32 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Women Voters initiative intended to reform the process. One of the few
crumbs that filtered down to the Republicans was a new North Seattle
district with no incumbents. Gorton asked Dan Evans for advice. “Go for
it!” he said. Also enthusiastic were the Pritchards. Joel’s hat was already
in the ring for a seat in the House from the 36th District.
Slade found a place to live in the 46th, then sought the blessings of his
bosses. “Running for the Legislature was not seen as a fitting thing for a
young lawyer to do. Pen Miller ran interference for me. I don’t know ex-
actly what he said, but probably it was, ‘Look, he can’t win the race. Why
make him disaffected? Let him go ahead and do it and get it out of his
system.’ So it was Pen Miller who enabled me to begin my political ca-
reer.” It was in his system to stay.
So was Sally Clark, a reporter for The Seattle Times. She was very smart
and very attractive, with a pert pageboy and a confident air. They met on
Feb. 7, 1957, when three girls from Du luth who skied every weekend with
guys who lived at the College Club hosted a mix-and-meet at a little red
house they’d rented at Leschi. Slade called her the next day and came court-
ing in a nerdy seafoam green postwar Studebaker. “For weeks thereafter
every Friday night we went to a movie and every Sunday we went skiing,”
Sally says. “I couldn’t figure out who he was dating on Saturdays. Then I
found out he was going to bed early so he’d be rested up for skiing. I fool-
ishly followed him down slopes that were way too steep for me.” When her
new beau was on Tic-Tac-Dough, her editors invited her to join them in the
publisher’s office, which featured the only TV in the building.
For Sally, it wasn’t love at first sight, “but he was certainly the most
interesting young man I’d met in some time. He could talk about some-
thing other than cars and football, which is about all other fellows liked
to talk about. He was so intelligent and knew about so many things. He
grew on me, and little by little those other guys fell by the wayside.” They
were married on June 28, 1958. After a four-day stay in San Francisco,
they drove a “huge boat of an old Ford” back to Seattle and went doorbel-
ling the evening they got home. The honeymoon was over. The new Mrs.
Gorton understood politics. Dad was a Democrat; mother a Republican,
“especially around Election Day. Then they would go to the polls and can-
cel each other out.” Sally had been a reporter since her junior year in high
school, practically running the weekly in her hometown of Selah after the
owner got himself elected county commissioner. First at the Yakima Herald-
Republic and then at the Times, she had interviewed the wives of many
well known politicians.
“Sally knew perfectly well what she was getting into,” Slade says, smil-