With one child in culinary school, I settled in with the movie Julie and Julia a few weeks ago. I enjoyed it thoroughly and Meryl Streep's transformation into Julia Child is both charming and eerily accurate at the same time. Thinking that I would attempt to do what Julie, the character in the movie, did and work my way though Mastering the Art of French Cooking over the course of the next year or so, I went in search of the venerable tome at one of Ellensburg's fine used bookstores. While Brick Road Books did not have a copy, they did have the new collection of the letters between Julia Child and her pen pal, and, ultimately dear friend, Avis DeVoto.
As Always, Julia is remarkable not only for the insight into the making of a cookbook classic, it offers important insights to all Democrats who came of age after the Bay of Pigs as to what life was like during those years, especially for Democratic women. Both Julia and Avis make no attempt to hide their loathing of Senator McCarthy and the anti-communist fervor which some commentators have indicated touched one out of five Americans. Indeed, Paul Child, Julia's husband who was a foreign service officer, was called to Washington to appear for questioning before the House Un-American Activities Committee. As the movie suggests, Paul Child was questioned on the basis that he was a "treasonous homosexual." All indications were that he was a straight man happily married to the love of his life.
The cultural climate was such that a political figure whose gay son was outed, actually took his own life after the revelation ruined his career. Both Avis and Julia mirthfully recalled the "pixie-fairy" incident in the McCarthy hearings wherein McCarthy staffers were gay bashed verbally. This in spite of both the DeVoto and Child families having dear friends who were homosexual men or women. While it would be tempting to think we've gone beyond that in 2011, I'm not entirely certain those attitudes have been eliminated in spite of the expansion of laws against hate crime and speech.
Avis, who was married to a prominent writer of the day, worked in publishing and had many literary friends of her own or due to the work of her husband, also met many political figures and government agency officials. She made it her business to make sure Julia understood the campaigns of Adlai Stevenson and the yearning of Democrats to see him elected. An entire array of other political luminaries and lesser governmental officers provide fodder for Avis to explain the political goings on of the day to the expatriate Julia. Julia in turn provided Avis with the European outlook on American politics which was not positive in regards to the McCarthy hearings with most of the European press being profoundly disturbed and unsettled by the hearings. Both women were not above "smack talking" the Republican opposition.
The book is also a fascinating peek into the world of women forging a way for themselves in a work world that was not accommodating or fair to women. When her husband Bernard died, Avis eventually had to leave publishing and take a more lucrative or at least steady job as a "house" secretary at Harvard. Reading about the house selection procedures was a fascinating glimpse into a world that while it may still exist, seems like something right out of the Harry Potter books. Avis eventually returns to work at Alfred Knopf. It is easy to see the role both women were societally required to play in building or maintaining their husband's careers by entertaining or being entertained.
It was satisfying to finish As Always, Julia on the first night of my foray into Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In the letters between Avis and Julia the stated concerns of the executives at Houghton Mifflin over the size of the book, the style of explanation and the general intimidation level to the American Housewife were laid out ad nauseum. However, they were right. I did feel intimidated, the book did seem too big and it seemed like a lot of trouble to take on these recipes. Add to that the fact that I don't drink and so many of the meat recipes include wine or cognac, I was mentally telling myself this really isn't for me. Then I discovered I was out of milk, onions and had no Swiss cheese in the house. I persevered though and I did roast a chicken (Poulet Roti) and make scalloped potatoes with Meat Stock and Cheese (Gratin Savoyard). The results were absolutely delicious and there will be many more meals with Julia in our house.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Local Democratic Party History-Colin and Margaret Condit
Colin and Margaret are providing our fundraising dinner venue next week on St. Patrick's day, read a few things you may not have known about them in this Daily Record Article.
Many thanks to Willa Lou Brukhetta for hosting and Jay Clough for agreeing to be our Keynote person at this event.
Many thanks to Willa Lou Brukhetta for hosting and Jay Clough for agreeing to be our Keynote person at this event.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Scoop Jackson and the Cause of Freedom
"For those who make freedom their cause, Henry Jackson will always inspire honor, courage and hope."-From the Citation accompanying the Medal of Freedom awarded to Scoop by President Ronald Reagan.
Reprinted in full from a History Link essay:
Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson was one of the most successful and powerful politicians in the history of Washington state. Jackson was born and died in Everett, Snohomish County, the rough-edged industrial port on Puget Sound north of Seattle, where he lived in the house where he was born for much of his life (when Congress was not in session). At 28, Jackson entered the United States Congress as its youngest member. He remained there the rest of his life, serving under nine presidents. Jackson never lost an election in Washington, winning six terms in the House of Representatives and six in the Senate, often by record margins. Jackson was the quintessential "Cold War liberal." He was an outspoken and influential advocate of increased military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and the labor movement. Together with Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989), with whom he served in the Senate for 28 years, Jackson used his legislative skill and seniority to win the state unprecedented influence in the nation's capital. He guided landmark environmental legislation that greatly expanded wilderness areas and national parks in Washington and across the country, managed the bills that granted statehood to Alaska and Hawaii, and sponsored the law that turned surplus military bases into parks in Seattle and elsewhere.
Raised in Everett
Henry Martin Jackson was born on May 31, 1912, in the home of his parents Peter and Marine Jackson at 3602 Oakes Street in Everett. Both parents were immigrants from Norway. Peter Jackson was born Peter Gresseth, and changed his name when he immigrated. He met Marine Anderson at the Lutheran church in Everett, where they were married in 1897.
Henry was the fifth and last of the Jackson children. He had three sisters -- Gertrude, Agnes (who died before Henry was three), and Marie -- and one brother, Arthur. Gertrude, the oldest, 14 when Henry was born, was particularly close to Henry. It was Gert who gave young Henry the enduring nickname "Scoop." The name came from a comic strip character, a newspaper reporter who got others to do his work for him, which reminded Gert of her little brother's ability to avoid chores. Gertrude, who taught at Everett's Garfield Elementary School for many years, helped pay Henry's way through college and law school. She was an enthusiastic campaigner when he ran for office, and advised him throughout his political career. Neither Gertrude nor Marie married, and both lived in the Oakes Street house until their deaths some months apart in 1969.
In junior high and high school, Jackson participated on the debate team and told classmates he hoped to be a senator some day. He went to college and law school at the University of Washington, graduating from law school in 1935.
A Crusading Prosecutor
Jackson returned to Everett and worked for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) while waiting for his bar exam results. His relief work made him an enthusiastic supporter of the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) and a lifelong believer in the ability of government to improve people's lives. At FERA, Jackson developed a close friendship with John Salter, a natural political strategist who played a key role in his early career.
In 1936, having passed the bar, Jackson went to work for Lloyd Black, a well-known Everett attorney and Democratic politician. Black, who became a superior court judge in 1937, encouraged Jackson when the 26-year-old lawyer considered running for Snohomish County prosecuting attorney in 1938.
The Democratic incumbent, Al Swanson, had a drinking problem and was widely blamed for the corruption that flourished in post-Prohibition Snohomish County, where illegal drinking, gambling, and prostitution establishments operated openly. Jackson's successful campaign, which Salter managed, relied on door-to-door canvassing by a corps of largely youthful volunteers, Jackson's sister Gertrude foremost among them. In office, Jackson garnered publicity as a crusading prosecutor, running pinball machines out of the county and leading well-publicized raids against bootlegging and gambling establishments.
Youngest Member of Congress
Two years later, a new political opportunity arose. Mon Wallgren, the popular Everett jeweler who represented Washington's Second District in the United States House of Representatives, gave up his seat to run for the Senate. Salter managed Jackson's campaign for the House seat, relying again on young volunteers and door-to-door campaigning, as well as on advertisements touting Jackson's prosecutorial success -- "Vote for a Man Who Has the Courage of his Convictions" (Kaufman, 30). Jackson beat five opponents in the Democratic primary, and won the general election in the Roosevelt landslide. In January, 1941, taking Salter as his administrative assistant, the 28-year-old Jackson became the youngest member of the United States Congress.
World War II dominated Jackson's first two terms in the House of Representatives. Draft age and single, Jackson felt political pressure to join the army, which he did, as a private. However, he spent only a few months on active duty before the president required Congressmen to either leave active duty or give up their seats. Like many but not all West Coast politicians, Jackson strongly supported the wartime policy of removing Japanese Americans from their homes to internment camps, a constitutional abuse which has subsequently been generally regretted.
The 1946 election brought the closest of the 13 straight victories that comprised Jackson's electoral career. A backlash against the Democrats led to Republican gains across the country. Jackson held his seat with 53 percent of the vote against the same Republican he had easily defeated in the three previous elections, but Republicans won every other House of Representatives race in the Pacific Northwest.
In the House, Jackson staked out positions he would hold throughout his career. On domestic, especially economic, issues he was resolutely liberal, a strong supporter of the New Deal and the Fair Deal of President Harry Truman (1884-1972). In part inspired by the example of Norway and other Scandinavian countries, Jackson advocated for national health insurance and publicly owned power systems. On foreign policy, he backed the Truman administration, which saw the Soviet Union as the primary post-war threat to American interests, and sought to "contain" the growing "Communist menace."
Into the Senate
In 1952, Jackson decided to take on Republican Senator Harry P. Cain and announced his candidacy on his 40th birthday. Cain had entered politics as a liberal Democrat. As Mayor of Tacoma, he was one of very few western politicians who opposed Japanese internment. Cain then joined the military, and while serving as a paratrooper in Europe, won the Republican nomination in the 1944 Senate race, losing the general election to Warren Magnuson. Two years later, in the 1946 Republican landslide, Cain won the Senate seat that Mon Wallgren had given up to run for governor in 1944, defeating Wallgren's appointed successor Hugh Mitchell. In the Senate, Cain allied himself with "red-baiting" Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), established an erratic record, and was widely considered to be among the least competent senators.
Jackson fiercely attacked Cain's performance. Cain responded by using McCarthy-style tactics against Jackson, even bringing McCarthy to Seattle to campaign for him. It did not help Cain. Salter assembled a strong staff that ran an innovative media campaign. Washington's senior senator, Warren Magnuson, who had served with Jackson in the House before winning his Senate seat, lent his support and staff to Jackson's campaign, establishing a pattern of cooperation between the two that would last throughout the 28 years they spent in the Senate together. Despite another Republican landslide, headed this time by Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), Jackson handily defeated Cain.
As a freshman senator, Jackson got his first taste of national publicity when he played a subsidiary role in the Army-McCarthy hearings where Joseph McCarthy met his downfall. While repudiating McCarthy's tactics and his grossly exaggerated allegations, Jackson, along with other Democrats, criticized the Eisenhower administration for what they considered insufficient spending on defense against the Soviet Union, particularly on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Jackson's avid support for nuclear weapons brought the first -- but not the last -- challenge from the left wing of his own party, when Seattle peace activist Alice Franklin Bryant unsuccessfully opposed him in the 1958 Democratic primary. By the late 1950s, Jackson was labeled the "Senator from Boeing" by some who disapproved of his constant support for more weapons systems.
In 1958 Jackson used his position as chair of the Interior Committee's Subcommittee on Territories to lead the fight for the successful bill granting statehood to Alaska, a cause that Jackson, Magnuson, and other Washington politicians had long supported, but which was opposed by various powerful interests. The following year, Jackson managed the bill that made Hawaii a state. At the 1960 Democratic convention, Jackson was a leading candidate to be John F. Kennedy's vice presidential choice, but Kennedy ultimately selected Lyndon Johnson, the Senate Majority Leader from Texas and a key Southern ally.
Marriage and Family
For Jackson, 1961 brought not only the inauguration of Kennedy's New Frontier, but a major personal change. At 48, the senator was still considered one of the capital's most eligible bachelors, although Jackson, conservative and conventional in his social life, was certainly not known for a playboy lifestyle, as were some single colleagues such as Magnuson. Jackson met 28-year-old Helen Hardin, a receptionist in the office of New Mexico Senator Clinton Anderson, in early 1961, and they married on December 16, 1961.
They had two children, Anna Marie in 1963, and Peter in 1966. The Jacksons had a home in Washington, D.C., but in Everett they continued to live, as Jackson had all his life, with his sisters in the Oakes Street house where he was born. They acquired their own home in Everett in 1967, when Jackson purchased the mansion at 1703 Grand Avenue that in his youth had been the home of a leading banker. This home is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Environmental Protection
Jackson became chair of the Senate's Interior Committee in 1963, and in that position shepherded passage of much of the significant environmental legislation of the 1960s. The Wilderness Act of 1964 protected 9 million acres of wilderness land, and created the procedure for protecting additional land by designating it as wilderness. Other bills established national seashores and protected wild and scenic rivers. In 1968, Jackson won passage of bills creating North Cascades National Park in North Central Washington and Redwood National Park in California.
In many ways, Jackson's most far-reaching contribution was the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which required preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement assessing potential impacts to the environment before any federal project was approved, and which became a model for similar legislation in Washington and other states. Neither Jackson nor anyone else foresaw that the Environmental Impact Statement requirement would become a powerful tool for those seeking to halt, delay, or modify projects they considered harmful to the environment, and Jackson subsequently had mixed feelings when his bill was used to oppose projects such as the I-90 Freeway and the Alaska oil pipeline that he supported.
At the time, the environmental achievements of the 1960s were overshadowed by the increasingly bitter national debate over the war in Vietnam. Following President Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) and the advisors he inherited began to escalate American combat involvement in Vietnam. Jackson, like Kennedy and Johnson, saw Vietnam as a key Cold War battlefield, and he remained a dogged supporter of the administration's Vietnam policy even when many other Democrats began calling for an end to American involvement.
Fort Lawton and the ABM
Jackson, along with conservative southern senators, pressured the administration to develop an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that was supposed to protect American targets from a nuclear missile attack. Johnson agreed, and Fort Lawton, a military base in Seattle, was selected in 1967 as one of the ABM locations. This triggered a storm of protest from constituents that put Jackson in a bind. Seattle residents were looking forward to having under-utilized Fort Lawton become a park, and they feared the ABM installation would make the city a prime target for attack. Jackson tried to defuse the opposition by convincing the Army to move the ABM site across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island and Port Gamble, but residents there were equally opposed.
When Richard Nixon (1913-1994) succeeded Johnson as president in 1969, Jackson persuaded him to place ABM missile sites in lightly populated areas, thus keeping them from Puget Sound altogether. By then many senators, including Magnuson, opposed the ABM, but Jackson led the fight to preserve the program, winning close votes in 1969 and 1970.
With Fort Lawton safe from the ABM, Jackson sought to mollify his Seattle critics by making the surplus military installation available for a park. He pushed through the Federal Lands for Parks and Recreation Act, which made surplus federal land in metropolitan areas available for parks at little or no cost to local authorities. Cities across the country used the act to acquire federal property as parks. However, Jackson's position triggered another controversy over Fort Lawton. Northwest Indian leaders who wanted to reclaim the site as an Indian cultural center were angered by Jackson's apparent decision to give the property to Seattle. In 1970, Indian activists and supporters "invaded" the fort and staged a sit-in to highlight their demands. They were soon removed but the controversy continued until a compromise, which Jackson helped broker, gave most of Fort Lawton to Seattle as Discovery Park, on condition that 20 acres be leased to United Indians of All Tribes, who opened the Daybreak Star Cultural Center there in 1977.
