Depending on who you ask, the EEI evangelism campaign to Seattle  was either a failure or a success.  If you ask Stewart, he will say in his clipped, highly focussed manner that it failed.  Seattle did not agree to convert to the EEI and immediately sign a completed Cover Sheet right there on the spot.   Far from it.  If you ask me,  I think I pulled off a major political coup and have a vote for consolidation in my firm grip.  I didn't even try to convince Paula Green, a bureaucrat who has dealt with Seattle power policy matters for over twenty years and who is very  much "set" in her ways in a subliminal manner that is perfectly consistent with her title:  "Deputy Superintendent," to come to the EEI Jesus.   Somewhere on the long dark drive up the  I-5 corridor, with rancid coffee sloshing around with a stale maple bar from a seedy gas station store in my empty, weak belly, somewhere up there by the Centralia coal fired power plant that Transalta bought a couple of years ago amidst all that due diligence frenzy that Greg Wolfe had stirred up within our shop,  somewhere up there in the dark, miserable windy rain I settled upon my strategy.  I would not even attempt a frontal attack.  We have sent the equivalent of John Bell Hood and his corp of Texans directly against the WSPP fortification (the Shari Stack gambit) and been badly mauled and hurled back.  Secondly, Enron, or whatever is left of us, is in no position to claim the high moral ground.  We have to get used to slinking around sheepishly in front of there conservative folks who had suspected our hubris all along.  It wasn't a good time to argue from the implicit basis of superior intelligence.  

Therefore, I decided to test drive my consolidation theory, and, had a spectacular success.  I had this intransigent, stubborn old policy gal leaning over the table, looking into my eyes and emphatically exclaiming:  "I support that.  Who could possibly be against that?"  This after I basically said that lawyers could tie us all up for years arguing about an ever narrowing set of distinctions and that it was time to stop bashing either agreement and set up a Joint Drafting Committee and "harmonize" them.  Excuse me for using this nauseating word "harmonize."  It's right up there with "facilitate"  or the dreaded "incentivize" as disguting words, but I swallowed my pride and used it with gusto.  I laid it on real thick, claiming that the WSPP had done a great job in the west while the same thing was going on in the east and now it was time to harmonize the documents and get on with more important matters, that it was stupid to tie up our valuable resources and time comparing these agreements and trashing them.  I claimed that each agreement referred to exactly the same concepts, only using different words, and that these differences could be quickly resolved by competent energy attorneys.  

My test drive of this theory with a live candidate, an entrenched WSPP supporter who aint gonna change was interesting.  I got her to agree to a joint committee concept and state emphatically in front of all that she would enthusiastically endorse this idea.  This is the first of several of these types of conversations we need to have with various parties.  I am going to head over to BPA and "convert" the infamous Brenda whoever to this new doctrine.  If we line up big guys like Seattle, BPA and others, critical big Mo may be generated and, in the ultimate scene, we send Elizabeth into the caves (drafting conference room) against Mike bin Small and, hey, I'm willing to bet on the outcome of that encounter.  I think we all know what would happen then.  Think about it.  It is a marginal little drama that I have kindled up out of the depths of my despair and boredom, but, it might just pick up steam if it is nursed along.  PacifiCorp's Jeremy Weinstein is taking a more strident, judicial review of due process approach to the WSPP, and with him leading a formal charge, this little argument I am trying to plant could be the compromise for peace.  ----cgy