Books

'Slade Gorton: A Half Century in Politics'

by John C. Hughes

Washington State Heritage Center, 436 pp., $35

Slade Gorton, who turned 84 on Jan. 8, is one of the four appointees who carved Washington's new congressional districts. From political watchers I heard no worries whether octogenarian Gorton would hold his own. The worries were that he would snooker his juniors.

The analytic brainpower of the state's former U.S. senator is one of the themes of "Slade Gorton: A Half Century in Politics." Slade — he likes to be called by his first name — was never a glad-hander. It was a problem he made up with brains. In his 10 years in the Legislature, Gorton was one of the few who knew from his own reading what the bills meant, in detail. Years later, when the U.S. Senate voted on the House's articles of impeachment against President Clinton, Gorton voted yes on the obstruction of justice charge and no on perjury — and he had his reasons why.

"Slade Gorton" is an authorized biography, funded partly by the Slade Gorton International Policy Center and partly by the National Bureau of Asian Research, which Gorton helped create. The book is friendly but professional. The author, John Hughes, was editor and publisher of The Daily World in Aberdeen, as well as biographer of former Gov. Booth Gardner and political columnist Adele Ferguson. Hughes has interviewed his subject and people who worked with him and against him, spending much time with newspaper clippings and biographies.

The book is clear, factual and explanatory. The author ventures no opinions beyond safe ones, e.g., "Gorton is virtually viceless, except for his impatience, which can morph into arrogance if things get tedious." I expect most buyers will treat it as a reference. Hughes tries to cover all the big issues in Gorton's half-century in politics, resulting in a scattershot narrative. From page 201 to 210, for example, the story moves from federal tax reform to Frank Zappa, the Seattle Mariners, former Sen. Brock Adams and Judge William Dwyer.

From all this a picture does emerge of Washington's three-term senator, and it is different from the cartoon Democrats made of him in 2000. Slade Gorton started in politics as a Republican moderate allied with Dan Evans, Joel Pritchard and Ludlow Kramer. He represented a district in Seattle. He supported the Equal Rights Amendment and opposed a ban on abortion. He would not sell his integrity for partisan gain: Early in his career he defended state Rep. John Goldmark, D-Okanogan, from a charge of communist influence, and in 1974 he called for the resignation of President Nixon several months before the event. During the Reagan years, he opposed the president on so many occasions that it cost him an appointment to the federal appeals court.

Though never in his party's right wing, Gorton moved rightward as he aged. He was for a state income tax in 1967 when Evans proposed one, and against the income-tax initiative bankrolled in 2010 by Bill Gates Sr. Of course, Slade would be the first say the two proposals were different. He would know how they were different, and he would get the details right.

Bruce Ramsey is a Seattle Times editorial writer.