booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

I had outstanding instincts – way beyond the average person. I was gifted with that, but
Norton was brilliant – meticulous and disciplined.”
* * *
When the Gardner children started elementary school, Jean and her chum, Connie
Bacon, bought a gift shop in Tacoma. They were partners for seven years. Bacon, who
would become Booth’s special assistant for Western Washington when he was governor,
described Jean as “kind, generous, caring, bright,” with “real depth of character.” Several
others who knew the couple well during those years said Jean was also “very Scandinavian”
and, all things considered, not a good match for such an insecure, impulsive, ambitious
man. Booth was affable on the outside but driven to succeed by those old demons. As he
poured himself into the presidency of the Laird Norton Co., overseeing a major expansion
of the lumberyards, he was commuting daily from Tacoma to Seattle and struggling to
meet his family responsibilities. In particular, he knew he wasn’t being a good father –
his own being a pluperfect example of how not to do it. Years later, Doug Gardner told a
New York Times writer, “He provided for us, but he wasn’t there for us.” Booth admitted,
“I wasn’t a good father. I didn’t give him enough support, so he found it in religion.” Like
many men of his generation, Booth’s priorities were work and success. He even attended
seminars where other CEOs and their spouses talked about the pressures. Some of those
sessions were like AA meetings, there was so much baggage to be checked.
Jean Gardner spoke candidly to Walter Hatch for his riveting 1987 Seattle Times
profile of the governor. She said they’d always had a “stormy relationship,” even separating
for a while in the late 1970s. She resented Booth’s bouts of withdrawal, his inability to
discuss his feelings. His work and his civic causes seemed to be a higher priority than his
family. During those years, he was often absent, she said, and tried to compensate by
spoiling their kids, which she especially resented because it meant Mom had to be the bad
guy, the one who said no.
* * *
Despite later denials, Booth flirted with the idea of running for governor in 1976,
concluding that would be aiming too high too soon, even though it turned out to be a good
year for outsiders. For president, a Georgia peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter edged
Gerald Ford, who was undone by rampant inflation and his pardon of the disgraced Richard
Nixon. Dixy Lee Ray, a former head of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, was elected
governor, defeating John Spellman, the pipe-smoking moderate Republican who was King
County executive. Even members of her own party came to view Ray as a radioactive loose
cannon, sort of like Sarah Palin with a Ph.D. and a poodle. From what he read, Booth liked
Spellman a lot better than Dixy, but he thought she ran the better campaign. He mused
that he could have beaten Spellman too.
The Gardners reconciled and Pierce County voters moved to divorce themselves
from a scandal.
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