As the former deputy prosecuting attorney for Island County, the adjudications and law reform coordinator for the governor’s Law and Justice Office and the legal officer for the U.S. Marine Corps Air Reserve unit at NAS Whidbey, I believe that the great state of Washington would be best served by Ms. Gregoire graciously conceding rather than “pulling an Al Gore.”

I actually admire Christine’s service as attorney general and insurance commissioner. She was very willing to assist me with a corrupt national insurance company’s failure to pay a just claim, when I met her on Capitol Hill in 1993. I was Special Counsel to the late, great U.S. Commerce Committee Chairman, Sen. Warren Magnuson, in the 70s. We passed all the civil rights and consumer protection federal legislation in that committee, so I know what she has faced in those jobs.

But the obvious corruption of the voting in Seattle and King County this year, by some Democrats, is matched only by that of some of the Republican election officials in the 1972 1st Congressional District race, when Democrat John Hemplemann was cheated out of his probable victory over the late Lt. Gov. and then-incumbent Cong. Joel Pritchard. As a Hemplemann supporter, I still resent that grave injustice 32 years later. Let’s not do this, create lasting resentment and mistrust, now on a statewide scale!

I chose Washington State and the University of Washington Law School over Massachusetts and the Harvard Law School in 1963, in large part because of the relative cleanness of Washington state’s politics vs. that of the East. Let’s keep it that way, please!

John Stafford

Jessup, Maryland