A Primary Challenge
In 1970, as in 1958, Jackson faced a challenge from his own party. Aided by some national anti-war figures, left wing Democrats mounted a concerted attack on Jackson in the 1970 primary. Their candidate was Carl Maxey, a lawyer and civil rights leader from Spokane, who fiercely denounced Jackson's support for the war and military spending. Maxey was one of the first African American politicians to run for statewide office in Washington. The Maxey forces won some victories in party conventions, but Jackson retained his popularity with voters and racked up record margins over both Maxey and his subsequent Republican opponent, Charles Elicker.
Jackson opposed the policy of detente with the Soviet Union that Nixon pursued. He did, however, endorse Nixon's efforts to improve relations with the Communist government of China. In sharp contrast to his position on the Soviet Union, Jackson came to believe that maintaining closer diplomatic and trade ties was the best approach to China. Between 1974 and his death in 1983, Jackson made four official visits to China, where he was warmly welcomed by Chinese leaders.
Jackson also had a close relationship with Israel and its leaders. By the 1970s Jackson was the leading Congressional supporter of increased military aid to Israel. He co-sponsored the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which responded to Soviet restrictions on emigration of Jewish Soviet citizens to Israel by linking increased trade between the U.S. and Soviet Union to lifting emigration restrictions.
Running for President
In 1972, Jackson launched the first of his two attempts to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but managed to win only the Washington state caucuses. In 1976, Jackson mounted a better prepared attempt at the nomination. He was the early frontrunner, and won several primaries, but dropped out of the race after losing the crucial Pennsylvania primary to Jimmy Carter (b. 1924). His campaign was dogged by the hostility of the Party's left wing and by allegations of illegal contributions by Boeing and other elements of the "military-industrial complex."
The elements that made Jackson the most successful vote-getter in the history of the state did not work as well in the national primaries. Unremarkable at best as a public speaker, Jackson was an excellent one-on-one campaigner, with a remarkable ability (assisted by detailed notes) to remember voters' names and important personal information. Over the years, he and his staff built up numerous political connections throughout the state. Community leaders, newspaper writers, and average voters all referred to Jackson simply as Scoop, and felt a personal connection to him. Jackson was not able to make the same connection with voters across the country in the short time-frame of the presidential primaries.
Neoconservative Legacy
Jackson's hard line on the Soviet Union and his strong support for Israel made him a favorite of an increasingly influential group of formerly liberal but strongly anti-Communist intellectuals and politicians who came to be known as the neoconservatives. Many neoconservatives who supported Jackson's presidential bids gravitated to Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) and the Republican party after Jackson's defeats. Among these were Richard Perle, a longtime Jackson staffer who worked under Dorothy Fosdick, Jackson's top foreign policy adviser, and Paul Wolfowitz, another member of the Jackson circle, both of whom went on to play prominent roles developing Middle East policy in the George W. Bush administration.
Jackson presaged Reagan's foreign policy when he openly opposed Jimmy Carter's attempts at expanding detente with the Soviet Union. Jackson, who had only reluctantly supported arms control treaties negotiated by Kennedy and Nixon, repudiated the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) II Treaty that Carter negotiated, and led the Senate forces that prevented its ratification. Jackson was not sorry when Carter lost to Reagan, although he was saddened that the Reagan landslide defeated many Democratic senators, including Magnuson, leaving the Senate in Republican control for the first time since early in Jackson's first term.
End of an Era
Magnuson's defeat, and the Democrats' loss of Senate control, ended a lengthy era in which Jackson and Magnuson teamed to give Washington unprecedented influence in the U.S. Senate. The two senators had very different temperaments, and were not personally close, but they shared a dedication to serving their constituents. Both were skilled legislators and had powerful chairmanships, Jackson on the Interior Committee and Magnuson on Appropriations. "Scoop and Maggie," as they were known, repeatedly brought the state its share and then some of federal expenditures. Ironically, one of their highest profile battles on behalf of Washington interests, the unsuccessful 1971 effort to continue funding for Boeing's controversial supersonic transport (SST), was one of the few major legislative defeats that either senator suffered.
Henry Jackson easily won his sixth Senate term in 1982, defeating Republican Douglas Jewett with 69 percent of the vote. Jackson turned 71 in May 1983, but was known for his healthy lifestyle and appeared vigorous and fit. As a result, his sudden death on September 1, 1983, was a shock. Perhaps fittingly, his final public appearance was a press conference in which he denounced the recent downing of Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight 007 by a Soviet jet. In the evening Jackson suffered a ruptured aorta at his Everett home and died within hours despite intense efforts to save him.
Governor John Spellman (b. 1926) appointed former governor Daniel Evans (b. 1925) to Jackson's seat, and Evans defeated Congressman Mike Lowry in a subsequent special election to complete Jackson's term. In the months and years that followed his death, Jackson received many honors. A Trident submarine and the new federal office building in Seattle were named for him. The University of Washington renamed its School of International Studies in his honor, and a private foundation was later organized to promote his legacy. Congress, under the provisions of the Wilderness Act Jackson helped pass, designated more than 100,000 acres in the scenic Cascade Mountains of eastern Snohomish County and western Chelan County as the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness. The Port of Seattle Commission also voted to rename Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for Jackson, but quickly retreated due to protests from Tacoma.
Thus, Henry M. Jackson's work survives in much groundbreaking progressive legislation, in an empowered environmental movement, in numerous public improvements throughout and beyond Washington state, in the current influence of policy makers he mentored, and in the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union's Stalinist government and the opening of post-Maoist China. He would have much to be proud of were he alive today.
Reprinted in full from a History Link essay:
Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson was one of the most successful and powerful politicians in the history of Washington state. Jackson was born and died in Everett, Snohomish County, the rough-edged industrial port on Puget Sound north of Seattle, where he lived in the house where he was born for much of his life (when Congress was not in session). At 28, Jackson entered the United States Congress as its youngest member. He remained there the rest of his life, serving under nine presidents. Jackson never lost an election in Washington, winning six terms in the House of Representatives and six in the Senate, often by record margins. Jackson was the quintessential "Cold War liberal." He was an outspoken and influential advocate of increased military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and the labor movement. Together with Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989), with whom he served in the Senate for 28 years, Jackson used his legislative skill and seniority to win the state unprecedented influence in the nation's capital. He guided landmark environmental legislation that greatly expanded wilderness areas and national parks in Washington and across the country, managed the bills that granted statehood to Alaska and Hawaii, and sponsored the law that turned surplus military bases into parks in Seattle and elsewhere.
Raised in Everett
Henry Martin Jackson was born on May 31, 1912, in the home of his parents Peter and Marine Jackson at 3602 Oakes Street in Everett. Both parents were immigrants from Norway. Peter Jackson was born Peter Gresseth, and changed his name when he immigrated. He met Marine Anderson at the Lutheran church in Everett, where they were married in 1897.
Henry was the fifth and last of the Jackson children. He had three sisters -- Gertrude, Agnes (who died before Henry was three), and Marie -- and one brother, Arthur. Gertrude, the oldest, 14 when Henry was born, was particularly close to Henry. It was Gert who gave young Henry the enduring nickname "Scoop." The name came from a comic strip character, a newspaper reporter who got others to do his work for him, which reminded Gert of her little brother's ability to avoid chores. Gertrude, who taught at Everett's Garfield Elementary School for many years, helped pay Henry's way through college and law school. She was an enthusiastic campaigner when he ran for office, and advised him throughout his political career. Neither Gertrude nor Marie married, and both lived in the Oakes Street house until their deaths some months apart in 1969.
In junior high and high school, Jackson participated on the debate team and told classmates he hoped to be a senator some day. He went to college and law school at the University of Washington, graduating from law school in 1935.
A Crusading Prosecutor
Jackson returned to Everett and worked for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) while waiting for his bar exam results. His relief work made him an enthusiastic supporter of the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) and a lifelong believer in the ability of government to improve people's lives. At FERA, Jackson developed a close friendship with John Salter, a natural political strategist who played a key role in his early career.
In 1936, having passed the bar, Jackson went to work for Lloyd Black, a well-known Everett attorney and Democratic politician. Black, who became a superior court judge in 1937, encouraged Jackson when the 26-year-old lawyer considered running for Snohomish County prosecuting attorney in 1938.
The Democratic incumbent, Al Swanson, had a drinking problem and was widely blamed for the corruption that flourished in post-Prohibition Snohomish County, where illegal drinking, gambling, and prostitution establishments operated openly. Jackson's successful campaign, which Salter managed, relied on door-to-door canvassing by a corps of largely youthful volunteers, Jackson's sister Gertrude foremost among them. In office, Jackson garnered publicity as a crusading prosecutor, running pinball machines out of the county and leading well-publicized raids against bootlegging and gambling establishments.
Youngest Member of Congress
Two years later, a new political opportunity arose. Mon Wallgren, the popular Everett jeweler who represented Washington's Second District in the United States House of Representatives, gave up his seat to run for the Senate. Salter managed Jackson's campaign for the House seat, relying again on young volunteers and door-to-door campaigning, as well as on advertisements touting Jackson's prosecutorial success -- "Vote for a Man Who Has the Courage of his Convictions" (Kaufman, 30). Jackson beat five opponents in the Democratic primary, and won the general election in the Roosevelt landslide. In January, 1941, taking Salter as his administrative assistant, the 28-year-old Jackson became the youngest member of the United States Congress.
World War II dominated Jackson's first two terms in the House of Representatives. Draft age and single, Jackson felt political pressure to join the army, which he did, as a private. However, he spent only a few months on active duty before the president required Congressmen to either leave active duty or give up their seats. Like many but not all West Coast politicians, Jackson strongly supported the wartime policy of removing Japanese Americans from their homes to internment camps, a constitutional abuse which has subsequently been generally regretted.
The 1946 election brought the closest of the 13 straight victories that comprised Jackson's electoral career. A backlash against the Democrats led to Republican gains across the country. Jackson held his seat with 53 percent of the vote against the same Republican he had easily defeated in the three previous elections, but Republicans won every other House of Representatives race in the Pacific Northwest.
In the House, Jackson staked out positions he would hold throughout his career. On domestic, especially economic, issues he was resolutely liberal, a strong supporter of the New Deal and the Fair Deal of President Harry Truman (1884-1972). In part inspired by the example of Norway and other Scandinavian countries, Jackson advocated for national health insurance and publicly owned power systems. On foreign policy, he backed the Truman administration, which saw the Soviet Union as the primary post-war threat to American interests, and sought to "contain" the growing "Communist menace."
Into the Senate
In 1952, Jackson decided to take on Republican Senator Harry P. Cain and announced his candidacy on his 40th birthday. Cain had entered politics as a liberal Democrat. As Mayor of Tacoma, he was one of very few western politicians who opposed Japanese internment. Cain then joined the military, and while serving as a paratrooper in Europe, won the Republican nomination in the 1944 Senate race, losing the general election to Warren Magnuson. Two years later, in the 1946 Republican landslide, Cain won the Senate seat that Mon Wallgren had given up to run for governor in 1944, defeating Wallgren's appointed successor Hugh Mitchell. In the Senate, Cain allied himself with "red-baiting" Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), established an erratic record, and was widely considered to be among the least competent senators.
Jackson fiercely attacked Cain's performance. Cain responded by using McCarthy-style tactics against Jackson, even bringing McCarthy to Seattle to campaign for him. It did not help Cain. Salter assembled a strong staff that ran an innovative media campaign. Washington's senior senator, Warren Magnuson, who had served with Jackson in the House before winning his Senate seat, lent his support and staff to Jackson's campaign, establishing a pattern of cooperation between the two that would last throughout the 28 years they spent in the Senate together. Despite another Republican landslide, headed this time by Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), Jackson handily defeated Cain.
As a freshman senator, Jackson got his first taste of national publicity when he played a subsidiary role in the Army-McCarthy hearings where Joseph McCarthy met his downfall. While repudiating McCarthy's tactics and his grossly exaggerated allegations, Jackson, along with other Democrats, criticized the Eisenhower administration for what they considered insufficient spending on defense against the Soviet Union, particularly on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Jackson's avid support for nuclear weapons brought the first -- but not the last -- challenge from the left wing of his own party, when Seattle peace activist Alice Franklin Bryant unsuccessfully opposed him in the 1958 Democratic primary. By the late 1950s, Jackson was labeled the "Senator from Boeing" by some who disapproved of his constant support for more weapons systems.
In 1958 Jackson used his position as chair of the Interior Committee's Subcommittee on Territories to lead the fight for the successful bill granting statehood to Alaska, a cause that Jackson, Magnuson, and other Washington politicians had long supported, but which was opposed by various powerful interests. The following year, Jackson managed the bill that made Hawaii a state. At the 1960 Democratic convention, Jackson was a leading candidate to be John F. Kennedy's vice presidential choice, but Kennedy ultimately selected Lyndon Johnson, the Senate Majority Leader from Texas and a key Southern ally.
Marriage and Family
For Jackson, 1961 brought not only the inauguration of Kennedy's New Frontier, but a major personal change. At 48, the senator was still considered one of the capital's most eligible bachelors, although Jackson, conservative and conventional in his social life, was certainly not known for a playboy lifestyle, as were some single colleagues such as Magnuson. Jackson met 28-year-old Helen Hardin, a receptionist in the office of New Mexico Senator Clinton Anderson, in early 1961, and they married on December 16, 1961.
They had two children, Anna Marie in 1963, and Peter in 1966. The Jacksons had a home in Washington, D.C., but in Everett they continued to live, as Jackson had all his life, with his sisters in the Oakes Street house where he was born. They acquired their own home in Everett in 1967, when Jackson purchased the mansion at 1703 Grand Avenue that in his youth had been the home of a leading banker. This home is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Environmental Protection
Jackson became chair of the Senate's Interior Committee in 1963, and in that position shepherded passage of much of the significant environmental legislation of the 1960s. The Wilderness Act of 1964 protected 9 million acres of wilderness land, and created the procedure for protecting additional land by designating it as wilderness. Other bills established national seashores and protected wild and scenic rivers. In 1968, Jackson won passage of bills creating North Cascades National Park in North Central Washington and Redwood National Park in California.
In many ways, Jackson's most far-reaching contribution was the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which required preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement assessing potential impacts to the environment before any federal project was approved, and which became a model for similar legislation in Washington and other states. Neither Jackson nor anyone else foresaw that the Environmental Impact Statement requirement would become a powerful tool for those seeking to halt, delay, or modify projects they considered harmful to the environment, and Jackson subsequently had mixed feelings when his bill was used to oppose projects such as the I-90 Freeway and the Alaska oil pipeline that he supported.
