A decade after he left office, Republican former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton is back in the political fray, endorsing candidates and speaking out on national security in the Obama administration.
Gorton, still a practicing attorney in Seattle at 82, endorsed state Rep. Jaime Herrera for Congress in early February, predicting confidently that the Camas Republican “will win this election and be the next member of Congress from the 3rd District.”
He was in Vancouver Thursday to endorse Brent Boger, Clark County’s Republican state committeeman and a Vancouver assistant city attorney, in his race for county prosecuting attorney. Gorton spoke at a fundraiser for Boger at the Fort Vancouver National Site that was attended by a who’s who of local GOP officials.
“Brent is running for a very peculiar office,” Gorton told the crowd. His job, if elected, “is to see to it that our common society runs better and that justice is done. … He will truly be a servant of all the people, those who don’t vote for him as well as those who do.”
‘Law is the law’
Boger, one of three candidates in the race, also has been endorsed by Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna.
Veteran deputy prosecuting attorney Tony Golik and criminal defense attorney Jeff Sowder, both Democrats, are the other candidates.
Gorton, a former three-term Washington attorney general, said in an interview that the fact that Boger has no experience as a criminal prosecutor is a nonissue for him.
“The law is the law,” Gorton said. As attorney general, he said, “I found as I interviewed people for jobs or promotions, what counted was competence and not narrow specialization. Brent’s experience here in the city of Vancouver is impressively broad.”
Boger, who has worked in the city attorney’s office for 11 years, said that if elected he would assign an attorney to focus on public integrity, noting, “We have had problems with small-town local officials who have violated the public trust.”
Gorton served in the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 1987 and again from 1989 until his loss to Democrat Maria Cantwell in 2000. He predicted that 2010 will be a good year for Republicans, and that the GOP has a reasonable chance of gaining control of the U.S. House.
“This is the kind of year when it’s going to be very difficult for a Democrat to defend the status quo to voters,” he said.
Tea Party welcome
He also welcomed the insurgent Tea Party movement into the Republican fold, predicting its members will infuse the party with new momentum.
“I think we have a whole bunch of new people who have interesting new ideas,” he said. “I see them as successors to the Goldwater people and the Reagan people. Our new energy usually comes from the conservative side.”
On other issues, Gorton said he staunchly defends McKenna’s authority to join a multi-state constitutional challenge of the new health care reform law, even over the objections of Gov. Chris Gregoire.
“There’s a good valid reason for the challenge, and he didn’t need the permission of the governor,” Gorton said.
Safety a concern
Gorton served on the 9/11 Commission and has been critical in the past of the Bush administration’s failure to follow some of the panel’s recommendations for reducing the threat of future terrorist attacks.
But he told The Columbian he believes the nation is less safe under President Barack Obama.
“The George W. Bush administration managed this country for seven and a half years without an incident of domestic terror,” Gorton said. The Obama administration, in contrast, has had two serious threats since it took office 15 months ago, he said.
He cited as concerns U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s continuing investigation of CIA agents, which critics say has demoralized the agency, and the failure of the State Department to revoke the visa of the would-be Christmas bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, after his father warned U.S. Embassy officials in Nigeria that his son was a potential security risk.
Like the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11, 2001, the Obama administration has become somewhat complacent, Gorton said.
