KING-5’s Jean Enersen offers a buffer between Republican Rob McKenna, left, and Democrat Jay Inslee.

OLYMPIA, Oct. 16.—After five long hours of televised debates between the two contenders for governor this year, we can finally conclude one thing: Democrat Jay Inslee is a man of faith. He says his economic plan is the answer to everything, allowing spending as usual without a tax increase, even if there’s still no telling how it pencils out. You just have to believe.

Meanwhile Republican Rob McKenna says he needs no miracles, just tight controls, a willingness to change the course of state government, and the discipline to say no to some rather powerful interests. One difference: He’s got numbers and they add up.

That’s the conclusion to be drawn after the fifth and final televised debate of the campaign season, a clash that was sharper than any that have come before, and which offered the last chance for either candidate to fill in the blank spots. A tough panel of reporters posed questions Tuesday night as the two contenders squared off in the studios of KING-5 television in Seattle. In a most remarkable development for the series, the panel dared to point out when candidates failed to answer – and they called Inslee on it several times.

Inslee provided no new details, but insisted his plan would work. “When we create jobs we are going to create revenue and we are going to have the first dollar go into our schools. That is a plan I think is consistent with what the people of Washington want.”

McKenna got off the line of the night: “It has been said that hope is not a strategy, and hoping that a jobs plan will create more jobs to address this is not a strategy.”

A Crackling Debate

Former Congressman Jay Inslee.

It’s a high-stakes race, of course – not just a race for a seat left open by the exit of Gov. Christine Gregoire, but also one that could end Washington state’s blue streak — the Democratic Party’s 28-year control of the governor’s mansion. Attorney General McKenna faces former Congressman Inslee in a race the polls indicate is as close as can be. And for those who are tuning in late and trying to decide which, if any, of the debates to catch on the Web, Tuesday’s was the one. It was a crackling hour that demonstrated how the big-picture arguments have played out in this year’s campaign. McKenna said Inslee’s team has shortchanged education while playing to its public-sector constituencies, and accused the Democratic candidate of vagueness. Inslee responded by accusing McKenna of waging war on women.

Only a couple of elements were missing. Inslee failed this time to use the phrase “secret sauce” – the savory term he has used in previous debates to describe his vision for an economic program that would create special incentives for favored high-tech and clean-energy businesses. And McKenna spared viewers the technical details of his plan to meet the demands of a costly Supreme Court decision that will require the state to plow billions into K-12 education over the years ahead. His plan is based on projections for revenue growth from the state budget office, which says state revenues will grow 36 percent over the next eight years.  McKenna would steer most growth in the state budget to education and cap expenses elsewhere, meaning he’d have to say no to public employee unions and social service interests that are supporting Inslee. “My point is that we’re not just hoping for more tax revenue,” he said.

Inslee isn’t suggesting he’d say no to anyone, though he did promise Tuesday to be a “disruptive force” at the statehouse. But so far he has offered no estimate for the number of jobs and the amount of tax revenue that would be generated during the first two years, when the crunch will be the tightest. Given the fact that Tuesday was the final debate, that’s probably as good as it gets.

No Holds Barred

Attorney General Rob McKenna.

The sharpest exchange came when reporters asked Inslee to justify his attack on the levy-swap plan that has emerged as the Legislature’s leading solution to at least part of the school-finance problem posed by the Supreme Court’s recent McCleary decision. The scheme would replace local levies in part with the state property tax levy, as a way of ensuring stable funding for schools. It wouldn’t generate any more money, but it would raise property taxes for some 47 percent of the state’s homeowners and lower them for the rest. The plan is favored by Democrats as well as Republicans, but when McKenna embraced it, Inslee attacked him for favoring a tax increase.

Times reporter Jim Brunner challenged Inslee to present a counterplan, but Inslee said his economic plan was good enough. “We are going to put people to work with my jobs plan, which I hope we will talk about tonight. We are going to shift millions of dollars from our health care funding today into education. This is the way forward and it is the only place where the real money is now.”

McKenna noted that the levy-swap concept has wide support and said Inslee appears deliberately to be misunderstanding it – a point underscored by newspaper editorial writers, education groups, and even members of his own party. It’s not a tax increase, McKenna said, and it certainly is not something he originated. “Your premise is false, Jay,” he said. “You just keep repeating it because you hope by repetition it will just fool people into believing it.”

Wars on Loopholes, Women

Reporters challenged the candidates to name tax loopholes they would close – a particular problem for Inslee, who has said he would close at least part of next year’s billion-or-more budget gap by ending tax incentives. The problem is that Democrats from the governor on down say no war on loopholes is likely to generate much. For his part, Inslee named a million-dollar tax break for artificial insemination of livestock and an unspecified tax break for fossil fuels “in the tens of millions of dollars.” McKenna, whose plans do not depend on loophole closure, said he would urge congressional action to allow states to impose sales tax on Internet retailers, worth perhaps $100 million to Washington, though he acknowledged the state cannot take action by itself.

Inslee’s chance at turnabout came when he had a chance to pose a question – and he dug in on the war-on-women theme. Noting that McKenna joined the national Republican lawsuit against health care reform, Inslee said the effort was aimed at overturning specific women’s health programs, and vowed to “protect women from discrimination.” McKenna observed drily that there were other issues involved in the case.

Last Line

And as five hours of debate came to a close, here’s how they summed it all up.

Inslee said you have to have a vision, and you have to believe in it. “We’re the most innovative people in America, perhaps the world, and now we have an opportunity to have a governor with the experience and the vision to continue that innovative tradition. …It is this experience that makes me an optimist, that my vision in fact can come to pass. We are a great state. We can be greater.”

McKenna said it’s about time the state changed course. “The question is, do you think you will be better off four years from now if we put the same people back in charge of Olympia who have been running it for the last 28 years? A lot of thoughtful folks around the state have considered that question, and they’ve concluded the answer is no. …I ask you to join us and vote for a new direction.”

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