A goLd wAtch foR MAggie 159
on stage with Jimmy Carter, Jackson, Magnuson and a host of other Dem-
ocratic poobahs and hopefuls. “Maggie’s staffers sat me right next to him.
My orders were to grab him by the back of his pants and help him stand
up whenever there was an applause line. You couldn’t tell it from the
front,” Dotzauer cackles, “but I had him by the back of his britches.”
Howard Baker stumped with Slade in Seattle and Spokane after the
primary. The campaign hoped he would allude to Maggie’s appetite for
alcohol, but the minority leader flatly refused. The epitome of a Southern
gentleman, Baker loved the Senate. Later, Baker explained to Gorton his
conviction that a senator could appropriately campaign for any candidate
of his party in any state. However, he could never make negative com-
ments about a colleague. “He taught me something about the United
States Senate as an institution,” says Gorton. Baker is one of his political
heroes.
inhe t wAning dAys, Ted Kennedy jetted to Seattle for a fundraiser and
gave one of his patented tub-thumpers to several thousand of the faithful.
“Maggie can achieve more in six minutes than other senators achieve in
an entire six-year term!” Kennedy thundered. In a twist, Magnuson was
also hoping for coattails from Jim McDermott, the young state senator
who had settled one score by depriving “Madame Zonga”—the despised
Dixy Lee Ray—of renomination and was thought to be leading John
Spellman in the race for governor.
Magnuson spent upwards of $1.25 million; Gorton about $900,000,
but he nearly matched the incumbent on advertising buys. Newman’s
ads for Gorton, produced by David Stern’s Seattle agency, were clever and
well timed.^13
The Seattle Times endorsed Gorton, saying he had “the vigor, vision,
experience and grasp of today’s realities to give Washington State a fresh,
effectively different voice in the Senate.” The Post-Intelligencer said Mag-
nuson’s seniority was too valuable to lose but “Gorton, we think, would
make a first-class senator.” The Spokesman-Review in Spokane praised
Gorton’s “stamina and vision.” The Weekly, striving to offer Seattle a cli-
ché-free zone, gave a worldly shrug: “Senator Magnuson is out of political
fashion; his staff isn’t what it used to be; if he serves out the next term
that will be 50 years in Congress, which is too long for anyone’s brain.
Senator Gorton is smooth, quick, up with the political trends, a cunning
legislator, master of the data. It adds up to an irrational choice: vote for
Maggie.”^14
Barnstorming 6,600 miles across America on election eve, hapless