Helen Sommers: An Oral History

pg. 96 Daniel J. Evans
touch with the others.
While the direct powers of the Washington state
governor are limited – I was a “Teddy Roosevelt
Republican” – I believed in the “bully pulpit” and,
that you could get out in front of the Legislature.
The governor didn’t have any vote in the Legislature,
but you could affect very strongly what the
Legislature was dealing with. In other words, you
could help set the agenda. So I got to know all the
legislators well. At some times we were at odds with
one another, but at least knowing them helped in
moving ahead the things I wanted to do.
The 1960s and ‘70s was a time of real activism.
African-Americans were moving forward to solidify
the rights that had been granted to them 100 years
before. Native Americans were, for the first time,
really becoming involved in the process. And so
were women. So, in all cases, we had major groups
in our society who were becoming very involved
in the process. Women, of course, were a majority
of our society; but really did not have – and had
not had – an equal opportunity, an equal shot
at everything from jobs to the legal rights that I
thought they all should have.
Each legislative session we would make some
progress – but progress is sometimes in small steps,
so you need to come back and make another step
the next time around.
In those early days, it was obvious from the
very start that Helen Sommers was a very smart,
able and dedicated legislator. Some come and the
thrill of winning kind of overcomes the challenge
of legislating. But, that was not the case with
Helen. She, from the very start, was a real student
of government and a hard worker, and those are
the kinds of things that lead you up the ladder in a
legislature pretty quickly. She made a real impact
in the Democratic Caucus and in the House of
Representatives in just a few years.
Monahan: Everybody I talked to, including Dean
Foster, who was Chief Clerk of the House in the
beginning of Helen’s career; and Gary Locke, who
had worked with her when they both served on
the Appropriations Committee, said Helen wasn’t
so much a politician as she was a brilliant policy
person. Her focus was on policy.
Governor Evans: I think she was more than that.
She had intelligence way above the legislative average!
She became a leader because she studied more
and knew more about what was going on. She was
really interested in fundamental policy. She grew
in stature primarily in the budgeting arena and
the spending arena. But she not only wanted to be
someone who could work with the numbers and
the figures, but even more important, Helen was
interested in what the money was being used for
and how it affected the state and the people! Helen
really had an interest in and a dedication to what
policies we were focusing our money on and how we
were doing it, not just the fact that we were doing it.
Monahan: One area of particular interest to Helen
– and I’m sure you had involvement with her in this
area – was higher education. After your three terms
as governor, you did not seek a fourth term, and
you became the second president of The Evergreen
State College in Olympia. And, later, you’d served
on the Board of Regents of University of Washington,
including two years as President of the Board.
Helen was a great protector of higher education as
chair of Appropriations. She worked through her
career to protect, beyond probably anyone, the need
to finance and expand higher education.
Governor Evans: In the mid-1960s and early ‘70s,
we were beginning a Community College system in
our state, as well as The Evergreen State College.
The challenge then was really funding, because our
Community College system was growing extremely
rapidly, and not only in the institutions we had,
but in new ones that were springing up all over the
state. So funding the expansion of higher education
in Washington was a real challenge.
When I first became governor in 1965, we didn’t
even have Medicare and Medicaid. Those hadn’t
even been invented. So the cost of health care to the
state was reasonably minimal at that time. Then,
President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs
of the 1960s came about, and dramatically
affected every state in the union because those big
programs of the federal government were “partnership
programs with the states!” In other words,
the states managed those social programs, not the
federal government directly, and the states provided
varying percentages of money depending on the