MAJoRity RuLes 79
duplicitous. When Smith sat down, Gorton popped up. “When the gen-
tleman from Seattle has been in a minority as long as we’ve been in a
minority,” he began, glancing toward Smith, who began to laugh. Gor-
ton screeched to a halt in mid-sentence, shook his head and turned a
lovely shade of red. “Pretty soon all the Democrats were laughing. Pretty
soon even the Republicans were laughing. And pretty soon Mr. Gorton
sat down. Sam Smith and I told that story on one another for years
thereafter.”
On the last day of the regular session, the open housing legislation
Smith had been championing for years finally won approval. Gorton had
been a co-sponsor since 1959. Governor Evans promptly signed it into
law. It was a significant start on the long chuckholed road to boosting
civil rights in Washington State.
duA 52–ngRi dAy speciAL session, Evans’ income tax proposal fell a vote
short of the two-thirds majority required to pass a joint resolution. Gorton
had done some major arm-twisting to win over conservatives in his
caucus.
The legislators’ 112–day stay in Olympia demonstrated that the “bien-
nial 60–day session the founding fathers had envisioned was clearly an
outdated concept,” Don Brazier, a freshman Republican that year, wrote
30 years later in the second volume of his history of the Washington
Legislature.^3
On the whole, 1967 was a productive year for progressive Republi-
cans and their curious collection of ad hoc allies. The Evans-Gorton team
pushed through a new Department of Water Resources, together with
stricter controls on air and water pollution; established an Office of Com-
munity Affairs; boosted the gas tax from 7.5 to 9 cents per gallon to fund
highway construction and removed control of community colleges from
the local school districts to promote growth and innovation. The Legisla-
ture also authorized a new four-year college in Thurston County, which
became The Evergreen State College. State employees got a 12 percent raise,
teachers 7 percent.
Evans was gearing up for his re-election campaign. Gorton was think-
ing about what to do next when Mary Ellen McCaffree had an idea.