the chAnge Agents 33
ing at the memory of all the ups and downs they experienced over their
next 42 years in politics. “I thought he’d outgrow it,” she quips.
tov dAn eAns, goRton was precisely the sort of live wire the Republicans
needed in the Legislature. Using a Polk Reverse Directory and a map of the
43 rd Legislative District, Evans won election to the House in 1956 by apply-
ing his engineer’s mind to campaigning. “I had tediously traced each
street and marked down the name of anybody I knew who lived there. I had
several hundred potential workers and donors in my district as a result.
Slade and I did the same thing for the 46th district. Being a newcomer,
he knew only a handful but I knew quite a few, having lived close by.”
A lot more than quite a few, Slade says. “Dan knew about 700 people in
that district and I knew seven! He was the model, the absolute model, of
what a Republican should be at a time when we were trying to recover”
from the setbacks in 1956. “Slade ran a first-rate campaign and worked
much harder than any of his opponents,” Evans says. “I began to appreciate
Slade and Sally on their wedding day, June 28, 1958, with their parents,
Clarissa Clark and Thomas Slade Gorton Jr. and Ruth Gorton. Sally’s father,
Harry Baker Clark, was deceased. Gorton Family Album