At the time, the environmental achievements of the 1960s were overshadowed by the increasingly bitter national debate over the war in Vietnam. Following President Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) and the advisors he inherited began to escalate American combat involvement in Vietnam. Jackson, like Kennedy and Johnson, saw Vietnam as a key Cold War battlefield, and he remained a dogged supporter of the administration's Vietnam policy even when many other Democrats began calling for an end to American involvement.
Fort Lawton and the ABM
Jackson, along with conservative southern senators, pressured the administration to develop an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that was supposed to protect American targets from a nuclear missile attack. Johnson agreed, and Fort Lawton, a military base in Seattle, was selected in 1967 as one of the ABM locations. This triggered a storm of protest from constituents that put Jackson in a bind. Seattle residents were looking forward to having under-utilized Fort Lawton become a park, and they feared the ABM installation would make the city a prime target for attack. Jackson tried to defuse the opposition by convincing the Army to move the ABM site across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island and Port Gamble, but residents there were equally opposed.
When Richard Nixon (1913-1994) succeeded Johnson as president in 1969, Jackson persuaded him to place ABM missile sites in lightly populated areas, thus keeping them from Puget Sound altogether. By then many senators, including Magnuson, opposed the ABM, but Jackson led the fight to preserve the program, winning close votes in 1969 and 1970.
With Fort Lawton safe from the ABM, Jackson sought to mollify his Seattle critics by making the surplus military installation available for a park. He pushed through the Federal Lands for Parks and Recreation Act, which made surplus federal land in metropolitan areas available for parks at little or no cost to local authorities. Cities across the country used the act to acquire federal property as parks. However, Jackson's position triggered another controversy over Fort Lawton. Northwest Indian leaders who wanted to reclaim the site as an Indian cultural center were angered by Jackson's apparent decision to give the property to Seattle. In 1970, Indian activists and supporters "invaded" the fort and staged a sit-in to highlight their demands. They were soon removed but the controversy continued until a compromise, which Jackson helped broker, gave most of Fort Lawton to Seattle as Discovery Park, on condition that 20 acres be leased to United Indians of All Tribes, who opened the Daybreak Star Cultural Center there in 1977.
A Primary Challenge
In 1970, as in 1958, Jackson faced a challenge from his own party. Aided by some national anti-war figures, left wing Democrats mounted a concerted attack on Jackson in the 1970 primary. Their candidate was Carl Maxey, a lawyer and civil rights leader from Spokane, who fiercely denounced Jackson's support for the war and military spending. Maxey was one of the first African American politicians to run for statewide office in Washington. The Maxey forces won some victories in party conventions, but Jackson retained his popularity with voters and racked up record margins over both Maxey and his subsequent Republican opponent, Charles Elicker.
Jackson opposed the policy of detente with the Soviet Union that Nixon pursued. He did, however, endorse Nixon's efforts to improve relations with the Communist government of China. In sharp contrast to his position on the Soviet Union, Jackson came to believe that maintaining closer diplomatic and trade ties was the best approach to China. Between 1974 and his death in 1983, Jackson made four official visits to China, where he was warmly welcomed by Chinese leaders.
Jackson also had a close relationship with Israel and its leaders. By the 1970s Jackson was the leading Congressional supporter of increased military aid to Israel. He co-sponsored the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which responded to Soviet restrictions on emigration of Jewish Soviet citizens to Israel by linking increased trade between the U.S. and Soviet Union to lifting emigration restrictions.
Running for President
In 1972, Jackson launched the first of his two attempts to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but managed to win only the Washington state caucuses. In 1976, Jackson mounted a better prepared attempt at the nomination. He was the early frontrunner, and won several primaries, but dropped out of the race after losing the crucial Pennsylvania primary to Jimmy Carter (b. 1924). His campaign was dogged by the hostility of the Party's left wing and by allegations of illegal contributions by Boeing and other elements of the "military-industrial complex."
The elements that made Jackson the most successful vote-getter in the history of the state did not work as well in the national primaries. Unremarkable at best as a public speaker, Jackson was an excellent one-on-one campaigner, with a remarkable ability (assisted by detailed notes) to remember voters' names and important personal information. Over the years, he and his staff built up numerous political connections throughout the state. Community leaders, newspaper writers, and average voters all referred to Jackson simply as Scoop, and felt a personal connection to him. Jackson was not able to make the same connection with voters across the country in the short time-frame of the presidential primaries.
Neoconservative Legacy
Jackson's hard line on the Soviet Union and his strong support for Israel made him a favorite of an increasingly influential group of formerly liberal but strongly anti-Communist intellectuals and politicians who came to be known as the neoconservatives. Many neoconservatives who supported Jackson's presidential bids gravitated to Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) and the Republican party after Jackson's defeats. Among these were Richard Perle, a longtime Jackson staffer who worked under Dorothy Fosdick, Jackson's top foreign policy adviser, and Paul Wolfowitz, another member of the Jackson circle, both of whom went on to play prominent roles developing Middle East policy in the George W. Bush administration.
Jackson presaged Reagan's foreign policy when he openly opposed Jimmy Carter's attempts at expanding detente with the Soviet Union. Jackson, who had only reluctantly supported arms control treaties negotiated by Kennedy and Nixon, repudiated the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) II Treaty that Carter negotiated, and led the Senate forces that prevented its ratification. Jackson was not sorry when Carter lost to Reagan, although he was saddened that the Reagan landslide defeated many Democratic senators, including Magnuson, leaving the Senate in Republican control for the first time since early in Jackson's first term.
End of an Era
Magnuson's defeat, and the Democrats' loss of Senate control, ended a lengthy era in which Jackson and Magnuson teamed to give Washington unprecedented influence in the U.S. Senate. The two senators had very different temperaments, and were not personally close, but they shared a dedication to serving their constituents. Both were skilled legislators and had powerful chairmanships, Jackson on the Interior Committee and Magnuson on Appropriations. "Scoop and Maggie," as they were known, repeatedly brought the state its share and then some of federal expenditures. Ironically, one of their highest profile battles on behalf of Washington interests, the unsuccessful 1971 effort to continue funding for Boeing's controversial supersonic transport (SST), was one of the few major legislative defeats that either senator suffered.
Henry Jackson easily won his sixth Senate term in 1982, defeating Republican Douglas Jewett with 69 percent of the vote. Jackson turned 71 in May 1983, but was known for his healthy lifestyle and appeared vigorous and fit. As a result, his sudden death on September 1, 1983, was a shock. Perhaps fittingly, his final public appearance was a press conference in which he denounced the recent downing of Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight 007 by a Soviet jet. In the evening Jackson suffered a ruptured aorta at his Everett home and died within hours despite intense efforts to save him.
Governor John Spellman (b. 1926) appointed former governor Daniel Evans (b. 1925) to Jackson's seat, and Evans defeated Congressman Mike Lowry in a subsequent special election to complete Jackson's term. In the months and years that followed his death, Jackson received many honors. A Trident submarine and the new federal office building in Seattle were named for him. The University of Washington renamed its School of International Studies in his honor, and a private foundation was later organized to promote his legacy. Congress, under the provisions of the Wilderness Act Jackson helped pass, designated more than 100,000 acres in the scenic Cascade Mountains of eastern Snohomish County and western Chelan County as the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness. The Port of Seattle Commission also voted to rename Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for Jackson, but quickly retreated due to protests from Tacoma.
Thus, Henry M. Jackson's work survives in much groundbreaking progressive legislation, in an empowered environmental movement, in numerous public improvements throughout and beyond Washington state, in the current influence of policy makers he mentored, and in the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union's Stalinist government and the opening of post-Maoist China. He would have much to be proud of were he alive today.
Sources:
Robert G. Kaufman, Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); Peter J. Ognibene, Scoop: The Life and Politics of Henry M. Jackson (New York: Stein and Day, 1975); William W. Prochnau and Richard W. Larsen, A Certain Democrat: Senator Henry M. Jackson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972); Byron Acohido, "Scoop Calls Downing of Jet an Outrage ...," The Herald, September 1, 1983, p. 2-A; Mark Funk, "Sen. Jackson, Everett's Favorite Son, Is Dead of Heart Attack at 71," Ibid., September 2, 1983, pp. 1 & 8-A; Jim Muhlstein, "Medics Worked Intensely to Save a Big Man," Ibid.; "Milestones Were Many in Henry Jackson's Career," Ibid., p. 2-B; Mike Barber, "500 Gather at Daybreak Star to Honor Northwest Indian Leader," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 21, 2000, Website accessed August 6, 2003 (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com); "Henry M. Jackson Wilderness Area," The Wilderness Information Network, Website accessed July 10, 2003 (http://www.wilderness.net/ nwps/wild_view.cfm?wname=Henry%20M%2E%20Jackson) By Kit Oldham, August 19, 2003Sunday, January 9, 2011
There Is No Place for Violence and Threats in a Democracy
Before attending yesterday's Washington 4th Congressional District Committee Meeting in Yakima, if I had ever heard of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, I couldn't remember that moment.
For me hearing of the attempt on her life, having just found a seat at the Yakima Democratic Headquarters in preparation for my first foray into political involvement beyond Kittitas County, this will be one of those frozen in time memories which include listening to the radio and hearing the reports of small planes flying into the the two towers on 9/11, hearing that Bay Bridge collapsed into the San Francisco Bay while I was at work in a grocery store in Placerville, California, and, again at work in an Insurance Firm in Emeryville, California watching news reports of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding. Yesterday will also be memorable because moments before, as I was walking into the meeting, I saw a woman carrying a rifle bag (I did not know there was a gun and pawn shop nearby) and just for a moment, I did stop to ponder what her intent might be.
Assassinations and assassination attempts are, unfortunately, part of the fabric of American history. There is no escaping our past which includes the shooting of President Abraham Lincoln, the shooting of John F. Kennedy, the shooting of George Wallace, the shooting of Bobby Kennedy, the shooting of Martin Luther King, the shooting of Ronald Reagan and the shooting of John Lennon. No discussion of political violence would be complete without at least touching on the bombing of the Murrow building in Oklahoma City carried out by Timothy McVeigh with some assistance from a few other politically frustrated friends. We are all too well acquainted with this type of violent and wanton taking of human life.
In this past month since unexpectedly becoming more involved in local party politics, I've wrestled with how to best deal with difficult issues of political discourse that could come up here locally. Our community has a recent black eye in the Manweller-Huber fisticuffs that evolved out of several acts of free speech. While I do not wish to reopen that can of worms, and I am, of course, extremely sympathetic to the Huber family, I am also concerned about not seeing a repeat on any member of the Democratic Party's part in this county.
I know many of the members of the Republican Party (and, even, Tea Partiers) here quite well, and, many I also count as not only good friends, but dear friends. I also know that realistically, there will be moments of vitriol, of passion, possibly of stupidity, possibly of disingenuous commentary or behavior that is otherwise unsavory. But I ask that our people, the Democrats, stand tall, not take personal offense even when it is warranted, and move forward with the critical tasks of rebuilding our party's infrastructure, telling our story of the good works the Democrats have done in the past and will do for Central Washington in the future, and reaching out to serve our Kittitas County community members of all political persuasions. Let us do our part to build a positive democracy here locally without violence, threats and, simply put, with respect for all, even when we passionately disagree with them or the way they express themselves.
Keith Olbermann's Call to Political Leaders and Pundits to Repudiate Violence and Threats
Sunday New York Times Article on Gabrielle Giffords Shooting
For me hearing of the attempt on her life, having just found a seat at the Yakima Democratic Headquarters in preparation for my first foray into political involvement beyond Kittitas County, this will be one of those frozen in time memories which include listening to the radio and hearing the reports of small planes flying into the the two towers on 9/11, hearing that Bay Bridge collapsed into the San Francisco Bay while I was at work in a grocery store in Placerville, California, and, again at work in an Insurance Firm in Emeryville, California watching news reports of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding. Yesterday will also be memorable because moments before, as I was walking into the meeting, I saw a woman carrying a rifle bag (I did not know there was a gun and pawn shop nearby) and just for a moment, I did stop to ponder what her intent might be.
Assassinations and assassination attempts are, unfortunately, part of the fabric of American history. There is no escaping our past which includes the shooting of President Abraham Lincoln, the shooting of John F. Kennedy, the shooting of George Wallace, the shooting of Bobby Kennedy, the shooting of Martin Luther King, the shooting of Ronald Reagan and the shooting of John Lennon. No discussion of political violence would be complete without at least touching on the bombing of the Murrow building in Oklahoma City carried out by Timothy McVeigh with some assistance from a few other politically frustrated friends. We are all too well acquainted with this type of violent and wanton taking of human life.
In this past month since unexpectedly becoming more involved in local party politics, I've wrestled with how to best deal with difficult issues of political discourse that could come up here locally. Our community has a recent black eye in the Manweller-Huber fisticuffs that evolved out of several acts of free speech. While I do not wish to reopen that can of worms, and I am, of course, extremely sympathetic to the Huber family, I am also concerned about not seeing a repeat on any member of the Democratic Party's part in this county.
I know many of the members of the Republican Party (and, even, Tea Partiers) here quite well, and, many I also count as not only good friends, but dear friends. I also know that realistically, there will be moments of vitriol, of passion, possibly of stupidity, possibly of disingenuous commentary or behavior that is otherwise unsavory. But I ask that our people, the Democrats, stand tall, not take personal offense even when it is warranted, and move forward with the critical tasks of rebuilding our party's infrastructure, telling our story of the good works the Democrats have done in the past and will do for Central Washington in the future, and reaching out to serve our Kittitas County community members of all political persuasions. Let us do our part to build a positive democracy here locally without violence, threats and, simply put, with respect for all, even when we passionately disagree with them or the way they express themselves.
Keith Olbermann's Call to Political Leaders and Pundits to Repudiate Violence and Threats
Sunday New York Times Article on Gabrielle Giffords Shooting
Sunday, January 2, 2011
The Cascade Curtain?
Reprinted in Full from a Yakima Herald Editorial.
From the Yakima Herald-Republic Online News.
Posted on Friday, December 31, 2010
How the 'Cascade Curtain' could open -- just a bit
Yakima Herald-Republic
For decades, political officials and observers have looked for ways to part the "Cascade Curtain," Washington state's mountainous physical boundary that also embodies the economic, philosophical and political split between east and west. Folks on this side of the state constantly lament that they are outvoted, outmaneuvered and overlooked by the wealthier, more populous westside.
The curtain could open just a bit, thanks to the 2010 Census and the population growth that it documented in Washington state during the past decade.
Since 2000, the number of state residents has risen 14.1 percent to 6,724,540, enough to add one congressional seat to the current nine. The 4th Congressional District's population almost kept pace with the state, gaining 13.4 percent, with much of that growth in the Tri-Cities and, to a lesser extent, in Kittitas and Grant counties. The Spokane-dominated 5th District saw a little over half that rate at 7.5 percent.
