The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

212 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
selling out or doing something inappropriate is just pure hogwash.” On
the other hand, he wouldn’t have made the swap. 6
The political calculus of the Manion-Dwyer deal was tricky. While conservatives
and liberals berated Gorton, some analysts said he might have
scored important points with the middle. The Adams campaign played
the integrity card. “There has always been an underlying question of the
true motives of Senator Gorton,” said Governor Booth Gardner, Adams’
campaign chairman. “An almost subliminal question that the Manion
situation clarified is that he does what is in the political and not the public
interest. ‘Slippery’ is back.” Ashley Holden pronounced the deal “outrageous.”
He planned to hold his nose and vote for Gorton as the lesser of
two evils, “but not all conservatives are like me.” 7
Other conservatives were angered by Gorton’s efforts to help Evans
protect a national treasure while still preserving property rights. Slade
couldn’t win for trying.
fouR MiLes wide And 85 Long, the Columbia River Gorge is one of the
scenic wonders of the world. On a clear day and even in the mist, the vistas
sculpted by cataclysmic Ice Age floods are breathtaking. Flanked by
rimrock cliffs, the semi-arid eastern portion features rolling beige hills,
farms, ranches and plateaus that seldom see people. Then, as the Great
River of the West makes its way past the Cascades, Washington and Oregon
view one another from steep bluffs lush with Evergreen forests and a
profusion of waterfalls. From the Washington side, Mount Hood is a picture-perfect
ancient volcano snoozing in a white blanket.
Gorgeous as all this is, the river itself is a far cry from what Lewis and
Clark saw. Dammed for electricity and irrigation, beginning with the
New Deal and boosted by Scoop and Maggie, the march of progress along
the Columbia dispossessed Indians, strangled salmon and set the stage
for a battle that was heating up when Jackson died: Should the Gorge be
protected as a federal park? To environmentalists, the answer was an unequivocal
yes. However, upwards of 70 percent of the 41,000 residents of
the Gorge were opposed. They were represented by 24 local governments
fearful of federalization. So too the Grange and the National Association
of Counties.
A bill introduced by Oregon’s Republican senators, Mark Hatfield and
Bob Packwood, proposed a two-state commission to manage land-use in
the Gorge, designating it a national scenic area to be managed by the Forest
Service. Evans, Gorton and most other members of the Washington
and Oregon delegations backed a commission largely composed of resi-