BOOTH WHO? - Washington State Digital Archives

speech or having to meet with someone. I just told him, ‘Booth, you can’t do that. It throws
everybody in a turmoil.’ We had several little sessions out in the stairwell.” Gittings says
many don’t grasp the fact that Gardner is fundamentally shy. “He feels most comfortable
around kids. It’s not just some act.”
If anyone knew the real Booth Gardner, it was Gittings, according to many former
staff members. “Rose Gittings is the most intuitive person I have ever known,” says Mari
Clack, a University of Washington classmate who became Booth’s Eastern Washington
representative. “She was the mom,” Gardner says with affection.
The Seattle Times conducted a poll to give Gardner a first-year report card. It found
that 63 percent rated him good to excellent at managing state government, but only 45
percent rated him effective at initiating new programs. Jim McDermott disagreed. He said
Booth had been “the most effective first-year governor I have ever worked with.”
“I don’t think you can do this job in just one four-year term,” Booth said as 1986
approached. “I fully intend to go for two terms.” When he was feeling upbeat, he told
himself he wanted at least three consecutive terms, to match Dan Evans.
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Pete von Reichbauer, Booth’s old friend (he had been an usher at the legislator’s
wedding) was one of the most vocal of the Republicans asserting that Gardner’s request for
the power to hire and fire the directors of the Game, Transportation and Parks departments
and appoint the members of the state Board of Education was an effort to “turn the clock
back to the era of pork barrel politics.” The state senator warned that “the people who
decide which lakes and streams are stocked with fish, or where the next state highway
is located will be beholden to the political powers in Olympia.” The proposal also riled
many members of the state’s passionate contingent of fishermen and hunters. The Game
Department had been created by initiative in 1932 when steelheaders carried the day in
a battle with commercial fishermen and packers. In 1945, Gov. Mon Wallgren persuaded
the Legislature to give him the power to appoint the game director. The Sportsmen’s
Council promptly filed a referendum and Wallgren’s plan was soundly defeated by the
voters. “Two years later, we beat Wallgren,” one veteran angler recalled. “It will happen
to this guy (Gardner) too.” At a House committee hearing on the governor’s plan, anglers
demonstrated that they belonged to no organized party. Jerry Pavletich, a leading member
of Trout Unlimited, a steelheader group, backed Booth, saying, “The buck should stop with
the chief executive of the state. The bottom line is the present system does not work.” Next
up was Dean Fellows of the Federation of Fly Fishermen, who said Booth’s proposal would
give governors a license to “sell the appointment to the highest bidder.”
“Whenever we’ve tried to abolish or merge or change any state agency, by God
you’d think the world was coming to an end,” said Rep. Max Vekich, a Democrat from Grays
Harbor who strongly supported the reorganization plan. Booth did have the support of
anglers, tribal leaders and fisheries professionals as he steamrollered opponents to the
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