booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

lanket of snow. Three-thousand Seattle teachers marched down Fifth Avenue. Still others
picketed outside ferry terminals with signs that said, “Pay the toll, Booth.” That summer,
in a development that seemed heaven sent, the Education Commission of the States held
its annual convention in Seattle, with Gardner presiding as both host and chairman. On
opening day, WEA President Carla Nuxoll and her vice president, C.T. Purdom, led a noisy
procession of 6,000 teachers brandishing banners and balloons. “No more hot air!” they
chanted at the top of their lungs.
* * *
Gardner’s $72 million package to crack down on predatory sex offenders would be
the slam dunk of the 1990 legislative session – and one of his finest hours as governor. His
actions demonstrated the empathy that reverberated from his fractured childhood, his
outrage at senseless crime and his common sense.
On the evening of May 20, 1989, 7-year-old Ryan Hade asked his mom if he could
go for a bike ride in their South Tacoma neighborhood. She told him to be back before dark.
Ryan’s sad fate was to encounter a profoundly deranged man. With a doughnut as bait, Earl
Shriner lured Ryan into the woods, raped him, strangled him with wire, cut off his penis
and left him for dead, naked and caked in blood and mud. Shriner, who was 40, had an
appalling track record of violence and perversion. At 16, he killed a schoolmate. Too young
to be charged with homicide under then-prevailing state laws, he was first committed to a
school for juvenile delinquents, then to a mental hospital. Diagnosed as slightly retarded,
he fell through the cracks of a system that found it difficult to differentiate between
the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled and criminals with frontal lobes fried by
drugs and alcohol – a cautionary tale in and of itself. The ensuing years found Shriner in
and out of jail for assault, kidnapping and animal mutilation. The case provoked outrage
statewide. Talk-radio went ballistic and Gardner was hit by an avalanche of demands for
a special session of the Legislature. “Many of our political leaders are counting on your
anger to blow over,” one critic told a rally at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma. Others wanted to
summarily castrate every pervert in sight.
The governor said he was sickened by the crime, but an emotional response was no
rational way to write new laws and reform a complex system. He appointed Norm Maleng,
his former rival, to head a 24-person task force. It included representatives of the criminal
justice system, mental health professionals, defense attorneys, victims and their relatives,
notably Helen Harlow, Ryan Hade’s mother, and Ida Ballasiotes, whose daughter was raped
and murdered in 1988 by a fugitive from a work-release center. Maleng was an inspired
choice for chairman. Booth respected his ability as a prosecutor and knew he had the
perfect personality to ensure the process wouldn’t be tainted by the emotionalism of the
moment. His appointment also gave the task force a bipartisan cachet.
The only truly controversial issue was whether an involuntary commitment law was
constitutional. Under the legislation presented by the task force, with Gardner’s strong
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