Due to a schedule conflict and a lack of cable, I missed last night’s debate between Dino Rossi and Gov. Christine Gregoire in Blaine, but Josh (AKA the Competition, nee the Boss) was there (word is he stayed in a SWANK hotel), and he blogged about it for Horse’s Ass this morning.

Josh focuses in his post on the debate over the minimum wage (a Rossi-supporting convenience store clerk he talked to is “pissed” that Rossi opposes Washington State’s inflation-indexed minimum wage), but the thing that jumped out at me from the coverage of last night was this: Gregoire, who has bent over backwards to differentiate herself on “values” from “George W. Bush Republican” Rossi, vowed not to fund a paid family leave program passed by the legislature, a response to the projected $3.2 billion budget deficit. That program has been a major priority for Democratic legislators; targeting it as a cost-cutting measure smacks of pandering to exactly wrong audience.

The next Rossi-Gregoire debate will be on Wednesday, October 1, at 7:00 pm; it will air on PBS affiliates.