The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

unhAppy dAys 107
nage in either Washington. Nor could he recall Ehrlichman mentioning
that he was in contact with Dysart about politics. 31
in the heightened wAKe of Watergate, reporters in Washington State
also investigated the activities of a charming young man who had volunteered
with the Evans campaign. His name was Ted Bundy. Some tried to
couch Bundy’s activities as spying, yet the extent of his role was to attend
Rosellini press conferences and speeches and report back on what was
said, S.O.P. opposition research. Larsen and the AP’s Dave Ammons were
well aware of what Bundy was up to. He never tried to pose as a reporter.
Larsen said it was hardly cloak-and-dagger stuff. Neale Chaney, the state
Democratic chairman, agreed. Going to public meetings to monitor the
opposition, “That’s a legitimate part of the business.” Dolliver chimed in
that campaigns had to make sure the opponent wasn’t saying “one thing
in Bellingham and something else in Walla Walla.” 32
In 1973, Bundy landed a plum job as assistant to Ross Davis, the state
Republican chairman, and was admitted to law school at the University of
Puget Sound in Tacoma. Two years later, the checkered lore of the 1972
campaign would be forever footnoted by the news that Bundy had been
arrested in Utah for attempting to kidnap a young woman. His mug shot
was soon on every front page, a dead ringer for police sketches of “Ted,” a
handsome man suspected in a string of disappearances of young women,
from Lake Sammamish east of Seattle to the mountains of Colorado. The
Volkswagen bug Bundy was driving matched up too. It contained a pair
of handcuffs, rope, a crowbar and a pair of pantyhose with scissored eye
holes. Bundy would be revealed as one of the most sickeningly prolific
psychopathic serial killers in American history. Mischievous Democrats
have a good time to this day reminding people that Bundy was such a
promising Young Republican. 33
goRton sAys the nuMBeR one thing he learned that year was that he
“never wanted to be in that situation again.” From then on he never had a
chief deputy attorney general. After Dysart’s departure, Ed Mackie, Phil
Austin, John Martin and Mal Murphy were basically equal. One deputy
was never in charge of the office in his absence. “And all of the deputies I
had after that were strictly lawyers. None of them was particularly active
in politics.”
He was anxious to see 1972 end, and decided a long trip would be just
the tonic for a family that had endured a singularly stressful year.