The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 34

THENATION NA A9 LOSANGELESTIMES By Sam Howe Verhovek Times Staff Writer SEATTLE It been much of a political honeymoon for Gov. Christine Gregoire. In a normal political atmosphere, she would have been guaranteed time to convince voters that the 9.5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase she pushed through the Legislature a few days agowas the right thing to do. Before being asked to cast their ballots again, voters might have seen the fruits of her plan to ease the Puget Sound mind-boggling transportation problems. But this a normal political world.

Since Washington voters went to the polls in November, Gregoire routinely has awakened to headlines about mishandled ballots, deceased voters and what the alternative Seattle Weekly recently called election that Her erstwhile challenger, Republican Dino Rossi, is suing to get the election overturned. Many legal experts say that when his case goes to trial May 23, the Republicans have a shot at getting an unprecedented re- vote. The number of ballots that have come under question far exceeds 129-vote margin of victory. If their race were a 100- yard dash, the distance between them at the finish line would be barely one-third of an inch. The postelection fight has become what state Republican Chairman Chris Vance calls legal equivalent of Both parties have spent millions of dollars on legal challenges, andSen.

John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, last Democratic presidential nominee, is scheduled to fly here today to help raise money for cause. Through it all, however, even the detractors say she has remained remarkably focused. In the just-ended legislative session, Gregoire managed to achieve most of her stated goals passage of her billion transportation plan. She has made nearly all of her major personnel appointments, and says she is confident of prevailing in the legal battle ahead.

cannot and, in fact, I refuse to get distracted by what is going in the legal case, Gregoire, 58, said in an interview in Tacoma. philosophy is, the only thing Ican do is to be a good Gregoire was sworn in January, just days after state elections officials certified her victory after a hand recount of all 2.9 million ballots. Before that, two machine recounts had given Rossi a 42-vote lead. If a revote happens, said Gregoire, a former state attorney general, deal with it. But frankly, I see getting Plenty of election-law experts here agree with her.

Washington courts have never ordered a statewide revote, they say, and Gregoire appears to have followed the recount provisions to a T. Recent polls also suggest that Gregoire has prevailed in the court of public opinion: A majority of Washingtonians now op- poses a revote, which Rossi says is the only fair way to settle the matter. One dynamic in any future Gregoire-Rossi matchup, however, will have changed profoundly: Gregoire now has a record to run on. AlthoughDemocrats say the governor has accomplished much in a short time, Republicans call her a thief, or and say she has resorted to big-spending, tax-hiking Democratic ways. good or for bad, be running as an said Stuart Elway, a pollster in Se- attle.

campaign will be: I told you nothing would change if she became governor, and nothing did. They just raised taxes run the same campaign, only this time with an exclamation Aspokeswoman for Rossi, a former state senator, called the election giant this Mary Lane said, even Christine Gregoire can continue to say with a straight face that can know with certainty who It is also impossible to know, Elway said, whether in a revote the electorate would focus on the gas, tobacco and state estate tax increases passed under Gregoire or give the Democrat-controlled Legislature credit for tackling big problems. Those include reconstruction of Alaskan Way viaduct, which was damaged in a 2000 earthquake, and replacement of the busy Highway 520 bridge over Lake Washington that connects Seattle with its eastern suburbs. is on top of the charts of issues that people want Elway said. if the sense coming out of this session is: finally doing something about it could be a huge plus for her.

these projects have such along lead Elway said. in the meantime, people are not going to be happy about these new Gregoire plans to travel around the state in the coming days for a series of public bill signings where she will pro- motethe passage of legislation that expanded health coverage for nearly 20,000 poor children, increased enrollment and tuition aid at public universities, and created a $1-billion fund for biomedical and agricultural research. As a public speaker, political- watchers here said, Gregoire can come off as somewhat wooden and controlled, though she is routinely described as funny and warm in more personal settings. frustration is, did people get to know during the November election, the governor said. think they In that contest, Gregoire tar- geted issues in her TV ads without talking much about her life: She is the daughter of a single mother who said she fled an abusive relationship and raised her child while working as a short-order cook.

The governor herself is the mother of two accomplished daughters, the wife of a Vietnam War veteran, a breast-cancer survivor and a three-term attorney general who helped lead the landmark tobacco litigation that brought tens of billions of dollars to the states. Rossi, in contrast, ran an ad campaign that featured his children and described how worked as a young man polishing floors at the Space Needle. Since being sworn in, Gregoire said, she has received support from around the country. I get is, are so proud of you, you are courageous, you are she said, describing the letters and e-mails. somehow or another have seen what happened here as kind of the for the way disputed elections should be resolved.

But former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) who was ousted in 2000 by Democrat Maria Cantwell in another bitterly close race recently blasted King County officials for having worst elections administration of any county in the United States of Ballots from King County, where Seattle is located, gave Gregoire her edge in the final recount. They have been the focus of charges that dead people, felons, ineligible provisional voters and others who should have been struck from the polls instead had votes cast for them. Democrats have a different view, saying that problem ballots occur in nearlyevery statewide election, and that the real news is how well the bulkof the ballots were counted.

State Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt called the 2004 vote most accurate election in state During a recent call-in television program, Gregoire told one state resident: really wish we could move Being governor, she said, is a job. doing what I done if I had won by a she added. cannot and, in fact, I refuse to get distracted by what is going on. My philosophy is, the only thing I can do is to be a good Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, who may be facing a revote Challenge Hangs Over Washington Governor Christine Gregoire won the recount, but her opponent alleges fraud and may win a new vote.

