So State Sen. Don Benton of Vancouver has suddenly surfaced as the Republican to beat Democrat Patty Murray for the U.S. Senate this fall.
That’ll be the day.
There have to be a lot more people besides me who remember that if it hadn’t been for Benton’s squirreling away $1 million bucks in donations that should have gone into campaigns when he was state party chair in 2000, we might still have Slade Gorton in D.C., not to mention avoided losing legislative majority to the D’s.
Benton wanted to pay cash for an office building in Olympia so he could move party headquarters there from Tukwila after the election, using money Gorton desperately needed in order to compete with millionairess Maria Cantwell.
I remember talking to Gorton’s press secretary, Cynthia Bergman, in September 2000, and telling her it was time for her boss to take off the gloves. He had been playing it cool concentrating on his own accomplishments, which were many, when I thought he could have zeroed in on the fact Cantwell led the fight for the hated (by property owners) Growth Management Act as a state House member.
How, I asked Bergman, is Slade going to handle Maria without antagonizing women?
“That’s not the problem,” she said. “That’s not the issue. The issue is how do you campaign against a woman worth $40 million?”
She hasn’t got $40 million, I said.
“That’s what I read,” said Bergman. “She spent $5 million already and has broken spending records in Washington state to win the primary, yet her top issue is campaign finance reform, which is hypocrisy. When she ran for Congress, more than half her money came from PACS (political action committees.)”
Cantwell’s newfound wealth from software company stock ownership had been handy in buying tons of television ads contradicting her old voting record in Congress as a liberal, not to mention the one featuring her beaming mother proclaiming, “Maria was the first in our family to go to college.”
“Slade’s never been outspent before,” said Bergman, “but we may not have enough to match her on TV. If it comes down to grass roots support, we have more than 21,000 individuals. She has one. That’s the challenge — how to campaign against a woman with $40 million who’s willing to spend whatever it takes and has already spent $5 million.”
Slade lost by 2,229 votes. Benton’s executive board called on him to resign as party chair because he made his plan to buy the building and move without consulting them, but he refused and later was succeeded by Chris Vance.
I only wrote about Benton one time after that when he wrote a letter to Senate leadership protesting a plan to have all lawmakers, senators and representatives, put on the feed bag together during the two years they wouldn’t have use of their separate private dining rooms while the Legislative Building was being refurbished.
Leadership said no to the suggested alternative of busing the senators to a restaurant newly opened in Olympia by the two French chefs who had served them during sessions and now were out of that job.
State Democratic chair Dwight Pelz is quoted as saying Benton “may be the strongest candidate in the race so far,” considering the six others are unknowns without political experience.
Well, Dwight, limburger cheese is strong because it stinks. Don Benton is limburger cheese.
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Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.