Take a look at the accompanying map, and you'll see the 4th District, represented by Republican Doc Hastings of Pasco, now is a sprawling but intuitive compendium of Yakima, Kittitas, Klickitat, Benton, Franklin, Grant, Chelan and Douglas counties. The western boundary runs right along the Cascade crest.
The state's new districts will need to average about 672,000 people (nice of the 10 seats to make that math easy). To do that, according to the Washington State Redistricting Commission, the 4th District will need to "lose" 90,280 people -- or more correctly, have that number transfer to another district. In the 5th District, just over 50,000 residents are so affected. So more than 140,000 people east of the Cascades will need to find a new congressional home. That means one, maybe two westside districts are going to come over our way.
The early scuttlebutt offers two prospects for the new 10th District: one is based in Olympia and would take a chunk of population from Southwest Washington's fast-growing 3rd; a second sets up a Bellevue-based 10th that would severely alter the 8th, now centered in the suburbs south and east of Lake Washington. Under the first scenario, the 3rd would extend up the Columbia River Gorge to Klickitat and Yakima counties; under the second, the 8th would follow Interstate 90 into Kittitas and Yakima counties.
Both districts recently elected Republicans, newcomer Jamie Herrera Beutler of Camas in the 3rd and veteran Dave Reichert of Auburn in the 8th. Either or both would be attuned to the political leanings of the Yakima Valley, and having another congressional representative or two familiar with Valley issues could add to this area's clout.
History favors a Valley tie-in with the Columbia Gorge and the 3rd; during the 1970s, the 4th District stretched into the city of Vancouver, and the 15th Legislative District edges into eastern Clark County now. While Clark County is heavily urban and suburban, the resource-based economy of outlying areas bears similarities to parts of the 4th. On the flip side, population trends may augur for the 8th, as upper Kittitas County sees growing numbers of "206ers," a reference to newcomers whose phones bear Seattle's area code.
That said, we believe a bloc of Valley votes with one new congressional representative would hold more sway than would votes diluted by both the 3rd and the 8th. The districts must be equal in population, but federal law requires districts to consider cities, counties and "communities of interest" whenever possible.
Thanks to a 1983 constitutional amendment, the state's redistricting process is fairly straightforward. Decades of legislative shenanigans led to the change, which yanked the process from legislators and set up the bipartisan redistricting commission. The panel, reappointed every decade, consists of four voting members, two each chosen by Democratic and Republican legislative leaders. Those four then pick a fifth nonvoting member as a chair. The Legislature approves the final maps but can make only minor changes. The first elections under the new districts will take place in 2012.
The Democrats have picked their representatives: former Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis and former state House Clerk Dean Foster. Republicans have yet to announce their picks, but we hope the GOP acknowledges its Central Washington power base and chooses someone, who, if not from east of the mountains, is at least attuned to this region's redistricting interests.
Much of the attention on the new congressional seat has focused on the state's overall congressional and presidential clout; the new seat brings the state's electoral vote total to 12. Within the state's increased national profile, Central Washington could gain some clout of its own. It may not be the Cascade Curtain raiser, but it may set the stage for enhanced political influence for our Valley.
Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Sharon J. Prill, Bob Crider, Frank Purdy and Karen Troianello.
From the Yakima Herald-Republic Online News.
Posted on Friday, December 31, 2010
How the 'Cascade Curtain' could open -- just a bit
Yakima Herald-Republic
For decades, political officials and observers have looked for ways to part the "Cascade Curtain," Washington state's mountainous physical boundary that also embodies the economic, philosophical and political split between east and west. Folks on this side of the state constantly lament that they are outvoted, outmaneuvered and overlooked by the wealthier, more populous westside.
The curtain could open just a bit, thanks to the 2010 Census and the population growth that it documented in Washington state during the past decade.
Since 2000, the number of state residents has risen 14.1 percent to 6,724,540, enough to add one congressional seat to the current nine. The 4th Congressional District's population almost kept pace with the state, gaining 13.4 percent, with much of that growth in the Tri-Cities and, to a lesser extent, in Kittitas and Grant counties. The Spokane-dominated 5th District saw a little over half that rate at 7.5 percent.
Take a look at the accompanying map, and you'll see the 4th District, represented by Republican Doc Hastings of Pasco, now is a sprawling but intuitive compendium of Yakima, Kittitas, Klickitat, Benton, Franklin, Grant, Chelan and Douglas counties. The western boundary runs right along the Cascade crest.
The state's new districts will need to average about 672,000 people (nice of the 10 seats to make that math easy). To do that, according to the Washington State Redistricting Commission, the 4th District will need to "lose" 90,280 people -- or more correctly, have that number transfer to another district. In the 5th District, just over 50,000 residents are so affected. So more than 140,000 people east of the Cascades will need to find a new congressional home. That means one, maybe two westside districts are going to come over our way.
The early scuttlebutt offers two prospects for the new 10th District: one is based in Olympia and would take a chunk of population from Southwest Washington's fast-growing 3rd; a second sets up a Bellevue-based 10th that would severely alter the 8th, now centered in the suburbs south and east of Lake Washington. Under the first scenario, the 3rd would extend up the Columbia River Gorge to Klickitat and Yakima counties; under the second, the 8th would follow Interstate 90 into Kittitas and Yakima counties.
Both districts recently elected Republicans, newcomer Jamie Herrera Beutler of Camas in the 3rd and veteran Dave Reichert of Auburn in the 8th. Either or both would be attuned to the political leanings of the Yakima Valley, and having another congressional representative or two familiar with Valley issues could add to this area's clout.
History favors a Valley tie-in with the Columbia Gorge and the 3rd; during the 1970s, the 4th District stretched into the city of Vancouver, and the 15th Legislative District edges into eastern Clark County now. While Clark County is heavily urban and suburban, the resource-based economy of outlying areas bears similarities to parts of the 4th. On the flip side, population trends may augur for the 8th, as upper Kittitas County sees growing numbers of "206ers," a reference to newcomers whose phones bear Seattle's area code.
That said, we believe a bloc of Valley votes with one new congressional representative would hold more sway than would votes diluted by both the 3rd and the 8th. The districts must be equal in population, but federal law requires districts to consider cities, counties and "communities of interest" whenever possible.
Thanks to a 1983 constitutional amendment, the state's redistricting process is fairly straightforward. Decades of legislative shenanigans led to the change, which yanked the process from legislators and set up the bipartisan redistricting commission. The panel, reappointed every decade, consists of four voting members, two each chosen by Democratic and Republican legislative leaders. Those four then pick a fifth nonvoting member as a chair. The Legislature approves the final maps but can make only minor changes. The first elections under the new districts will take place in 2012.
The Democrats have picked their representatives: former Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis and former state House Clerk Dean Foster. Republicans have yet to announce their picks, but we hope the GOP acknowledges its Central Washington power base and chooses someone, who, if not from east of the mountains, is at least attuned to this region's redistricting interests.
Much of the attention on the new congressional seat has focused on the state's overall congressional and presidential clout; the new seat brings the state's electoral vote total to 12. Within the state's increased national profile, Central Washington could gain some clout of its own. It may not be the Cascade Curtain raiser, but it may set the stage for enhanced political influence for our Valley.
Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Sharon J. Prill, Bob Crider, Frank Purdy and Karen Troianello.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Warren Magnuson-"He is scrupulously fair with federal funds; one half for Washington state, one half for the rest of the country."
As you, or someone you know, will be returning a gift that didn't work under warranty, this week after Christmas, remember "Maggie" who helped to create the Federal law on warranties known as the Magnuson-Moss Act. This History Link Essay reposted below, writtien by Kit Oldham, details the many other accomplishments of Senator Magnuson in the areas of health, consumer protection, environmental protection and the opening of the China trade market. As Eastern Washington residents, yes even we Democrats, we often feel that we receive little benefit from the Westside establishment. Not so, my friends, for an interesting read from 2005, check out Joel Connelly's column where he talks about what the West, largely through its Washington State Democratic elected officials, has done for the East.
Warren G. Magnuson ("Maggie" to constituents, Warren to family and friends) represented Washington in the United States Senate longer than anyone else and used his seniority and persuasive skills to enact legislation that profoundly affected many aspects of American life. Adopted at birth, Magnuson grew up in the Midwest and moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. After serving in the state legislature, as King County Prosecutor, and in the U.S. House of Representatives, he was elected to the Senate in 1944, serving six terms (36 years) before his 1980 defeat. Magnuson led the way for major increases in federal funding for health care and research. Before Ralph Nader was a national figure, Magnuson initiated the public interest revolution in Congress with ground-breaking consumer protection legislation. His love for the marine environment of his adopted state led to landmark bills protecting marine mammals, conserving American fisheries, and making Puget Sound off-limits to supertankers. Magnuson and Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson (1912-1983) served together in the Senate from 1952 until 1980, using their legislative skill and seniority to win Washington an unprecedented share of federal funds. Magnuson secured appropriations to build dams and highways that changed the face of the state, launch two World's Fairs, preserve Pike Place Market, replace the West Seattle Bridge, and provide disaster relief after Mt. St. Helens erupted.
Midwest Boyhood
Warren Grant Magnuson was born in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he grew up as the adopted son of William and Emma Magnuson. Magnuson's birth date is given as April 12, 1905, but the actual records of his birth are sealed. He apparently never knew his birth parents, and many accounts state that they died within a month of his birth. However, several people close to Magnuson told his biographer that Warren's natural mother was a North Dakota farm girl working as a waitress who was a friend of Emma Magnuson. The Magnusons, who in addition to Warren adopted a girl named Clara, ran a bar in Moorhead. Warren had a distant relationship with William, who left the family when Warren was a teenager. But he adored his adoptive mother Emma, whom he supported and moved to Bainbridge Island to live near him.
Handsome and likeable, Warren was popular with classmates at Moorhead High School, where he had many girlfriends -- a pattern that continued much of his life. The nickname "Maggie," by which Magnuson became known to generations of Washington politicians and voters, was first used when he quarterbacked the Moorhead football team. Although recognizing it as a badge of popularity, Magnuson never particularly liked the nickname. His family and close friends called him Warren.
During high school, Magnuson delivered newspapers and telegrams in Moorhead and in neighboring Fargo, North Dakota, where he met banker Alex Stern and his family. Alex's son Bill, 15 years older than Magnuson, became a lifelong friend. The connection provided Magnuson's introduction into the worlds of business and politics. Although Bill Stern was a prominent North Dakota Republican leader, he supported Magnuson's decision to enter politics in Washington as a Democrat. Stern helped pay Magnuson's way when he attended college in North Dakota, and aided his move to Seattle.
Move to Seattle
Why Magnuson left the Midwest for Washington is unknown, although romance played a role, as he followed a high school sweetheart. Magnuson enrolled at the University of Washington on October 2, 1925. He completed his undergraduate degree the following year and entered the UW School of Law. While in school, Magnuson worked delivering ice as a member of the Teamsters Union organized by legendary labor leader Dave Beck. Magnuson's Teamster connection proved advantageous in Democratic Party politics, and Magnuson and Beck became close allies.
Magnuson began his political career under the guidance of Scott Bullitt, a Democratic leader who ran for governor in 1928. (Bullitt was the husband of Dorothy Bullitt, who after his untimely death in 1932 founded and ran King Broadcasting Company.) Magnuson campaigned across the state for Bullitt and for presidential candidate Al Smith, both of whom lost. Also in 1928 Magnuson married for the first time, wedding Peggins Maddieux, the "Miss Seattle" of 1927. Magnuson was not ready for monogamy and the couple soon separated, divorcing in 1935.
State Legislator, County Prosecutor
After graduating from law school in 1929, Magnuson landed a job as the secretary (director) of the Seattle Municipal League, which enabled him to establish close relationships with Seattle business and civic leaders, many of them Republicans. He first ran for office in 1932, winning a state House of Representatives seat from Seattle. Magnuson joined a tide of fellow Democrats in Olympia as the party reversed the long-standing Republican dominance in state offices.
Magnuson formed close alliances with other emerging Democratic leaders, especially newly elected Senator Homer T. Bone (1883-1970) and his campaign manager Saul Haas (1896-1972). Following Scott Bullitt's death, Bone and Haas became the most important influences in Magnuson's early career. Bone was a pragmatic populist known as the "father of public power," a cause that Magnuson also embraced. Haas, a newspaperman and political activist, played an important role in Magnuson's early campaigns and became a good friend. With Magnuson as an investor, Haas founded KIRO radio in 1935 and went on to a prominent career in radio and television.
In his single term in the state legislature, Magnuson demonstrated the legislative skill he later used in the U.S. Senate. He supervised passage of a bill creating a $10 million bond issue to hire unemployed workers on public works projects -- one of the nation's first unemployment relief acts.
An unapologetic "wet" like his mentor Scott Bullitt, he was also a leader in the 1932 repeal of state laws prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol. Washington had adopted Prohibition in 1914, five years before the nation went dry with passage of the Volstead Act and ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Magnuson was elected as a delegate to the 1933 state constitutional convention that approved the 21st Amendment and voided the Volstead act, and he supported legislation to establish the public alcohol monopoly of the Washington State Liquor Control Board.
As throughout his career, Magnuson was careful not to neglect the interests of his businessmen friends. He got the legislature to pass a bill that authorized pari-mutuel betting on horse racing, paving the way for his good friends Joe Gottstein and Bill Edris to establish Longacres Race Track. Magnuson also participated in the establishment of a major national corporation, serving as a lawyer and lobbyist for Northwest Airlines, which Bill Stern and another Fargo businessman, Croil Hunter, were organizing.
From the Legislature, Magnuson moved on to become King County Prosecutor, winning a post that had long been held by Republicans, with the support of his Seattle business contacts including prominent Republicans. He served only two years, 1934-1936, before another opportunity arose.
On to Congress
Marion Zioncheck (1901-1936), a law school colleague of Magnuson's who had held Washington's First District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1932, was showing signs of serious mental instability. With Zioncheck vacillating on whether to run again, Magnuson entered the race. Two days later Zioncheck announced he would not seek re-election; within the week he committed suicide by jumping from his office window. Magnuson likely felt some guilt; he delivered an emotional speech in his friend's memory. With strong union backing, Magnuson won the endorsement of the Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF), a left-wing alliance of liberal Democrats and organized labor that included many Communist Party members. At the other end of the political spectrum, his campaign was aided by much of Seattle's conservative business establishment. Supported by left and right, Magnuson easily won the Democratic primary and the general election.
Magnuson won assignment to the Naval Affairs Committee, where he secured millions of dollars in appropriations for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, at the time the state's largest employer. Magnuson served eight years in the House, easily winning reelection in 1938, 1940, and 1942. In that time, he sponsored bills that created the National Cancer Institute and the Alaska International Highway Commission. During World War II, Magnuson served for several months on the aircraft carrier Enterprise, seeing heavy combat in the Pacific until President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1881-1945) ordered congressmen to return from active duty.
