The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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paign,” says Chris Koch, Gorton’s chief of staff in that character-building
year. Koch joined the campaign team after the primary.
John Carlson, a Republican pundit and future candidate for governor,
observed later that the Gorton campaign featured two consultants “who
hate each other’s guts” and 21⁄2 campaign managers. Gorton, he wrote,
came across as “an imperious viceroy grudgingly tolerating his leatherfaced
constituents with Brylcream-spackled hair.” 2
Newman says he smelled trouble and told Gorton so as early as spring.
“But nobody believed me. Even Slade was a little snippy. My big error was
that I should have resigned right away. My influence and involvement in
the campaign steadily waned throughout the summer. All of a sudden
Brock caught fire.”
Adams had loads of kindling. Yet for much of the spring Democrats
and pundits were muttering “Where’s Brock?” The Adams campaign
was caught up in problems of its own. Ellen Globokar, Brock’s 31-yearold
campaign manager, was an outsider from Michigan. She was getting
the cold shoulder from Lowry partisans and outright second-guessing
from Karen Marchioro, the mercurial, intimidating state Democratic
chairwoman. Globokar pushed ahead with stoic tenacity. “A lot of people
viewed it as a kamikaze mission. I had meeting after meeting with
people who would tell me
Brock Adams couldn’t win.
I felt powerless for a large
portion of the campaign.”
She took a calculated risk
to challenge Gorton’s effectiveness
and went in hock
$100,000 before the primary
to start buying ads. 3
Boosted by a noisy senior
citizen group, Adams began
to hammer away at Slade’s
support for scaling back
the Social Security cost-ofliving
adjustments. Gorton
dismissed the group as “a
Brock Adams on the campaign
trail, 1986. Brian DalBalcon/
The Daily World