4 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Many have observed that Gorton and Hillary Clinton seem to rub a lot
of people the wrong way for some of the same reasons. They’re remark-
ably bright, self-assured and polarizing. Gorton, as pollsters put it, has
high negatives.
When President Reagan visited Seattle in 1986 to help raise funds for
Gorton’s Senate re-election campaign, the P-I’s Joel Connelly wryly ob-
served that the menu de jour—cold salmon and chilled vichyssoise—
“served inadvertently to sum up the senator’s personality.” The Gorton
womenfolk were not amused. Connelly, a fellow Episcopalian, found
himelf in the same pew with them one Easter Sunday morning and s
remembers the ritual exchange of “Peace” as palpably grudging.
Even Gorton’s best friends couldn’t resist the temptation to caricature.
Joel Pritchard, Washington’s former lieutenant governor, who could have
made a decent living doing standup, used to quip that if Slade and the
famously gregarious Governor Booth Gardner had been in med school
together, Slade would have received an A in Surgery and an F in Bedside
Manner, while Booth would have flunked Surgery and aced Bedside
Manner. Hearing this, the Boothies would laugh, then protest that their
guy deserved at least a C in Surgery. Gorton’s friends would just laugh.
Pritchard, who admired both men, had hit the bull’s-eye.
John Keister, the host of KING-TV’s Almost Live!, ought to have given
Gorton one of his Emmys. When Slade threw out the first pitch before a
Mariners’ game, Keister reported, “His throw was accurate, but his face
scared some of the younger children.” And when Gorton was captured
Gorton at his office
in the Gorton Center.
On the wall behind
him are some of the
quills from his U.S.
Supreme Court
appearances.
Dan Schlatter/Puget
Sound Business
Journal