The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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Jellen worked with Tony Williams, Gorton’s chief of staff, to develop a
strategy that Tony would oversee down the stretch while she worked with
the Bush people and other Republican candidates. Goal No. 1 was to offset
Cantwell’s money advantage by keeping the National Republican Senatorial
Committee and well-heeled GOP donors fully engaged and writing
checks. Nor could they be content to watch Senn and Cantwell duke it
out, à la Lowry and Bonker 12 years earlier. They knew they wouldn’t get
50 percent of the primary vote; they just couldn’t afford to be second. If
Cantwell was the winner, which they fully expected, given Senn’s proclivity
to go shrill and Maria’s money, they had to style her as a classic taxand-spend
liberal disguised as a high-tech centrist. Their ads would also
emphasize Slade’s constituent-relations credentials, reprising the “Slade
Gorton Works for Me” theme. They had Bush’s state manager in their
fold early on, and resolved to prop up the Texas governor in every way possible.
“We knew ‘W’ wouldn’t win Washington but we didn’t want him to
lose big,” Williams says. They needed to energize the Republican base. It
was likely to be another nail biter. They scheduled fundraisers all around
the state, with guest stars as diverse as Charlton Heston and Bill Gates.
Guns and software. The race would shatter the state’s campaign spending
records.
it wAs hALf pAst 9 on the night of May 12, 1999. Danny Westneat, The
Seattle Times’ man in Washington, was watching a master at work. Gorton
was down on both knees in a room deep in the basement of the U.S.
Capitol. “He wasn’t praying,” Westneat wrote. “Pen in hand and surrounded
by staff and lobbyists from the mining industry, the Republican
senator was furiously scratching out the words to give Eastern Washington
a gold mine.” 9
In 12 hours of wheeling and dealing by House and Senate conferees,
the emergency appropriations bill President Clinton needed to underwrite
the NATO air war in the Balkans and assist Kosovo refugees had
acquired a remarkable array of expensive appendages and special pleadings.
There were subsidies for reindeer ranchers and sewers for Salt Lake
City. A senator from Alabama was out to prevent the White House from
listing sturgeon as an endangered species. Senator Byrd, who could play
piggyback better than anyone, added a rider to help a West Virginia steel
mill hurt by imports; Domenici was going to bat for small oil and gas
companies; $566 million was earmarked to help Midwest farmers hurt by
low commodities prices. The tinkering totaled $9 billion. Lacking a lineitem
veto, Clinton would have to take it or leave it. 10