Gregoire completes whirlwind campaign swing across North Olympic Peninsula

A perky Chris Gregoire appeared in Port Angeles on Monday, followed by a pugnacious Chris Gregoire in Sequim.

It wasn’t that only Washington’s governor morphed on the 17-some-mile route eastward.

The audience also changed from the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce to a gathering of Democratic Party faithful.

At the special breakfast meeting of about 100 chamber members in the Port Angeles CrabHouse, Gregoire was gubernatorial, noting that the state finished in the top five best states for business in a study by Forbes magazine.

It finished in the same place in a Fortune magazine survey for small businesses, she said.

At Sequim’s John Wayne Marina in an appearance for the Clallam County Democratic Party, she was combative, telling about 70 party regulars: “The individual who’s running against me is for change as well [as Barrack Obama], but it’s not change that we want.”

Later, she received applause when she said, “I take no lessons from Washington, D.C., and I take no lessons from my opponent.”

She never mentioned any of the nine candidates running against her in the Aug. 19 primary, and certainly not Republican Dino Rossi, who she narrowly beat in 2004 and is her likely opponent in the November election.

Gregoire’s two appearances in Clallam County capped a North Olympic Peninsula visit that included a fish barbecue attended by more than 350 Democrats at Jefferson County Fairgrounds on Sunday night.

She returned to Olympic on Monday afternoon.

Other highlights of Monday’s governor’s speeches included:

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