Patrician GOP leader in Senate
Slade Gorton, a patrician and cerebral politician from Washington state who served as a Republican leader in the U.S. Senate before being ousted by the Seattle area’s increasingly liberal electorate in 2000, has died. He was 92.
Gorton died Wednesday in Seattle, said J. Vander Stoep, his former chief of staff.
Gorton was the Chicagoborn scion of the New England frozen-fish family. His political career began in 1958, when he won a legislative seat soon after arriving in Seattle as a freshly minted lawyer.
He went on to serve as state attorney general, a three-term U.S. senator and member of the 9/11 Commission — the last of which he considered the singular achievement of his life in public service.
Gorton was known for his aggressive consumer-protection battles as attorney general and for going to federal court to end SeaWorld’s capture of orcas in Puget Sound; for his defeat in 1980 of the state’s legendary Democratic Sen. Warren Magnuson at the height of his power; and for his work on the GOP inner team in the U.S. Senate.
He twice saved professional baseball in Seattle, suing Major League Baseball in the 1970s to force it to bring a team to the city and arranging a deal to have Nintendo’s owner and local investors buy the Mariners to keep them in town in 1991.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who overlapped with Gorton in the Senate, said they didn’t always agree but still worked together to strengthen cleanup efforts at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, toughen pipeline safety standards and expand healthcare for children.
“Throughout his career in both Washingtons, Slade defied convenient labels and stood on principle — we need more leaders in our country like Slade,” Murray said in a statement.
Former Republican Gov. Dan Evans called Gorton an intellectual giant and a strategic thinker who helped define the GOP in the state during a time when the party could still prevail in major statewide contests.
He was an independent thinker who believed in individual freedom and who distrusted concentrated power, former staff members recalled. They noted his willingness to take on entrenched leaders and institutions: He called on Exxon’s chief executive to resign after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and he fought automakers for improved fuel standards.
But he also sided with loggers and rural communities when he declared that protections for spotted owls were overbearing, and he frequently butted up against Native American tribes on issues of fishing rights.
“Gorton was our toughest opponent,” said Ron Allen, former president of the National Congress of American Indians. “He made us better, smarter and more savvy .... He cared about the salmon and the environment and said the tribes should play a role. But when it came to sovereignty issues, we collided time and again.”
Gorton struggled with his image as an icy, aloof Ivy Leaguer. He was sometimes compared to the frozen fish sticks his grandfather once sold, and he squirmed over the nickname “Slippery Slade.”
“I’m more comfortable reading a book than working a room ... and my idea of fun is going to a Mariners game with my grandkids, keeping score and staying to myself,” he said.
Gorton chalked it up to Yankee reserve, not disdain for people.