The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

24 | Let’s Make a Deal
GoRton And evAns ignited a right-wing firestorm on March 4,
1986, when they nominated William L. Dwyer to a vacant seat
on the U.S. District Court in Seattle. Before it was over, the left
was also mad as hell at Gorton, and Adams had another juicy issue to
exploit.
Characters from past dramas—friend and foe alike—keep popping up
on the changing sets of Gorton’s life. It was Dwyer who won a libel verdict
in 1964 for John Goldmark, with Gorton as a character witness for the
liberal legislator falsely accused of being a communist. And it was Dwyer
whom Gorton sent to the mound against the American League owners in
1976 to secure a new ball club for Seattle. A proud member of the ACLU,
Dwyer went on to represent a Black Panther, pro bono; won a state Supreme
Court decision overturning a Seattle movie censorship ordinance
and defended a controversial children’s sex-education book at the Public
Library. Dwyer, in short, resoundingly flunked the Reagan Administration’s
litmus test for prudent jurisprudence. “This man is not even a Republican!”
huffed State Senator Jack Metcalf, demonstrating remarkable
powers of observation. Ashley Holden, one of the defendants in the Goldmark
case, was a hero to the state’s unreconstructed Republican right.
Noisily alive and well at 92, he said he still knew a pinko when he saw
one. “Dwyer is a left-wing liberal and a Democrat, and why would a Republican
senator want to nominate a man like that?” Because he is extraordinarily
well qualified, said Gorton and Evans. Dwyer “exemplifies
what a judge should be,” King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, another
Republican, said later as the debate intensified. 1
When Reagan and Attorney General Ed Meese stonewalled Dwyer’s
nomination, Gorton informed the White House that he would vote
against Daniel Manion, an Indiana lawyer the president desperately
wanted on the federal bench. The son of a John Birch Society director
who was the Rush Limbaugh of his day, Manion was characterized as a
“barely literate” conservative ideologue by his foes. Forty law school deans
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