booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

Chapter Seven: Senator Gardner
Before deciding which office to seek as a stepping stone, Booth realized he
needed to pick a party. One thing his father and stepfather actually had in common was
that they were both Republicans. Brick Gardner, however, was all fuss and bluster while
Norton Clapp was cool and calculating. Clapp gave his time and money generously but
strategically, especially in the early 1960s when Washington State sprouted a crop of bright
young Republicans. They were led by State Rep. Dan Evans, an upstanding engineer from
Seattle. Evans was an Eagle Scout who loved to hike and sail. Clapp, by now one of the top
Scout leaders in the nation and an enthusiastic boater, liked the cut of his jib. He was also
impressed with the rest of Evans’ crew, especially the cerebral Slade Gorton, a transplanted
New Englander. Clapp was more
conservative than they were, but
another major Republican donor cut
to the chase: “He’s a pragmatist, not
an ideological warrior.”
In “The Last Tycoon,” the
most insightful profile of Clapp
ever written, Nick Gallo of the
Seattle Weekly summed up Clapp’s
free-enterprise philosophy: “He
lambasted wasteful government,
claiming it stifled productivity
and creativity. He compared
government structure to a 19 th -
Century stagecoach unprepared
to take us into the 21 st Century
and urged creation of a Metro-like
‘megacity’ to replace the patchwork
of bureaucracies in the Puget Sound
Norton Clapp by Roger Thias.
area.” Clapp was a key contributor as Evans bucked a Democratic tide in 1964 and denied Al
Rosellini a third term. The helicopter was now at the disposal of a Republican.
Clapp was in for a shock in 1970. His stepson had decided to become a Democrat,
and he hadn’t seen it coming. Two years earlier, Booth had publicly identified himself as
a Republican in a newspaper ad, joining a list of GOP supporters of the state’s formidable
senior U.S. Senator, Warren G. “Maggie” Magnuson. “I was a devout Republican by
birth, by association,” Booth says, “but I was conflicted.” He’d been talking politics with
Bill Baarsma, a colleague at the University of Puget Sound and a future Tacoma mayor.
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