UPDATE 2: Rossi backers bar press at Olympia fundraiser tonight

• Published August 19, 2008

The media is barred from Dino Rossi’s fundraiser scheduled at 5 tonight in a private home west of Olympia. But it’s not what you might think, if you happened to have read about heavy handedness toward outsiders at Rossi events.

As well as I can tell, Rossi’s campaign, per se, is not behind the nixing.

I wouldn’t even write about this except that we were invited a couple of weeks ago to attend the $150 per head (suggested minimum) event at the home of Ted and Tanya Jernigan, a couple who has donated $2,800 each to the Rossi campaign. They live in a large, brick-faced home that overlooks Puget Sound’s southernmost terminus at Mud Bay.

But some of the Jernigans’ co-hosts (the Thurston County finance committee for Rossi) objected to having the media around, according to Tanya Jernigan. Rossi’s spokeswoman Jill Strait confirmed last week that it is a policy to exclude the press at fundraisers.

Over the weekend, something changed — perhaps fears of headlines like the Aug. 12 piece in the Seattle Times that said, “Dem cameraman is evicted from Dino Rossi event.” That same story, linked here, also told of an event in a public park in Wenatchee where representatives of farm groups sponsoring a Rossi event kept a cameraman from getting close, even telling him he could not stand outside the roped-off area.

Strait told us Monday we’d be welcome to attend and listen to what Dino had to say tonight. We were surprised to learn we could also bring a photographer, if we were low-key about it.

Strait said the reason she offered to let us in is that we had been invited initially and there was “confusion.”

I should mention that some of the co-hosts include movers and shakers in Olympia’s business community, including developer Ron Rants, motorcycle dealership owner Steve Boone and others, including Chuck and Mary Hallett, Renee Ries, Aaron Koelsch, Bret Wilhelm, Jay Rudd and Ken Parsons. Like the Jernigans, a few of them have given generously to Rossi’s campaign.

I don’t know what this says about Rossi if he becomes governor, but it turns out he doesn’t call all the shots with supporters. When I checked with Tanya Jernigan, she let me know by email that the co-sponsors’ position had not changed.

So there.

UPDATE: Moments before the fundraiser’s doors were to open, I got a call from the Jernigans. The press is now welcomed. … But we’ve already made other plans. Oh well.

UPDATE 2: Gregoire’s campaign is trying to highlight a difference between her approach and Rossi’s this evening. Spokesman Aaron Toso said the Seattle Times and a photographer were getting pictures of a “low-dollar” fundraiser Gregoire held tonight with “young professionals in Seattle.”

And, Toso said by email, “the Republican Party’s tracker, Bart, is there” too. Toso included a photo of said tracker and indicated the man was admitted and given a free drink ticket after paying $60.

Gregoire and Rossi both have bigger gatherings later in the night — Gregoire in Seattle and Rossi in Redmond.