Hotline On Call

Updated at 8:36 p.m.

Like many Democratic candidates across the country, Washington gubernatorial nominee Jay Inslee, is tying Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna to Paul Ryan's budget.

As we wrote earlier this week, Inslee is now calling it the "Rob-Ryan-Romney" plan. And it's the last thing that McKenna, who is casting himself as a different kind of Republican in deep blue Washington State, needs.

But McKenna's campaign turned the Ryan argument around on Inslee in an interview on Thursday, using Ryan to tie the former congressman to the other Washington. "I look at that and I think to myself -- I suppose I'll ask him -- 'I'm not even sure if Rob's met Paul Ryan,'" McKenna communications director Charles McCray told Hotline On Call. "I'll tell you one thing, Congressman Inslee sure has."

The line fits with a central component of McKenna's campaign: Casting Inslee, who resigned from Congress in March after 13 years in the House, as a creature of Capitol Hill, out of touch with Washington State voters.

McKenna did praise Mitt Romney's Ryan pick in an interview with Seattle's Fox affiliate this week, saying: "There's no better expert on the federal budget than Representative Ryan."