44 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Toevs and several supporters screeched to the curb at the Gortons and
piled out. “I told him to get the hell off my property or I’d punch him,”
Gorton says. Toevs’ recollection is that he intercepted Gorton’s car and
chased Slade back to his house. They agree that they went nose to nose.
Gorton had campaigned relentlessly. He defeated Toevs two-to-one
and went on to easily win re-election in November.
Fifteen years later, when Goldmark was stoically fighting lymphoma,
Gorton spoke at a recognition dinner in Seattle for John and Sally Gold-
mark. “In 1959 when I first became a member of the state Legislature, I
took it as an article of faith that I would not like John Goldmark and that
we would vote on opposite sides of almost every significant issue. The last
half of that prediction turned out to be all too correct,” Gorton told the
crowd. “The first part did not, because it was from John Goldmark that I
learned the most important political lesson of my entire life.... That the
character and the courage of the individual within our system counted for
far more than anything else.”^12