Gov. Chris Gregoire and six other governors have declared Friday to be College Colors Day to celebrate the start of the collegiate athletic season.

Gregoire encourages Washingtonians to show their school spirit by wearing their college colors tomorrow. Question is, will she wear University of Washington colors (she graduated in 1969) or Gonzaga’s, where she got her law degree in 1977? My suggestion? Change outfits at noon so she can honor both.

The event hasn’t gotten a lot of publicity,

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Statewide voter turnout in the Aug. 21 primary was an estimated 28 percent, lower than the 34 percent Secretary of State Sam Reed had predicted.

State elections director Nick Handy, who released the estimate today, said a lack of rousing races or issues in the state’s three largest counties dragged down turnout overall. Turnout ranged from 70 percent in Lincoln County to 22 percent in Franklin County.

Echoing one of Reed’s favorite themes, Handy said the latest primary voting pattern demonstrates that all-mail voting boosts turnout.

Among the poll-site counties of King, Kittitas, and Pierce, the projected

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The anti-war Democrats aren’t happy at all with U.S. Rep. Brian Baird’s call for giving the U.S. military more time in Iraq. MSNBC’s FirstRead blog reports that MoveOn is planning to run YouTube spots blasting him for a “flip-flop.” (YouTube ad here.)

Naturally, the House Republican Leadership hastened to call attention to the ads, e-mailing editorial page editors around the county. Their message linked to a column by the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby asserting that "the left insists on defeat in Iraq" and "beats up any Democrat who strays off-message."

Baird, D-Vancouver, made the “more

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Our ed board met with Tacoma Port Director Tim Farrell today to go over the basic financial aspects of the port’s recent deal to build a $300 terminal for NYK Line.

It wasn’t easy to grasp all the complexities of the deal, and at times Farrell struggled to explain them in easy-to-understand terms. We needed Port Finance for Dummies.

His basic point, however, is that the deal is an unprecedented “cost-plus” agreement that reduces the port’s risk of being burned by volatile construction costs. It’s a first in the U.S. port industry, he believes.

The port

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We recently took note of Ian Morrison’s new role as Gov. Chris Gregoire’s Pierce County representative. In the same vein, we introduce Clark Mather, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks’ new Sixth District director based in Tacoma.

We met Mather recently when accompanied his boss to a TNT editorial board meeting. A 2001 WSU grad, Mather worked for five years as a legislative assistant in U.S. Sen Maria Cantwell’s Washington, D.C., office before signing on with Dicks. He’s held the district post since January.

Mather replaced Tom Luce, who took a new job as executive director of the Executive Council

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In last Sunday’s reader column on the Perspectives page, Julia Miller, an Edgewood mother, described her mounting anxiety as she awaited her first voice recital.

The recital was Saturday night; she had to write the column in advance, nervous about how it would all turn out. As we suspected it would, it all went fine. Miller reports:

Yes, I survived the recital. My home is filled with the customary congratulatory bouquets, and “the applause has barely died down!” Thanks for the opportunity to share my stage fright with the entire Tacoma and Pierce County community.

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Art Jarvis, Tacoma’s interim school superintendent, left a good impression today in his first visit with the TNT editorial board.

That was a whole lot better than now-departed superintendent Charlie Milligan did in his disastrous first visit a year ago. Milligan seemed to have a chip on his shoulder from the beginning, displaying obvious resentment at questions about his plans for his first year in Tacoma. His year was all downhill from there.

Jarvis, by contrast, was easy-going and relaxed. He was a little tough to pin

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