1980 KING5 Washington State Primary Election Coverage

It was 1980, and the U.S. was in the depths of a huge recession. Interests rates on mortgages were well into the double digits. American hostages were being held at the US Embassy in Tehran. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, so the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics that summer.
In the presidential race, the difference between the two candidates, incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, was famously described by humorist Mark Russell as the choice between “the evil of two lessers.”
Closer to home, Mount St. Helens erupted with deadly consequences in May. In statewide politics, Governor Dixy Lee Ray lost a Democratic primary challenge to Jim McDermott.
Washington state’s political landscape had a volcano of its own to contend with earlier in 1980, when Democratic Speaker of the State House John Bagnariol, Democratic State Senate Majority Leader Gordon Walgren and a lobbyist named Pat Gallagher were charged and then convicted of conspiring to push through gambling legislation in exchange for a cut of the future casino profits.
Peter Jackson, longtime local journalist, and pundit, and son of Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson says that in 1980, the Washington Democratic Party establishment was “thrown on its head” by the scandal that stemmed from a controversial FBI sting operation that came to be known as “Gamscam.” Jackson says that Bagnariol had been planning a run for governor, and Walgren was going to run for Attorney General. Instead of running for higher office, both were convicted just weeks before the election in October 1980.
When Election Night that year finally rolled around on Nov. 4, former California governor and retired movie star Ronald Reagan won Washington and a whopping 43 other states.
In Washington state, Reagan got just shy of 50 percent of the vote to Carter’s 37 percent (Anderson got nearly 11 percent). Republicans here gained a majority in the State House, and later gained a one-person majority in the State Senate when Pete von Reichbauer switched party affiliation in February 1981.
David Ammons at the Secretary of State’s office in Olympia says that there’s no evidence that voter turnout was suppressed in November 1980. Turnout in Washington that year was higher than in 1976 and 1972 (percentage-wise), and right around where it had been since at least the 1950s.
In addition to the governor’s race, the results of another statewide contest in Washington in 1980 also came as a shock.
Washington state’s longtime Democratic US Senator Warren Magnuson, who had served six terms in the Senate, was beaten by Slade Gorton. Prior to running against Magnuson, Gorton had served three terms as Washington Attorney General.
A lot of people felt the same way. Including Slade Gorton, who beat Magnuson in 1980.
Gorton, now 88, is the last Republican elected to the US Senate from Washington. His final victory came against Ron Sims in 1994; Maria Cantwell defeated him in 2000.
In 1980, Gorton says, Warren Magnuson wasn’t unelectable, but he was vulnerable in a year that saw so many other long-serving Democrats defeated.
“Our campaign [strategy], as my campaign consultant described it, was to present Senator Magnuson with a gold watch,” Gorton said. “And my slogan was ‘Washington’s Next Great Senator,’ admitting that Magnuson had been a great senator, but now we needed a new one.”
That same Seattle Times day-after-the-election editorial said that “Gorton’s intellect and energy were seen by most voters as bigger assets than the now-passé politics of Warren Magnuson.”
Before he could take on Magnuson, however, Gorton had faced a primary challenge from broadcasting executive Lloyd Cooney, who’d stepped down as head of KIRO Radio and Television (when both were owned by Bonneville; KIRO TV is now owned by Cox). Gorton says a big clue that he might be able to beat Magnuson was that the total of his and Cooney’s votes exceeded what Magnuson received in the primary.
On Election Night 1980, Gorton says that Washington’s remaining Democratic senior senator, Scoop Jackson, reached out to him as soon as Gorton’s victory was clear.
Jackson unexpectedly died in office in 1983; John Spellman appointed former governor and fellow Republican Dan Evans to be Jackson’s successor.
A few days after the 1980 election, Scoop Jackson was mentioned in the Seattle Times as a possibility for Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. Peter Jackson says that job wasn’t something his father was interested in. “He actually wanted and would have accepted being Secretary of State,” Peter Jackson said. “He’d been offered [Secretary of] Defense in the Nixon administration, and he did turn it down. It was part of Nixon trying to look bipartisan.”
Meanwhile, Magnuson’s 1980 defeat was one of a dozen Democratic lawmakers that created a Republican majority in the US Senate.

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Interesting to see how this was preserved