A house divided 285
Adams stuck it out. It was a sad ending, Gorton says, for someone who
had once been “a brilliant and articulate person.”
A househ s ARpLy divided, the Washington State Republican Party con-
vened in Yakima in June with conservative Christian activists in firm
control. The congregants immediately adopted a plank that declared
“Western cultural values” superior to all others. It called for a constitu-
tional ban on abortion, even in cases of incest and rape, denounced the
U.N., the “deviant lifestyle” of homosexuality and public school classes
supposedly promoting witchcraft. “This doesn’t sound like the party of
Abraham Lincoln,” said Congressman Morrison, who was running for
governor. When King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, another main-
streamer, told the delegates the protection of children’s rights would be
his highest priority if he was elected attorney general, some booed; others
stood and turned their backs. Booing shook the hall when King County
Executive Tim Hill, a pro-choice candidate for Adams’ Senate seat, de-
clared, “I support Roe vs. Wade.” By plunging into theocracy, Hill said,
the party risked relegating itself to “permanent minority status.”^4
Sarah Nortz, Gorton’s daughter, was a delegate from Island County.
“Give him one vote for guts,” she said of Hill. “It was the right thing
to do.” Hill’s strategy, in fact, was to goad the delegates into outrage and
boost his bona fides as an electable moderate. He had a camera crew
in tow.
Rod Chandler, styling himself as the party’s presumptive Senate nom-
inee, steered clear of abortion and the other litmus tests, focusing instead
on blasting Murray as a liberal lapdog. Why was he running? “Because I
love America!” A week later, however, he put on his progressive cloak and
said the platform was “rooted in the Dark Ages.”^5
Chandler and Morrison were profiles in timidity, The Seattle Times edi-
torialized. But “first prize for Political Pandering” went to Gorton, “pre-
sumably the leader of his party, who delivered a 20-minute keynote ad-
dress without once mentioning the platform or the divisive, xenophobic
principles it embraces. Instead, the senator attacked the ‘liberal media’
and the Democratic Party platform.”^6
Although the Blethens, who had a controlling interest in The Times,
had endorsed him in every statewide race he’d run, Gorton concluded
there was no longer a dime’s worth of difference between Seattle’s two
daily newspapers. He viewed the Post-Intelligencer as habitually hostile.
Now The Times’ “true left-wing political colors” were also on prominent
display. Gorton returned fire in a letter to the editor: