The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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Kerr, a conservative young lawyer from Tacoma. Kerr had withdrawn
from the race–too late, however, for his name to be removed from the
ballot.
On the first day of an Eastern Washington campaign swing, Gorton
and Don Brazier stopped in Waitsburg. Home to about a thousand folks,
it’s a picturesque burg nestled in rolling amber fields of wheat and barley.
After visiting their legislative colleague, Vaughn Hubbard, a local attorney,
and paying their respects to the friendly editor of the weekly paper,
they surveyed Main Street. Brazier pointed to three locals leaning on a
pickup truck, shooting the breeze. “If you really want to be the attorney
general,” he told Gorton, “you’re going to walk across the street, introduce
yourself to those guys, tell them who you are and what you’re running
for.” Slade’s eyes said he’d prefer lunch. “He knew I wasn’t going to let
him get away. Finally, he walked across the street and had a chat with
them. That is when I decided that Slade really wanted to be attorney general.”
For his part, Gorton learned there weren’t many hicks in Waitsburg,
judging from the first question the trio asked when he told them
how much he’d appreciate their votes: “What’s your position on the price
of wheat?”
nineteen-siXty-eight wAs one of the most gut-wrenching years in
American history, beginning with the Communists’ massive Tet Offensive
across South Vietnam. College campuses roiled with anti-war demonstrations.
President Johnson announced he would not seek re-election.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated four days later, touching off race
riots that came within two blocks of the White House and spread across
the nation; Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded after winning the
California primary, and all hell broke loose on the streets outside the
Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer after Mayor
Daley gave his police carte blanche to suppress throngs of young protesters.
They tear-gassed and beat bloody hundreds of kids, as well as reporters
and bystanders after the protesters got tired of being relentlessly hassled
and starting throwing rocks.
Dore’s campaign brochure featured his portrait superimposed on a
montage of lurid newspaper headlines: “Jail Term in Fire-Bomb Case,”
“Stabbing on ‘Hippie’ Hill,” “Woman’s Scream Routs burglar,” “Lawlessness
. . . ,” “Murder . . . ,” “Assault.” 3 McCutcheon was only slightly less
bellicose. He’d “heard the voices” of those who’d had enough of “violence
in the ghettos, riots in the schools and colleges and crime in the streets.” 4
Durning, a Rhodes Scholar, called the get-tough talk “the politics of fak-