The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

coMMissioneR goRton 341
That clearly carried no weight. Several cabinet appointees who faced contentious
confirmation hearings were from states Bush lost. 4
“I was very lucky they didn’t give me one of those cabinet jobs,” Gorton
says. “Any one of them would have been over after four years because
Bush replaced most of his cabinet in his second term. It would have been
prestigious but very, very frustrating and it would have cost me some of
the most interesting opportunities I ever had.”
goRton Joined a leading Seattle law firm, Preston, Gates & Ellis (now
K&L Gates), where his talents as lawyer, legislator and lobbyist would produce
many billable hours, not just add luster to the letterhead. Preston,
Gates also maintained an office in D.C., where Gorton would work a few
days a month. On the side, he hooked up with ex-aides Tony Williams, J.
Vander Stoep and Nina Nguyen, who had founded a bicoastal consulting
firm, Washington 2 Advocates. Seattle City Light and the state’s Public
Utility Districts were first in line for Gorton’s “strategic and tactical advice”
to defend their access to low-cost federal power. 5
He was re-engaged in civic life practically before the movers left, joining
Jim Ellis on a committee reviewing Sound Transit’s troubled light-rail
project. The Forward Thrust program championed by Ellis and Gorton
included rapid transit. When the bond issue to finance light rail failed at
the polls, it cost the region billions in federal matching money. Now, some
30 years down the road, the project was three years behind schedule and
$1 billion over budget, despite the federal money Gorton had secured for
it as a senator. Project planners faced an array of obstacles, including topography,
tunneling, new safety rules and neighborhood concerns about
intrusiveness and eminent domain. It would be worth all the trouble, Gorton
said, recalling a trip on the system Atlanta built with the federal money
that could have been Seattle’s. “It was a wonderful ride. My strong feeling
is that for this community to abandon light rail would be suicide . . . To
run this city with buses only seems to me the height of foolishness.” 6
Soon he was popping up everywhere, headlining fundraisers, writing
guest editorials, campaigning for progressive projects. He joined the opposition
to initiative guru Tim Eyman’s statewide ballot measure to limit
property taxes, saying it was no time to be cutting back on support for law
enforcement. (Eyman won big.)
In a piece for the P-I’s editorial page, Gorton and his favorite Democrat,
Governor Gary Locke, backed a plan to require out-of-state online
retailers to collect sales taxes. Besides eroding state revenues, “remote
sales also pose a fundamental fairness issue,” they wrote. “Why should