Ted S. Warren Associated Press CONTESTED: Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire leaves the House chamber in Olympia. The revote that her Republican opponent Dino Rossi is seeking is possible but unprecedented. By Lianne Hart Times Staff Writer AUSTIN, Texas Sometime this summer, the archives of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Nor- man Mailer will be trucked to central Texas from the warehouse in Pennsylvania where the 20,000 pounds of letters, manuscripts and memorabilia collected over seven often-turbulent decades have been stored.

Purchased for $2.5 million by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, the collection in- report cards, car repair bills, drafts of his 40-plus books as well as unpublished short stories. It the Platonic conception of what an archive should said Thomas F. Staley, director of the research center. Mailer, in Austin last week for the announcement of the sale, said that he had left it up to others to catalog his past and entirely sure whatwas in all of the file boxes haunted by what they might he said. Mailer, been married six times and has nine children.

Texas may seem to be an offbeat choice for the archives of an East Coast writer, but Mailer said his relationship with the state datedto World War II, when he was attached to an Army combat troop from San Antonio that served in the Philippines. It was a best-of-times, worst-of-times experience that left him with most intense feelings about Texas, pro and he said. Mailer said he wondered if the sale would cause a local politician or as he put it, damn fool Texas to demand to know why state funds were spent on the likes of him. But in the end, he decided to leave his papers at the University of Texas because of the reputation of the Ransom Center, which he said greatest collection of literary archives to be found in The center, founded in 1957, has 36 million pages of manuscripts and more than 100,000 works of art and design. Vivien green curtain dress from With the is here, as are the Watergate papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which were acquired in 2003 for $5 million.

collection began when his mother saved stories he wrote at8 of Bob and and 11 Martian By the late 1960s, the archives were so voluminous that space was rented in Manhattan to store it all. Twelve years ago the collection was moved to a warehouse in Pittston, said J. Michael Lennon, an English professor at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, and archivist of the Mailer collection. had more room he said. Glenn Horowitz, a New York bookseller who brokered the sale, said he first contacted the Ransom Center in November and reached an oral agreement within weeks.

No other bidders were involved, he said. first one he said. was the first Mailer will donate $250,000 to help cover cataloging costs, university officials said. It will take years to fully archive the collection, which includes letters and photographs dating to the 1930s; videos and audiotapes of television appearances; contracts and royalty statements; and newspaper clippings documenting 1969bid to become mayor of New York. Twenty-three boxes are crammed with papers related to Pulitzer Prize-winning 1979 book on the life and death of Utah inmate Gary Gilmore.

Mailer also won the Pulitzer for Armies of the in 1969. In his ninth decade, Mailer has slowed down physically he walks with a cane in each hand and says he is going deaf but writes daily and is working on another book. A longtime resident of New York, he now livesin Provincetown, Mass. Any new documents Mailer generates will eventually become part of the archive. Jack Plunkett Associated Press AUTHOR: Norman Mailer discusses the sale of his archive in Austin, Texas.

In front of him are two pieces from his collection. Vast Archives to Be Housed in Texas The Pulitzer-winning collection of papers and memorabilia is bought by a university research center for $2.5 million. From Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The first man to fly freely and un- tethered in space, famously photographed alone in the cosmic blackness above a blue Earth, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on Saturday.

Retired astronaut Bruce McCandless became the first so- called human satellite in 1984. The dramatic scene of McCandless flying with a hefty space- jetpack, but with his face invisible behind his helmet, remains one of the greatest space photos. those of you who work here or have worked here at the Kennedy Space Center, I have a few words: thank you, thank you and thank McCandless, 67, told the hundreds gathered for the afternoon ceremony. His shuttle commander, former astronaut Vance Brand, said he was glued to the window as McCandless jetted around outside. knew I come back and tell Bernice that lost Brand said, referring to wife of almost 45 years.

McCandless helped develop the jetpack, known by NASA as the manned maneuvering unit, and was later part of the shuttle crew that delivered the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit 15 years ago this past week. Two other former shuttle astronauts were inducted into the Hall of Fame on Saturday: Joseph Allen, 67, who used the jet- pack later in 1984 to grab a pair of stranded satellites for salvaging, and Gordon Fullerton, 68, an early shuttle pilot who still flies research aircraft for NASA. The crowd included 18 astronauts already enshrined in the Hall of Fame, three of them moonwalkers. Hall of Fame Inducts McCandless, 1st Untethered Astronaut In addition to the famously depicted flier, shuttle pilots Joseph Allen and Gordon Fullerton are honored as members. Craig Rubadoux Associated Press HONORED: Retired astronaut Bruce McCandless becomes a member of the U.S.

Astronaut Hall of Fame. From Associated Press METHUEN, Mass. Four men who made news by saying they dug up buried treasure worth as much as $125,000 from one of their yards are now accused of stealing the cache of old currency while doing a roofing job at home. The arrests came after the men appeared on national TV, and police noticed how the story was different each time. they kept quiet probably could have sold the money and no one would have ever Police Chief Joseph E.

Solomon said. The cache included 1,800 bank notes and bills dating from 1899 to 1928. The currency had a face value of about $7,000, but prosecutors said the men had been offered $125,000 by a collector. Police received an anonymous call on Tuesday from a woman who said the story the men had been telling was a lie, according to court papers. They interviewed neighbors who said they had not seen anyone digging in the yard.

And a coin shop owner who examined the money told investigators the men gave him conflicting accounts of how they found it. Men Accused of Stealing.