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26 | Post-mortems
I
hficto v Ry As A thousAnd fAtheRs and defeat is an orphan, this
waif was left with a footlocker full of second-guessing. Paul Newman,
the genius of 1980, was now the goat of ’86, according to one post-
mortem. Phil Watkins, the campaign’s communications director, told a
forum that poor polling decisions early on played a big role in Slade’s
loss.^1
“Stuff like this comes with the territory when you’re a consultant,”
Newman says, flatly denying his polls were flawed. “I didn’t have any
traction in that campaign for most of the summer. After the primary, all
of a sudden it’s like somebody playing a game of checkers. They’ve got
four checkers left and they say, ‘OK, tell me how I can win this game?’
What you want to say is, ‘The way you can win this game is to call me
when it starts.’
“The truth is highly overrated,” Newman quips, but one thing is for
sure: “The Reagan visit was a stake in the heart. We had a lead when Rea-
gan showed up. We lost the lead literally the day after. And we still almost
came back.”^2
Chris Koch, Gorton’s chief of staff, agreed with those who were calling
Hanford “Gorton’s Iran,” a reference to Jimmy Carter’s travails with the
ayatollah. “The Hanford issue was a mess for us,” Koch said. “In a logical
world, people shouldn’t have held Slade responsible for it. But Brock did a
good job of capitalizing on it. They ran a picture-perfect campaign, once
they got going.”^3
Elway’s polling on the Sunday and Monday before the election revealed
that Adams voters were overwhelmingly motivated by Hanford, Social Se-
curity and Medicare. The referendum on Hanford as a dump site found
82.6 percent in favor of telling the feds to take a hike. Further, 55 percent of
Adams’ vote came from women. He projected more warmth than Gorton.
“He just didn’t do the ‘little touch’ things that make a difference, particu-
larly for a guy whose strength isn’t one-on-one,” one Gorton supporter told
The Seattle Times on condition of anonymity. “He needed to have someone
