Steve Bloom/The Olympian
As the ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, Dino Rossi is at the center of the state budget controversy as the session nears its conclusion.

Rossi means business

PATRICK CONDON, THE OLYMPIAN

Originally published Saturday, March 9, 2002

OLYMPIA -- In 1980, a young Seattle business school student named Dino Rossi was afraid to tell his father, a schoolteacher and lifelong Democrat, that he had just voted for Ronald Reagan.

"I went home not knowing what to expect," Rossi said. "But I told him, and he said, 'So did I.' He ended up being one of those Reagan Democrats. So that's when I decided I was a Republican."

Rossi is not so timid these days about voicing his conservative views. As the ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, he has been a leading critic of Democratic efforts to repair the battered state budget.

He won credit from some colleagues for his predictions last year that the budget passed by Democrats would lead to the current fiscal crisis, with the state facing a $1.6 billion budget shortfall.

"I wish it hadn't all come true, but it did," Rossi said. "I thought I'd laid out a pretty persuasive (argument) that that's what would happen, but sometimes short-term gain trumps long-term perspective in Olympia."

Frustrating foresight

Rossi's "I told you so" approach has rankled many Democrats, who say there's no way they could have predicted the events of Sept. 11, the ensuing Boeing layoffs and the blow dealt to the state's economy.

"How could we have known that terrorists would crash planes into the World Trade Center?" is how House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler put it.

Rossi has countered that many of the other conditions that exacerbated the state's recession were in place long before Sept. 11: A decline in state revenue, a falling stock market, a bust in the state's dot-com market.

"They can blame the al-Qaida all they want," he said. "I don't think that's the total source of the problem."

A business approach

Rossi, whose large district takes in much of eastern King County, ascended to his leadership position relatively quickly since his 1996 election to the Senate. A successful commercial real estate broker, he constantly applies his business experience to his work as a legislator.

"When it's your money, you have money coming in and money going out, and you better have something left over when you're done," Rossi said. "It's a basic business approach, and it's my approach."

His business acumen predates his political ambition by many years, Rossi said. As a 7-year-old, he would regularly scour a golf course near his home for lost balls, then sell them back to golfers.

"I was making $30 a week," Rossi recalls. "I was (loaning) money to my older brothers."

Once he got to college, Rossi wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and be a teacher. His dad thought otherwise.

"He just said, 'Son, you've been a businessman since you were seven,' " Rossi said.

It wasn't until he was already established as a real estate broker that Rossi even considered politics, and only then when a tenant at an apartment building he owned passed his name along to the King County Republican Party chairman. By the end of their first meeting, Rossi had been drafted to run the campaign of a candidate for King County Council.

Quick rise

Rossi quickly established himself as a successful fund-raiser and organizer and was named King County Republican of the Year within six months of his first involvement with the party. He lost in his first bid for the Senate in 1992 but came back four years later and beat the incumbent who had defeated him the first time.

Rossi immediately sought a seat on the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee. "I told them, 'Give me a parking space in Tukwila, give me an office in the basement, just put me on Ways and Means,' " he said.

He got his wish and within four years was in the top Republican spot. This year, as Democrats again lead the effort to fill the holes in the state budget, Rossi has suggested alternative methods, such as a state hiring freeze, a sliding scale for state worker health care premiums that would ease the burden on lower-paid workers, and other cost-cutting measures.

Even some Democratic leaders have said some of Rossi's ideas should be considered. Rossi knows that the political reality of being in the minority keeps him out of the serious budget deliberations that will take place over the next week.

But like most legislative Republicans, he's hoping the November elections will give Republicans a chance to do more than shoot spitballs at Democratic efforts.

"I'd like to be in the majority," Rossi said. "I'd like to put forward a budget that's actually sustainable and sensible."

Dino Rossi

-Age: 42

-City: Sammamish

-Family: Wife, Terry; four children

-Education: Bachelor's degree in business management, Seattle University, 1982

-Occupation: Commercial real estate investment broker

-Legislative service: Elected to Senate, 1996; ranking Republican, Senate Ways and Means Committee; member, Economic Development and Telecommunications Committee

The Olympian Copyright 2002

back to Legislature 2002 index