46 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
freshman, was getting beat up on by the likes of John Goldmark, whom I
immensely enjoyed debating at every opportunity just for the hell of it.”
Wily John L. O’Brien, having narrowly won a record fourth term as
speaker, wielded the gavel with impunity during the filibuster that staved
off HB 197 and paralyzed the House. The son of Irish immigrants,
O’Brien was a deceptively affable self-made man. His father, a Seattle cop,
died in a shootout when Johnny was 9. O’Brien kept a wary eye on the
hive of ambitious young Republicans in his midst.
The Evans team had recruited and elected more progressives, allowing
Dan to score a 21–18 victory in the race for minority leader. Evans’ grow-
ing statewide reputation was burnished by his decisiveness during the
fight over the power bill. In the course of four tedious days, the members
were locked in their chamber “under call,” hour after hour, as the oppo-
nents resorted to every form of parliamentary jujitsu in the book and
some holds no one had ever attempted. There were hundreds of amend-
ments and 45 roll call votes. Sixty-one of the 99 members engaged in the
debate, with Gorton, Evans, Hurley, Goldmark and Norm Ackley, a sharp
young Democratic attorney, getting in some of the most withering licks.
Goldmark said the bill was “essentially a fraud” because its proponents
were hailing it as the right to vote. “Democracy,” the Okanogan rancher
asserted, “is representative government. It is based on having people se-
lected because their friends and neighbors decide somebody should be
entrusted with responsibility and they send them to a place to inform
themselves and make decisions. It is not a question of referring every
single thing back to the people.”^3
Eight exhausting hours into Day 1, Speaker O’Brien fielded a motion to
advance the bill to a third reading. He ignored calls for a roll call vote,
declared it defeated and banged his gavel so hard that the head broke off
and went flying, almost hitting one of the Republicans in the front row.
With that, O’Brien declared “Adjourned!” and disappeared through the
curtains behind the rostrum as the proponents erupted in indignation.
No one had ever seen Evans so angry.^4
When the battle resumed, Ackley pointed out that if private power won
the first vote required by the proposed law, any future attempt by a PUD
to seek a second vote or reverse the first vote would be automatically
blocked. Gorton conceded the point and won some grudging new admir-
ers across the aisle. He and Ackley drafted a clarifying amendment that
passed.
“I think the people for this bill are just as patient as those against it,”
Gorton predicted confidently. By Day 4, however, the opponents had