Ferguson - Oct. 1, 2009

Senate vacancy here had behind-the-scenes drama

WE DIDN’T have to go through all the machinations Massachusetts is employing to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but replacing U.S. Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson when he died in 1983 was no picnic either.

We wound up with a Republican appointee many of the Republicans didn’t want and a Democratic challenger the party chairman begged not to run.

The governor appoints to fill Senate vacancies here as Massachusetts used to do. Democrats there took that power from Republican Gov. Mitt Romney when they thought John Kerry might make it to the White House, and they didn’t want Romney to replace him with one of his own. They changed the rules so a seat would remain vacant until a special election was held. Now that they have a Democratic governor, they want to restore appointment power out of fear a Republican might win in a special election.

In 1983, Republican John Spellman was governor here. Newsweek wrote at the time that the minute Spellman heard Jackson was dead, he picked up the telephone and called Dan Evans and offered him the appointment.

NOT TRUE. Evans, in fact, was not Spellman’s first choice and, I’m sorry to say, I have never learned who was. Spellman named Evans because, a poll by the Senate Republican Campaign Committee showed him to be 20 points ahead of his expected opponents when he had to run in November to keep the seat.

The Evans appointment must have cost plenty in the way of peace on the domestic front for Spellman because there was no love lost between the state’s first lady, Lois Spellman, and Evans. She resented all those years her husband sat patiently and then impatiently waiting for Evans to tire of the governor’s office and give him a crack at it. Evans served three consecutive terms, remember?

Evans didn’t want it at first.

He preferred being an executive, not a back row senator.

Our other senator.

Slade Gorton, persuaded him that all he had to do was finish out the five years remaining in Jackson’s term and he could retire with another nice pension.

Evans was too liberal for conservative Republicans, then riding fairly high, and who asked Ellen Craswell of Silverdale or Dick Bond of Spokane to run against him.

Both declined.

Lloyd Cooney ran.

Democrats gearing up to run included Mike Lowry and Seattle Mayor Charles Royer.

Most Democratic leaders agreed privately that Lowry’s resemblance to Yasser Arafat was disastrous.

State chair Karen Marchioro wanted Royer and asked Lowry not to run.

He refused.

I got a visit one day from the head honcho of the Democrat-loving Building Trades Council who told me BTC was not endorsing any candidate. Not Lowry? They didn’t like his national defense posture and his anti-nuclear energy stand. Not Royer? No friend of labor. Works harder to eliminate projects than build them.

SOUNDS LIKE you’re left with the Republican, I said. ‘I didn’t say that,” he said. ‘We are not endorsing any candidate, but Dan Evans has historically never been anti-labor and he’s probably going to win.”

Thirty men and three women, most nobodies, were on the primary ballot where Dan Evans got 36.68 percent and Lloyd Cooney got 19.63 percent. Lowry got 26.33 percent and Royer 15.15 percent. In November, Evans got 672,326 or 55.41 percent and Lowry got 540,981 or 44.59 percent. Evans served out Jackson’s term and retired with a nice pension to go with the ones he got for being a sailor, a legislator and a college president.

Oh, we did make a change in the appointment process. Vacancies now have to be filled with someone of the same party. Takes all the fun out of it, doesn’t it?

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)