booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

eform was “doable.” He was about to get a crash
course in the perils of governance. But he was off
and running, literally, at least three times a week,
prompting honks, waves and double-takes as he
jogged the three-mile Capitol Lake loop. When, as
promised, he took time out for his first field trip
to a school he was totally in his element. The kids
at Northwood Junior High in suburban Spokane
gave him rock star treatment, screaming for an
autograph, handshake or hug. “He’s so cool,”
one ninth-grader said, admitting that she didn’t
know anything about him except that “he’s the
governor.” Gardner said that any time he heard
people complain about what a cushy job it was to
be a teacher, he’d say, “I’ve got a deal for you: You
work from now until Christmas as a teacher, and
I’ll cover your job for you. At the end, you tell me
if you don’t need two weeks off at Christmas.”
Booth with a House page in 1986. Gardner family album.
In Olympia, the honeymoon was over even before the ides of March, when Booth
warned that salary increases for public employees, teachers and college faculty were
unlikely in 1985. The reserves for the current biennium were practically gone, he said,
and the state could face a deficit in the next two years “unless we begin to pull back” on
spending. Then came the news that revenue collections were down $25 million. “We’re
in trouble,” said Grimm. Gardner responded with a cautious $9.3 billion budget that gave
top priority to economic development and the cleanup of Puget Sound. He earmarked
nearly $299 million for contingencies and included $40.6 million, pending a hoped-for
negotiated settlement, to begin phasing in “comparable worth” pay hikes to some 15,000
mostly female state workers who’d prevailed in a landmark sex-discrimination case. State
Patrol troopers, who’d gone nearly two years without a raise, got a 4 percent boost in his
budget. Gardner also recommended raises of 4.6 to 8 percent for faculty at the state’s two
major universities to help them compete with other four-year research schools. However,
“The Education Governor” was proposing a $4.2 billion budget for the public schools,
$117 million less than Spellman had suggested. That was also nearly $600 million below
what the state school superintendent, Frank “Buster” Brouillet, said it would take just to
maintain the status quo, which was rapidly losing its status. Booth’s budget made “any
talk of education excellence a cruel joke,” said John Cahill, communications director for
the state’s largest teachers’ union, the Washington Education Association. Its outgoing
president was Booth’s Phi Delta Theta UW fraternity brother, Reese Lindquist, who had
prodded the union to back him for governor. “I’m very disappointed,” Lindquist said.
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