BOOTH WHO? - Washington State Digital Archives

candidates spent an hour answering questions about the environment from the Washington
Environmental Political Action Committee. “The environmental movement has come of age
as a force in Washington politics,” Seattle Times reporter Eric Pryne wrote. “Not too many
years ago politicians were railing against environmentalists. But you don’t hear much, if any,
green-baiting this year. And last night a few veteran environmental activists in the crowd of
300 saw the forum as a sign the political establishment finally has bestowed on them and
their causes the mark of legitimacy.” Spellman noted that in 1981 Booth backed more lenient
air-pollution controls on Tacoma’s Asarco copper smelter. Gardner said Spellman’s zeal for
cleaning up Puget Sound was just election-year expediency.
In Tacoma on the 15 th , Spellman was crisply forceful in their first debate while
Gardner surprised most everyone with his poise. Well prepped by his policy adviser, Laird
Harris, he accused Spellman of being a “fumbling” governor who had signed more than 80
tax hikes in the space of four years. Spellman
countered that Gardner’s vaunted management
expertise was a sham, charging that he had
“ripped off the road fund” to balance the
Pierce County budget and “left the county
in a shambles.” One of the reporters asked
Spellman why he broke his 1980 promise not
to raise taxes. “No one,” he said, “could have
expected the worst depression we’ve had in
50 years” – far worse that the “Boeing Bust”
of the 1970s. Spellman could have added
that his promise was to raise taxes only as “a
last resort,” but that might have sounded like
equivocating.
While Booth’s TV ads refrained from
attacking Spellman, on Oct. 21 in Seattle his
team finally got him to come out swinging.
Saying he was tired of “catching without a
mask,” the first words out of his mouth were
“John, I think you’ve run one of the dirtiest campaigns we’ve seen in Washington in a long
time.” Spellman shot back nimbly that Gardner was just defensive because “we’ve scored
most of the points.” An Elway poll for The Seattle Times showed Spellman gaining.
The last debate was Halloween night in Spokane. It produced nothing scary for
either side, except that Spellman twice committed the perhaps Freudian slip of referring to
Gardner as “Mr. Governor.” Spellman said he was proud to stand on his record. He’d made
tough decisions to help the state weather the toughest economy in a half century and the
recession was almost over. “Philosophically,” he said, “I think the State of Washington is on
Gardner and Spellman chat before their last debate in
Spokane on October 31, 1984. Shawn Jacobsen ©The
Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA) 1984 Reprinted with
permission.
87