While serving in the House, and for much of his subsequent Senate career, Magnuson combined hard work and legislative accomplishment with a flamboyant bachelor (some said playboy) lifestyle. He was known for his hard drinking, which rarely seemed to affect him. He frequented racetracks and poker games. He lived in first-class hotels, the Olympic in Seattle and the Shoreham in Washington, D.C., and spent time in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and New York City. And he enjoyed the company of many women. He had a serious 15-year, although non-exclusive, relationship with nightclub singer and B-movie actress Carol Parker, and was linked romantically, and in newspaper gossip columns, with various other Hollywood starlets. It was not until the late 1950s that he began to settle down with a single companion. Magnuson met Seattle native Jermaine Peralta, a widow with a young daughter, at the Olympic Hotel, where she worked in a jewelry store. They soon became constant companions and married in 1964.
Senator Magnuson
By 1944, Representative Magnuson was one of the leading Democratic politicians in Washington state. When Roosevelt appointed Magnuson's mentor Senator Homer Bone to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Magnuson ran for the open Senate seat. He defeated Republican Harry P. Cain (1906-1979), who won the Republican nomination while on active duty as a paratrooper in Europe. Cain originally entered politics as the liberal Democratic mayor of Tacoma. He enlisted when the U.S. entered the war and remained on duty while running against Magnuson. Bone waited until Magnuson won the election, then resigned his seat before his term ended so that Magnuson could be appointed ahead of other newly elected senators and gain crucial seniority.
In his 36 years in the Senate, Magnuson achieved a record of legislative accomplishment matched by few who served in that body. He did so while rarely drawing attention to himself. Although a fixture in Washington state politics, he was never a household name nationally. Unlike Senators who sought national headlines and higher office, Magnuson's greatest ambition was to be a power in the Senate. He succeeded in part because his long tenure came during an era when seniority and chairing committees carried enormous power. Magnuson chaired the Commerce Committee for many years, and was a key member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which he eventually chaired.
It was Magnuson's personality, however, that was key to his remarkable ability to move legislation smoothly through the often-contentious Senate. Unlike many politicians, he lived by the rule "Never hold a grudge" (Scates, 6) -- today's opponent could be a needed vote tomorrow. His Senate colleague Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005) said in 1971, "Maggie is the most loved man in the Senate" (Scates, 217). Magnuson sought results, not attention; he was, in terms that were often attributed but probably not original to him, a Senate "work horse," not a "show horse." He explained his success by saying, "If you want to get something done, give someone else the credit" (Memorial Services, 3).
Magnuson's power in Washington, D.C., was enhanced by his close friendships with many of the eight presidents he served under. He regularly played poker with Roosevelt and his successor, Harry S. Truman (1884-1972). The night before John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was inaugurated, Magnuson was the only guest of the newly elected president and his family -- neither man revealed what they discussed. Magnuson was closest to Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973). They were friends and allies from the time they served together on the House Naval Affairs Committee. Even after Johnson became president, Magnuson addressed him as "Lyndon," and Johnson took time from his presidential duties to be Magnuson's best man at his 1964 wedding.
With his Senate legislation, Magnuson changed the face of Washington state. Even before entering Congress, he supported construction of dams on the Columbia River to provide both public hydroelectric power and water to irrigate the fertile but arid Columbia Basin. By 1954, thanks in large part to Magnuson's work in the Senate, there were eight federally subsidized dams on the Columbia. Magnuson was instrumental in having the route of Interstate-82 shifted closer to the Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco, in getting interstate highway spurs built to the Tri-cities and to downtown Tacoma, and in obtaining federal highway funds for roads serving the submarine base that Henry Jackson convinced the Pentagon to locate at Bangor on the Kitsap Peninsula.
Washington's One-Two Punch: Maggie and Scoop
Magnuson and Jackson, who served together for 28 years from Jackson's election in 1952 to Magnuson's defeat in 1980, gave their state one of the most powerful Senate duos in history. Significant differences in personality and interests precluded a close friendship, but the colleagues shared a dedication to serving their constituents. "Scoop and Maggie," as they were known, brought a steady stream of contracts for leading state employers, especially Boeing. While Jackson was labeled, often derisively, the "Senator from Boeing," Magnuson also played a key role on the aircraft maker's behalf. Ironically, one of Scoop and Maggie's highest profile battles for Boeing ended in one of their few major defeats, when the Senate in 1971 narrowly defeated funding for the controversial supersonic transport (SST).
In the 1970s, when Magnuson was at the height of his influence on the Appropriations Committee, Vice President Walter Mondale (b. 1928) said:
When Victor Steinbrueck won passage of the 1971 initiative preserving Seattle's Pike Place Market, Magnuson, who enjoyed the Market's eclectic mix of vendors and humanity, was able to direct some $20 million in Housing and Urban Development appropriations to renovating Market facilities. The 1978 accident in which a freighter rammed the West Seattle Bridge provided him an opportunity to fund a new bridge, which city officials had long wanted, from the federal bridge replacement fund. In his last year in office, Magnuson garnered nearly $1 billion in emergency disaster relief following the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
Funding Health Care and Research
Magnuson's efforts were not limited to Washington state -- they affected the lives of all Americans. Following the National Cancer Institute bill he introduced in the House, Magnuson in 1948 sponsored Senate legislation creating a National Health Institute. This formed the core of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), now the world's largest medical research facilities, due in large part to the millions in federal appropriations Magnuson sponsored. At the urging of physician William Hutchinson, he launched "the war on cancer" in the mid-1960s and secured funding to establish the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, named for William's brother, a popular Seattle Rainiers baseball star who died of cancer in 1964.
Among other significant health care legislation Magnuson sponsored was the 1970 bill creating the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), which provided funds for doctors to serve communities lacking medical care. Enactment of the NHSC bill is the subject of The Dance of Legislation, a revealing inside account by Eric Redman, who worked on the bill as a young Magnuson staffer.
Protecting Consumers
Along with health care, Magnuson is identified with consumer protection, a cause he embraced following his near-defeat in the 1962 election. Magnuson won his first re-election campaign in 1950 and in 1956 he crushed Governor Arthur Langlie, who denounced Magnuson's lifestyle. However, in 1962, without Irv Hoff, the politically astute aide who had masterminded the 1956 campaign, Magnuson barely outpolled Republican Dick Christensen, a right-wing minister and political newcomer.
The close call shook Magnuson; it also inspired his young staffer Gerald "Jerry" Grinstein to come up with an idea to revitalize Magnuson's image: legislation to protect consumers. At the time, Ralph Nader, who would soon become the leading consumer advocate, had not appeared on the national stage, and consumer protection barely registered as a political issue. According to Magnuson's biographer, Grinstein's idea came from a New Yorker article. Magnuson readily adopted the idea. He recruited a new generation of energetic young staffers to develop legislation, many of whom went on to prominent political careers of their own, including Congressman Norm Dicks and King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng (1938-2007). The lead role on consumer protection went to Mike Pertschuk, Grinstein's Yale classmate, who became chief counsel to the Commerce Committee. Pertschuk established an alliance between Magnuson and Nader and his crusading Nader's Raiders, who were actively exposing corporate abuses.
With the support of his staff and Nader's volunteers, along with Senate allies like Phil Hart and Frank Moss as well as Jackson, Magnuson and the Commerce Committee produced a dramatic tide of consumer protection and public interest legislation that included the Safe Drinking Water Act, Fair Credit Advertising Act, Door to Door Sales Act, and laws that required warnings on cigarettes, regulated automobile safety, required manufacturers to live up to the promises in their warranties, and set standards for children's toys. The Flammable Fabrics Act, conceived and promoted by Magnuson's Seattle constituent and unofficial health care adviser Dr. Abe Bergman, then director of outpatient services at Children's Hospital (who also conceived the NHSC), protected children by requiring that sleepwear be flame resistant. Most far-reaching and controversial of the bills that Magnuson guided through the Commerce Committee was Senator Hart's Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, which originated the requirement that all food products be accurately labeled with their ingredients and quantity.
Opening China
The focus on consumer protection did not reduce Magnuson's efforts in other areas. He shepherded through a deeply divided Congress the most controversial section of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- Title II, which outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants, transportation facilities, and theaters. Magnuson played a major role in passage of many other laws, including those that established public television, gave 18-year-olds the right to vote, created Amtrak, and reorganized the Northwest's electric power structure.
Magnuson was particularly sensitive to the social and economic dimensions of the Pacific Rim, especially as they affected his home state. After years of effort, Magnuson was able in 1965 to eliminate the "Chinese exclusion" provisions of U.S. immigration laws that dated back to the anti-Chinese agitation in the 1880s. He was also the leading, and at times almost the only, Congressional advocate of normalized relations and trade with the Communist government that gained control of China in 1949. Although "Red China" was suspect in the eyes of most politicians and citizens, Magnuson never wavered. He argued that hundreds of millions of people could not be written off simply because of their form of government, and that trade and contact, not isolation, was the best means to influence China. Magnuson's views were vindicated when Republican President Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994) resumed contact with China in the 1970s.
Protecting the Sound
Magnuson may have derived the most personal satisfaction from his work to protect the marine environment. According to one aide, the senator was a "romantic" about the water (Scates, 179). Of the many bills for which he was responsible, the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act is one of two (the other is the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) that bears his name. The Magnuson Act, which increased the government's ability to manage and control fisheries by extending U.S. territorial waters to a 200-mile limit, helped save the American fishing industry. Magnuson also sponsored laws that imposed safety standards for oil tankers and established the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Two of Magnuson's best-known and most dramatic successes arose from his love of Puget Sound and its creatures. Like many Washingtonians, he was angered when entrepreneurs captured Puget Sound orcas for sale to aquariums. To protect the whales from what he called their "only real enemies -- men who attack them for profit" (Scates, 294), Magnuson and his staff drafted and got Congress to pass the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The Act played a central role in preserving local seal, sea lion, sea otter, and whale populations.
The MMPA also provided Magnuson with a vehicle for single-handedly making Puget Sound off-limits to supertankers. Oil companies proposed to build new ports on Puget Sound where supertankers could unload oil from Alaska into a planned pipeline to the Midwest. While some Washington politicians, notably Governor Dixy Lee Ray, enthusiastically backed the oil port plan, Magnuson warned of the environmental catastrophe that would result if a supertanker lost its cargo in Puget Sound. When the MMPA came up for reauthorization in 1977, he attached an amendment to it that prohibited construction of new oil ports in state waters east of Port Angeles, effectively banning supertankers from those waters. Governor Ray denounced the senator as a "dictator," but the press and many citizens credited him with saving the Sound.
Magnuson won reelection easily in 1968 and 1974, both times defeating Jack Metcalf (1927-2007), a state legislator who years later was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. By 1980, however, the 75-year-old senator was showing the effects of his age and worsening diabetes. Although some current and former aides advised against another campaign, Magnuson loved his job and his wife Jermaine encouraged him to run. He faced a strong challenger in Slade Gorton, the popular state attorney general, who emphasized his relative youth and vigor in contrast to Magnuson. And 1980 was a disastrous year for Democrats across the country, as Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) won a landslide victory over deeply unpopular Jimmy Carter and Republicans took control of the Senate. Magnuson lost decisively.
Enduring Legacy
He did not look back. Unlike many former lawmakers, Magnuson did not hang on in Washington, D.C. Instead, after spending some time in their Palm Springs home, Warren and Jermaine Magnuson moved into a house on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill with sweeping water views. There Magnuson led a productive retirement. Although slowed by his diabetes, which led to amputation of his foot and its replacement with an artificial one, he served on a United Nations committee studying nuclear proliferation, recommended that the state legislature adopt a flat rate income tax to fund schools, and spoke at Henry Jackson's funeral in 1983. Shortly before his death, Magnuson dictated testimony supporting Senator Brock Adams' bill, prompted by the Exxon Valdez disaster, to require that oil tankers be built with double hulls. He died at home on May 20, 1989, at the age of 84.
More than 20 years after he left office and more than a decade after his death, Magnuson's legacy endures throughout Washington and across the country. Among many honors, his achievements are commemorated in Warren G. Magnuson Park, located along Lake Washington on former Sand Point Naval Air Station property that the senator acquired for Seattle, and in the Warren G. Magnuson Health Sciences Center at the University of Washington Medical Center that he did so much to fund. His influence is visible in projects ranging from the Columbia River dams to the restored Pike Place Market. Most of all, Magnuson's legacy lives on in the laws that continue to promote health care, prohibit discrimination, make products safer, protect the marine environment, and much more.
Note: This file was updated on March 16, 2007, and again on May 25, 2007. By Kit Oldham, October 14, 2003
HistoryLink.Org
Warren G. Magnuson ("Maggie" to constituents, Warren to family and friends) represented Washington in the United States Senate longer than anyone else and used his seniority and persuasive skills to enact legislation that profoundly affected many aspects of American life. Adopted at birth, Magnuson grew up in the Midwest and moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. After serving in the state legislature, as King County Prosecutor, and in the U.S. House of Representatives, he was elected to the Senate in 1944, serving six terms (36 years) before his 1980 defeat. Magnuson led the way for major increases in federal funding for health care and research. Before Ralph Nader was a national figure, Magnuson initiated the public interest revolution in Congress with ground-breaking consumer protection legislation. His love for the marine environment of his adopted state led to landmark bills protecting marine mammals, conserving American fisheries, and making Puget Sound off-limits to supertankers. Magnuson and Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson (1912-1983) served together in the Senate from 1952 until 1980, using their legislative skill and seniority to win Washington an unprecedented share of federal funds. Magnuson secured appropriations to build dams and highways that changed the face of the state, launch two World's Fairs, preserve Pike Place Market, replace the West Seattle Bridge, and provide disaster relief after Mt. St. Helens erupted.
Midwest Boyhood
Warren Grant Magnuson was born in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he grew up as the adopted son of William and Emma Magnuson. Magnuson's birth date is given as April 12, 1905, but the actual records of his birth are sealed. He apparently never knew his birth parents, and many accounts state that they died within a month of his birth. However, several people close to Magnuson told his biographer that Warren's natural mother was a North Dakota farm girl working as a waitress who was a friend of Emma Magnuson. The Magnusons, who in addition to Warren adopted a girl named Clara, ran a bar in Moorhead. Warren had a distant relationship with William, who left the family when Warren was a teenager. But he adored his adoptive mother Emma, whom he supported and moved to Bainbridge Island to live near him.
Handsome and likeable, Warren was popular with classmates at Moorhead High School, where he had many girlfriends -- a pattern that continued much of his life. The nickname "Maggie," by which Magnuson became known to generations of Washington politicians and voters, was first used when he quarterbacked the Moorhead football team. Although recognizing it as a badge of popularity, Magnuson never particularly liked the nickname. His family and close friends called him Warren.
