Dino Rossi's rebranding effort may pay off with voters who say they don't know what it means when a candidate declares himself a member of the "GOP Party." That's what Rossi used when he filed for office, saying that it is an insult to voters to suggest that they don't know the initials for Grand Old Party, an old Republican nickname.

A recent poll by Stuart Elway says that about 25 percent of respondents didn't know what GOP meant. In the most recent Elway Poll voters were asked which party they thought was meant when a candidate lists party preference as "GOP Party."

75 percent said Republican party.

15 percent didn't know.

7 percent said Democratic

3 percent said other.

And it will come as no surprise that of those who said they didn't know, or got it wrong, the biggest chunk, 27 percent, describe themselves as independent. That's where the greatest benefit of rebranding could come for a Republican trying to buck a 24-year gubernatorial losing streak for the party.

I was talking to a smart friend over the weekend who bemoaned the oh-so-careful approach Gov. Chris Gregoire is taking to governing. He’s a supporter. But he worries that out of fear of alienating someone, somewhere, Gregoire has traded activism for near-paralysis.

Not that I would ever argue with said smart guy. But his point was made for him in an in-depth piece by Chris Mulick of the Tri-City Herald. Mulick dug into Gregoire’s role in the Tri-Cities’ push for a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant that would have created 400, high-paying jobs. The plant ended up in Idaho.

But rather than champion a project she feared would be controversial in some environmental circles, Gregoire deployed a "balanced approach" of not publicly promoting or opposing the project. …

Gregoire's unwillingness to play a more active role in recruiting what would have been a major economic development score for the state, Eastern Washington and the Tri-Cities has left even some of her strongest supporters shaken.

"There is a real disconnect between many of us in the Tri-Cities, including your friends and supporters, and you concerning your effort in support of siting the Areva plant in Richland," wrote Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Mike Lawrence, a longtime friend of the governor, in a May 7 e-mail.

Gregoire told Mulick that her support was unambiguous and that no one from Areya ever expressed any concerns about her support.

Read the well-told story.