Rick Dahms
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AFTER FIVE QUIET, scandal-free years of living in the governor's mansion, Gary Locke will ask voters statewide to mark his name at the ballot box for a second time this November. Locke's awesome approval ratings suggest Washingtonians are happy not to have a conservative wacko herding them into church or a big-mouth liberal threatening their wallets. The governor's hands-off approach seems to suit the voters just fine.
But how deep is Locke's support? Although around 57 percent of Washingtonians in political pollster Stuart Elway's survey last December say they like Locke, his critics, both right and left, warn these high poll numbers may be misleading: The public may quietly yearn for someone who takes risks to tackle big problems. That's why a liberal like Don Hopps, former aide to ex-Governor Mike Lowry, believes Locke's support is "a mile wide" but only an "inch deep." Hopps calls the governor "mush" and adds, "I don't think he's done anything on the major issues, and I think the public knows it." Hopps believes the governor would get dumped if he faced a Jesse Ventura-style independent insurgency or a popular Republican.
GOP consultant Bret Bader thinks he has just such a candidate in conservative hot-talker and initiative-wizard John Carlson, whose campaign he's managing. "There's a hunger for someone to shake up the system," Bader says.
The governor himself says he hates labels like "liberal" and "conservative." His supporters are proud that his philosophy is so middle-of-the-road. Blair Butterworth, Locke's campaign spokesman, says that the governor "never has been a strong ideological leader." We live in a political climate in which politicians get the most done when "they break down problems into digestible bites," notes Butterworth. In addition to Locke's mastery of the incremental change, Butterworth says it is Locke's "self-consummate middle-class values," that make him popular with the masses.
There's no doubt Locke has established himself in the voters' minds as a family man. When people think of him, he's usually attached to his wife and two children like a figure in a string of paper dolls. The beautiful Mrs. Locke, former TV news reporter Mona Lee, and two toddlers, Emily and Dylan, who are every bit as cute as Caroline and John-John were once upon a time, make for great family portraits. Locke's children are the darlings of Olympia, and the governor doesn't conceal that they inspire him to reach out to the state's working families.
Locke seems to revel in being just an ordinary guy. He readily acknowledges that people frequently accuse him of having no charisma. He doesn't seem to care. People who have never met him may only have an image of a nerd with a bad haircut who keeps his head buried in books about policy.
In person, although he's very warm and passionate, he looks you straight in the eye and tells you things like "Education is the great equalizer," as if it were not a sound bite but a perfectly normal phrase to use in ordinary conversation when there are no cameras or crowds around. He talks seamlessly about all he's accomplished; touting, for example, that he's created a tutoring program for kids who have trouble reading or boasting that he's persuaded Asian countries to start buying various Washington crops. "I'm not a Jesse Ventura," he says. "I just like to get the job done."
Rumors have abounded since Locke was elected that he has a future in national politics. The latest version has him becoming a cabinet member if Al Gore is elected president. "The sky's the limit for Gary," says Washington Democratic Party Chair Paul Berendt. Locke himself is characteristically modest on the subject. He says that his wife Mona wants to return to TV journalism when they do leave the governor's mansion. At that point, he says, he'll probably just become a "soccer dad."
And his supporters say that's why he'll be reelected: The joys and concerns of parenthood are the tie that binds voters of both parties in these days of high-tech prosperity and a mini-baby boom. By putting his kids before everything, Locke can relate to everybody. And as Locke seems to have figured out, all he needs to do is say the word "education" a lot and people will assume that their kids' future (i.e., their kids' future incomes) is in good hands. Elway's poll shows most people who like Locke say his focus on improving education is what makes him a viable candidate for reelection.
LOCKE WANTS MOST to be remembered as the governor who improved schools. Born to blue-collar immigrants in public housing, Locke says education enabled him to achieve the American dream. He didn't learn English until he was five years old and struggled his first few years in school. Eventually he blossomed, earning his undergraduate degree at Yale and attending law school at Boston University.
Characteristically, he hasn't called for any major overhaul of the education system. Locke has focused instead on improvements that most people wouldn't criticize: He has started a program to recruit tutors to help kids read; he's demanded state funding for "Promise Scholarships" to help middle-class teens go to college; he's called on the Legislature to fund the hiring of 1,000 new teachers to reduce class sizes; he has campaigned for better teacher training. Noticeably absent from the list is the powerful Washington Education Association's pet cause: pay raises for teachers.
