booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

health care system where the more money you have, the better medical care you receive,”
he said. With a voice steeped in gravitas, Sheen took off his dark-framed glasses and leaned
forward to look the viewer in the eye. “It’s a dangerous law that could be imposed on
the poor, the disabled and most vulnerable in our society. Initiative 1000 tells doctors it’s
OK to give a lethal drug overdose to a seriously ill person even if they’re suffering from
depression. Additionally your spouse could die by assisted suicide and you wouldn’t have
to be told. People who are ill need real medical care and compassion, not lethal drugs.”
The rebuttal was swiftly on the air. Called “Lies about I-1000,” it replayed
Sheen’s comments, interrupting him in mid-sentence and stamping “LIE!” across his
face. “Disability, ethnicity and economic class are irrelevant under I-1000,” it said. As
for depression, “The patient must be mentally competent. If there’s any question about
depression, the patient must be referred for a mental health evaluation.”
Another ad charged that a “small group” of “out-of-state religious leaders” were
trying to impose their will on the electorate and defeat “Washington’s Death With Dignity
law.” That was the final poke over the line for Joel Connelly, the veteran Seattle Post-
Intelligencer columnist and political reporter, who bestowed on I-1000’s backers the 2008
“Sheer Gall Award.” Washington had no such law, Connelly said. The issue was whether
there should be such a law. The “religious leaders” line was a slam at the Catholic Church,
he said, adding that I-1000 backers had “openly bashed” Catholics “in missives to liberal
bloggers” and used “code phrases” in the Voters Pamphlet. Never a fence-sitter, Connelly
was usually reviled by the right, which didn’t notice how often he enjoyed his declarations
of independence. At the outset of the campaign, Connelly had concluded that Gardner,
once an optimistic people person, was now a singularly “self-absorbed guy.” For a reality
check, he turned to 61-year-old Chris Carlson, a hiking buddy who had known Gardner for
years. Carlson, a leader of the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide, was fighting Parkinson’s as
well as a rare form of neuro-endocrine cancer. In 2005, he was told he had only six months.
It’s still “a matter of time,” Carlson conceded, but just look what the past two years had
brought him: “He has hiked in Hell’s Canyon, welcomed a new granddaughter into the
world, rejoiced as a son returned safely from Iraq …,” Connelly wrote. “Will our society
accept killing as compassionate when it has the world’s most advanced medical treatment,
has made leaps in controlling pain and developed legal devices such as living wills that set
limits on treatment?”
The columnist kept the heat on Gardner and the I-1000 campaign, quipping that
with Gardner’s deep pockets they had “a financial advantage that most campaigns would
die for.” Blair Butterworth, an I-1000 consultant, jabbed back, telling Connelly, “I respect
your faith, but in terms of public policies that reach beyond it, I’d feel better if you kept it
to yourself.” Connelly said that was “a weird thing to say to an Episcopalian.”
Knute Berger, writing on Crosscut.com, observed that if Gardner “thought he was
going to be a poignant poster child for difficult end-of-life issues, he was mistaken. Instead
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