MADAME VICE-PRESIDENT:

As Dunn's challengers line up, she may seek Murray's Senate seat (Warren Cornwall, January 04, 2003, Seattle Times)

News that Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn might leave the seat she's held through six elections is putting the political ambitions of several Eastsiders in the spotlight.

While the Bellevue Republican says she is no longer in the running for a job with an airline lobbying group, reports that she might take the job prompted several people to start positioning themselves for the seat - including King County Councilman Rob McKenna and state Sen. Dino Rossi.

Yesterday Dunn confirmed that she's under heavy pressure from her party and the White House to run against Sen. Patty Murray next year, further raising speculation about who might replace her.

Dunn told The Associated Press that she has made no decisions about a Senate race but said even President Bush had given her a nudge.

Murray's comments about Osama bin Laden's benevolence - which made headlines last month - were "stupid" and ill-considered, but not a career-ending gaffe, Dunn said.

Murray was vulnerable before the comments - and more so now, she said.

"I feel she is severely in a position now where she should feel threatened, now more than a couple of weeks ago," Dunn said. "It's not just one thing, those comments, (but) the fact that she lost the Senate for the Democrats." Murray is chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

She'd immediately become a superstar in the Party--a female senator from the Pacific Coast--and would almost inevitably, along with Condi Rice, become a much-mentioned possibility for the VP slot in '08, balancing out a white male Southerner, like Bill Frist. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 8, 2003 7:36 PM