6 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
columnist lathered into a paroxysm of revulsion over Gorton’s challenges
to tribal sovereignty. Gorton’s battles with the Indians unquestionably are
the most contentious episode of his life story. As state attorney general, he
challenged all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court the landmark 1974
Boldt Decision granting treaty tribes the right to catch up to 50 percent of
the fish in their “usual and accustomed” places. As a U.S. senator, he
threatened to slash nearly half of the tribes’ federal funding unless they
agreed to waive sovereign immunity from civil lawsuits. No one should
have special rights, he insists.
The tribes’ anger, poured into a war chest bolstered by casino reve-
nues, helped send him into retirement. However, neither Al Ziontz, one
of the most respected attorneys in Indian country, nor Ron Allen, a for-
mer president of the National Congress of American Indians, believes
Gorton is a bigot. “He was our toughest opponent,” says Allen. “He made
us better, smarter and more savvy. I don’t think Slade hates Indians. He
just has strong opinions based on his review of what he considers the
facts. He has always been a great lawyer—an insatiable reader with an
incredible intellect. He can debate anything—constitutional law or scrip-
ture, for that matter. He cared about the salmon and the environment and
said the tribes should play a role. But when it came to sovereignty issues
we collided time and again... .”
Gorton finds all forms of bigotry “appallingly un-American.” In 1963, he
outraged the potent right wing of the State Republican Party by testifying
as a character witness for a liberal Democrat, a legislative colleague smeared
as a communist. John Goldmark, moreover, was a Jew, they whispered
loudly. Anti-Semitism reminds Gorton of Mark Twain’s observation that it
is “the swollen envy of pygmy minds.” When he was running for attorney
general in 1968, a year fraught with violence and upheaval, Gorton shocked
many by refusing to mince words: “I have always been for law and order,”
he said, “but too many people today use the phrase when they really mean
‘Keep the niggers in their place.’” He worked tirelessly to protect Chinese
students in the wake of Tiananmen Square.
When the spotted owl debate erupted, Gorton became a chainsaw pop-
ulist, championing timber communities and welcoming the wrath of King
County’s “chattering classes” with all their “self-assured liberalness.” The
greens called him a cruel demagogue. He retorted that they were “anti-
human” hypocrites, masters of the sophistry they claimed he employed.
“Slade recognized there was more to Washington State than Puget
Sound,” says Dan Evans. The former three-term governor and U.S. Sena-
tor has been Gorton’s friend for a half century.