booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

of Washington. Opponents, many of them evangelical Christians, flooded his office with
letters of outrage and declared it would cost him “any prospects of re-election in 1988.”
Gardner’s order also encouraged state agencies to hire people with limited English
language skills. “My administration will not tolerate discrimination,” he said. “We only
intend to discriminate against one group: those who are not competent to do the job. If
a worker can do the job in a professional manner, then state government has no right to
intrude in his or her private life.”
In 1990, a cross-burning outside the Whidbey Island home of a mixed-race couple
and several gay-bashing incidents prompted an outraged Gardner to propose some of
the most aggressive malicious harassment legislation in the nation. He was thwarted
repeatedly by conservative senators who asserted that extending protection to gays
amounted to an endorsement of their “lifestyle.” The Persian Gulf War in 1991, though
brief, sparked an outbreak of threats against Jewish and Muslim Americans. The governor
said the best way to honor the diverse group of men and women in the armed forces
would be “to ensure their civil rights and freedom are protected here at home.” Gardner
was able to establish a statewide program to monitor hate crimes and secure funds to train
law enforcement on ways to combat racist groups like the Aryan Nations and skinheads.
* * *
Gardner said his first six months were exhausting. “I just couldn’t catch my stride.
…You’ve got to go through your first legislative session, and that isn’t fun.” As it was in the
beginning, it would be at the end eight
years later: When the lawmakers left
town, he was liberated. Looking back, he
says he was never comfortable with the
rough and tumble of legislative politics. “I
hated it.”
Rosalie Gittings, his personal
assistant, recalls his mood swings,
especially in the afternoon when his
attention deficit was at its worst. She
believes his eating habits were a big
part of the problem. She scolded
him whenever she found a cache of
Coke in the office refrigerator. Even
more disconcerting was his habit of
disappearing. “All of a sudden, he would
decide to run out of the office and I would
catch him on the stairway. He would
want to avoid going someplace to make a
Booth meets with Rosalie Gittings, his trusted personal assistant.
Wayne Zimmerman ©The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) 1985
Reprinted with permission.
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