The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

58 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Hayes Elder, a Greive staffer appointed to the House in 1964, gave Mc-
Curdy a lift back to Seattle one day. They immediately began parsing the
landscape. “We’d identify the precinct we were in and then tell what the
vote had been in the 1960 presidential election and the 1962 legislative
elections,” McCurdy says, smiling over the memory. “The amount of
knowledge you had to store in your head was really astonishing, and Gorton
was up to it. That surprised a lot of people because nobody thought
there was anybody else in the Legislature with that kind of head for small
numbers other than Bob Greive. It had been an enormous source of
Greive’s power.”
Gorton was rarely flustered. Stress made Greive even more emotional.
Political lives were at stake, he was reminded daily. Ralph Munro, Washington’s
former longtime secretary of state, was a classmate of Foster’s at
Western Washington State College. He well remembers the day Greive
sent a State Patrol trooper to Bellingham to yank Foster out of class. The
senator needed help with the redistricting maps.
Nerves were frazzled; there were fissures right and left—“old guard,”
“new breed,” conservative, liberal, rural, urban, east side, west side. It all
made Big Daddy very nervous. Two days before adjournment, the coalition
speaker prodded Gorton to give it another go with Greive. Slade took
along Pritchard, Moos and Perry. He and Greive clashed instantly. Greive
said Gorton didn’t understand the implications of what the courts might
do if they failed. “Don’t be ridiculous!” Slade barked. Clearly peeved that
Gorton was so icily resolute, Greive stormed out. Neither could rustle up
enough votes to prevail.
the BAttLe wAs ReJoined when Governor Rosellini called a special session.
He admonished the old-guard Democrats to reject any compromises.
Rosellini and Attorney General John J. O’Connell, an ambitious
Democrat, felt certain they could stave off court intervention and leave
redistricting to the 1965 session. Rosellini expected the 1964 elections to
produce solid Democratic majorities in both houses. He was weighing
whether to seek an unprecedented third consecutive term. O’Connell was
saying he shouldn’t run. He wanted Rosellini’s job. Big Daddy Day did
too.
Gorton and Evans now believed they were likely to get a better deal
from the courts, which might redraw the districts, make all the legislators
run at large or appoint a special master. Under any of those scenarios
Republicans surely would do better than agreeing to a shotgun marriage
served up by Greive. Olympia was one seething soap opera.