The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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Pendleton skirts, with a pair of dogs for best friends. The former chairman
of the Atomic Energy Commission was undeniably brainy, yet also
a political naïf with a short fuse. What did she want to change in Olympia?
“Everything!” 3
goRton And his deMocRAtic opponent, J. Bruce Burns, a little-known
attorney from Tacoma who had served three terms in the Legislature,
were unopposed in the primary. “I’m running against a fellow who knows
every dirty trick in the book,” Burns said. He vowed to “remove partisan
politics” from the office and scolded Gorton for hiring outside attorneys
when there were 200 lawyers on the state payroll. Gorton countered that
the taxpayers were his client and he was making sure they got their money’s
worth by deploying the talent to win when a case required special
skills. He pointed to Dwyer’s home run against the haughty American
League owners. The office had aggressively pursued antitrust and consumer-protection
litigation, winning cases against the asphalt industry
and antibiotic drug manufacturers. With claims filed by more than
80,000 families, the latter was a source of particular pride to Gorton
since “literally every citizen in the state was a beneficiary.” He had championed
Congress’s decision earlier that year to amend federal antitrust
laws to permit state attorneys general to recover damages on behalf of
individual citizens in price-fixing cases and was itching to file more consumer-protection
lawsuits. He was unapologetic about his vigorous opposition
to the Boldt Decision as “both bad law and bad social policy.”
Gorton promised to con tinue being “an activist attorney general.” 4
Burns’ charge that Gorton was practicing partisan politics stemmed
from the attorney general’s headline-making disputes with his predecessor,
John J. O’Connell, and Karl Herrmann, the pugnacious state insurance
commissioner who famously once issued “NO SMOKING” signs
that featured “By order of KARL HERRMANN, Insurance Commissioner
and State Fire Marshal” in letters nearly as big as the warning. Gorton
also sued Seafirst Bank and state Senator August P. Mardesich, a powerful
Democrat from Everett, over a retainer to Mardesich’s law partner that
was largely passed along to the redoubtable “Augie.” It amounted to bribery,
Gorton charged. 5
“Slade and Augie were the two brightest guys in the Legislature in all
the years I was there,” says Sid Snyder, who began his political career as
an elevator operator at the Capitol in 1949 and retired as Senate majority
leader a half century later. They relished strategy; their command of seemingly
small details inspired awe. It was Mardesich who finally deposed