Helen Sommers: An Oral History

pg. 166 Dean Foster
their operation. So he wasn’t as much a ‘hands-on’
– or interfering Speaker! He also was pretty realistic
about what he could get, and he counted votes
pretty well. He allowed the committee chairs, up
to a point, to run their operation. His 2 nd District
seatmate was Sen. Ted Bottiger, who was Majority
Leader by this time in the Senate, so they worked
pretty well together. Wayne was, in his way, a very
strong Speaker, but he didn’t try to run everything!
Monahan: So he maintained a good relationship
with his Caucus?
Chief Clerk Foster: The relationship between a
caucus and a speaker is always a mixed bag at
best. Everybody wants to do ‘something,’ but the
Speaker has to figure what’s possible.
So the Speaker has to make some tough decisions.
One of the reasons we’ve never had a Speaker
of the House as governor in our state is because
ultimately it comes down to the Speaker’s decision
about whether something happens or not. So you
get people who come here with an agenda – they
want to raise taxes or they want to cut taxes; or
do this or that – but if you can’t get the votes; you
can’t get the votes! It’s the Speaker’s job to make
sure you’ve got the votes. So you get some tension
between a caucus and a speaker. It’s always been
that way, and it always will be!
Monahan: Joe King followed Wayne Ehlers as Speaker
of the House. Helen had a good relationship with
both Wayne and Joe. The Appropriations Committee
was the area that was most important to her. While
‘liberal’ on social issues, Helen’s probably more ‘fiscally
conservative.’
Chief Clerk Foster: Oh, yeah, that’s it. That’s when
you start getting tension between a very, very smart,
fiscally-tight committee chair and a Speaker. Helen
was an outstanding policy person and she started
making decisions based on numbers and things
like that, but not on politics. And that did result
in tension between any one of those speakers and
Helen. And it did for the rest of her career. It wasn’t
necessarily the political thing she’d come up with;
but what the Speaker had to do is to come up with
50 votes! At the end of the session you had to pass
a budget with 25 Senate and 50 House votes, get it
signed by the governor, and have it balanced! Helen
brought to the table a new way of thinking about
state budgets. It was very strong, but it clashed
with the political realities of what a speaker and
legislature had to do.
Monahan: Joe King said Helen had been there for
a long time when Joe was elected Speaker. Helen’s
goal was to chair the Appropriations Committee
(it was Ways & Means when Joe was elected).
Joe told me he had this difficult problem. Dan
Grimm had chaired the Ways & Means Committee.
Grimm became State Treasurer. Joe divided
Ways & Means to three committees: Appropriations,
Capital Budget and Revenue. Helen wanted
Appropriations, but Joe appointed Gary Locke
instead. He said it was very difficult because Helen
was entitled to it. And it was a very difficult choice
for him. Was there any tension with them?
Chief Clerk Foster: Oh, absolutely there’s tension
all the time. People in the Legislature become ambitious
and they learn that certain chairmanships
help them with their goal, whether political or
policy. So there was infighting for those positions
and the Speaker had to make decisions between
good people. When they made those decisions over
a period of time, they probably made one person
happy and a lot of others unhappy.
And, Helen wasn’t very good at that in-fighting,
but she learned how to do it. So Joe had to make
that tough decision, and he did. Gary Locke was
much more of a detail person, while Helen was
much more into formulating policy.
I think that Helen internally and personally suffered
a number of setbacks or defeats over the years.
But she was always able to follow that by coming
back and working with whoever had won out. She
was always good at that because she put setbacks
behind her faster than most people would.
Monahan: In the 1994 election, the Republicans
gained a majority in the House for the first time
since 1982, Clyde Ballard was elected Speaker, and
continued in the majority until the 1998 election.
Chief Clerk Foster: The Democrats had been a
minority for several years. Sort of what happened
in 1979 happened again in 1999. The second 49-49
tie in Washington history! Most of the Democrats