EVERETT – Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican challenger Mike McGavick brought their campaigns to Everett on Saturday, urging their rain-soaked supporters to wave signs, phone friends and make every effort to get the vote out this election.
“We’re going to work hard these next three days, and on Nov. 8 we’re going to wake up with a new United States senator,” McGavick told 100 loyalists gathered in the Flying Pig restaurant before noon.
A couple hours later, Cantwell issued a similar call to 100 backers in an Everett Community College auditorium.
“Make sure we don’t slow down one second,” she told them. “We don’t want to wake up Nov. 8 thinking we didn’t get the job done.”
McGavick and Cantwell are crisscrossing the state in the hours leading up to Tuesday’s election. Saturday was McGavick’s final time in Snohomish County; Cantwell’s last campaign stop in the county is this morning in her hometown of Edmonds.
Cantwell faces four opponents in her quest for a second six-year term: McGavick, Bruce Guthrie of the Libertarian Party, Aaron Dixon of the Green Party and Robin Adair, an independent.
Cantwell and McGavick each view Snohomish County as vitally important because its 335,000 registered voters could sway the outcome.
Cantwell, 48, won the county vote in 2000 when she unseated incumbent Republican Sen. Slade Gorton. She defeated Gorton by 3,800 votes in the county and won the election by 2,229 votes.
Winning the county again is no cinch. The 2004 election demonstrated Snohomish County voters are independent minded. That year, a majority backed both Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi.
Cantwell should benefit from a national political mood unfavorable to Republicans because of voter frustration with the war in Iraq. Democrats hope to win enough Senate and House of Representative seats nationwide to retake control of Congress from the GOP.
“It is about changing the agenda” in Washington, D.C., Cantwell told the crowd.
Democrats will expand access to college education, ensure veterans receive needed medical care and steer the nation away from its addiction to oil and fossil fuels for its energy needs, she said.
“We are going to change the course in Iraq. We are going to have a plan to get our troops home,” she said.
Nothing is guaranteed, she said, in urging them to work on getting out the vote.
“We want to make sure that this election is a victory here … to take our country in a new direction that is about hope and opportunity,” she said.
Earlier, McGavick, 48, reminded supporters of his pledge to run a civil and issue-oriented campaign.
“I have done my job. I haven’t been treated in kind,” he said, a reference to ads critical of his tenure as the leader of Safeco Insurance.
McGavick guided the firm from near bankruptcy to profitability. Cantwell’s television ads target McGavick’s decision to lay off workers in the turnaround while accepting a multimillion-dollar bonus when profits were earned.
McGavick told the GOP activists that when contacting voters they should explain his goals, so they see the contrast with the incumbent.
He said he wants a “victory strategy” not an “exit strategy” in Iraq, curbs in federal spending, and secure and controlled U.S. borders.
He also said he’d welcome a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for some immigrants who arrived here illegally.
“But you’re going to learn English,” he said, eliciting cheers and applause.
Cantwell will spend election night in Seattle and McGavick will be in Bellevue.
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