During high school, Magnuson delivered newspapers and telegrams in Moorhead and in neighboring Fargo, North Dakota, where he met banker Alex Stern and his family. Alex's son Bill, 15 years older than Magnuson, became a lifelong friend. The connection provided Magnuson's introduction into the worlds of business and politics. Although Bill Stern was a prominent North Dakota Republican leader, he supported Magnuson's decision to enter politics in Washington as a Democrat. Stern helped pay Magnuson's way when he attended college in North Dakota, and aided his move to Seattle.
Move to Seattle
Why Magnuson left the Midwest for Washington is unknown, although romance played a role, as he followed a high school sweetheart. Magnuson enrolled at the University of Washington on October 2, 1925. He completed his undergraduate degree the following year and entered the UW School of Law. While in school, Magnuson worked delivering ice as a member of the Teamsters Union organized by legendary labor leader Dave Beck. Magnuson's Teamster connection proved advantageous in Democratic Party politics, and Magnuson and Beck became close allies.
Magnuson began his political career under the guidance of Scott Bullitt, a Democratic leader who ran for governor in 1928. (Bullitt was the husband of Dorothy Bullitt, who after his untimely death in 1932 founded and ran King Broadcasting Company.) Magnuson campaigned across the state for Bullitt and for presidential candidate Al Smith, both of whom lost. Also in 1928 Magnuson married for the first time, wedding Peggins Maddieux, the "Miss Seattle" of 1927. Magnuson was not ready for monogamy and the couple soon separated, divorcing in 1935.
State Legislator, County Prosecutor
After graduating from law school in 1929, Magnuson landed a job as the secretary (director) of the Seattle Municipal League, which enabled him to establish close relationships with Seattle business and civic leaders, many of them Republicans. He first ran for office in 1932, winning a state House of Representatives seat from Seattle. Magnuson joined a tide of fellow Democrats in Olympia as the party reversed the long-standing Republican dominance in state offices.
Magnuson formed close alliances with other emerging Democratic leaders, especially newly elected Senator Homer T. Bone (1883-1970) and his campaign manager Saul Haas (1896-1972). Following Scott Bullitt's death, Bone and Haas became the most important influences in Magnuson's early career. Bone was a pragmatic populist known as the "father of public power," a cause that Magnuson also embraced. Haas, a newspaperman and political activist, played an important role in Magnuson's early campaigns and became a good friend. With Magnuson as an investor, Haas founded KIRO radio in 1935 and went on to a prominent career in radio and television.
In his single term in the state legislature, Magnuson demonstrated the legislative skill he later used in the U.S. Senate. He supervised passage of a bill creating a $10 million bond issue to hire unemployed workers on public works projects -- one of the nation's first unemployment relief acts.
An unapologetic "wet" like his mentor Scott Bullitt, he was also a leader in the 1932 repeal of state laws prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol. Washington had adopted Prohibition in 1914, five years before the nation went dry with passage of the Volstead Act and ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Magnuson was elected as a delegate to the 1933 state constitutional convention that approved the 21st Amendment and voided the Volstead act, and he supported legislation to establish the public alcohol monopoly of the Washington State Liquor Control Board.
As throughout his career, Magnuson was careful not to neglect the interests of his businessmen friends. He got the legislature to pass a bill that authorized pari-mutuel betting on horse racing, paving the way for his good friends Joe Gottstein and Bill Edris to establish Longacres Race Track. Magnuson also participated in the establishment of a major national corporation, serving as a lawyer and lobbyist for Northwest Airlines, which Bill Stern and another Fargo businessman, Croil Hunter, were organizing.
From the Legislature, Magnuson moved on to become King County Prosecutor, winning a post that had long been held by Republicans, with the support of his Seattle business contacts including prominent Republicans. He served only two years, 1934-1936, before another opportunity arose.
On to Congress
Marion Zioncheck (1901-1936), a law school colleague of Magnuson's who had held Washington's First District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1932, was showing signs of serious mental instability. With Zioncheck vacillating on whether to run again, Magnuson entered the race. Two days later Zioncheck announced he would not seek re-election; within the week he committed suicide by jumping from his office window. Magnuson likely felt some guilt; he delivered an emotional speech in his friend's memory. With strong union backing, Magnuson won the endorsement of the Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF), a left-wing alliance of liberal Democrats and organized labor that included many Communist Party members. At the other end of the political spectrum, his campaign was aided by much of Seattle's conservative business establishment. Supported by left and right, Magnuson easily won the Democratic primary and the general election.
Magnuson won assignment to the Naval Affairs Committee, where he secured millions of dollars in appropriations for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, at the time the state's largest employer. Magnuson served eight years in the House, easily winning reelection in 1938, 1940, and 1942. In that time, he sponsored bills that created the National Cancer Institute and the Alaska International Highway Commission. During World War II, Magnuson served for several months on the aircraft carrier Enterprise, seeing heavy combat in the Pacific until President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1881-1945) ordered congressmen to return from active duty.
While serving in the House, and for much of his subsequent Senate career, Magnuson combined hard work and legislative accomplishment with a flamboyant bachelor (some said playboy) lifestyle. He was known for his hard drinking, which rarely seemed to affect him. He frequented racetracks and poker games. He lived in first-class hotels, the Olympic in Seattle and the Shoreham in Washington, D.C., and spent time in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and New York City. And he enjoyed the company of many women. He had a serious 15-year, although non-exclusive, relationship with nightclub singer and B-movie actress Carol Parker, and was linked romantically, and in newspaper gossip columns, with various other Hollywood starlets. It was not until the late 1950s that he began to settle down with a single companion. Magnuson met Seattle native Jermaine Peralta, a widow with a young daughter, at the Olympic Hotel, where she worked in a jewelry store. They soon became constant companions and married in 1964.
Senator Magnuson
By 1944, Representative Magnuson was one of the leading Democratic politicians in Washington state. When Roosevelt appointed Magnuson's mentor Senator Homer Bone to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Magnuson ran for the open Senate seat. He defeated Republican Harry P. Cain (1906-1979), who won the Republican nomination while on active duty as a paratrooper in Europe. Cain originally entered politics as the liberal Democratic mayor of Tacoma. He enlisted when the U.S. entered the war and remained on duty while running against Magnuson. Bone waited until Magnuson won the election, then resigned his seat before his term ended so that Magnuson could be appointed ahead of other newly elected senators and gain crucial seniority.
In his 36 years in the Senate, Magnuson achieved a record of legislative accomplishment matched by few who served in that body. He did so while rarely drawing attention to himself. Although a fixture in Washington state politics, he was never a household name nationally. Unlike Senators who sought national headlines and higher office, Magnuson's greatest ambition was to be a power in the Senate. He succeeded in part because his long tenure came during an era when seniority and chairing committees carried enormous power. Magnuson chaired the Commerce Committee for many years, and was a key member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which he eventually chaired.
It was Magnuson's personality, however, that was key to his remarkable ability to move legislation smoothly through the often-contentious Senate. Unlike many politicians, he lived by the rule "Never hold a grudge" (Scates, 6) -- today's opponent could be a needed vote tomorrow. His Senate colleague Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005) said in 1971, "Maggie is the most loved man in the Senate" (Scates, 217). Magnuson sought results, not attention; he was, in terms that were often attributed but probably not original to him, a Senate "work horse," not a "show horse." He explained his success by saying, "If you want to get something done, give someone else the credit" (Memorial Services, 3).
Magnuson's power in Washington, D.C., was enhanced by his close friendships with many of the eight presidents he served under. He regularly played poker with Roosevelt and his successor, Harry S. Truman (1884-1972). The night before John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was inaugurated, Magnuson was the only guest of the newly elected president and his family -- neither man revealed what they discussed. Magnuson was closest to Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973). They were friends and allies from the time they served together on the House Naval Affairs Committee. Even after Johnson became president, Magnuson addressed him as "Lyndon," and Johnson took time from his presidential duties to be Magnuson's best man at his 1964 wedding.
With his Senate legislation, Magnuson changed the face of Washington state. Even before entering Congress, he supported construction of dams on the Columbia River to provide both public hydroelectric power and water to irrigate the fertile but arid Columbia Basin. By 1954, thanks in large part to Magnuson's work in the Senate, there were eight federally subsidized dams on the Columbia. Magnuson was instrumental in having the route of Interstate-82 shifted closer to the Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco, in getting interstate highway spurs built to the Tri-cities and to downtown Tacoma, and in obtaining federal highway funds for roads serving the submarine base that Henry Jackson convinced the Pentagon to locate at Bangor on the Kitsap Peninsula.
Washington's One-Two Punch: Maggie and Scoop
Magnuson and Jackson, who served together for 28 years from Jackson's election in 1952 to Magnuson's defeat in 1980, gave their state one of the most powerful Senate duos in history. Significant differences in personality and interests precluded a close friendship, but the colleagues shared a dedication to serving their constituents. "Scoop and Maggie," as they were known, brought a steady stream of contracts for leading state employers, especially Boeing. While Jackson was labeled, often derisively, the "Senator from Boeing," Magnuson also played a key role on the aircraft maker's behalf. Ironically, one of Scoop and Maggie's highest profile battles for Boeing ended in one of their few major defeats, when the Senate in 1971 narrowly defeated funding for the controversial supersonic transport (SST).
In the 1970s, when Magnuson was at the height of his influence on the Appropriations Committee, Vice President Walter Mondale (b. 1928) said:
"He is scrupulously fair with federal funds; one half for Washington state, one half for the rest of the country" (Scates, 324).An exaggeration, but while Magnuson and Jackson were in office, Washington consistently got more than its share of federal funds. For years the University of Washington was one of the top recipients of federal research grants. Magnuson secured federal funds for two World's Fairs in Washington -- 1962 in Seattle and 1974 in Spokane. And he arranged for generous matching funds for Seattle's proposed Forward Thrust rail transit systems (although local bonds failed at the polls in 1968 and 1970), and for Metro Transit after its creation in 1972.
When Victor Steinbrueck won passage of the 1971 initiative preserving Seattle's Pike Place Market, Magnuson, who enjoyed the Market's eclectic mix of vendors and humanity, was able to direct some $20 million in Housing and Urban Development appropriations to renovating Market facilities. The 1978 accident in which a freighter rammed the West Seattle Bridge provided him an opportunity to fund a new bridge, which city officials had long wanted, from the federal bridge replacement fund. In his last year in office, Magnuson garnered nearly $1 billion in emergency disaster relief following the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
Funding Health Care and Research
Magnuson's efforts were not limited to Washington state -- they affected the lives of all Americans. Following the National Cancer Institute bill he introduced in the House, Magnuson in 1948 sponsored Senate legislation creating a National Health Institute. This formed the core of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), now the world's largest medical research facilities, due in large part to the millions in federal appropriations Magnuson sponsored. At the urging of physician William Hutchinson, he launched "the war on cancer" in the mid-1960s and secured funding to establish the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, named for William's brother, a popular Seattle Rainiers baseball star who died of cancer in 1964.
Among other significant health care legislation Magnuson sponsored was the 1970 bill creating the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), which provided funds for doctors to serve communities lacking medical care. Enactment of the NHSC bill is the subject of The Dance of Legislation, a revealing inside account by Eric Redman, who worked on the bill as a young Magnuson staffer.
Protecting Consumers
Along with health care, Magnuson is identified with consumer protection, a cause he embraced following his near-defeat in the 1962 election. Magnuson won his first re-election campaign in 1950 and in 1956 he crushed Governor Arthur Langlie, who denounced Magnuson's lifestyle. However, in 1962, without Irv Hoff, the politically astute aide who had masterminded the 1956 campaign, Magnuson barely outpolled Republican Dick Christensen, a right-wing minister and political newcomer.
The close call shook Magnuson; it also inspired his young staffer Gerald "Jerry" Grinstein to come up with an idea to revitalize Magnuson's image: legislation to protect consumers. At the time, Ralph Nader, who would soon become the leading consumer advocate, had not appeared on the national stage, and consumer protection barely registered as a political issue. According to Magnuson's biographer, Grinstein's idea came from a New Yorker article. Magnuson readily adopted the idea. He recruited a new generation of energetic young staffers to develop legislation, many of whom went on to prominent political careers of their own, including Congressman Norm Dicks and King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng (1938-2007). The lead role on consumer protection went to Mike Pertschuk, Grinstein's Yale classmate, who became chief counsel to the Commerce Committee. Pertschuk established an alliance between Magnuson and Nader and his crusading Nader's Raiders, who were actively exposing corporate abuses.
With the support of his staff and Nader's volunteers, along with Senate allies like Phil Hart and Frank Moss as well as Jackson, Magnuson and the Commerce Committee produced a dramatic tide of consumer protection and public interest legislation that included the Safe Drinking Water Act, Fair Credit Advertising Act, Door to Door Sales Act, and laws that required warnings on cigarettes, regulated automobile safety, required manufacturers to live up to the promises in their warranties, and set standards for children's toys. The Flammable Fabrics Act, conceived and promoted by Magnuson's Seattle constituent and unofficial health care adviser Dr. Abe Bergman, then director of outpatient services at Children's Hospital (who also conceived the NHSC), protected children by requiring that sleepwear be flame resistant. Most far-reaching and controversial of the bills that Magnuson guided through the Commerce Committee was Senator Hart's Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, which originated the requirement that all food products be accurately labeled with their ingredients and quantity.
Opening China
The focus on consumer protection did not reduce Magnuson's efforts in other areas. He shepherded through a deeply divided Congress the most controversial section of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- Title II, which outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants, transportation facilities, and theaters. Magnuson played a major role in passage of many other laws, including those that established public television, gave 18-year-olds the right to vote, created Amtrak, and reorganized the Northwest's electric power structure.
Magnuson was particularly sensitive to the social and economic dimensions of the Pacific Rim, especially as they affected his home state. After years of effort, Magnuson was able in 1965 to eliminate the "Chinese exclusion" provisions of U.S. immigration laws that dated back to the anti-Chinese agitation in the 1880s. He was also the leading, and at times almost the only, Congressional advocate of normalized relations and trade with the Communist government that gained control of China in 1949. Although "Red China" was suspect in the eyes of most politicians and citizens, Magnuson never wavered. He argued that hundreds of millions of people could not be written off simply because of their form of government, and that trade and contact, not isolation, was the best means to influence China. Magnuson's views were vindicated when Republican President Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994) resumed contact with China in the 1970s.
Protecting the Sound
Magnuson may have derived the most personal satisfaction from his work to protect the marine environment. According to one aide, the senator was a "romantic" about the water (Scates, 179). Of the many bills for which he was responsible, the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act is one of two (the other is the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) that bears his name. The Magnuson Act, which increased the government's ability to manage and control fisheries by extending U.S. territorial waters to a 200-mile limit, helped save the American fishing industry. Magnuson also sponsored laws that imposed safety standards for oil tankers and established the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Two of Magnuson's best-known and most dramatic successes arose from his love of Puget Sound and its creatures. Like many Washingtonians, he was angered when entrepreneurs captured Puget Sound orcas for sale to aquariums. To protect the whales from what he called their "only real enemies -- men who attack them for profit" (Scates, 294), Magnuson and his staff drafted and got Congress to pass the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The Act played a central role in preserving local seal, sea lion, sea otter, and whale populations.
