38 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
course of this evil.” He cites the example of a farsighted lobbyist who cre-
ated a multi-billion dollar green industry in Washington State.
theion nAt AL pRohiBition Act died in 1933 after 14 controversial years.
Its thirst quenched by brazen rumrunners and moonlighting cops, Wash-
ington had been one of the least compliant states in the nation. With the
repeal of the 18th Amendment, states were then given considerable leeway
in regulating the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. “It’s influ-
ence that they have over nothing else that goes into interstate commerce,”
Gorton notes.
Regulation of wine sales was fiercely debated during his 10 years in the
Legislature. An array of trade restrictions against California wines, but-
tressed by court decisions and huge markups, protected the tiny “domestic”
producers, which remained mired in muscatel mediocrity. Most wine
drinkers dismissed Washington wines as ghastly stuff that only a wino
could swallow. Every session, the California wine growers would lobby
for repeal of the exclusionary legislation, to no avail until they hired Tom
Owens, aka “Tommy Raincoat,” a lawyer Gorton, Evans and a host of other
legislators admired for his honesty. “Tom lobbied for them on the up-and-
up,” Gorton says, and finally convinced the Legislature in 1969 that compe-
tition wouldn’t destroy the Washington wine industry, it would transform
it. “I know of no presentation in any legislative body in which I ever served
that has more totally and completely kept its promise than that one.”^2
In his second term, Gorton was the principal sponsor of legislation
placing stiff restrictions on billboards along major highways. He had
strong support from Evans and a number of Democrats, including Wes
Uhlman. At 26, Uhlman was one of the youngest legislators in America
and a future Seattle mayor. Gorton agreed with Ladybird Johnson, the
First Lady, that billboards are a blight on the American landscape. Unim-
pressed was Alfred Hamilton, a Lewis County farmer who belonged to
the John Birch Society. He erected a billboard along Interstate 5 that fea-
tured Uncle Sam exposing an ever-changing litany of liberal plots to un-
dermine American values.
RongoRt ’s eputAtion for parsing every bill became legendary in the
Legislative Building. Dick White, the state’s longtime code reviser, said
the funniest backhanded compliment his staff was ever paid came cour-
tesy of Slade, who “came in with blood in his eye one day and just raised
the roof off of my office because there had been a comma misplaced” in a
public power bill. [H]e accused us of deliberately doing it. And of course I