The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

the fReshMAn 39
resisted it, but (Slade) said, ‘I know you did it. Your people don’t make that
kind of mistake.’” 3
Reflecting on his 10 years as a member of the Washington Legislature
and 18 more in the U.S. Senate, Gorton concludes that “the average IQ of
the State House of Representatives with whom I served two generations
ago compared reasonably favorably with the United States Senate. Now,
bluntly, I don’t think that’s true today because of one of the great reforms
in our legislative history, which had unintended consequences. When I
began my career in the House, the Legislature met only once every two
years and for not much more than 60 days, even including a special session.
They were genuine amateurs at that $100 a month. I had no staff at
all until my last term when I became the majority leader, at which point I
got a secretary and an intern.” Today, he notes, many maintain that the
Legislature is staff-dominated.
Gorton recognized early on that assembling the Legislature only every
other year was becoming an anachronism. “The problem is that you don’t
end up having the same people or the same quality of people. When a legislative
body meets as long as ours does today, it is almost impossible to have
much of another career. And when the pay is at a relatively low five figures,
young people who have not had another career really can’t live on it and support
a family. Probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the kinds of people
we could persuade to run for the Legislature in the late 1950s and ’60s could
not conceive of doing so today and that is reflected in Olympia.”
Another huge difference between 1958 and 2011 is the nature and expense
of campaigns. To win a seat in the House in 1958, Gorton raised
and spent $1,100 in the primary and general elections combined. “We
had our battles, but it was less partisan.”
Well, usually. As he campaigned for re-election in 1962 and worked
with the League of Women Voters on a redistricting initiative, Gorton also
monitored, with mounting disgust, an Eastern Washington battle that had
turned vicious. A Democrat whose integrity he admired was in the crosshairs.
The fallout would have major repercussions for Slade’s bid for a
fourth term two years later. It also cemented a growing bond of mutual
admiration between two ostensibly strange bedfellows, Slade Gorton and
Bill Dwyer. Only 33, Dwyer was already one of the sharpest trial lawyers
in America. Actually, it was three ostensibly strange bedfellows, because
it began with John Goldmark.
A hARvARd LAw schooL gRAduAte, Goldmark was 45 in 1962. Suntanned
and handsome, with a graying crew-cut and muscular arms, he