The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

142 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
their mutual longtime rival, Bob Greive, as Senate majority leader. The
fallout from that struggle led to Mardesich being charged with extortion
and tax evasion. The lawyer turned commercial fisherman won an acquittal
from a federal jury in 1975 but his political career was all but over.
A pair of pros, Mardesich and Gorton rolled with punches. “Slade is a
hell of a sharp cookie,” Mardesich observed 20 years after their last
dustup. The feeling was mutual. “Augie had one of the greatest one-liners
I ever heard,” says Gorton. “He was a fairly conservative Democrat,
and when we were young legislators in the House some liberals excoriated
him for abandoning the Democratic platform. Augie stood up and
sort of looked at the ceiling, gathering his thoughts. ‘Well,’ he finally
said, ‘I always understood that the platform was the place from which
you mounted the train. And when the train left the station the platform
was left behind.’”
Between Herrmann and Gorton, however, there was absolutely no love
lost. The hard feelings dated back to the redistricting wars when Herrmann
was a state senator. The insurance commissioner’s downfall was
actually precipitated by a fellow Democrat, State Auditor Robert Graham,
who issued a scathing report detailing irregularities and questionable practices
in the agency. Gorton promptly filed a civil suit seeking $500,000
in damages. He accused Herrmann of using his office for personal gain,
including “misfeasance, nonfeasance and malfeasance.” Herrmann responded
with an indignant flurry of countersuits demanding $3.2 million
in fines and damages. “He is out to get my political hide,” the commissioner
told reporters, asserting that the attorney general had hired a
convicted “shake-down artist” as an investigator and conspired with
“high officials in the Nixon Administration” in a “vicious and vindictive”
political vendetta. King County Prosecutor Chris Bayley, a former Gorton
deputy, was part of the plot, Herrmann said. 6
KING-TV, which aired four documentaries highly critical of Herrmann’s
performance in office, was served with a $1.3 million libel suit.
Herrmann also threatened to charge Gorton with malfeasance if he refused
to pursue the auditor’s recommendation that members of the State
Liquor Control Board, including Evans appointees Don Eldridge, Leroy
Hittle and Jack Hood, be held accountable for thousands of bottles distributed
for “taste testing” and “routine business purposes.” The grand
jury indictments were tossed out in 1973, but the auditor issued a new finding
in 1975. It was particularly discomforting to Evans and Gorton to
have Eldridge, their old legislative ally, accused of wrongdoing. Evans
had appointed the highly regarded former House speaker to the Liquor