260 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
as well as modifications to the Endangered Species Act. The alternative,
Gorton said, was “complete devastation of those communities.” Some en-
vironmentalists “are moving toward a goal of complete elimination of the
timber industry in the Northwest.”^18
Congressman Dicks said Gorton was making a risky gamble. He sym-
pathized with timber communities, but warned that any plan that fell
short of the habitat protection advocated in the Thomas report could be
thrown out by the courts. That could end up reducing the harvest to zero.
Judge Dwyer’s temporary injunction was ample warning, the Bremerton
Democrat said. Jim McDermott, the Seattle liberal who had won Lowry’s
seat in Congress, said Gorton knew full well that any plan that fell short
of the Thomas report “doesn’t have the chance of a snowball on a Wash-
ington, D.C., sidewalk.” It was 90 degrees on the day he said it.^19
Win or lose, Mason said timber families would have long memories.
“Gorton is the only strong advocate of reasonable timber harvest in the
State of Washington. If Brock Adams had his way, we’d all be on welfare.”^20
At Gorton’s urging, the administration also prodded Congress to
jump-start the process to convene the “God Squad,” a Cabinet-level com-
mittee vested under the Endangered Species Act with the responsibility
of weighing whether the economic impact of saving a species was simply
too high for society to bear. George Mitchell of Maine, the Senate major-
ity leader, had helped write the act 17 years earlier. It would be “a derelic-
tion of duty,” he said, for Congress to expedite the process. To Gorton,
that was fresh evidence that the Democratic Party “stands nakedly captive
to the wine-and-brie urban special interests attacking the prospect of sav-
ing even some of the 35,000 jobs now imperiled in the Northwest.” Gor-
ton said Scoop Jackson “would have found this moment a horror” for “he
understood, as I do, that the people of those towns are the very definition
of what it is to be American.” Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., shot
back, “I think it would be news to me and news to all of the working class,
wage-earning people of the Pacific Northwest that... ‘special-interest
Slade’ was their champion. If he’s lifting a finger for working people, it
will be the first time in his elected career.”^21
In the middle of these pleasantries, the president of the Sierra Club felt
genuinely obliged to visit Gorton’s office to thank him for championing
legislation that would have required automakers to boost the corporate
average fuel economy of their vehicles to 34 miles per gallon by 1995 and
40 mpg by 2001. The auto industry and the Bush administration mounted
a full-court press to defeat the bill, arguing that the 20 to 40 percent in-
creases were too costly to achieve. Gorton nevertheless brought the bill