Senator Lorraine Wojahn

anyway after that. People lost their jobs and it
was hopeless. Tacoma was a very hopeless area.
Centralia and Everett were other timber towns
that were severely depressed. These towns, I
believe, are the birthplace of the Wobblie
movement.
Ms. Kilgannon: All timber towns. There was a
trend reported in these same articles that said the
Weyerhaeusers and that group of corporate
leaders were moving their family homes to
Lakewood at this time. That they were no longer
living in Tacoma or supporting Tacoma
interests.
Sen. Wojahn: The extremely wealthy. There is
more wealth in Tacoma, I believe, or there was,
than anywhere else in the state of Washington.
Maybe not anymore. It never focused on
Tacoma, but it was here. They didn’t spend their
money.
Ms. Kilgannon: Let’s keep that all in mind as
we look now at your first re-election campaign
in 1970. Bob Satiacum of the Puyallups is listed
as running against you. Can you tell me about
that campaign?
Sen. Wojahn: He became a Republican, I
think. Wasn’t that the same time that Bob
Corcoran ran, too? Corcoran was running as a
Democrat against me, and Bob Satiacum was
running as a Republican against me. Bob
Satiacum was my chief opponent. Corcoran said
all kinds of terrible things about me. He called
me a communist on the air.
Ms. Kilgannon: I was amazed at the redbaiting
that was going on in his literature and
ads.
Sen. Wojahn: Oh, yes. It was awful. We had a
time clock. I bought a time clock so I could time
all the time he spent talking about the election
and me on the air during his program. I’d start it
and stop it so I could prove how much time he
was taking talking politics on the air when he
shouldn’t have been.
Ms. Kilgannon: He was on Channel 13. He
had his own program, didn’t he? He had a free
platform. The issue of equal time became quite
a controversy.
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Sen. Wojahn: I know. I should have had equal
time. We fought. We couldn’t get it into federal
court. You have to get permission to go into
federal court. I hired an attorney and he was
really a good attorney and he petitioned to get in
– we couldn’t get in. We could have gotten in
six months later but it would be too late then.
We found out that Corcoran had filed for
bankruptcy and threw a lot of personal debt into
his bankruptcy. That he cheated. He was so
upset when we challenged him when he filed.
He talked about filing against me, but hadn’t
done it, and we challenged him on the equal
time issue when he did file. He went on the air
and said, “I was so upset that these people have
challenged my right to run for office.” We
didn’t challenge his right to run, we challenged
him being on the air, but he said “the right to
run.” And he said, “I went down to the
courthouse in Seattle and filed for Position One
against Wojahn.” He meant to say Tacoma, but
he said “Seattle” on the air. Dumb! And he kept
doing this.
I wrote this thing to get on the air. I talked
about “the person who gets her name before the
public wins elections.” And I talked about the
pig up in Bellingham and I talked about the
donkey in Fife that won. But my attorney said,
“You can’t use this.” So I had to redo it, because
he said, “You can’t do that. You called him a
pig and a donkey.”
Ms. Kilgannon: Not directly.
Sen. Wojahn: No, but, well anyway, he
cracked up over it. He thought it was hilarious.
Ms. Kilgannon: You said, “Every time my
opponent appears before this camera, every time
his name appears in TV Guide or the
newspapers, and every time radio KMQ
announces his program, every time, ladies and
gentlemen, his name is popularized and it
becomes a campaign tool.” And then you talk
about name familiarity as a political forum. “I
can remember a time some years back that a
jackass was elected precinct committeeman in
one of our Pierce County precincts.” And then
you say, “Last year a young female by the name
of Grunelda was elected homecoming queen at