Politics Never Broke His Heart
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JOHN SPELLMAN Politics Never Broke His Heart JOHN C. HUGHES LEGACY PROJECT First Edition Copyright © 2013 Washington State Legacy Project Office of the Secretary of State All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-889320-27-4 Front cover photo: Washington State Archives Back cover photo: Spellman Collection Book Design by Holly Harmon Cover Design by Laura Mott Printed in the United States of America by Thomson-Shore This is one in a series of biographies and oral histories published by the Washington State Legacy Project. Other history-makers profiled by the project include former Governor Booth Gardner; former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton; Northwest Indian Fisheries leader Billy Frank Jr; former State Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder; former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn; former first lady Nancy Evans; astronaut Bonnie Dunbar; Bremer- ton civil rights activist Lillian Walker; former Chief Justice Robert F. Utter; former Justice Charles Z. Smith; trailblazing political report- er Adele Ferguson; federal Judge Carolyn Dimmick; and Nirvana co- founder Krist Novoselic. For more information on the Legacy Project go to www.sos.wa.gov/legacyproject/ Also by John C. Hughes Nancy Evans, First-Rate First Lady The Inimitable Adele Ferguson Lillian Walker, Washington State Civil Rights Pioneer Booth Who? A Biography of Booth Gardner Slade Gorton, a Half Century in Politics For Sam Reed, who gave me the job of my life, and Drs. Ken Hunt, Juris Macs and Jim Lechner, who saved it GREG GILBERT © THE SEATTLE TIMES 1981; REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION GREG GILBERT © THE SEATTLE The governor-elect leads the family in a chorus of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” CONTENTS Preface: A Paradoxical Politician I 1. Matters of the Heart 1 2. Growing Up 9 3. The Graduate and the Novice 19 4. Heartbreak 26 5. Kane & Spellman 34 6. The Swamp 43 7. Fear and Loathing at the Courthouse 50 8. Psychological Warfare 56 9. Changing Times 64 10. The Crisis of the Old Order 69 11. Making Al Old 82 12. The Political Job 90 13. Breaking Barriers 97 14. Way Out Front 103 15. Mudville 111 16. Thrust Backward 120 17. The Kingdome 130 18. Groundbreaking 136 19. Sand Jacks and Smoke Screens 143 20. Off and Running 152 21. Primary Colors 159 22. Dixyland 166 23. Second Thoughts and Third Terms 177 24. Fully Justified 186 25. You Win Some, You Lose Some 192 26. A Real Governor 198 27. McDermott is the Question 207 28. Transitions 218 29. Gray and Lonely 226 CONTENTS 30. Fear and Loathing at the Capitol 237 31. Choices 245 32. What Next? 256 33. The Ides of March 265 34. An Epic Process of Due Process 270 35. Scratch and Match 279 36. China 283 37. Checks and Imbalances 288 38. A Sad Plum 299 39. Affordable Housing 304 40. Strong, Ill-defined Negatives 309 41. Booth Whew 317 42. Judge Not 329 43. He Couldn’t Watch 334 44. The Old Guvs’ Club 340 Author’s Note and Acknowledgements 349 Donors 352 Source Notes 354 Bibliography 384 About the Author 389 Index 390 I PREFACE A Paradoxical Politician “Who was Washington’s last Republican governor?” John D. Spellman is tired of being the answer to a trivia question. It’s as if he hasn’t done anything since 1984 when he lost to the charismatic Booth Gardner after one bumpy term. Or, for that matter, it’s as if he didn’t do anything before he was elected governor in 1980. When I told a long- time Democratic campaign consultant I was writing Spellman’s biography, he said, “Why?” Consider this: But for John Spellman, an oil pipeline with a capac- ity of a million barrels a day could be snaking along the bottom of Puget Sound. Rejecting Northern Tier’s pipeline application in 1982 in the face of a full court press by the Reagan Administration was “monumental,” says Tom Bancroft, executive director of People for Puget Sound. “An oil spill in Puget Sound from a pipeline could be absolutely devastating. It could mean the demise of the killer whale, of salmon stocks, of recreation and the liveli- hoods of hundreds of thousands.” 