booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

Pete never says anything he doesn’t mean. You don’t understand yet what this means for us
in the campaign. This gives us resources and assets beyond your imagination.”
Taggares did everything he said he’d do and more. He told Dotzauer he’d match
every dollar the Clapps contributed. “Then money started coming in from all kinds of
places I never heard of,” Dotzauer cackles mischievously. “It was all legal, but I didn’t realize
they had so many damn holdings. There was money all over the place.” The first round
of TV commercials boosted Booth’s name familiarity from 7 percent to 30 percent. “We
popped 25 points!” Dotzauer remembers, punching the air triumphantly. “It worked.”
* * *
McDermott, a child psychiatrist from Seattle, was a tough,
voluble campaigner who analyzed his opponent as a political dilettante.
His strategy was to get in Booth’s face and stay there. Their first
debate, in late June 1984, was before the Seattle Rotary Club at the
Sheraton Hotel. The Post-Intelligencer’s Neil Modie, an old pro, wrote
a lead that was spot on: “It was Booth Gardner’s kind of audience but
Jim McDermott’s kind of show…” Gardner, visibly nervous, failed to
counterattack as McDermott flailed him as a double-talker. He claimed
to have resuscitated Pierce County without raising taxes, the senator said, but the truth
was that the sales tax had been boosted. He claimed to have the common touch, to be a
champion of government transparency, yet he had shielded the scope and sources of his
wealth in a blind trust.
“As governor, I intend to run this state in the businesslike manner it requires,”
Gardner promised in a voice one wag described as “Elmer Fudd on helium.” The Rotarians
nodded. McDermott looked right past them and addressed the bank of TV cameras
capturing his message for the far larger audience of the 6 o’clock news on all three network
affiliates. He said Gardner and Spellman were peas in a pod – former county executives
who maintained that “if you’ve found the right manager, the problems of the state will
go away.” Landing a withering bipartisan uppercut, McDermott praised former threeterm
Republican governor Dan Evans. “The last good governor in this state,” he said,
“was somebody who was experienced in the Legislature and came into the governor’s
office with no experience in management. He was a man who had learned the process
and understood how it worked. Ask your horse. You can lead your horse to water but
you can’t manage him to drink.” Booth smiled thinly. Looking back, he shakes his head at
his sorry performance and says he was out of his league. “It was the Yankees in the form
of McDermott, and I just got chewed up.” Dave Ammons of the AP, who has a knack for
being simultaneously honest and empathetic, asked afterward, “You didn’t do very well,
did you?” “No I didn’t,” Booth said. “What are you going to do?” “I’m going to take a long
walk,” the candidate replied, “and I’ll be back.”
Dotzauer had seen it coming. “Let me tell you why he did horribly,” the former
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