booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

sprang from the Washington State organization. Death with Dignity’s national organization
sent Eli Stutsman. Coombs Lee was a nurse, physician’s assistant and attorney. Articulate
and attractive, she had been the chief petitioner for Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act.
Stutsman, a Portland attorney, was its lead author. Preston, a handsome, gray-haired
Seattle cardiologist, had been on the front lines of the 1991 campaign, emerging as a
national activist for “aid in dying.” Each of them would play key roles in the months to
come, but Preston’s Quaker roots, medical credentials and hard-won mastery of Politics
101 added up to what they needed most – a conciliator and sage.
They decided to meet regularly to share information and coordinate their efforts.
Booth came away from the first meetings impressed with his new allies, Preston in
particular, but deeply conflicted. What they were proposing didn’t go as far as he wanted.
Preston was emphatic that the Oregon law had to be their model. “The patient has to be
terminally ill and self-administer” the lethal dose, the doctor said. “Otherwise there’s too
much opportunity for abuse. It won’t pass the ethics test.” Booth pushed for something
he called “Oregon Plus” – a plan that would feature a panel of experts with the power to
approve assistance in dying to people with Parkinson’s and other debilitating but nonterminal
afflictions. They all warned him that thousands of people passionately committed
to Death With Dignity would drop out if he pursued that course.
Booth resolved to “keep on listening and learning.” In April, at the Norton Building
in Seattle, he convened a meeting attended by about 40 people, mostly family and friends.
Dr. Preston was there, too. He played a pivotal role in “helping to weave together the
various groups and to help Booth understand the subtleties of the issue,” Harris recalls.
“I’d voted for him twice, but I’d never met Booth before we started getting together,”
Preston says. “He was bright and funny. … His high regard for himself sometimes colors things
he says, but a lot of successful people are like that, and he was struggling to come to grips
with Parkinson’s. I liked his spirit. I liked Cynthia, too. She was young and bright. I will always
remember how she was attempting to counter his headstrong desire to let anyone die who
wanted to. She seemed to understand my concerns about the approach Booth was taking.”
Kelly Evans, a marketing and advertising specialist highly recommended by Denny
Heck, agreed to join the team. She helped with research, including focus groups and
polling. All of the feedback was very encouraging. (Evans became Gov. Gregoire’s reelection
campaign manager late in 2007. By then the key organizational work had been
done by the team.)
During the legislative session, State Senator Pat Thibaudeau, a Democrat from
Seattle, introduced the Washington Death with Dignity Act. However, it failed to emerge
from the Health & Long-term Care Committee before the 2006 session ended in March.
Gardner, Harris and Evans met with a number of political people around the state to get
a sense of whether there was any hope of passing aid-in-dying legislation in 2007 or 2008
or whether prospects were better for an initiative. Most counseled that passing legislation
166