Helen Sommers: An Oral History

Leonard Sawyer elected Speaker of the House
the Seattle area; Jim Boldt and Charles Kilbury from
the Tri-Cities; I remember Joe Haussler of Omak.
I believe John L . O’Brien kept himself separate
somewhat, probably because of his position as
Speaker Pro Tempore. I believe he was aware of the
secret meetings but never mentioned it to Speaker
Sawyer. We were surprised that the word never got
back to Leonard that this was going on!
Monahan: I read a quote from one of them. Rep .
Jim Boldt, of the Tri-Cities, said: “We came to
Olympia to change the world!” But they were told
by the Speaker when to vote yes, and otherwise,
they were back-benchers.
Representative Sommers: I think it was an example
where, if the Speaker gets a
majority that’s too great, he
can lose control of his caucus.
I think that’s what was happening
here. The larger the
majority, the more factions
leadership has to contend
with. There were little factions,
Helen Sommers – 1976
and so the criticism that I saw
with some of the people was
that all Sawyer would say to freshmen would be to
instruct them “Ok we got to vote yes on this!”
Of course the Legislature had been like that for
decades. It was the leadership making the decisions
and the new members just kind of tagging along,
perhaps wanting to build up seniority to have more
influence. Probably not challenging and not expecting
to have much influence, but that’s traditional
in legislative bodies, that’s not something unusual.
Part of Sawyer’s problem, besides many in his
caucus disapproving his approach, I guess, is the
press got very tough on him. He was accused of
all sorts of things in the media. How accurate that
was, you know, I think he sort of had the image of, I
don’t know how to say it, a dishonest politician – but
dishonest might be too strong a word – but he had
that persona that he was kind of a wheeler-dealer!
pg. 27