BOOTH WHO? - Washington State Digital Archives

The 26 th District freshman’s accomplishments in the next four years included helping push
through legislation to give the state’s two-year “junior” colleges autonomy from local
school districts. A few minutes before the final vote, a
school board chairman in his district called to say he
was toast if he voted for it. Faulk was undeterred. He
also went nose to nose with a powerful committee
chairman from Seattle, Wes Uhlman, to ensure that
a division of the new state appellate court would be
based in Tacoma.
“Larry was a prodigious worker,” Booth says,
“and a good guy. Everyone said, ‘Run for the House,’
but that’s a two-year term. I wanted a four-year term.
So I took him on. I’m likely a prohibitive loser, but after
his victory in 1966 Larry had written a manual on how
to get elected at the local level.” Booth checked it out
from the Tacoma Public Library. Faulk’s “master plan”
left nothing to chance. It outlined how to stage a coffee
klatch, where and when to doorbell and how to get
write-ups in all the papers, especially the weeklies,
which candidates often overlooked. Emphasizing that
“the candidate must be on time,” the primer also
told how to make a splash at the county convention to recruit more foot soldiers. “The
candidate’s band will not be loaned to any other candidate,” it said, adding that “girls with
chant signs” should be deployed throughout the crowd to build excitement. Bumper strips,
lawn signs, car-top signs, even pencils featuring the candidate’s name – “the little things”
– were also important to the cause. “When I finished reading it,” Booth says, “I thought,
‘Son of a bitch!’ and I said to myself, ‘Nobody can do what he did twice.’ He’d doorbelled
everywhere. He had a good mail campaign. He’d just done everything textbook – and then
he wrote the book on it.” What happened next is reminiscent of the scene in “Patton” when
the inimitable American general fulfills his dream of facing Rommel, the great German field
marshal, in an epic tank battle. Patton surveys the battlefield through his field glasses, sees
his guys winning and declares, “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”
Money being the ammunition of a campaign, Faulk was also losing that battle.
Booth handily won the Democratic primary and never let up. “We doorbelled and turned
up everywhere,” he says. One day they were campaigning outside Tacoma’s Asarco smelter
at 6 a.m. as the swing shift was heading home. Faulk was working one side of the street,
Booth the other. During a lull, Faulk wandered over.
“Did you read my book?”
“Yes.”
Booth on the campaign trail in 1970.
Gardner Family Album.
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