booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

was doable. Apparently it was heard because at least one student went home and told her
parents. At the community forum that evening, one of the parents asked me to share what
I had told the students. When I was finished, a man rose from the crowd. You could see 25
years of working in the woods on his face and hands – 25 years that had ended a month
before with a pink slip. He said, ‘Governor, what you say is all right for my kids, but what
about me? I’m 45. I have a wife and four children. My mother is sick. Do you really think I
can start over again?’ I didn’t have much of an answer.
“Since that evening, I have thought about that man a lot. And I have thought a lot
about what I could say to you that would be useful – useful to the many new legislators
who are here today, useful to the veterans who’ve been here for years and risen to
positions of leadership – and useful to the people of this state. …Here’s what I’ve seen from
this perspective: First and most importantly, I’ve seen that everybody matters. That man
in Hoquiam matters. His children matter. His sick mother matters. … There are no ‘little
people’ – only little minds that fail to grasp the basic truth of our common humanity and
our common future.”
Booth usually gave few instructions to his last speechwriter, a gifted wordsmith
named Jill Severn. “But for that portion of his farewell address he made me sit down and
listen carefully to the story about the lesson he learned from his visit to Hoquiam,” she
remembers vividly. “He told me, ‘I want you to write it exactly like that’ – talking to the
kids, then the dad asking him if he really thought he could start over. It was something
he felt deeply. We’d have fabulous conversations about all these great state-of-the-world
ideas. He was always interested in new ideas. I would bring him articles, then he’d wander
in and we’d just talk about anything and everything. That was what was so magical about
working for Booth.” He could turn a good phrase, too, Severn says. “Governors are the
expansion joint,” he told her one day when they were discussing the politics of balancing a
budget. “The feds are pushing down, and the people are pushing up.”
* * *
Gardner’s sixth year as governor, 1990, began with the good news that revenues
likely would be $600 million higher than expected. That meant the “short” 60-day session
– ostensibly a non-budget event – would be a fiscal free-for-all. About half the seats in the
Senate and all 98 in the House would be on the ballot that fall. Tired of “getting peanuts
instead of apples,” teachers demanded a 10 percent raise. Gardner, backed by budget
writers for both parties, said that wasn’t “doable this year.” Welfare caseloads were rising,
school enrollment was up and the prison population was higher than expected in the wake
of tough-on-crime legislation. In short, the bow wave from earlier approved expenditures
was already too big, the governor said. He was worried, too, about the outlook for the
1991-93 budget and advocated socking away $233 million of the projected surplus.
Booth earmarked $70 million for school construction and some $50 million for
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