Before I get to today’s ruling and where we go from here, I want to say a few thank-yous.

First off, I’d like to say thank you to my family. My wonderful wife Terry, you’ve been incredibly supportive – it’ll be 18 years this August that we’ve been married, and our children, our four children, they’ve been tremendous through all of this.

What was it – November 10, 2003, at the Village Theater we announced that we were going to run for governor because we wanted to turn our state around. We wanted to make a difference. And that place was full of a lot of people who had faith that we could. And I want to say thank you to those people who were early on in the campaign with us.

Over the course of the campaign, we ended up with so many people throughout the state who came to help. Not just Republicans, but independents and tens of thousands of Democrats who crossed party lines to support us, and to them I’d like to say thank you as well. It was an amazing effort throughout this state.

I’d like to say thank you to our legal team who did marvelous work, very hard work, worked day and night, and laid out a good case where people could really see what happened – could see what happened in King County – I think that was very helpful, and it will be helpful in the future as well.

Also, I’d like to talk a little bit about the opposing counsel, mainly Jenny Durkan and her family. I know that they had a tremendous loss – her father was a tremendous public servant. Right in the middle of this effort, this court case, she lost her father. I want to express our condolences, Terry and myself, to the Durkan family for their loss.

From the beginning of this election contest, I said we had two goals in mind. Number One, clean up the election system, especially in King County. And Number Two, to get to a new vote so that we could have a legitimately elected governor. Today, it doesn’t look like we’re going to be achieving those goals, as of today, but there still is hope for the future.

The election contest was not about me, it wasn’t about Christine Gregoire, it wasn’t about Republicans or Democrats. It was about the integrity of the system, which is the foundation of our democracy.

The one thing missing from the judge’s ruling was a clear decision as to who actually won the election and got the most legal votes. That was missing from the decision.

Now, there also is one thing that the judge said, too, which I do agree with, when he talked about King County and some of the changes that have to happen. And I do agree with the judge that nobody’s been fired and nothing has changed – moving everybody to a new building isn’t election reform. That is not election reform.

So with today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington State Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest.

I’d like to wish Christine Gregoire and her family all the best over the next three-and-a-half years. It’s important for the State of Washington that she is successful in implementing her campaign promises. I’d like to see that happen.

I don’t make this decision lightly, but I don’t make it also with bitterness or hard feelings. I continue to believe, and I think most Washingtonians believe, that mounting this election challenge and shining the light on the various problems in our election system, was the right thing to do.

Throughout the last six, seven months, I’ve met hundreds of people who have come up to me, people who’ve never been involved in politics in their entire life until now, young people – polling shows that we received a majority of the 18 to 29-year-old vote – some of these people voted for the first time in their entire lives. This piece is important for them: Don’t lose heart. Don’t give up. Don’t give up on the process. Stay involved. You need to stay involved. If there’s a problem, it’s all of our responsibility to fix it. That’s how our democracy works. We need to fix it – you can’t count on somebody else to do it – we have to do it.

My family’s been here a hundred years, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m definitely not going anywhere. I don’t know what the future holds – well, tonight the kids have swim team practice, that much I know, but beyond that, I really don’t know what the future holds. But I have faith that tomorrow will be a better day. I have faith that we will get some things corrected, and if people stay involved, we will get there.

I want to thank all of you for coming out, and we’ll see you again. Thank you.

Editors Note: What ever you do Dino, we are behind you!