The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

276 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
they both favored allowing women to fly combat missions and voted for a
foreign-aid bill Bush vehemently opposed because it didn’t restrict abortion
counseling. 2
When the Navy’s Whidbey Island air station was threatened with
down-sizing, then closure, Gorton’s stance was instructive of his dispassionate
approach to problem solving. Although his son-in-law, a combatready
aviator, was stationed at Oak Harbor, Slade bluntly dismissed the
Chamber of Commerce’s pitch that the community would be devastated.
Every community in the base-closing commission’s cross hairs could and
would make the same case, Gorton said. The only viable, patriotic argument
was that the military’s mission would be compromised. With support
from Adams and Dicks, Gorton made that case and won. The same
fact-based approach later saved the Everett Home Port.
With Dicks leading the way, Adams and Gorton agreed early on that
the landmark land-claims settlement with the Puyallup Tribe in the Tacoma
area was overdue and just. The tribes saw Gorton’s vote as windowdressing,
however, and they were miffed when he was named to the Select
Committee on Indian Affairs.
In June of 1989, the delegation’s power took a quantum leap when Tom
Foley of Spokane ascended to Speaker of the House in the wake of an ethics
probe instigated against Speaker Jim Wright by Gingrich. In 1991,
Gorton was named to Appropriations, making Washington the only state
with both senators on the powerful committee. 3
ALthough goRton’s suppoRt for logging interests infuriated environmentalists,
they welcomed his outrage over an historic unnatural disaster.
At 12:04 a.m. March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez—its radar
broken and skipper allegedly sleeping off a bender below decks—ran
aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The spill fouled
1,300 miles of coastline and 11,000 square miles of ocean. Soon thereafter
the tanker Exxon Philadelphia lost power and drifted for seven hours off
the Olympic Peninsula. In one of the fieriest speeches he ever gave on the
Senate floor Gorton denounced Exxon’s irresponsibility, calling for heavy
monetary penalties, other sanctions, tighter regulations and the CEO’s
resignation. America needed oil and clean beaches, he said, and the technology
to protect both interests was readily available if corporations and
regulators did their jobs. 4
Gorton bucked the Bush White House by teaming up with Nevada
Democrat Richard Bryan to push legislation requiring automakers to
achieve a 40 mpg fleet average for their vehicles by 2001. It would be the