Rick Dahms
Eastern exposure: Meet Johnny the moderate, on the scene in Roslyn.
Rick Dahms
Eastern exposure: Meet Johnny the moderate, on the scene in Roslyn.
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THE CANDIDATE ARRIVES on his 1997 Harley Dyna Wide Glide, accompanied by two rasty-ass bikers on gigantic Harley Fatboys. At 40, John Carlson, the GOP's candidate for governor, is boyish-looking in a Harley leather baseball jacket, small oval shades, and Darth Vader helmet—from which protrudes his Nixonian nose. As for his posse on the Fatboys, they have long dirty hair, tattoos, and earrings; they wear leather chaps. None of them looks like a Republican, but they all are.
The occasion is the kick-off party for Carlson's 17th campaign tour of Eastern Washington. Some in the crowd of bikers and assorted townsfolk have been waiting for Carlson at the Brick, a biker bar in Roslyn, a little mining town just east of Snoqualmie Pass. But many in the crowd don't know who the hell Carlson is. They don't know this is the hot-talker from KVI radio who killed affirmative action by spearheading the passage of Initiative 200; they don't know he was the force behind other conservative initiatives such as Three Strikes and Hard Time for Armed Crime. Carlson doesn't bother really introducing himself. Instead he says, "This is a Republican campaign for governor," sounding like he doesn't quite believe it himself.
His recent ride over the pass in the rain gives him an entr饠into the Beer-Nuts and Budweiser world of the Brick. "Great thing about riding in the rain," he announces: "The beer tastes better." It's the right thing to say and everybody heads in for a schooner.
Since the mines have been closed for decades, Roslyn lives by enticing tourists from the highway. Known as the location where the offbeat 1980s TV series Northern Exposure was filmed, the town gets a lot of tourists who simply want to walk where Rob Morrow walked. The Brick is the oldest operating bar in the state. "We're known as biker-friendly," says owner Larry Najar.
A water-fed spittoon runs the length of the bar, gurgling along disconcertingly under the bar stools. The fancy hardwood back-bar came around Cape Horn and the high-ceilinged rooms are filled with shuffleboard and pool tables, walls crowded with pool trophies and stuffed elk parts. Budweiser neons light up the meat shoot sign-up sheets while the Mariners play a soundless seventh inning on the multiple TVs.
The candidate gets up on a table with a pint in his hand in front of the gathering of tavern habitu鳬 bikers, and local Republicans. Because Carlson is running late, the crowd has drunk a little more than they had intended, and interrupts him a little too loudly with questions not quite on the subject.
"What about the bullshit helmet law?" somebody yells.
"I'm against it—the one who rides should decide." Carlson says, endearing himself immediately to the bikers, the unregistered beer drinkers, and the odd libertarian who might have wandered in.
For the older folks, he adds smoothly, "As your governor, I'll always wear a helmet—besides, my wife'd kill me if I didn't."
Carlson lays out the talking points he'll repeat over and over on this trip: no breaching of the Snake River dams; removal of all nets from rivers and compensation to fishers for lost income. He wants benchmarks for the recovery of salmon: "How can we claim success without recognized goals that tell us the salmon are no longer endangered?" he asks. He wants privatization of many state government services, including ferries and education. He'd like people in their 40s and 50s to take a training course and be able to teach in public schools. He takes credit for the lowered crime rate because of his Three Strikes initiative and says he'd add meth labs as a strike. He wants to give power to the Legislature to strike down any rule or regulation made by bureaucrats if it doesn't follow the intent of the law.
Carlson thumps the populist tub over and over against faintness of leadership and lack of vital signs from Governor Gary Locke and the government in Olympia. He calls his campaign "an insurgency" and promises that if he can't get his ideas through the Legislature, he'll legislate by initiatives in campaigns run from the governor's office.
"What about marijuana?" someone asks. "I'm afraid I'm a downer on that," he says.
Property taxes?
"I'm a downer on that one too."
It's exactly the right thing to say. They love his ass.
JOHN CARLSON is no moderate, but he plays one on TV. Where Senator Slade Gorton is eligible for the conservative adjective, the noun fits Carlson, though you'd never guess it by the issues he sticks to in this campaign.
His TV persona wasn't always so mellow. On Sunday nights for years, in one of local TV news' last gasps of relevance, Carlson debated southpaw historian Walt Crowley in a point/counterpoint setting on KIRO TV. In these weekly dustups, Carlson voiced opinions and embraced an "ethic cleansing" that he now avoids in order to keep a moderate face in this campaign.
The KIRO transcripts reveal Carlson's deeply held conservatism, which recent interviews indicate hasn't changed much. "Creationism," Carlson intoned in 1986, "should be taught equal to evolution in schools."
