Helen Sommers: An Oral History

Dean Foster
and there were 49 members in each caucus. When
it happened that way, the discipline in the two
Caucuses became that your members ‘always’ had
to vote with your party! So, people had to sit down
and learn to work with each other.
Rep. Helen Sommers, the Democratic co-chair
of the House Revenue Committee, sat down with her
Republican co-chair Ellen Craswell, and they did a
pretty good job on revenue issues, for instance. But
there was a lot of animosity in the two caucuses.
So those two institutional incidents – the coalition
and the tie – forced a lot more partisanship.
And it’s been that way progressively ever since!
Monahan: Helen did tell me, talking about Ellen
Craswell, they were miles apart in a lot of respects
– Helen was regarded a ‘moderate’ and Ellen was
one of the most conservative members, but they
worked together. She said the responsibility to
work together fell on the Co-Speakers and the cochairs
of the committees. She said both caucus’
‘rank & file’ members weren’t at all happy with
the direction.
Chief Clerk Foster: I think there were some controversial
bills that did pass that session because people
did sit down with each other because they knew that
both parties had to agree. So, they sat down and
found some common ground.
Helen, throughout her career, was able to do
that with people. Helen wasn’t very good at politics
but she was very good with policy! So when it was
strictly a policy kind of question, Helen always
knew how far she could go; she knew where the
compromises could be, and could work with people
in both caucuses very well.
The reason the tie worked so much better in
1979 than it did in 1999 is because the first two
Co-Speakers John Bagnariol and Duane Berentsen
were friends. They were both fairly conservative and
they both wanted to run for governor in 1980. So
they were ambitious and wanted to make it work.
They took the realistic approach in setting it up
so it was “co-everything.” And, it took both parties
to make a decision. It was set up to work that
way. The Co-Speakers met every day. Sometimes
the meetings weren’t always good, but at least they
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talked to each other. It didn’t work that way in the
1999 tie.
Monahan: So after the first tie, we bring ourselves up
to 1981 and John Spellman was the new governor.
The economy was really in bad shape – perhaps
not to the extent it is today – but it was a bad time.
The Republicans controlled both the House and
the Senate. The Speaker of the House was Rep. Bill
Polk. You’d think it would be smooth sailing for
Spellman, given his party’s majority in both Houses.
Chief Clerk Foster: No, they had major philosophical
splits. Speaker Bill Polk was much more conservative
than Spellman was! The Republicans had an
agenda of things they had campaigned on and, they
really tried to ram a lot of those issues through the
Legislature, including something that was anathema
to Labor. That was three-way insurance! Some in
Polk’s caucus had problems voting for that. And
the other thing, we were a ‘one-horse state’ in those
days! That is, Boeing. ‘As Boeing goes, so goes
Washington.’ Boeing had some problems and they
started laying-off people, and things got worse.
The Republicans refused to do anything to
raise any kind of revenue! I don’t know how many
special sessions we had in that period of time.
Polk and Spellman did not get along. At one
time, Spellman called his Republican legislators
“Troglodytes!” And, there was a real internal war
between the Spellman/Evans ‘moderates’ and the
Polk-led ‘conservatives.’
Finally, the Polk-Majority had no choice but
to raise revenue. Democrats came up with the
idea of putting the sales tax back on food, so the
Democrats did give the Republicans some votes to
pass it. That helped the Democrats win the next
election and regain control of the House. That’s
when Wayne Ehlers became Speaker of the House.
Wayne was part of the group that succeeded
in deposing Sawyer as Speaker of the House, even
though he was from Pierce County, and they were
always keeping an eye on Bagnariol. Wayne was just
about everybody’s good friend. He was an awfully
good committee chairman when he had the chance
to be a committee chair. He really believed in more
openness in government – it’s called ‘transparency’
now. And, he really allowed committee chairs to run