Dino Rossi

Dino John Rossi (born October 15, 1959) is an American businessman and politician who served as a Washington State Senator thrice, from 1997 to 2003, in 2012, and again from 2016 to 2017.

A Republican, he is a former chair of the Washington State Special Olympics.

Originally from Seattle, Rossi graduated from Seattle University and later pursued a career in commercial real estate.

Rossi was raised in Mountlake Terrace, graduated from Woodway High School in Edmonds, and earned a bachelor's degree in business management from Seattle University in 1982.

After college, Rossi began in the commercial real estate business, working for Melvin G. Heide at Capretto & Clark.

Rossi followed Heide to two more firms as Heide was being investigated for fraud and false statements; Heide later pleaded guilty.

Rossi later became a commercial real estate salesman, managing and owning real estate.

Rossi was formerly an owner of the Everett Aquasox minor league baseball team.

He is co-founder of the Bellevue, Washington-based Eastside Commercial Bank.

In 1992, Rossi ran for a Washington State Senate seat in a district representing suburbs east of Seattle, in the Cascade foothills.

After winning a divisive Republican Party primary, he lost the general election.

In 1996, Rossi ran again for the state senate and was elected.

Furthermore, the previous two GOP candidates for governor had lost their campaign bids by 16% and 18.7% in 1996 and 2000.

In the November 2 election, over 2.8 million votes were cast for governor.

After the initial vote count, Rossi led Gregoire by 261 votes.

Washington State law required a recount because of the small margin.

After the second count, Rossi again led, but by a smaller margin of 42 votes.

After a third count, done by hand, Gregoire took a 129-vote lead (expanded to a 133-vote lead after Justice Bridges' decision threw out 4 votes for Rossi).

King County's election department was sued by the Rossi campaign for its handling of ballots, including untracked use of a "ballot-on-demand" printing machine.

Even before the election date, the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to sue Washington State for failing to mail military ballots overseas, generally assumed to be Republican votes.

Republican leaders in Washington claimed there were enough disputed votes to change the outcome of the election and sued.

Rossi served in the Washington State Senate from 1997 until December 2003, when he resigned to spend full-time running for the governorship.

During his time as a senator, he gained a reputation for being a political consensus builder.

In 1998, he co-sponsored the Mary Johnsen Act, to require ignition interlock devices for certain convicted drunk drivers in the state of Washington.

He also sponsored the Dane Rempfer bill which boosted penalties for those who left the scene of a fatal accident, named after a 15-year-old boy from his district who was killed in a hit-and-run.

When the Senate Republicans gained the majority in 2002, Rossi became chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee that writes the state's two year operating budget.

As Ways and Means chairman, Rossi helped to carry out Democratic governor Gary Locke's plans to close a $2.7 billion budget deficit.

The budget chief for Democratic governor Gary Locke said of Rossi in 2003, "The really good legislators move from one side to the other really effortlessly, and I think Dino did that."

The Republican modifications to Locke's budget plan which Rossi oversaw included reaching a balanced budget by cutting the number of children eligible for Medicaid, cutting prenatal care for undocumented immigrants, cutting raises for state employees and increased tuition at colleges and universities.

Said former governor Locke, “For years, I have simply laughed when Dino Rossi took credit for devising a no-tax-increase budget for the 2003-2005 cycle while protecting vulnerable populations."

Rossi decided to run in November 2003, but was already facing an uphill battle in terms of money raised, low name identification with voters and trends established by the two prior GOP candidates for governor.

The sitting Washington State Attorney General and Rossi's eventual opponent in the general election, Democrat Christine Gregoire, had already raised $1.15 million by December, only weeks after Rossi officially kicked off his campaign.

He ran for Governor of Washington in 2004, losing to Democrat Christine Gregoire by just 129 votes in the closest gubernatorial election in the history of the United States.

On May 25, 2005, the judge hearing the lawsuit ruled that the Party did not provide enough evidence that the disputed votes were ineligible, or for whom they were cast, to enable the court to overturn the election.

Four years later, in 2008, he contested the office a second time, losing to Gregoire by more than six points.

He was the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in 2010, losing to incumbent Democrat Patty Murray.

Rossi returned to the Washington State Senate, being appointed in 2012 and again from 2016 to 2017.

He was a candidate for the United States House of Representatives for the eighth congressional district in 2018.

Rossi lost that race to Democrat Kim Schrier.

Rossi was the youngest of seven children brought up by his mother Eve, a beautician of Irish and Tlingit ancestry, and his father John Rossi, an Italian-American Seattle Public Schools teacher at Viewlands Elementary in North Seattle.