Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

lady. Is there sort of an unspoken rule among political women that your spouses could be
involved in the hand-to-hand combat, but that women are going to be more civil to one
another and sort of talk about kids and all the logistics of maintaining a home?
Evans: I don’t think there’s an unspoken rule. I just think it’s sort of good manners. We’re
not fighting each other. The spouses – the wives – in this case, had no animosity. In fact,
probably quite the opposite because we knew what the role entailed, and the difficulties,
and responsibilities —and we appreciated that.
Hughes: Interestingly when Dan was going for that third term, in mid-October the polls,
however reliable they were, had Al ahead, didn’t they?
Evans: Periodically. Well, you know, as an incumbent what you’re doing is more in
the papers and people are more aware of it. And they’d sort of forgotten some of Al’s
peccadilloes, I suppose. And in fact we laugh about it now. Dan’s been out of office a long,
long, long, long time. And if all the people who come up to him and say, “Oh, I wish you’d
run again,” or, “I should have voted for you” – if they actually had, we would have won by a
landslide!
Hughes: “Where were you when we needed you?”
Evans: Yes. They just forget the bad and think of the good, which is nice.
Hughes: What was the biggest and most memorable event that you had – sort of the beall,
end-all during those 12 years at the Mansion?
Evans: Oh, we had so many. I remember the first big legislative party we had that first
year in ’65, and I had never done that before – Where you invite the legislators and their
spouses, and the cabinet members and their spouses, and the Supreme Court justices and
their spouses, and office staff and their spouses, and the state elected officials and their
spouses, to dinner. And I had been to one with the Rosellinis, so I had an idea of how it
worked. But it’s a huge crowd and everybody comes because it’s during the legislative
session. There was sort of a play room downstairs. Not a huge room, but I had movies
going down there – a film of some sort. The scenery of Washington or something. And
then we had a buffet, and a bar. We put awnings around the outside of the porches and
heaters to heat it up so the bar could be out there. We had dancing and a band and the
93