The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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want you to win. And this is the kind of case you can make that might
possibly get you through that primary. Just take this money and buy the
ads. They’re from me.’ And Jack says, ‘Well, Slade, you’re a wonderful
person. You’re my ideal in politics, but I can’t take campaign contributions.
And as for these Madison Avenue kind of advertisements, I’d be
ashamed to attach my name to them.’
“Down he goes. Jack Dootson is defeated. I don’t see him for 15 years.
The last time I ever see him he is in front of the Federal Building in Seattle,
where my U.S. Senate offices were, carrying placards denouncing
aid to the Contras!”
it wAs fRidAy, feBRuARy 26, 1965. John O’Brien was desperately trying
to block the bipartisan Gorton-Greive redistricting compromise approved
by the Senate. He believed Greive, conspiring with Gorton, had protected
his Senate supporters while hanging House Democrats out to dry. Now,
however, O’Brien was out of time and short on votes. Yet the former
speaker railed on, denouncing Evans as a “power-hungry” dictator who
had manipulated his Republican colleagues “like a master puppeteer”
while “grossly abusing his veto power.” 9
Gary Grant, who had annoyed the hell out of Gorton and Greive by
promoting his own redistricting plan, read a letter he’d received from a
Democratic precinct committee chairman: “Dear bum: All of the plans I
see in the paper are those of the Senate and of Evans. Neither is good for
me. . . . [T]hese kinky redistricting lines will possibly wipe out both you
and Evans. Did you ever try to draw straight lines? Is that too much to
expect for $40 a day? Well, I hope you finish the job this year so I will be
able to start campaigning against you next year.” Grant said House Democrats
were “about to commit an act of hari-kari.” He demanded to know
from Dootson how much thought he’d given to the details of the proposal
he was backing “besides consideration for your own district? Seventeen
seconds, Mr. Dootson?”
Grant clearly didn’t grasp that the Senate bill was Dootson’s death knell.
In his rambling, courtly way, Dootson said there was the unmistakable
scent of hypocrisy in the air, but “it isn’t an ill wind that blows no good”
if they’d all learned something in the past six weeks.
“With apologies to Robert Service,” Hugh Kalich, a Lewis County
Democrat, read a piece of doggerel celebrating duplicitous “lawyer guys”
like “the great Slade Gorton and his crew.”
Copeland called it “a lousy bill . . . a very lousy bill, but the best we can
do . . . and the moment of truth is here.” 10