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7 | Taking On Giants

D

As civivn eAn, L engineeR, was back at work in his office in

Seattle when an Associated Press reporter called in the spring

of 1963. “What’s this about a Draft Dan Evans Committee?”

“Draft Dan Evans for what?” he laughed. “Well, governor, of course.”

Evans said it was news to him. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed his

mind. Gorton, the Pritchard brothers and C. Montgomery “Gummie”

Johnson, Weyerhaeuser’s public relations man, were telling him he had

little to lose and a lot to gain by running for governor in 1964 even though

it was shaping up as a Democratic year.

With his Eagle Scout-family man image, Evans was the handsome

young face of progressive Republican politics in Washington State. The

press coverage of the fractious coalition session had introduced him to a

statewide audience. Herb Hadley of Longview, elected to the House in

one of 1962’s biggest upsets, was thinking big. He launched the Draft

Dan Evans Committee. “Those guys just thought, ‘Well, we’ll goose this

thing along,’” Evans recalls.

The Evans brain trust began meeting weekly. Gorton increasingly be-

lieved Dan had a real chance, and if they lost a close one they’d still be

looking good for 1968. Joel Pritchard said there was only one way to go—

“full tilt.” He and Frank maintained that winning the GOP nomination

for governor was going to be tougher than beating Rosellini. Gummie,

who smoked Churchillian cigars and cussed like a sailor, was always

gung ho. Jim Dolliver, the sharp lawyer who functioned as chief of staff

for the House GOP caucus, was also enthusiastic. “We all felt like we were

on a mission,” Gorton remembers. “We were pretty young,” Pritchard said,

“and we were taking on giants.”^1

The murder of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, cast a pall

over politics. Most analysts believed Americans were unlikely to want

three presidents in the space of 14 months. There were clear signs, how-

ever, that Washingtonians were open to electing a new governor. No

Washington governor had ever won three consecutive terms, and Rosellini