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10 | General Gorton

“W

hyyou on d ’t Run for attorney general?” Mary Ellen sug-

gested in 1967.^ “What a great idea,” Gorton thought almost

the minute she said it. “I was spending so much time in the

Legislature that I wasn’t advancing in the private practice of law. I didn’t

really mind that so much, but I loved politics far, far more and the AG’s

office combined both.” The three-term incumbent, Democrat John J.

O’Connell, had already announced he would challenge Evans for governor.^1

After interviewing a number of hopefuls, a committee of two-dozen

Republican attorneys from around the state unanimously endorsed Gor-

ton, who had just turned 40. Evans gave Slade his enthusiastic blessings,

although he “would miss him sorely on the House floor and in the cau-

cuses where the big decisions are made,” the Seattle Argus said that Janu-

ary. “Evans doesn’t lack for loyal adherents skilled in parliamentary tac-

tics in the Legislature, but few can match Gorton’s adroitness in coping

with the Democrats or his knowledge of state government.” The Demo-

crats, meantime, had “an almost embarrassing richness of candidates.”^2

John G. McCutcheon, a former Pierce County prosecutor and state

representative, was running hard, as were Marvin Durning, an environ-

mental activist, and Fred Dore, a veteran legislator. Durning and Gorton,

classmates at Dartmouth, were associates in the same Seattle law firm.

Another Democratic hat in the ring was that of Don Abel Jr. (“Elect an

Abel Attorney General”), the son of a former State Supreme Court justice.

Don Navoni, who headed the Consumer Protection Division for O’Connell,

made it a five-Democrat field.

Dore was regarded as the Democratic frontrunner. McCutcheon, how-

ever, enjoyed name familiarity. His father, state Senator John T. McCutch-

eon, had served in the Legislature off and on since 1941. He had a solid

base of support from an energetic party apparatus in the state’s second-

largest county, though he’d lost a bid for re-election as prosecutor two

years earlier to an energetic young Republican, Ronald Hendry.

Gorton’s only Republican opponent in the 1968 primary was Robert G.