THE CAMPAIGN: Fork in the Road

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Hostesses & Flowers. The decorous 1956 senatorial campaign stands out in sharp contrast against the backdrop of Washington's wacky political history. In 1910 skinny Hiram Gill, trademarked by his white string tie, his corncob pipe and his Stetson hat, declared: "What Seattle needs is a mayor who will get a chief of police to handle the [red-light] district, and who will back up the chief when the delegations of citizens call and protest. And I'm the bird." He was elected mayor.

In the Depression 1930s an organization called the Unemployed Citizens League, a lineal descendant of the wacky, rowdy International Workers of the World of World War I days, signed up more than 50,000 members and helped vote into office a haphazard assortment of statesmen that included a state legislator who was in jail for rape when the election returns came in. In 1932 jazz Bandleader Vic Meyers donned bed sheet and sandals, led a goat through Seattle in a campaign for mayor. With Cinemactress Laura La Plante as "campaign manager," Meyers promised hostesses on late streetcars and flowerpots on fire hydrants. He lost, but later served five terms as Democratic lieutenant governor, two of them when Arthur Langlie was governor.

Magnuson's predecessor in the House of Representatives was the notorious and pathetic Marion Zioncheck, who in 1936 strewed empty beer bottles across the White House lawn, protesting that Vice President Garner had kidnaped his wife. Ultimately, Zioncheck was sent to an asylum, escaped to file for reelection, then committed suicide.

A 'Debt to Beck. In Washington's whirling '30s there was more abroad than wackiness. Seattle police directed patrons to gambling casinos and winked at sidewalk soliciting. Along the waterfront Teamster Dave Beck fought Longshoreman Harry Bridges for control of the piers, while Beck's teamsters stopped farm trucks at the city line and forced them to take on union helpers. A powerful Communist movement put nine card carriers into the state legislature. Observed Jim Farley: "There are 47 states in the Union and the Soviet of Washington." Foremost of the era's politicians was John F. Dore, who announced in 1936: "Brother Dave Beck was the greatest factor in my election [as mayor of Seattle], and I say again that I am going to pay back my debt to Dave Beck and the teamsters in the next two years regardless of what happens." And he did.

To fight wreckers such as Dore, six young men gathered one day in 1933, formed a nonpartisan organization dedicated to doing something about Seattle's municipal corruption. To candidates who forswore service to special groups, promised to accept no single campaign contribution larger than $50, to make public their finances if asked, the reformers promised to give their support. Seeking a name for their movement, they harked back to the plowman-statesman who left his fields to defend Rome, dubbed themselves the New Order of Cincinnatus. In 1934, on a $600 budget, the Cincinnatus sponsored three council candidates, saw one elected. Two years later they voted in three more councilmen. One of them: Arthur Langlie.