The MMPA also provided Magnuson with a vehicle for single-handedly making Puget Sound off-limits to supertankers. Oil companies proposed to build new ports on Puget Sound where supertankers could unload oil from Alaska into a planned pipeline to the Midwest. While some Washington politicians, notably Governor Dixy Lee Ray, enthusiastically backed the oil port plan, Magnuson warned of the environmental catastrophe that would result if a supertanker lost its cargo in Puget Sound. When the MMPA came up for reauthorization in 1977, he attached an amendment to it that prohibited construction of new oil ports in state waters east of Port Angeles, effectively banning supertankers from those waters. Governor Ray denounced the senator as a "dictator," but the press and many citizens credited him with saving the Sound.
Magnuson won reelection easily in 1968 and 1974, both times defeating Jack Metcalf (1927-2007), a state legislator who years later was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. By 1980, however, the 75-year-old senator was showing the effects of his age and worsening diabetes. Although some current and former aides advised against another campaign, Magnuson loved his job and his wife Jermaine encouraged him to run. He faced a strong challenger in Slade Gorton, the popular state attorney general, who emphasized his relative youth and vigor in contrast to Magnuson. And 1980 was a disastrous year for Democrats across the country, as Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) won a landslide victory over deeply unpopular Jimmy Carter and Republicans took control of the Senate. Magnuson lost decisively.
Enduring Legacy
He did not look back. Unlike many former lawmakers, Magnuson did not hang on in Washington, D.C. Instead, after spending some time in their Palm Springs home, Warren and Jermaine Magnuson moved into a house on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill with sweeping water views. There Magnuson led a productive retirement. Although slowed by his diabetes, which led to amputation of his foot and its replacement with an artificial one, he served on a United Nations committee studying nuclear proliferation, recommended that the state legislature adopt a flat rate income tax to fund schools, and spoke at Henry Jackson's funeral in 1983. Shortly before his death, Magnuson dictated testimony supporting Senator Brock Adams' bill, prompted by the Exxon Valdez disaster, to require that oil tankers be built with double hulls. He died at home on May 20, 1989, at the age of 84.
More than 20 years after he left office and more than a decade after his death, Magnuson's legacy endures throughout Washington and across the country. Among many honors, his achievements are commemorated in Warren G. Magnuson Park, located along Lake Washington on former Sand Point Naval Air Station property that the senator acquired for Seattle, and in the Warren G. Magnuson Health Sciences Center at the University of Washington Medical Center that he did so much to fund. His influence is visible in projects ranging from the Columbia River dams to the restored Pike Place Market. Most of all, Magnuson's legacy lives on in the laws that continue to promote health care, prohibit discrimination, make products safer, protect the marine environment, and much more.
Sources:
Shelby Scates, Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997); Scates, "Magnuson, U.S. Sen. Warren G., and Relations with the People's Republic of China," Washington HistoryLink.org Cyberpedia Library (www.historylink.org); Memorial Services Held in the Congress of the United States, Together With Tributes Presented in Eulogy of Warren G. Magnuson, Late a Senator From Washington (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990); Eric Redman, The Dance of Legislation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973); Robert G. Kaufman, Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 206-07; Norman H. Clark, The Dry Years, Prohibition & Social Change in Washington (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 236-237; Frank Chesley, "Saul Haas," HistoryLink Cyperpedia Library (www.historylink.org).Note: This file was updated on March 16, 2007, and again on May 25, 2007. By Kit Oldham, October 14, 2003
HistoryLink.Org
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Father of Public Power-Homer Bone
This is the first post in a series dedicated to exploring the history of the Democratic Party locally and in Washington State and presenting some of the biographies of Washington Democrats. Several photos of Judge Bone can be found on the original history link page. As Kittitas Democrats we are particularly aware of the continuing role public power and private power company regulation plays in political discourse regarding land use, relicensing of dams, energy site development and many other issues.
From HistoryLink.Org:
Homer T. Bone, a Democratic senator representing Washington in the United States Congress (1932-1944) and later a Judge in the United States Ninth Circuit of Appeals (1944-1956), has been dubbed the Pacific Northwest’s "father of public power." Bone was a pragmatic populist who vociferously championed public ownership of utilities while damning big business, especially the utility trusts. He was ousted from the Socialist Party in 1916 for being too moderate and later forayed into politics under the Republican and Farmer-Labor banners before alighting as a Democrat. Among Democratic Party loyalists, suspicions of apostasy would dog him his entire career. As a senator, he pushed the bills to build the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams as well as that creating the National Cancer Institute. He was progenitor of a coterie of progressive politicians who would further nourish his vision and indelibly flavor Washington state’s socio-political character for decades. Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989) was his most notable political descendent.
Hardscrabble Childhood
Homer Bone was born in Franklin, Indiana, on January 25, 1883, to James M. and Margaret Bone, and he came by his populism and abhorrence of war naturally. His father had never really recovered from a brutal imprisonment during the Civil War and his mother’s first husband had died in battle. Homer’s middle name came from a prison mate of his father. His ancestors had served and suffered as well, he recalled, in wars going back to the American Revolution.
The Bones, left destitute by the Panic of 1893, moved to Tacoma in 1899 to seek a better life. The family survived on whatever young Homer could earn and his father’s $20 a month pension. Homer’s formal education had ended in the eighth grade and he worked variously in a grocery store, a furniture store, and for the postal service. But he was ambitious and came from a family of some accomplishment in Indiana politics. A cousin, Scott C. Bone, had been editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and was Alaska’s territorial governor from 1921 to 1925. (It was Governor Bone who ordered a relay of dog teams to transport diphtheria antitoxin to Nome in 1925 to thwart a threatened epidemic, a mission now memorialized by the Iditarod sled dog race.)
Self-educated Lawyer
Bone studied law at night and passed the bar in 1911, at age 28. Like many self-educated men, he remained a voracious reader all his life. He specialized in labor law, became a special deputy prosecuting attorney in 1912, served as corporation counsel for the Port of Tacoma from 1918 to 1932, and as attorney for Tacoma City Light.
On January 25, 1919, his birthday, he married Blanche Slye, a 1918 University of Washington journalism graduate whose first interview subject was the longshoremen’s union attorney, Homer T. Bone. A son, Homer T. Bone Jr., was born in 1922.
Homer Bone was a "Debsian socialist" -- a rather mainstream type of socialist not unusual for the day, a member of the Socialist Party led by Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926). Bone first discovered the public-private power battle in 1908. He recalled later in a letter to a researcher: "I wonder what would have happened to me had I not been so vigorously stirred by the attacks on the patriotism of men whose only purpose was to have their city produce power for its own municipal system."
Bone became politically active, running unsuccessfully for prosecuting attorney and for mayor of Tacoma as a Socialist at a time when conservative Republicans firmly controlled the state. He ran for the Third District congressional seat as a Farmer-Labor candidate, but lost in the 1920 Warren G. Harding (1865-1923) landslide.
He was slight -- five feet, six inches tall and 135 pounds -- but his impassioned oratory and tart tongue quickly established him as the major Pacific Northwest voice for public power. He allied himself with other public-power visionaries of the time, among them Rufus Woods (1878-1950), publisher of The Wenatchee World who dreamed of harnessing the Columbia River, and James Delmage Ross (1872-1939), the "father of Seattle City Light." His opponents called him a radical, a demagogue, and a Bolshevik, among other epithets.
Stormy Start
He finally won his state House seat in 1922 as a Farmer-Labor candidate, though his district was strongly conservative. He immediately submitted the "Bone Bill," which would give municipal electrical utilities -- such as Seattle’s and Tacoma’s -- the power to sell their service beyond the city limits. The two-month session, one of the stormier in legislative history, escalated the simmering public vs. private power battle and catapulted Bone into the political spotlight. "The power lobbyists were as thick as bees around a hive," Bone recalled. The Bone Bill did not pass until 1933.
Bone also served as counsel for the state Grange ("a virile and progressive group," Bone said) and, in 1928, helped the organization draft the Grange Bill, which would give counties the power to create public utility districts. It also gave PUDs the right of eminent domain over private power properties. The 1929 Legislature declined to take action on the bill and it was submitted to voters at the November 4, 1930, state general election. It passed (with 152,487 votes in favor and 130,901 against), becoming Chapter 1, Laws of 1931, which is codified as RCW Title 54, Public Utility Districts.
Bone again ran for Congress in 1928, as a Republican, and again lost.
Senator Homer T. Bone
For the third time, Bone ran for Congress in 1932, now as a Democrat, and easily won a U.S. Senate seat in the Democratic landslide led by President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt (1881-1945). Bone’s campaign was managed by Saul Haas (1896-1972), who became a power in state Democratic Party politics, a key member of the Bone-Magnuson circle, and a broadcast magnate with KIRO, Inc.
At this time the Depression was approaching bottom and Bone easily ousted Wesley Jones, who had held the seat since 1908. During the campaign, Bone hammered away at the numbers, particularly Tacoma’s, which boasted the lowest electricity rates in the nation. He told a Wenatchee audience on October 10 that Tacoma "sells electricity for less than any other city in America and yet makes a profit." If Tacoma charged as much as the private utilities, he said, "there would be no need for taxes" (Seattle P-I).
The global arms race also was an issue and Bone flashed his isolationist credentials early. "Keep to America but Keep America Safe" was a slogan he offered during an October 1932 campaign speech in Port Angeles. He charged that the Olympic Peninsula was "glaringly unprotected" in the event of war in the Pacific.
Newspapers of that day made no pretense of fairness or balance and most of the state’s papers, including The Seattle Times, viewed public power as Socialist nonsense and Bone as a radical or worse. The Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Scripps papers, including the Seattle Star, however, were Bone champions. Two weeks before the election, the P-I ran a gushing, five-part series, "Life Story of Homer T. Bone, Career Marked By Battles for People," accompanied by sidebars liberally quoting the candidate on the campaign issues.
Saul Haas was 34 when he managed Bone’s campaign, but already had established a controversial reputation, particularly as managing editor of the Seattle Union Record. Haas spent 18 months in Washington, D.C., as Bone’s administrative assistant, but made time to explore the Federal Radio Commission, further grounding himself for a future in broadcasting. Both Bone and Magnuson quickly learned to use radio, the new communications phenomenon.
Roosevelt, with an overwhelming mandate and a compliant Congress, immediately launched his New Deal, a massive, progressive effort to lift the country out of the worst Depression in its history. The package included banking reform, agricultural reform, jobless pay, Social Security, and huge public works projects such as the Columbia River dams and the Tennessee Valley Authority to create jobs and wealth.
Bone became chair of the Senate Committee on Patents, a low-profile post, but easily shifted his public power fight to the national stage, with the enthusiastic support of Roosevelt. Bone saw the Columbia River as a mighty public resource and was instrumental in promoting construction of Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams. Bone introduced the Bonneville bill soon after he took office and construction on Bonneville Dam, as well as the Grand Coulee Dam, began in 1933.
While acknowledging his role in public power, he was most proud of his bill creating the National Cancer Institute, first introduced in 1937 and another revolutionary direction for government.
Bone and Boeing
Bone was an isolationist, though not a pacifist. He began exercising his anti-military muscle on the Senate floor in 1934, lambasting early manifestations of the military-industrial complex and citing Boeing by name.
Boeing had yet to become a local sacred cow, but was the state’s largest employer, with 1,000 on its payroll. Consistent with his position on public power, Bone wanted military wares produced by government-owned facilities to thwart profiteering. He charged that Boeing had made 68 percent profit on Navy business and 90 percent on Army contracts. He also railed against Boeing’s new $25,000-a-year executive hired to hustle federal business. The Seattle press, however, was now supporting military preparedness and ignored Bone’s polemics.
Bone also supported an amendment proposed by Rep. Louis L. Ludlow (1873-1950), D-Ind., that mandated a popular referendum before the United States could go to war, but it was opposed by Roosevelt and defeated in 1938 (Kirkendall).
Bone's convictions earned him a seat on the Senate Munitions Investigating Committee, chaired by Gerald Nye (1892-1971), a progressive North Dakota Republican and an America First supporter. (The America First Committee -- now the America First Party -- was generally nationalist, anti-war, anti-imperialist, populist, and isolationist.) The munitions committee accused the nation's bankers (mostly Morgan) and munitions industry (mostly DuPont) of war profiteering and lobbying the United States into World War I. But after a two-year investigation, the committee's conclusions about profiteering were lost in the growing war fever as World War II approached.
A curious footnote: The committee’s legal assistant was Alger Hiss (1904-1996), a bureaucrat who would rise through the ranks and become one of the Cold War’s more controversial figures, accused of spying for the Soviet Union.
New Deal Woes
By 1937, Roosevelt’s New Deal juggernaut was slowed by conservative courts and an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, including some isolationist Democrats. Homer T. Bone was among them and Harold Ickes (1874-1952), Roosevelt’s interior secretary, had lost faith in him. Bone did not fully support the president’s controversial effort to reorganize the federal government and the Supreme Court. Ickes and Bone also disagreed over management of Bonneville Dam, but it was the failure of "[c]ertain so-called liberals" to fully support Roosevelt’s government reorganization bill -- what the critics were calling his "court-packing" bill -- that really angered Ickes. He singled out Bone for particular scorn, calling him "a liberal of the very soft variety" (Ickes, 349).
Ickes "was glad to hear" that Roosevelt’s White House also was "looking for a candidate to run against Senator Bone," in the 1938 election, because "he abjectly follows Senator [Burton K.] Wheeler (1882-1975)," one of the most outspoken America Firsters in Congress (Ickes, 416).
The White House apparently didn’t find a challenger because in 1938 Bone won re-election easily. Nationally syndicated columnist Drew Pearson praised Bone’s campaign, especially the "astute organization work of Saul Haas," and noted that Haas and Bone were inseparable.
Power Struggles
The public vs. private power battle, meanwhile, had not abated. In 1937, the offices of Bone and Rep. Martin Smith, D-Wa., had submitted bills that would create a permanent Columbia Power Authority. Both bills gave the organization the authority to buy private power companies. In 1940, private power forces in Washington state offered Initiative 139, which sought a citizen vote whenever a public utility district offered revenue bonds under the Grange Bill, on the assumption that such bonds were evidence of public debt which must be repaid by taxes.
The campaign was fronted by the "Let the People Vote League," but in a letter to a constituent, Bone said, "This league is a sham front for private power companies -- nothing else." On May 22, 1940, Bone even interrupted Senate debate on the defense program to declare that, "At this very moment, the federal power program in Washington state was confronted with a cold and deliberate attack."
The initiative lost, but another battle followed in late 1940 over purchase of Puget Sound Power & Light’s Seattle territory under condemnation proceedings allowed in the Bonneville bill. PSP&L (now part of Puget Sound Energy) admitted spending more than $670,000 fighting the effort and the tug of war lasted until 1951, when Seattle City Light bought out the private utility’s Seattle service for $27.8 million. At one point in the debate, Bone asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the "remarkable rise" in the value of Puget preferred stock.
