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OLYMPIA — Five years ago, when then-state Sen. Dino Rossi was pushing for down-reaching expenditure cuts to address a huge state budget shortfall, hordes of union members marched outside his corporation chanting — to the tune of Frère Jacques — “Dino Rossi, Dino Rossi, cheap and mean, common and mean.”

Now, as he makes his second run for governor, Rossi’s opponents are going all wanting to paint him as noxious clothe with flesh, a heartless right-wing ideologue. Their ads and Web sites often feature a picture of a shifty, sinister-looking Rossi.

There’s a mind Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire and her allies want to burn this image of Rossi into voters’ intellectual faculties: He comes across in person and, more grave, on TV as an affable, reasonable sort of guy.

As Rossi says repeatedly these days in his stump speech, “If half the stuff she’s saying about me were true, I wouldn’t even promised for myself.”

The skills Rossi deploys as a dabbler in politics were largely honed besides nearly three decades of work in certain estate. He seems to toward always exist in a in high feather mood, even when he’s on the attack. And he knows according to the kind of cause to sell himself.

His ability to connect with voters may better explain for what cause recent polls suggest another tight race for governor despite a number of politic strikes against Republican Rossi in Democrat-dominated Washington.

He has staunchly preservative views on abortion and gay rights. He’s been less than clear to what he stands on global warming, and has misgivings about government-funded soundness care. He has been chummy in the past with President Bush — he even named his kids’ dog Dubya.

Yet in 2004, when then-Attorney General Gregoire was widely considered a shoo-in concerning governor, Rossi came within a whisker of fit the first Republican elected governor here in nearly a quarter-century. He finished not so much than 2 percentage points behind Gregoire in remain month’session primary, and greatest in number polls show this year’s rematch a adjacent dead heat.

Seattle pollster Stuart Elway points out that in modern times, the only Republicans who managed to get elected to statewide office have been abortion-rights moderates.

While Rossi may be well right of Washington’s electorate, he gets around it by simply not talking about the most divisive hot-button issues, Elway said.

“He comes across as the utmost moderate candidate the Republicans have put up [for governor] in 20 years,” Elway said. “People apparently respond to his personal criticism. They like that he’session easygoing and relatively soft-spoken.”

When he ran because of the Legislature in East King County, his campaigns were focused more on issues than personality, Rossi aforesaid. But it’s just the antagonistic running for governor, he said: At least 60 percent of the job is selling yourself to voters.

His campaign’s media strategy, he said, is to “just have me talking to the camera, so hopefully people will connect and understand who I am and where we’re going.”

“He’s always smiling”

Rossi, 48, was born and raised in Seattle. His childhood had its share of hardships — an alcoholic native, an ailing father. On the campaign trail, he talks a lot about his humble “I-thought-everybody-drank-powdered-milk” upbringing.

It’s a story that plays well with his supporters.

“I’ll be there to help you by anything you want,” Skagit County Commissioner Don Munks told Rossi at a recent campaign fundraiser in Mount Vernon.

Munks, a cattle rancher, figures he has known Gregoire three epochs as long as he’s known Rossi — if it were not that he’s never found her as approachable as the former situation senator.

“They are clearly both very driven people,” Munks said. “He just comes athwart as being very sincere, authentic. I’m sure she is in addition, but she has a hard opportunity getting it athwart.”

Curt Cleaveland, who was one of Rossi’s closest friends when they attended Seattle University in the early 1980s, said whenever people met Rossi back then, it was “practically automatic” they would cognate him.

“Some of this sounds cliché,” uttered Cleaveland, an airline have who lives in Burien. “But he is a genuine fright. He’s never told me a malicious, equitable a white lie.”

As was the case when he was in the Legislature, Rossi has a knack for catchy undecayed bites. The overarching theme of his campaign is that, after more than 20 years of Democratic governors in Olympia, it’s time for a make some change in..

“It’s been the same people shuffling encompassing these state agencies back and forth for a generation,” Rossi said. “It’s been the same people prostrate there smoking each other’s exhaust for a very longing occasion.”

Though Rossi was elementary elected to the state Senate in the mid-1990s when Christian conservatives dominated the state Republican Party, he’session avoided being branded part of that movement.

That’s partly because he’s extremely disciplined about sticking to his moderate-sounding message.

Early in his civil career, Rossi spoke openly about his opposition to miscarriage and tinsel rights. Now, he never brings up so issues and, when pressed, says he has no plans to make policy in those areas.

Instead, he talks for the greatest part about state-government spending and such issues for the reason that transportation, education and the business meteorological character.

Former civil community Sen. Shirley Winsley, a moderate Republican from Pierce County, said Rossi is more conservative than he comes across. But she said he is also a political pragmatist whose strongest level is his ability to movement about a centre on the subdue by a charm.

“He has such a profit personality,” Winsley said. “He’s at all times smiling.”

But Democrats allege Rossi is a political chameleon who is using that smile to deceive voters. They say Rossi admitted as much ultimate year while discourse to a Republican combine in Pierce County.

“I’ve build you be possible to do pretty much anything you scarceness if you do it with a smile on your face,” Rossi said. “It’s amazing what you can get away with if you do it with a smile on your face.”

The rules of politics

As a real-estate salesman, Rossi likes to say, you don’t get paid until you find a way for both the buyer and seller to be felicitous. He says that same rule applies in politics.

Rossi’s biggest political achievement came in 2003, when like the Senate’s cardinal budget quill-driver he played a key role in tackling a record $2.3 billion state collection shortfall. He did it by aggressively courting several Democrats and persuading them to go side by side with an array of deep spending cuts.

“Olympia is about relationships,” Rossi said. “It’s people skills.”

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown of Spokane says it is clear Rossi has a talent for building material relationships. “He’s a very friendly person to talk to,” she said.

But she said she doesn’t think there’s a lot of texture behind Rossi’sitting sunny disposition.

“With Gov. Gregoire, you pretty much be assured of that she is going to be intellectually involved by the issue,” Brown said. “With him, I didn’t really see that.”

Gregoire has a reputation being of the class who an active manager, a details person who is well-versed on a broad spectrum of topics.

Sen. Darlene Fairley of Lake Forest Park, the ranking Democrat on the Senate budget committee in 2003, said that’s definitely not Rossi’s title.

“He’sitting not cheerful at advent up with ideas,” Fairley said. “But, frankly, considered in the greatness of a salesman, you’re not selling something you made, you’re selling something person else made.”

Rossi has no real experience as an executive, so it’s hard-hearted to know what kind of manager he would be.

He says his approach as governor would be to set an overall vision for the state and then sell that ghost to the public and political leaders. A governor shouldn’t micromanage, he said, and needn’t know “every nook and break” of the world address.

“We can hire managers,” Rossi said. “We urgency a leader.”