petRoLeuM And Beyond 369
that day. He stood up there knowing there wasn’t the remotest chance he
could win. He balanced his message, thanking his supporters with hu-
mor and grace. It was absolute total perfection as a dead loser—one of the
handful of most impressive performances I’ve ever seen. Mike McGavick
would have been a great United States Senator.”
Maria Cantwell, smiling her Maggie Gyllenhaal smile, won a second
term with nearly 57 percent of the vote. Democrats regained control of
both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years as Republi-
cans absorbed what Bush pronounced “a whuppin’.”
“The one grace that comes with an event like this,” McGavick said with
his boyish smile, is that “you don’t sit around and say, ‘If I had just done
this one thing differently.’”^16
onneJ eoLc LLy gAve goRton a nice salute that year when Greater Seat-
tle’s greens and the U.S. Forest Service invited the former senator to
help dedicate a new campground and celebrate the resuscitation of the
valley bisected by the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. Before leav-
ing office, Gorton had secured $2 million for the campground, as well
as money to transform a pigpen back to paradise. The area had been
littered with garbage, derelict autos, old refrigerators and the toxic detri-
tus from meth labs. “Not bad for a guy on the ‘dirty dozen’ list whom the
Sierra Club spent $300,000 in ‘voter education’ money to defeat,” Con-
nelly wrote. To contrast Gorton’s dubious achievements rap sheet, he
proceeded to itemize all the genuinely good things Slade had done over
the years—from recruiting female attorneys to defending John Gold-
mark and Jamie Gorelick; from the Mountains to Sound Greenway to
saving the Mariners.^17
When a friend observed that it was such a nice piece, Gorton barked,
“Now he writes it!”