As governor, Booth Gardner often detoured from his appointed schedule to exercise what his staff called “management by walking around.”
The first time he did it, he headed to the Department of Social and Health Services and stood in line.
“They asked, ‘What are you here for?’ and I said, ‘I just want to look around,’” Gardner recounted. “They said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said, ‘Booth Gardner’. One lady said, ‘No you’re not.’ She said that because they had never seen a governor there before.”
At first, his chief of staff, Denny Heck, thought the practice was gimmicky. In time, he cam to view it as a quality of leadership.
“He really understood the connection of effectively managing and leading state government,” Heck said.
Voters are now trying to gauge the leadership traits in Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi, one of whom will be the next governor.
The Herald talked about leadership with every living governor who has served since 1957. They shared 44 years of experience as Washington’s governors for voters to consider before casting ballots on Nov. 2.
Gregoire and Rossi are each trying to convince voters that they possess the expertise, foresight and swagger to be the state’s leader.
They’ve characterized the election as a decision on which direction the state’s 6.1 million residents will go these next four years – “the right direction” with Gregoire or “a new direction’ with Rossi.
They’ve made their cases with written plans for boosting the economy, creating jobs, improving education and providing health care. They point to their records as the best indicators of whether they can deliver the goods.
Gregoire, former head of the state Department of Ecology, is in her third term as state attorney general. Her career highlights include several high-profile legal victories, including one against Big Tobacco that will bring the state $5 billion in the coming decades.
Rossi touts his career as a commercial real estate salesman and his seven years in the Legislature. He served as chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee in 2003, helping to write and pass the current state budget.
But slogans, plans and resumes are not the only ingredients of leadership. So too are inherent values and learned skills, Gov. Gary Locke said.
“Leadership requires integrity, honesty, vision, energy, a willingness to be accountable, the capacity to motivate, the ability to deliver hope and promise,” Locke said.
Leaders lead from the front
Governors lead best when they have a broad vision with specific goals, articulate them well and are willing to hit the street to organize popular support for their ideas.
On the Capitol campus in Olympia, where the laws are passed, credibility with the Legislature is a requisite that is earned by speaking the truth to everyone, including opponents.
“Leadership is a word that everybody puzzles over at times,” Gardner said. “It is knowing who you are, being able to have an impact on institutions for which you are responsible, knowing when to stay out of the way and let things go their own way.
“At other times, leadership is knowing when to step up and say we have got to keep this idea moving, we’ve got find answers.”
Leadership is perceived as much as it’s performed, the governors agreed. Its exercise, or lack of, is visceral for most people; they know it when they feel it.
And to hear Rossi and Gregoire on the campaign trail, they haven’t felt much leadership from Locke.
Rossi cites a lack of political “will, courage and leadership” in Olympia as the cause of the state’s malaise and lays it at the doorstep of the governor’s mansion.
For Gregoire, it’s a more difficult dart to throw. Locke endorsed her. She speaks of a leadership gap without pointing fingers.
“People want a leader who understands their problems,” she said. “They want to know they are part of the state and its future, and that government is there to help and support, not set up barriers.”
At any moment, the confluence of competence, ideology and action can create leaders or fell them.
After Sept. 11, 2001, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani personified hope in a despairing city, a beacon of light in a time of darkness.
Then there’s former California Gov. Gray Davis. For three decades, this enigmatic figure rose to power never having lost an election. When life soured in the Golden State, voters turned, dumping him for straight-talking, wildly popular movie action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“Leadership isn’t saying something can’t be done,” said Tim Hatley, who ran King County Executive Ron Sims’ unsuccessful campaign for governor. “Leadership is making the impossible possible.”
Blair Butterworth, a key figure behind Locke’s two gubernatorial campaigns, cautions against getting wrapped up too tight in a fabled notion of leadership.
That’s gone, he said, the victim of nasty campaigns that exacerbate partisan difference, incite distrust and stifle collaboration.
“We have a kind of romantic remembrance of executives who really can form public opinion and mold it and tap into the emotions of voters and get things done,” he said. “When they’re running, candidates try to tap into the old idea of leadership. Once elected, they face the problem that it just ain’t that way anymore.”
