The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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Gorton recalls. He started with Doran, who had been O’Connell’s chief assistant
attorney general. They’d been in court together several times in the
early 1960s. “I really liked and admired him, so I called Bob and had him
set up meetings with all of the assistants. Bob gave me an honest evaluation
of each of them.” Shortly before Christmas, as they were winding up the
interviews, Gorton observed that Doran’s own name was conspicuous by
its absence from the list. “Does this mean you’re leaving—that you want to
go and do something else?” Doran hemmed and hawed. “Well,” he finally
said, “I was number one for O’Connell and I thought you’d want someone
else.” Gorton said he was going to install his own chief deputy but he
wanted Doran to stay on as a key assistant. “Yes!” said Doran. Almost nine
months to the day later his wife gave birth. “I always considered myself to
be the godfather,” Gorton quips. 17
Brazier, who had been a deputy county prosecutor, assistant U.S. attorney,
city councilman and state representative, became Gorton’s wellliked
chief deputy. He was a Republican, to be sure, but more liberal than
Gorton. Slade valued Brazier’s penchant for speaking his mind and his
common-sense skill as an administrator. Brazier “was a perfect choice,”
Doran says. “He was great with the staff and a real asset to Slade, but the
key thing was that Slade was a lawyer’s lawyer and he ran a good legal
office. The fact that his first priority was to really get to know people tells
you a lot. I don’t think he ever asked anyone if they were a Republican or
a Democrat. He just wanted talented people. He’s somewhat reserved, as
people often note, but he was always approachable and friendly to the
whole staff.” 18 Still, some of the young attorneys at first found it disconcerting
when Slade sat behind his imposing new desk doing a crossword
puzzle as they offered a briefing—even more so when they discovered he
could divide his attention without missing a beat.
“Slade has a brilliant mind that can simultaneously keep the perspective
of the big picture and challenging details,” Mackie observed. “That
enables him to quickly ascertain whether someone briefing him really
knows what they are talking about. When he selects someone to do something
he has the confidence to let them exercise their judgment in doing
the task. . . . The freedom of individuals to make critical judgments does
present a problem of foul-ups, so his objective was to minimize foul-ups
while encouraging creativity.” 19
Dick Mattsen, an assistant attorney general who had worked for O’Connell
and earlier for McCutcheon as a deputy prosecutor, was “pleasantly
surprised” by how apolitical the Attorney General’s office was under
Gorton. 20