GERALD NELSON
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THE LEGISLATURE GAME was once a prestigious one, like polo or thoroughbred racing. It was an Olympiad played every other year, and everyone flocked to the galleries to watch the spectacle. The players, chiefly politicians, were respected by the spectators and regaled by the press. They lived lavishly, but they set and broke records and won great prizes for their fans, bringing honor to themselves and the game.
One day—no one quite remembers when—the game started to change. It turned inelegant and became like bowling. The caviar turned to cheese balls, champagne to root beer. Some of the new players would rather bring glory to God than to their own teams. The new breed didn't drink, smoke, or chase women—if only because about half of them were women.
Many fans were happy to see the new breed. They argued: What was so great about the old days? The game was conducted by big-bellied white guys who drank their way through the games, never paid for their own meals, huddled in secrecy, and threw games for tawdry sums of money.
Most of the old players got fed up and retired. Others were defeated. A few went to jail. Each year the game got harder, the rules more complex. The prizes became booby prizes at worst, consolation prizes at best. The players had to settle for less—just finishing the game in the time allotted became the prize. The spectators got bored, then angry, then bored again; then they lost interest altogether.
Still the game goes on. Starting on January 8, Governor Gary Locke, 98 elected members of the state House of Representatives, 49 elected state senators, an army of staff members, a platoon of paid lobbyists, too few citizen activists, and hardly any just regular folks start playing the 2001 version of the Legislature Game. For a minimum of 105 days, all parties will fight it out and, at the end, will deliver, at minimum, a budget of around $46 billion that will run state government for the next two years.
The voters have made the game much more challenging by evenly dividing the teams. The House has 49 Democrats and 49 Republicans. This tie means there's two of everything in the House leadership—co-speakers, committee cochairs, two points of view that presumably must find consensus, or not. Over in the Senate, Democrats hold a tenuous 25-24 majority. The Democrats' biggest advantage is in the governor's mansion: Locke was just reelected by a large margin.
Can the governor take advantage of his "mandate"? Will bipartisanship help everyone just get along? Or will gridlock settle in and the state's problems go unaddressed? Here's your up-to-the-minute Seattle Weekly guide on who the players are, what is at stake, and how the game is played:
The political players
The legislative players are underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated. Few citizens know who they are or what they do. Some are assholes and some are opportunists, but most are doing thankless public service for the sake of doing public service. They're paid $32,000 a year, which one legislator says comes out to about $5 an hour and "doesn't pay for the bullet holes."
Here are the principals:
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder has worked nearly every job in the Capitol—from elevator operator to senator—in a career spanning more than 50 years. A rare rural Democrat, he knows where the bodies are buried and has buried a few himself. He represents the old civility and is a patient compromiser, but he's also one tough cookie. In 1997, when majority Republicans suspended Senate rules to ram something down the throats of the Democratic minority, he quit in disgust. He was talked into coming back by a large bipartisan delegation.
His counterpart is GOP Senate Minority Leader Jim West, who ran for mayor of Spokane this summer. Many Republicans were angered by West's willingness to give up his powerful position in the Legislature for a place in the fractious Spokane City Hall. Humiliatingly, however, he lost in the primary, so he's back in Olympia. He's a smart and experienced number cruncher who was chief budget writer back in the Republicans' better days. When he first became minority leader, his reputation for vindictiveness, temper tantrums, and door slamming made some Senate Republicans doubt whether he could bring the caucus together and get them back into the majority. But West has proven himself able to work well with others, although the GOP is still in the minority.
Clyde Ballard, Republican House co-speaker, is a religious conservative from Wenatchee known as the "iron butterfly" by his colleagues because of his ability to keep discipline in his ranks and coexist affably with Democratic House Co-Speaker Frank Chopp, the first speaker from Seattle in 38 years. Chopp is the head of the Fremont Public Association, a social service agency, and one of the greenest Democratic lawmakers ever to win such a high post. Chopp and Ballard are philosophically an odd couple, but most of the time the House gridlock is sustained and maintained in a friendly manner.
Gary Locke: The governor won big in November, though it may have been only because of his new haircut. Locke was also helped when his opponent, John Carlson, kicked off his campaign with a fund-raiser headlined by Rush Limbaugh. Locke has already proposed a $46.3 billion budget that takes care of road improvements and answers the voters' call for more education dollars, but contains deep cuts in social and health programs, an aspect that disturbs Democrats. Republicans are huffing and puffing that Locke's budget runs around a voter-approved cap on state spending and fails to mention a way to fund all the proposed programs fully, leaving the wet work to the hapless Legislature. "I'm incredibly disappointed in the governor," says West, "for not giving us some guidance. Again, it's a lack of leadership." West, of course, is not known for being easily led, especially by Gary Locke.
