The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

4 | The Freshman
FRoM dAy one, RepResentAtive goRton, R-Seattle, actually read
the fine print of all the bills set to be debated the next day. “Every
damn one. I would work my way to an answer logically, step-bystep.”
Well, most of the time. Some defied translation, whether by sheer
bureaucratic turgidity or design. This irritated Gorton to no end. He noted,
too, that a swarm of lobbyists was always lurking in “Ulcer Gulch,” the
legislative passageway, to woo the lazy and complaisant.
In 1959, Washington legislators were paid $1,200 per year. There was
a shoe shine stand, manned by a stereotypically affable Negro, outside the
House chambers. Inside, practically everyone but Gorton and Evans was
smoking incessantly. Chet King of Pacific County still had his spittoon.
“We had no offices; no secretaries; no nothing,” Gorton recalls. “You sat
there at your seat in the House chamber,” boning up on bills and handling
correspondence as best you could. The lobbyists could be on the
floor until 15 minutes before a session started and an hour afterwards.
“We mostly escaped to the private dining room downstairs,” Evans recalls.
Gorton and Pritchard, being freshmen, were way back by the water
fountain, watching how the lobbyists operated down in front. “You
learned pretty quickly that the people who got lobbied the most were
the ones who were likely to vote the way the last guy who talked to them
wanted them to,” Gorton says. “Joel turned to me one day and observed, ‘He
who can be pressured will be pressured.’ No one ever put it better.” 1
Although outnumbered two-to-one, the Republicans were a vocal minority.
“As much fun as it was,” Gorton says, “there were only two
things that happened during that first session that would not have happened
had I not been there.” The first was a securities reform act. With
Gorton as the Republican sponsor, it won approval “over the almostdead
body of Elmer Johnston,” the penny mining stock lawyer from
Spokane who had tried to convince the young fellows it was best to go
along to get along. The second thing taught him you can’t always judge
a bill by its cover.
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