McKenna draws up his campaign themes on stage at Sammamish High School in Bellevue.


The theme was pretty clear. Standing in front of a dry erase board at his alma mater, Sammamish High School, armed with stats about how the state has retreated from its commitment to higher education and K-12 funding (higher ed funding as a percentage of the state budget is down to eight percent from 16 percent and K-12 funding has dropped from 50 percent of the budget to 41) Republican Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, said Washington State had become "an education reform backwater."

His yardstick? He said the state's failure "culminated in our poor showing in President Obama's  Race to the Top [ed reform program]."

The occasion for McKenna's statement, of course, was his announcement that he's running for governor in 2012.

And while the biggest cheers from the full house in the red-velvet auditorium came at McKenna's handful of stock GOP lines about overpaid state workers, wasteful government programs ("Any job, even flipping burgers, is better than an elaborate social program"), and his legal challenge to Obama's health care reform law, the bulk of his 40-minute speech consisted of advocacy for the education reforms that Obama and his education secretary Arne Duncan are famous for.

"We need to revamp," he said, so that "teacher retention is tied to evaluation of student achievement, and not solely rely on seniority."

McKenna also hyped another tenet of the Race to the Top agenda: charter schools. He didn't call them charters, but he lauded Aviation High School in Des Moines (a science magnet school), Arts & Technology in Marysville, and Delta High School (a science, technology, engineering, and math option school) in the Tri Cities.

And his education pitch didn't just mine the quasi-GOP themes Obama embraces. McKenna lamented the "achievement gap"—the academic divide between "white students and students of color"—calling education reform "the civil rights issue of the 21st century." [pullquote]McKenna lamented the "achievement gap," calling education reform "the civil rights issue of the 21st century."[/pullquote]

McKenna tied education reform to one of his other main themes, jobs explaining that the long-term solution to the state's economic problems was educating the next generation. After concluding his opening jobs rap with a pledge to make government "get out of the way" and support businesses (another huge applause line), he segued into his long-term jobs policy: Creating "the best public schools in America and the most accessible higher ed system in America as well."

McKenna pledged a "50/50 deal," saying that the state should push its portion of higher ed funding back to at least 50  percent—asking families to cover the other half. He complained that families currently cover 75 percent of the costs, though he didn't have concrete numbers on how he would fund the increased state commitment.

In the press conference afterward, McKenna said simply that he would "reprioritize" spending, and he was encouraged by the 13 percent predicted uptick in state revenues for the next biennium—a position that seems to contradict his Republican rhetoric lamenting the growth of government. Government growth tacks to the traditional biennium-over-biennium increase in revenues—typically around 15 percent—that McKenna is eager to spend. I asked him about this, and he said he wasn't going to increase government spending, he was going to reprioritize it.

After noting that the state allocation for higher ed funding has dropped from 16 to eight percent of the state budget pie over the last decade, McKenna said, "What does that tell you about the people in the governor's mansion and the legislature?"

McKenna's education theme also dovetailed with his other message: bipartisanship. During the press conference, he blamed "a few committee chairs" in Olympia for killing the bipartisan education reform bills. He's on to something. One of the main advocates of the Duncan-style reforms this year was Seattle Democratic Rep. Eric Pettigrew (D-37, S. Seattle). In the senate, the companion bill was sponsored by Democratic Sen. Rodney Tom (D-48, Bellevue).

The audience, though, didn't seem as hep to the bipartisan shtick. As McKenna laid out his final theme, government reform, the audience roared with approval after he detailed the state's escalating commitment to state employees—automatic five percent per year pay increases and nine percent per year benefit increases—when he concluded that we needed "fewer state employees."

McKenna seemed caught off guard by the thundering approval and walked it back a little: "But let me make two points," he said, "we don't need massive layoffs, we don't cut willy-nilly."

And at the press conference, when asked the Scott Walker question (how was he going to scale back state worker pay and benefits? Was he going to take away workers' rights to collective bargaining?), McKenna said, "No, no. That is a statutory right." The change, he said, was to bring the legislature into the bargaining process. Rather than have the governor simply present legislators with a simple up or down vote on a pre-negotiated contract, McKenna said lawmakers should be in on crafting the details of the contract.

Of course, lawmakers can, by definition, change statutory rights, but McKenna's endorsement of having lawmakers "at the bargaining table" seemed antithetical to Walker's call to knock over the bargaining table altogether.

As his campaign moves forward, it will be interesting to see McKenna navigate the tension between his play to be bipartisan and the wishes of the GOP base.

And his concerted effort to tack to the bipartisan center won't only be tricky because of the GOP. The Democrats are having none of it either. Shortly after McKenna's announcement, the Washington State Democrats issued a statement from the Democratic Governors Association faulting McKenna for "siding with big oil" by refusing to "investigate price gauging at the pump."

DGA Executive Director Colm O'Camartun concluded:

Rob McKenna has said he is a moderate, but he has cozied up to the Tea Party and the extremes in the Republican Party. The real Rob McKenna will now become clear to the people of Washington.

McKenna certainly copped to being a Republican. At the end of his speech, after boasting about going up against both major parties in court when he defended the state's Top Two primary system, he joked:

"When I sued both political parties, I wasn't  sure I was going to be invited back ... at least not by the one [party] I care about."