It was nice of the PDC to enter the modern era of web accessibility; their redesigned site does that in spades.

The Search the Database function is now actually highly useful, providing assorted summaries and full breakdowns where they often either didn't exist or had to be compiled using multiple reports.

Some nuggets worth mentioning:

1) The Governor's race is indeed a barn burner. Christine Gregoire has raised $8.1 million to Dino Rossi's $6.3 million. She leads in cash-on-hand with $5.7 million to his $4.6 million. Of note, she has received $850,000 from the State Democrats (which of course is now a much discussed issue), he only $40,000 thus far from the state GOP. There's your special interest funded campaign versus grassroots donor support in a nutshell.

2) Independent expenditures are indeed coming close to canceling each other out in the Governor's race, and not just in political impact. $1.3 million in spending against Gregoire coupled with $200,000 in support of Rossi about matches the $1.5 million spent by Evergreen Progress against him. Caveat: the Democratic Governors Association just pumped another $750,000 into Evergreen Progress's war chest, meaning the DGA has put a cool $1 mill into this PAC effort alone...an amazing level of spending in July not seen in the Evergreen State since Maria Cantwell opened up her personal checkbook in the 2000 Senate race.

3) Rob McKenna has a nice early lead over John Ladenburg, with a 3.5 to 1 cash-on-hand advantage (approximately $637,000 for the former to $180,000 for the latter).

4) The Lands Commissioner is going to be another war, just like last time. Peter Goldmark - who whatever his lack of success as a Congressional candidate was a very solid fundraiser in 2006 - leads incumbent Doug Sutherland in cash-on-hand by a modest margin of $344,000 to $310,000.