Gov. Chris Gregoire says she’s trying to run a positive campaign and only began airing ads attacking Republican Dino Rossi after his backers attacked her. She’s doing that even though she concedes it has meant putting on hold what would have be an important part of her early re-election campaign.

Lori Matsukawa and I taped an interview with Gregoire this morning for the weekend edition of KING 5's Up Front. The web-extra portion of that interview has been posted at the Up Front site.

On the program - Sunday morning at 9:30 on KING 5 and at 8 p.m. on Northwest Cable News - Gregoire talks about gay marriage, the income tax, state spending and the shaky economy.

The web portion of the interview started off with a question about the campaign. Four years ago Gregoire told me that she had made a mistake in her first campaign for governor by not taking more time to tell voters about her background and to give them a better sense of the real Chris Gregoire.

But it seems she’s skipping that part of the campaign again. I told Gregoire that her ads talk much more about Rossi than they do about her. She said:

This campaign isn’t going like I hoped it would, to be perfectly honest with you. I had hoped it would be a campaign on issues and we could have healthy debates and let the voters decide. But instead we started in June, of all times, with attack ads by the BIAW to the tune of $1 million and now my opponent has added on to the attacks. So what I’d like to see is a healthy debate about issues, has now turned into my having to respond. I will not let them lie, Dave. I will not let them sit there and do those attacks without a response.

She said she was trying to run a positive campaign, though she was asked about ads from her and the labor-backed Evergreen Progress that hit Rossi as BIAW ads hit her.

My ads that you’re referring to are a response to his misrepresentations. My ads, that I put out, are very positive.

That's just one of a couple distinctions Gregoire tries to draw between her campaign and what's being done on behalf of Rossi.