Well, at least for a couple days….
Christine Gregoire left for Idaho and in an interesting constitutional twist, she had to go pretty far down the pecking order before she could find someone to be the state’s chief executive…
An alert reader (lobbyist Jim King) pointed out that Auditor Brian Sonntag gets to fill in for Gov. Chris Gregoire this weekend because all the people ahead of him are out of state this weekend.
The Washington constitution lays out the order of succession of who takes over as governor in the event of “disablility” of the real governor (I guess being out of state counts as a disability.)
1. Lt. Gov. Brad Owen (but he’s leaving Friday).
2. Secretary of State Sam Reed (he’s in Oregon for the weekend).
3. Treasurer Mike Murphy (he’s out of state now and isn’t back until Jan. 6.
4. Auditor Brian Sonntag (Bingo! He’s a homebody for the holidays.)
After that it would have been Attorney General Rob McKenna, Schools Superintendent Terry Bergeson and, finally, Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland.
So, the governor wasn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel for her temporary replacement. She scraped the middle.