4 p.m. report gave Gregoire a 39-vote lead. Gregoire's lead thinned as the sun set. At 5:14 p.m., Rossi went ahead by four votes. At 5:59, Gregoire took the lead by 13 votes. Finally, at 6:33 p.m., Benton County put Rossi ahead by 261 votes.

Washington leans Democrat and has not elected a Republican governor since 1980. Presidential candidate John Kerry won the state with 53 percent of the vote; the current governor, Locke, easily defeated Republican opponents to serve two terms; and Democrats control the Legislature.

Gregoire, 57, looked like the Democrats' Wonder Woman. Polished and popular, Gregoire won national recognition as lead negotiator of the 1997 tobacco settlement, in which major tobacco companies agreed to pay $206 billion to 46 states. But after a bruising primary, her campaign struggled to find a message that connected with voters.

Rossi, on the other hand, wasn't the GOP's first choice by a long shot. Republicans tried to recruit three other prospects. They wanted someone with a higher profile than the 45-year-old who lacked name recognition outside his Senate district. The commercial real estate agent surprised the party faithful, though. He ran a slick, strong campaign identifying him as a compassionate conservative. And his promise of a fresh start in state government caught on with voters.

As political junkies across the country recovered from their presidential election withdrawal, they turned to the Washington governor's race for entertainment.

"It's fun, it's exciting," said Joe Arko, a retired doctor in Plano, Texas, who has followed the Washington election religiously on the Internet. "It's like a two-week playoff series. But it's a lot more important than a ball game."