I'm blogging from the Legislative Building and will be until the session adjourns tomorrow. There still aren't many people — by which I mean lobbyists — around outside the chamber doors.

That tells you that most of what's left to do is settled and just needs to make its way through the process. I can't think of a major issue that will attract a swarm of lobbyists to work the doors.

Clifford Traisman is here. He is the state lobbyist for the Washington Conservation Voters and the Washington Environmental Council. I ran into him in the hall between the House and Senate. You could say he was taking a victory lap of sorts. He told me:

"It was an enormously successful session."

That came with no qualification. You don't hear that often from interest groups. There are always compromise and things left behind or damage done from the other side to moderate that sort of exhortation. But environmentalists, at least through the biggest organization that represents them in Olympia, got the Legislature to do everything on their priority list.

It was a short list; four items. But that's been WCV's strategy for the past five years. This is the first time that all four can be checked off. Certainly that has to do with the big Democratic majorities. House Speaker Frank Chopp was intently focused on the four priorities. Any time he was asked about any other environmental issue, his answer would be that it wasn't on the list of four.

But what's most interesting about the environmentalists' success this year is that rather than rely solely on those Democratic majorities, they pushed for what Traisman referred to as an "environmental majority."

The four bills on the list all got bipartisan support. Traisman said the number of Republican votes on environmental bills was a record. One of the four issues was to get $100 million in the capital budget for the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program. There's no single legislative vote count on that. But on the others:

The bill that could lead to a ban on a chemical fire retardant passed the House 71-24 and 41-8 in the Senate. It was the third year for the bill.

The Puget Sound Partnership bill passed 41-5 in the Senate and 86-12 in the House.

A clean fuel bill passed the Senate 44-4 and passed the House 79-19.

So how do environmentalists get Republican support? In part by bringing back issues that the Legislature is familiar with. That helps build support on both sides of the aisle. But Traisman pointed out something even more important:

"None of these issues pitted the environment against the economy."

Traisman said business lobbyists did not oppose any of the four priority bills. Another important bill, but one that didn't make the top four, was a bill to restrict gravel mining on Maury Island. That had business opposition, and the environmentalists lost.

In a year when some people have questioned whether the Democratic majorities have been aggressive — or progressive enough — Traisman said environmentalists have been well served by a focused, restrained, agenda.

"This is a long-term strategy. These are not one-year, feel-good issues. We're not trying to go for that one 50-homer season. ... It may not make the far left run to their mailbox and send our group money. But people who are watching know what's been done.

"We're not here to make a political statement, as some would like us to do."