Judge Bone
In 1944, another election was looming, but Bone had broken a hip in 1939 and, despite two operations, was virtually crippled. He was 61, had lost some of his fire, and was considering retirement and returning to Tacoma to practice law. But Roosevelt, despite whatever residual animosity remained from earlier skirmishes, nominated Bone on April 1, 1944, to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Senate unanimously approved the nomination the same day, but Bone delayed resigning from the Senate until November 13 to prevent Republican governor Arthur B. Langlie (1900-1966) from appointing a Republican to the seat. Bone’s heir-apparent, popular, four-term Rep. Warren G. Magnuson, ran for the seat, defeating Harry P. Cain (1906-1979). Langlie was forced to name Magnuson to the seat, which gave him a seniority advantage over Arkansas’ William Fulbright.
Blanche Bone died in San Francisco in 1955. Bone retired from the bench as a full-time judge in 1956, but served intermittently until 1968, when he returned to Tacoma. He died on April 12, 1970, a day when University of Washington students rioted against the Vietnam War. The public-private power battle was no longer front-page news, but war was still making headlines.
Bone was cremated and his ashes interred at Oakwood Cemetery, beside the remains of his father and mother. The Seattle Times, one-time Bone nemesis, noted with regret in a eulogistic editorial on March 13, 1970, that "No public power dam in this country ever was named for Homer Truett Bone."
Note: This essay was corrected on September 29, 2009. By Frank Chesley, December 28, 2003
From HistoryLink.Org:
Homer T. Bone, a Democratic senator representing Washington in the United States Congress (1932-1944) and later a Judge in the United States Ninth Circuit of Appeals (1944-1956), has been dubbed the Pacific Northwest’s "father of public power." Bone was a pragmatic populist who vociferously championed public ownership of utilities while damning big business, especially the utility trusts. He was ousted from the Socialist Party in 1916 for being too moderate and later forayed into politics under the Republican and Farmer-Labor banners before alighting as a Democrat. Among Democratic Party loyalists, suspicions of apostasy would dog him his entire career. As a senator, he pushed the bills to build the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams as well as that creating the National Cancer Institute. He was progenitor of a coterie of progressive politicians who would further nourish his vision and indelibly flavor Washington state’s socio-political character for decades. Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989) was his most notable political descendent.
Hardscrabble Childhood
Homer Bone was born in Franklin, Indiana, on January 25, 1883, to James M. and Margaret Bone, and he came by his populism and abhorrence of war naturally. His father had never really recovered from a brutal imprisonment during the Civil War and his mother’s first husband had died in battle. Homer’s middle name came from a prison mate of his father. His ancestors had served and suffered as well, he recalled, in wars going back to the American Revolution.
The Bones, left destitute by the Panic of 1893, moved to Tacoma in 1899 to seek a better life. The family survived on whatever young Homer could earn and his father’s $20 a month pension. Homer’s formal education had ended in the eighth grade and he worked variously in a grocery store, a furniture store, and for the postal service. But he was ambitious and came from a family of some accomplishment in Indiana politics. A cousin, Scott C. Bone, had been editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and was Alaska’s territorial governor from 1921 to 1925. (It was Governor Bone who ordered a relay of dog teams to transport diphtheria antitoxin to Nome in 1925 to thwart a threatened epidemic, a mission now memorialized by the Iditarod sled dog race.)
Self-educated Lawyer
Bone studied law at night and passed the bar in 1911, at age 28. Like many self-educated men, he remained a voracious reader all his life. He specialized in labor law, became a special deputy prosecuting attorney in 1912, served as corporation counsel for the Port of Tacoma from 1918 to 1932, and as attorney for Tacoma City Light.
On January 25, 1919, his birthday, he married Blanche Slye, a 1918 University of Washington journalism graduate whose first interview subject was the longshoremen’s union attorney, Homer T. Bone. A son, Homer T. Bone Jr., was born in 1922.
Homer Bone was a "Debsian socialist" -- a rather mainstream type of socialist not unusual for the day, a member of the Socialist Party led by Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926). Bone first discovered the public-private power battle in 1908. He recalled later in a letter to a researcher: "I wonder what would have happened to me had I not been so vigorously stirred by the attacks on the patriotism of men whose only purpose was to have their city produce power for its own municipal system."
Bone became politically active, running unsuccessfully for prosecuting attorney and for mayor of Tacoma as a Socialist at a time when conservative Republicans firmly controlled the state. He ran for the Third District congressional seat as a Farmer-Labor candidate, but lost in the 1920 Warren G. Harding (1865-1923) landslide.
He was slight -- five feet, six inches tall and 135 pounds -- but his impassioned oratory and tart tongue quickly established him as the major Pacific Northwest voice for public power. He allied himself with other public-power visionaries of the time, among them Rufus Woods (1878-1950), publisher of The Wenatchee World who dreamed of harnessing the Columbia River, and James Delmage Ross (1872-1939), the "father of Seattle City Light." His opponents called him a radical, a demagogue, and a Bolshevik, among other epithets.
Stormy Start
He finally won his state House seat in 1922 as a Farmer-Labor candidate, though his district was strongly conservative. He immediately submitted the "Bone Bill," which would give municipal electrical utilities -- such as Seattle’s and Tacoma’s -- the power to sell their service beyond the city limits. The two-month session, one of the stormier in legislative history, escalated the simmering public vs. private power battle and catapulted Bone into the political spotlight. "The power lobbyists were as thick as bees around a hive," Bone recalled. The Bone Bill did not pass until 1933.
Bone also served as counsel for the state Grange ("a virile and progressive group," Bone said) and, in 1928, helped the organization draft the Grange Bill, which would give counties the power to create public utility districts. It also gave PUDs the right of eminent domain over private power properties. The 1929 Legislature declined to take action on the bill and it was submitted to voters at the November 4, 1930, state general election. It passed (with 152,487 votes in favor and 130,901 against), becoming Chapter 1, Laws of 1931, which is codified as RCW Title 54, Public Utility Districts.
Bone again ran for Congress in 1928, as a Republican, and again lost.
Senator Homer T. Bone
For the third time, Bone ran for Congress in 1932, now as a Democrat, and easily won a U.S. Senate seat in the Democratic landslide led by President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt (1881-1945). Bone’s campaign was managed by Saul Haas (1896-1972), who became a power in state Democratic Party politics, a key member of the Bone-Magnuson circle, and a broadcast magnate with KIRO, Inc.
At this time the Depression was approaching bottom and Bone easily ousted Wesley Jones, who had held the seat since 1908. During the campaign, Bone hammered away at the numbers, particularly Tacoma’s, which boasted the lowest electricity rates in the nation. He told a Wenatchee audience on October 10 that Tacoma "sells electricity for less than any other city in America and yet makes a profit." If Tacoma charged as much as the private utilities, he said, "there would be no need for taxes" (Seattle P-I).
The global arms race also was an issue and Bone flashed his isolationist credentials early. "Keep to America but Keep America Safe" was a slogan he offered during an October 1932 campaign speech in Port Angeles. He charged that the Olympic Peninsula was "glaringly unprotected" in the event of war in the Pacific.
Newspapers of that day made no pretense of fairness or balance and most of the state’s papers, including The Seattle Times, viewed public power as Socialist nonsense and Bone as a radical or worse. The Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Scripps papers, including the Seattle Star, however, were Bone champions. Two weeks before the election, the P-I ran a gushing, five-part series, "Life Story of Homer T. Bone, Career Marked By Battles for People," accompanied by sidebars liberally quoting the candidate on the campaign issues.
Saul Haas was 34 when he managed Bone’s campaign, but already had established a controversial reputation, particularly as managing editor of the Seattle Union Record. Haas spent 18 months in Washington, D.C., as Bone’s administrative assistant, but made time to explore the Federal Radio Commission, further grounding himself for a future in broadcasting. Both Bone and Magnuson quickly learned to use radio, the new communications phenomenon.
Roosevelt, with an overwhelming mandate and a compliant Congress, immediately launched his New Deal, a massive, progressive effort to lift the country out of the worst Depression in its history. The package included banking reform, agricultural reform, jobless pay, Social Security, and huge public works projects such as the Columbia River dams and the Tennessee Valley Authority to create jobs and wealth.
Bone became chair of the Senate Committee on Patents, a low-profile post, but easily shifted his public power fight to the national stage, with the enthusiastic support of Roosevelt. Bone saw the Columbia River as a mighty public resource and was instrumental in promoting construction of Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams. Bone introduced the Bonneville bill soon after he took office and construction on Bonneville Dam, as well as the Grand Coulee Dam, began in 1933.
While acknowledging his role in public power, he was most proud of his bill creating the National Cancer Institute, first introduced in 1937 and another revolutionary direction for government.
Bone and Boeing
Bone was an isolationist, though not a pacifist. He began exercising his anti-military muscle on the Senate floor in 1934, lambasting early manifestations of the military-industrial complex and citing Boeing by name.
Boeing had yet to become a local sacred cow, but was the state’s largest employer, with 1,000 on its payroll. Consistent with his position on public power, Bone wanted military wares produced by government-owned facilities to thwart profiteering. He charged that Boeing had made 68 percent profit on Navy business and 90 percent on Army contracts. He also railed against Boeing’s new $25,000-a-year executive hired to hustle federal business. The Seattle press, however, was now supporting military preparedness and ignored Bone’s polemics.
Bone also supported an amendment proposed by Rep. Louis L. Ludlow (1873-1950), D-Ind., that mandated a popular referendum before the United States could go to war, but it was opposed by Roosevelt and defeated in 1938 (Kirkendall).
Bone's convictions earned him a seat on the Senate Munitions Investigating Committee, chaired by Gerald Nye (1892-1971), a progressive North Dakota Republican and an America First supporter. (The America First Committee -- now the America First Party -- was generally nationalist, anti-war, anti-imperialist, populist, and isolationist.) The munitions committee accused the nation's bankers (mostly Morgan) and munitions industry (mostly DuPont) of war profiteering and lobbying the United States into World War I. But after a two-year investigation, the committee's conclusions about profiteering were lost in the growing war fever as World War II approached.
A curious footnote: The committee’s legal assistant was Alger Hiss (1904-1996), a bureaucrat who would rise through the ranks and become one of the Cold War’s more controversial figures, accused of spying for the Soviet Union.
New Deal Woes
By 1937, Roosevelt’s New Deal juggernaut was slowed by conservative courts and an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, including some isolationist Democrats. Homer T. Bone was among them and Harold Ickes (1874-1952), Roosevelt’s interior secretary, had lost faith in him. Bone did not fully support the president’s controversial effort to reorganize the federal government and the Supreme Court. Ickes and Bone also disagreed over management of Bonneville Dam, but it was the failure of "[c]ertain so-called liberals" to fully support Roosevelt’s government reorganization bill -- what the critics were calling his "court-packing" bill -- that really angered Ickes. He singled out Bone for particular scorn, calling him "a liberal of the very soft variety" (Ickes, 349).
Ickes "was glad to hear" that Roosevelt’s White House also was "looking for a candidate to run against Senator Bone," in the 1938 election, because "he abjectly follows Senator [Burton K.] Wheeler (1882-1975)," one of the most outspoken America Firsters in Congress (Ickes, 416).
The White House apparently didn’t find a challenger because in 1938 Bone won re-election easily. Nationally syndicated columnist Drew Pearson praised Bone’s campaign, especially the "astute organization work of Saul Haas," and noted that Haas and Bone were inseparable.
Power Struggles
The public vs. private power battle, meanwhile, had not abated. In 1937, the offices of Bone and Rep. Martin Smith, D-Wa., had submitted bills that would create a permanent Columbia Power Authority. Both bills gave the organization the authority to buy private power companies. In 1940, private power forces in Washington state offered Initiative 139, which sought a citizen vote whenever a public utility district offered revenue bonds under the Grange Bill, on the assumption that such bonds were evidence of public debt which must be repaid by taxes.
The campaign was fronted by the "Let the People Vote League," but in a letter to a constituent, Bone said, "This league is a sham front for private power companies -- nothing else." On May 22, 1940, Bone even interrupted Senate debate on the defense program to declare that, "At this very moment, the federal power program in Washington state was confronted with a cold and deliberate attack."
The initiative lost, but another battle followed in late 1940 over purchase of Puget Sound Power & Light’s Seattle territory under condemnation proceedings allowed in the Bonneville bill. PSP&L (now part of Puget Sound Energy) admitted spending more than $670,000 fighting the effort and the tug of war lasted until 1951, when Seattle City Light bought out the private utility’s Seattle service for $27.8 million. At one point in the debate, Bone asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the "remarkable rise" in the value of Puget preferred stock.
Judge Bone
In 1944, another election was looming, but Bone had broken a hip in 1939 and, despite two operations, was virtually crippled. He was 61, had lost some of his fire, and was considering retirement and returning to Tacoma to practice law. But Roosevelt, despite whatever residual animosity remained from earlier skirmishes, nominated Bone on April 1, 1944, to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Senate unanimously approved the nomination the same day, but Bone delayed resigning from the Senate until November 13 to prevent Republican governor Arthur B. Langlie (1900-1966) from appointing a Republican to the seat. Bone’s heir-apparent, popular, four-term Rep. Warren G. Magnuson, ran for the seat, defeating Harry P. Cain (1906-1979). Langlie was forced to name Magnuson to the seat, which gave him a seniority advantage over Arkansas’ William Fulbright.
Blanche Bone died in San Francisco in 1955. Bone retired from the bench as a full-time judge in 1956, but served intermittently until 1968, when he returned to Tacoma. He died on April 12, 1970, a day when University of Washington students rioted against the Vietnam War. The public-private power battle was no longer front-page news, but war was still making headlines.
Bone was cremated and his ashes interred at Oakwood Cemetery, beside the remains of his father and mother. The Seattle Times, one-time Bone nemesis, noted with regret in a eulogistic editorial on March 13, 1970, that "No public power dam in this country ever was named for Homer Truett Bone."
Sources:
Harold Ickes, The Secret Diaries of Harold Ickes, Vol. II, The Inside Struggle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953-54); Shelby Scates, Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997); Homer T. Bone Papers, Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, Washington; Richard S. Kirkendall, “Two Senators & The Boeing Company,” Columbia, Winter 1997-98; Terry Slatten, "Homer T. Bone, Public Power, and Washington State Progressive Politics in the Mid-1920s," Master’s thesis, University of Washington, 1980; Frank Chesley, Saul Haas (1896-1972) (Seattle: Saul & Dayee G. Haas Foundation, 2001); Kit Oldham, “Magnuson, Warren G. (1905-1989),” HistoryLink Cyberpedia Library (www.historylink.org); Archives of The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.Note: This essay was corrected on September 29, 2009. By Frank Chesley, December 28, 2003
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