194 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Gorton and Evans won praise from the ACLU, not exactly an answer to
their prayers for an understanding Republican base back home.
goonRt wAs AMong the outRAged when the owner of the Baltimore
Colts, one of the NFL’s iconic franchises, loaded the team’s gear—every-
thing from shoulder pads to memorabilia—into a fleet of moving vans
under cover of night and decamped to Indianapolis. Gorton and his staff
drafted a bill that would have required the NFL to create two expansion
teams by 1987, one of them guaranteed to Baltimore. More importantly,
the legislation also stipulated that no major professional sports league,
including baseball, basketball and hockey, could sanction shifting a team
to a new city without weighing profitability, facilities and fan support.
Then, if a league voted to move a franchise, the final decision would have
to pass muster with a board that included a community representative
and a member appointed by the American Arbitration Association. NFL
Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who was lobbying for immunity from anti-
trust laws, vehemently opposed Gorton’s bill. It cleared the Commerce
Committee but was bogged down by more intrigue.
The budget mess, meanwhile, got messier.
As fall approached, debates still raged, left and right, over Social Secu-
rity, defense and the deficit. Congressmen Dick Cheney of Wyoming and
Trent Lott of Mississippi, the minority whip, said Reagan and Weinberger
were on a collision course with Congress over their sky-high military
budget request. If Reagan “doesn’t really cut defense, he becomes the
No. 1 special pleader in town,” said Cheney, a future secretary of defense.
Aid to the anti-communist Nicaraguan Contras, which Gorton supported
early on, also poisoned relationships.
“Day in and day out the toughest, most emotionally draining issue was
aid to the Contras,” says Rich Ellings, who in 1984 became Gorton’s leg-
islative assistant for foreign and defense policy. “Anti-war and pro-Sand-
inista activists from Washington State called me incessantly and wrote
Slade accusing us personally of genocide, maiming and killing babies
and siding with evil rich landowners, while Seattle liberals had Sandini-
sta leaders visit the city with much fanfare. Congress put time limits on
Contra aid and changed its mind several times on the strings attached,
which meant the issue would be reviewed again and again.” Gorton wanted
to be constantly up to speed on every development.
Ellings was a young Ph.D. who had come highly recommended by pro-
fessors at the newly named Henry M. Jackson School of International
Studies at the University of Washington. When he interviewed for the job