The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

88 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Two years into Slade’s first term, at the urging of Gorton and Brazier,
Evans appointed Doran to the Thurston County Superior Court bench. In
1977, he handed down a landmark ruling, upheld by the State Supreme
Court, that the state was not living up to its “paramount” constitutional
duty to provide for the public schools. Doran ordered lawmakers to define,
then fund a “basic” education for all students. Whether the state ever actually
fulfilled the mandate was still being hotly debated 34 years later.
Recruiting and retaining sharp lawyers was a challenge. High turnover
was a fact of life in the office. Bayley accompanied Gorton on an East
Coast swing to visit law school campuses. Upon their return, Gorton reported
that firms in the East were offering law school graduates $15,000
a year, while his office could barely afford $10,000.
Talented female law school graduates were still finding it difficult to
land jobs at major Seattle law firms. They discovered that the new attorney
general was gender blind. Being smart was what mattered.
in the spRing of 1969, King County elected its first county executive
under a progressive new home-rule charter. John D. Spellman, who opposed
the tolerance policy, had an ally in Gorton. Some of Chuck Carroll’s
worst fears had come true: “That damn Gorton,” one of the Evans gang,
was now attorney general and Spellman, a pipe-puffing do-gooder, was
rocking the boat in what had been the prosecutor’s fiefdom for two decades.
Carroll kicked himself for encouraging Spellman to run for county
commissioner in 1966, presuming he would toe the line.
Joel Pritchard and another state legislator, R. Ted Bottiger of Tacoma,
obligingly requested an opinion from the attorney general on the legality
of pinball machines, cardrooms, pull-tabs and punchboards. Gorton pronounced
the games illegal—even bingo, although he left some wiggle
room for small-stakes games. City or county ordinances licensing gambling
activities were in conflict with state law, Gorton said. Tolerance was
“very debilitating. It draws in the pros and fosters contempt for the law.
Soon it becomes a big-money operation,” opening the door to organized
crime. Although the State Constitution included an anti-lottery provision,
Gorton agreed that “a law that bans a Little League raffle to purchase
uniforms or bingo games in a church is a bad law.” He warned, however,
that if a lodge hired professionals to help manage its raffles it could be
subject to abatement proceedings. He backed prison terms of up to five
years and fines of up to $100,000, the stiffest in the nation. Opponents,
led by Representative John Bagnariol and Senator Gordon Walgren, two
up-and-coming Democrats, countered with bills liberalizing gambling. 21