booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

Faulk says he muttered something unprintable under his breath. You had to hand it to
Booth, Faulk says. “He’s a nice guy. I couldn’t help but like him, and I still do.”
Faulk’s flummoxed failure to seize that one moment wasn’t decisive. On March
10, 1981, Booth survived their rematch by winning 52.8 percent of the vote to become
Pierce County’s first county executive. Gardner said the conflict-of-interest allegation over
the shopping mall probably hurt. For Faulk, more money might have made a difference.
Gardner spent some $225,000 – including about $150,000 of his own money. It added up
to five times what Faulk was able to raise and spend. “The Republican National Committee
could have come in with $100,000,” Faulk says. “We were closing. Given another week and
more money we could have beat him. We had momentum. I could feel it from the streets.
But they didn’t and he won and, of course, the rest is history.”
So is Faulk’s warning to Spellman. After his resounding victory in the primary,
Booth had told the News Tribune’s editors he had no plans to run for governor in 1984.
He said he’d like to be Pierce County executive for eight years, “then I might go back into
private business.” But the paper’s political writer, Jerry Pugnetti, polled a lot of Democrats
who saw the personable 44-year-old as governor sooner rather than later. “If Booth isn’t
thinking about it, there’s a lot of people around here thinking about it for him,” one said.
One who thought Booth’s road to Olympia was strewn with speed bumps was
an old friend, State Sen. Peter von Reichbauer of Vashon Island. A month earlier, von
Reichbauer had stunned the Legislature by defecting to the Republicans out of displeasure
with the level of government spending. That gave the R’s a 25-24 majority and control
of both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time in 32 years.
Von Reichbauer declared that if Gardner didn’t take on Pierce County’s Democratic
“machinery” in his first six months of office, “he will fail.” He added that the “narrowness
of his victory” over Faulk was not only surprising, it “will eliminate him as a contender
against Gov. Spellman in 1984.”
Spellman, the former King County executive, congratulated Booth on his victory.
Although he’d backed Faulk, he said he believed Gardner would do well. His advice was to
be assertive. “I suspect that he already knows that. I would just underline it.”
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