booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

We went to see him and he gave us a check. You never look at the check; you just put in
your pocket. I just said, ‘Thank you, Dave. We really appreciate it.’ When we got outside
in the hall, I pulled out the check. Jesus Christ! It’s a thousand bucks! Nobody’s ever given
us a thousand bucks! Dave raised $52,000 for us in 30 days, so we would be able to be
competitive.”
Faulk laid it on the line when he went to Olympia to ask the governor to campaign
for him. “Spellman is sitting there, calmly smoking his pipe and I’m walking around waving
my hands because I’m a Slav and I can’t talk without my hands, and I said, ‘Governor, we
can win this thing. We need help, and we need it now.’ Finally I said, ‘Well, governor, let me
tell you something: If he gets me he’s gonna get you next!’ ”
* * *
Gardner won the endorsement race. He was anointed by six city council members,
10 legislators, 14 mayors, 15 of the 23 new county charter freeholders, The Pierce County
Herald, The Suburban Times and The Tacoma News Tribune, Pierce County’s leading source
of news. The News Tribune’s endorsement editorial said it was “a difficult choice between
two good men” but Gardner’s “superiority in executive training” tipped the scales.
“Gardner’s stewardship of a multi-million dollar corporation and his formal education in
business administration provide him with impressive credentials,” the newspaper said. “It
is rare that such a skilled executive would interrupt a successful career in private business
to devote full time to local-government service.”
On election eve, Gardner and Faulk were at a candidates’ forum at a Grange Hall.
Booth drew the short straw and had to go first. He had appeared on the same platform
with Faulk and the others so many times that his brain was bouncing from the monotony.
He started to give his standard stump speech. Then he stopped, smiled mischievously
and launched into Faulk’s speech. “I had been listening to him for three months solid. I
knew his speech by heart,” Booth says. Equally bored, Faulk often “kind of dozed off when
other people were talking.” But as he began to grasp what was happening, Faulk started
twitching and fidgeting. “He’s kind of a kinetic guy,” Booth says, adding that his opponent
soon was fully alert and “on the edge of his chair.” When Booth concluded, Faulk jumped
up, grabbed the microphone and declared, “He gave my speech!” Booth took it back and
confessed, “He’s telling you the truth, folks. I did give his speech. But I’ve been listening to
it for so long I just had to do it. If you want to know what I have to say, he’s been with me
the same amount of time I’ve been with him. Let him give my speech.” Booth handed the
microphone back to Faulk, “but he wouldn’t do it, which was a mistake. … If he had been
on his toes he would have had six minutes to say ‘This is too serious a job to be joking
around’ and things like that.”
“It’s true,” Faulk readily concedes, laughing so hard nearly 30 years later that tears
practically come to his eyes. Faulk was usually fast on his feet and outshone Gardner in
most of their debates. Booth was faster that night. When he realized what was happening,
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