1 Moreover, during 14 eventful years at the King County Courthouse, Spellman swept out a rat’s nest of patronage and palm-greasing to create a modern government. “John was the George Washington of King County” after the voters approved a home-rule charter in 1968, says Dow Constan- tine, who was elected county executive in 2009.2 Spellman promoted racial equality, criminal justice reforms, land-use planning and farmlands preservation. He persevered at every turn to build a landmark domed stadium, the Kingdome, and helped secure the sports franchises that made Seattle a big-league town. Former state treasurer Dan Grimm, a Democrat who sparred with Spellman when he was in the Legis- lature, disagrees with using public funds to finance sports stadiums. “But the ones we have now and those yet to be built in generations to come” owe their existence to Spellman. “The Kingdome was nothing more than the initial incarnation of what he achieved,” says Grimm. “Justice dictates every I II POLITICS NEVER BROKE HIS HEART major stadium in King County should have ‘Spellman’ in its name. There oughta be a law.” 3 These things are important to remember, not just for the sake of his- tory and fairness but because there are lessons to be learned from opportu- nities missed and mistakes made. “A lot of the challenges haven’t changed all that much,” Constantine says. 4 And in Olympia, nearly 30 years on, the governor and Legislature are still struggling with cutting and taxing and their “paramount” constitutional duty to amply fund the public schools. I THOUGHT, going in, that this would be an easier story to tell because I had already written Booth Gardner’s biography. I soon discovered that Spell- man’s life story—86 years at this writing—is also the story of King Coun- ty’s bumpy road to maturity, if that’s the right word. He was born in the last week of 1926, the grandson of Northwest pioneers. He has fleeting memo- ries of the halcyon days before the Depression when Seattle spit in the eye of Prohibition, thrilled to college football and built grand hotels. Spellman saw the “Hooverville” down by the tracks where the homeless huddled during the darkest days of the Depression. He watched sleek, silver B-17s leaving the Boeing factory and dropped out of high school to join first the Merchant Marines, then the Navy. He went to college on the GI Bill; studied for the priesthood and became a national moot court champion during law school. As a young Seattle attorney in the 1950s, he took up civil rights and union cases; joined the clean-government progressives and campaigned for “For- ward Thrust” programs to clean up Lake Washington, build parks and im- prove transportation. He served on the Municipal Civil Service Commission and became one of the nation’s most influential Roman Catholic laymen. While Seattle put its best face forward during the 1962 World’s Fair, its police force was rife with corruption. The prevailing attitude toward mi- norities owed more to Century 19 than Century 21. As a dark horse candi- date for mayor, Spellman stood for open housing and an end to the “toler- ance” policy that sanctioned vice. Elected county commissioner in 1966, he promoted a progressive new charter and became the first county executive in the state. He faced down 3,000 angry white construction workers who marched on the Courthouse to protest his push to give minorities access to apprenticeship programs. Spellman led the county through the “Boeing Bust” of the 1970s when a famous billboard urged the last person leaving Seattle to turn out the lights. His tireless lobbying—and friendship with Senator Warren Magnuson— secured federal aid for the state. He and his wife spearheaded food banks and fundraisers. He played a key role in securing a half-cent local-option PREFACE III PERMISSION WITH EPRINTED 1983; R 1983; IMES T eattle S HE © T © ORBES F atalie N Governor Spellman listens to a reporter’s question in 1983. He said his administration “relies more on love than fear.” sales tax for hard-pressed counties and cities. As the only Washington gov- ernor to have served as a county commissioner, Spellman had a special un- derstanding of local government problems. He lost his first bid for governor to the inimitable Dixy Lee Ray in 1976, the year of the political outsider, and inherited a fiscal mess four years later when she was summarily rejected and he was elected. With the state facing what was then the worst downturn since the Depression, Spellman aban- doned an expedient no-new-taxes pledge, went to war with diehard conser- vatives—he called them “Troglodytes”—and raised taxes by a billion dollars to avoid deeper cuts to education and social services. Read on and you can draw your own conclusions whether that was reckless or prudent. The con- servatives called him a pseudo-Republican. The cartoonists portrayed him as “The Amazing Waffleman.” Congressman Denny Heck, who in 1982 was the Democrats’ 31-year-old House majority leader, says this about the task Spellman faced right off the bat as governor: “Degree of difficulty off the charts.” 5 “BLANDNESS IN POLITICS can be a formidable political weapon,” David Brewster, the perceptive Seattle journalist who covered Spellman’s rise in IV POLITICS NEVER BROKE HIS HEART King County, observed optimistically in 1981 just before Spellman took office.6 Voters tell pollsters they want competence and integrity; they say they’re tired of all the shouting.