Watching the Rossi-Gregoire debate tonight, I want to comment about the questioners. Robert Mak [corrected] from King TV, David Postman of Seattle Times, a woman from a Spokane TV station and a guy who reports for public radio in Western Washington.

David Postman had very good questions and even more than that. So many politicians are happy to ignore the question and talk about whatever they choose. With his first question (don't recall the topic now) Postman called her back: "Back to my question. What would you do...?"

Much later he asked her: You have major complaints about the budget Rossi put together this year. What would you cut from the budget and how would you raise more revenue?" She wandered off into "setting priorities, but not in Olympia..." And he called her on it: What would you cut? And she did it again. And he called her back to the question again. Great job!

On the other hand, the King TV guy turned a question about a serious, expensive error by Gregoire's office ("I get all the credit, but none of the blame.") into a cheap shot. We taxpayers had to pay about $17 million to 3 disabled men because Gregoire's people didn't file the appeal in time. He asked if the disabled men didn't deserve it. And he repeated the question to both candidates. First, his was just fishing for a maudlin response. "Oh I feel so sorry for them. The state can be generous." (My fingers instintively typed "the taxpayers can afford that." But King reporters don't think like I do.) Second, it is not reasonable to expect the candidates for governor to know that case inside out - what happened, who did what. It was a double cheap shot - at both candidates. No one could expect a serious question from that guy after that.

On the format. A couple of times it seemed that Gregoire got the chance to rebut, but Rossi didn't. But I confess that I skipped past the opening when they gave the format - I sure love Dish TV's DVR.