the giAnt KiLLeRs 165
J. Vander Stoep, who was elected to the Washington State Legislature
at 23, became chief of staff during Gorton’s second term in the Senate.
The button-down young Republican from Chehalis was a classic Gorton
find. Heading Gorton’s staff “was the best job in D.C. by far,” Vander
Stoep says. “He wanted no part of the day-to-day operations. When it
came to the management of his organization all he would say to me—and
this was very rare—was ‘This staff person can’t keep up.’ And I would
proceed from there. But if I was hiring competent people, that’s all he
wanted. His philosophy has always been ‘Hire talent; don’t hire experi-
ence.’ Not that experience is bad, but we’re not looking for 20-year Capitol
Hill veterans in defense or education or what have you, because you can
learn the subject matter very quickly if you have talented people. ‘What
we want,’ Slade always said, ‘is energy and commitment.’”^6 It was no sur-
prise, then, that Mike McGavick dropped out of college to follow Gorton
to D.C. He became Slade’s legislative assistant for foreign and defense
policy, immersing himself in the arcane details of weapons systems. “He
was a college senior but he had a complete grasp of the issues,” Gorton
recalls. “He had general officers calling him ‘sir.’ That’s how impressive
he was.”
Gorton’s staff had a bipartisan reputation as one of the best in Con-
gress, says former state legislator Max Vekich, an activist with the Long-
shore Union and cradle Democrat. The Vekiches were frustrated at every
turn as they attempted to get a family member out of Croatia at the height
of the strife in 1993. “So who do you call in Washington, D.C., at 4 a.m.
when you desperately need help? You call Slade’s staff.” Vekich apolo-
gized to Vander Stoep for rousting him out bed. “This isn’t politics,” the
chief of staff said. “This is family.”
ongun i Au RAtion dAy, Iran finally freed the 52 American hostages after
Carter released several billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets. Carter had
been an indefatigable lame duck but Reagan’s people maintained that
Iran’s grand imam, the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, gave in because
he was worried about dealing with a tough new president. Others saw the
timing as one last insult to Carter.
On the domestic front, the challenges faced by Reagan and the new
Congress were the most daunting since the 1930s. High inflation, high
interest rates and high unemployment had pushed the “Misery Index” to
record levels. Inflation averaged 13.6 percent during 1980. The Fed kept
interest rates high, with the prime around 20 percent, for much of 1981.
It would take two years to tame inflation. Reagan’s approval rating sagged