Welcome to Girls' State.

In 1992, Christine Gregoire, then running for attorney general of Washington, made a pilgrimage to the offices of EMILY's List, the legendary fund-raising network for women candidates. At the end of a daylong campaign course, EMILY's List founder Ellen Malcolm ushered Gregoire into a back room. "Ask me for money," Malcolm said. But Gregoire choked. "I thought, I can't do that," says Gregoire. "After I stumbled around for a bit, Ellen said, 'Let me play the candidate, and I'll show you how'." That conversation was invaluable, says Gregoire, who earlier this month was inaugurated as governor after a contested triple recount gave her a 129-vote lead over her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi. Not being squeamish about raising money--$6 million for her campaign and $2 million more for the recount--"is one way you make yourself credible," says Gregoire.

It's a lesson the women of the Evergreen State have learned well. Although Rossi is suing for a new election, Gregoire's victory makes Washington--at least for now--the first state to have a woman in the statehouse and two in the U.S. Senate, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. They are not anomalies in Washington: Gregoire, Murray and Cantwell, all Democrats, are creatures of a political culture that has produced greater electoral gains for women per capita than any state in the country--ranging from school boards and city councils all the way up. National groups are studying the state's political farm system in hopes of replicating it elsewhere. "Washington has normalized the whole idea of women leading," says Marie Wilson, of the White House Project, an organization promoting women's political involvement.

There's no easy explanation for how Washington came to be girls' state. The state's progressive frontier culture is part of it. "Women arrived here in covered wagons," Gregoire told NEWSWEEK. "Their contributions were respected from the beginning." Seattle elected the nation's first female big-city mayor, Bertha K. Landes, in 1926, and the state got its first female governor, Dixie Lee Ray, in 1976. But the big breakthrough came in 1992, when women nationwide were swept into office following outrage over the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Murray, a self-described "mom in tennis shoes," vaulted to the U.S. Senate; Cantwell, then 34, was elected to the House of Representatives, and Gregoire became attorney general. "You reach a certain threshold, and then everyone becomes a role model," says Cantwell, whose 2000 Senate run was inspired by Murray.

Women have also benefited from the lack of an old boy's network. The state's relatively weak political parties and open primaries make it easier for newcomers to break in. Washington's tech-driven, entrepreneurial economy has also generated a high number of women business owners, says Seattle political consultant Cathy Allen. "Women here are writing the checks to candidates," she says. "They are more invested in the system." Though Washington is a Blue State, Republican women have also fared just fine. Conservative Jennifer Dunn, a top fund-raiser for George W. Bush and former chair of the state GOP, represented suburban Seattle in Congress for 12 years. In 2004, Cathy McMorris, a pro-life Republican, was elected to Congress from Spokane.

All three of Washington's top women have compelling life stories. Murray, a homemaker, was so angry about education-budget cuts that she got herself elected to the state Senate. Gregoire started her career as a clerk typist, put herself through law school, then became a crusading anti-tobacco attorney general. Cantwell, the first college graduate in her family, made (and lost) her own fortune as a software executive during the 1990s. "When I ran for Senate in 1992, I had women saying to me, 'Don't you think a man should do that?' or 'Put your name on the ballot as Pat, not Patty'," says Murray, who was re-elected to a third term last year. In Washington, no one dares to offer that advice now. Women rule.