booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

wasn’t impressed with either the “Harvard-educated” new county executive or his chief
of staff. “Barlow was asking him something and this guy got right up close to him and
punched his finger in his chest and said, ‘Don’t f*** with me, kid.’ Well, Greg got a hold
of the auditor’s office and told them he wanted this guy’s office audited, and the report
showed bad things.” Next, Faulk says, they called the
manager into Booth’s office. There was not-so-good
news and bad news, Barlow said, brandishing two letters.
The first was the manager’s resignation; the second
his dismissal. “If you don’t sign the first one, Booth will
sign the second.” The man gazed at Booth, hoping for a
reprieve, saw in his eyes that there was no wiggle room
and resigned. Barlow could be “tough as hell on somebody
who deserved it,” Faulk says, “but on the other hand
he can be a very kind, gentle, fun-loving guy.” The latter
was lost on some Gardner intimates who saw Barlow as
Booth’s hatchet man. They viewed him as a bad influence.
Barlow believed his mission was to protect Booth
from his deep-seated desire to make nice. He liked to be
liked so much that he was vulnerable. “Every day someone
would ambush Booth on the sidewalk and get him to agree to do something – put a few
more dollars in this program or a few more employees in that department,” Barlow told
Seattle Times reporter Walter Hatch in 1987. “I called them ‘sidewalk decisions.’ My job
was to track those people down and ask them exactly what they had asked Booth to do.
Once they heard my voice, they usually forgot.”
The swagger was unmistakable, Shirley Winsley says, adding that Barlow “always
looked like a military guy” even when he wasn’t in uniform. “He was always perfectly
groomed, like a page out of Esquire. … He came across as a very smart man, but a lot of us
didn’t know quite what to make of him. He could have come down to earth a little. That
would have helped.” She says the image Barlow projected was calculated to annoy the hell
out of someone like crusty ol’ Slim Rasmussen.
On the other hand, they all liked Booth’s legal counsel, Terry Sebring, who was
“very competent, congenial and low key,” Winsley says. Sebring was able to handle
personnel and public works issues without ruffling political egos, she adds, and deserves a
lot of the credit for the Gardner administration’s successes in modernizing Pierce County
government. Booth seconds that motion.
A graduate of the University of Puget Sound Law School’s first class, Sebring had
been the chief civil deputy in the County Prosecutor’s Office. He was the legal adviser
to the three county commissioners before the new charter was approved by the voters.
Barlow and Gardner were particularly impressed by the way Sebring handled the new
Lt. Col. Greg Barlow, Booth’s chief of staff.
John Cox photo, Washington National Guard.
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