The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

342 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
merchants on Main Street be required to collect sales taxes while online
merchants are not?” Then they hit the road to promote a referendum on
the 2002 ballot to boost the gas tax by 9 cents to fund highway projects,
mass transit and ferries. “This is roads, not government,” Gorton emphasized.
“The future of the state in terms of its economic vitality, safety of
its highways and the lifestyle we live depends on our willingness to make
the investments we’ve ignored over the years.” (Sixty-two percent were
unwilling. But the 2003 Legislature adopted the “nickel” package, upping
the gas tax by 5 cents to finance congestion-relief projects.) 7
with his AnALyticAL Mind and half-century in politics, Gorton was on
the A-list for commissions, boards and think tanks. Howard Baker recruited
him for an important project sponsored by the University of Virginia’s
Miller Center of Public Affairs: a commission to study what lessons
could be learned from the fiasco in Florida, where the White House
was hanging on chads for weeks before Bush won the Supreme Court
and graduated from the Electoral College. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter
were the honorary co-chairmen; Gorton and Kathleen Sullivan, dean of
the Stanford Law School, vice chairmen. Other members included Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, Leon Panetta, Bill Richardson, former attorney general
Griffin Bell, Slade’s friend Rudy Boschwitz and John Seigenthaler,
the noted newspaperman.
The commission’s director was Philip Zelikow, who managed the
Miller Center. An academic who was also a lawyer, historian and former
National Security Council aide, Zelikow “was known to be indefatigable,
able to go without sleep for days, surviving on whatever was available
from the nearest vending machine.” A debate champion in college, he
was also known for not suffering fools gladly. If that sounds like someone
Gorton would like a lot, you’ve been paying attention. He was “wowed by
Zelikow’s intelligence, his writing skills, and his all-important ability to
meet a deadline.” Zelikow, in turn, found Gorton a kindred intellectual
soul who was also dispassionate. 8
Major bones of contention in Florida were late-arriving military ballots
and the provisional ballots issued to voters who showed up at the wrong
polling place or whose status seemed otherwise questionable. Washington
State also used provisional ballots as a safety net to ensure no voter was
disenfranchised. Gorton told the commission that provisional ballots from
college students helped cost him his seat in the Senate. “But I am for it, and
I think we ought to recommend it to the whole country.” It got everyone’s
attention, Zelikow says. “It was public spiritedness of a rare kind.” 9