Substance and style
Gregoire and Rossi speak of leadership in similar ways.
She says: “It’s about having a vision and setting in place a plan to getting it done, bringing people together to get it done, to make them understand this is not about being Republican or Democrat, it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about doing what’s right for the common good.”
He says: “It is being able to stand up and say this is the direction that we’re going to go, inspire people to follow and having people come with you. You had better come to it with a core set of principles, and if you follow those principles and you explain it to the public, you’ll be fine.”
Their leadership styles differ.
Gregoire said her personality fuels a laserlike focus on the direction she wants to go and on solving problems that she encounters.
“I’m intense because I have a serious job. That intensity brought about the success in the tobacco case,” she said. “My style is to bring people together, set out a goal for them, set out a clock, tell them what I want to get accomplished, and they can write the path. They can come to an agreement as to how we move forward.”
Rossi said he’s easygoing, though not laid-back. He’s a conversationalist who will apply skills honed in making million-dollar real estate deals to breaking down complex problems.
As the best example, he points to his role in successfully steering the budget through the Legislature last year. “It was about listening to people and figuring out what can be done within a framework,” he said. The method won’t be much different if he’s governor. “It’s just like doing another transaction. It’s just a little more complicated in figuring out how you get from A to Z.”
In Washington, the governor must figure it out within the margins set by the state constitution.
Persuasion and the bully pulpit
Governors can appoint directors for 23 agencies, but voters still choose the attorney general, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction and five other statewide officeholders.
Governors cannot introduce laws – that’s the prerogative of the 147 state lawmakers – but they can veto them. As the head of state they do command more focus from – and scrutiny by – the media than any other member of government.
“A governor leads here not so much by power derived from the constitution but with power derived from your ability to convince and direct people,” said Dan Evans, a Republican who served as governor from 1965-1977 before serving in the U.S. Senate.
“You don’t have a whole lot of power to determine what legislators will do, but you have a voice that is louder than all the legislators put together. It is the bully pulpit. You can focus attention on issues that are really important,” said Evans, considered one of the most popular governors in state history.
One of the first chances to seize that spotlight is the State of the State speech that governors deliver each January.
Newly elected governors can miss the opportunity, Evans said, by not cashing in on the energy and anticipation that comes from their victory.
“Too many political leaders tend to hoard too much of that political capital because they’re looking toward the next election,” he said. “Worrying about the next election is the worst kind of political leadership.”
Getting things done
Al Rosellini, who was the Democratic governor from 1957-65, said he measures leadership by one’s ability “to be decisive, to consider all the arguments and then to make a decision, right or wrong.”
Rosellini ascended to power after 18 years in the Legislature. “A lot of things that needed to be done were not done,” he said. “That lack of leadership inspired me to run.”
He cited Highway 520 as an example. As a legislator, he voted for the project, but it never got built. Running for governor, he vowed to build it. “We started it my first day in office,” he said.
He got it done.
He also had to win over – or roll over – opponents of his plans to host the 1964 World’s Fair in Seattle, and to construct the floating Hood Canal Bridge.
Rosellini faced a budget deficit and led an unpopular fight to raise the sales tax to keep from slashing programs. “Some started calling me ‘Taxellini.’ That damn near cost me re-election,” he recalled.
“A governor would be weak if they didn’t have the stamina to speak up to what the people need,” he said. “Decisiveness is necessary in order to make progress.”
As governors, John Spellman and Mike Lowry carefully tended their relationships with lawmakers.
“Leadership,” said Spellman, a Republican who was governor from 1981 to 1985, “is convincing others to work together to get something done. Leadership is not making grand remarks on propositions that are impossible to carry out.”
Though his party controlled the Legislature, Spellman assumed office in the midst of one of the state’s worst fiscal crises, after Dixie Lee Ray’s turbulent tenure. He pushed the Legislature to raise taxes and create the Lottery in order to fill government’s depleted savings.
“I had no idea how bad the economic condition of the state was,” he recalled. “I said I didn’t think I’d have to raise taxes and we did, several times in the first session.”
He regularly breakfasted and lunched with legislators to discuss and debate ideas. He managed to nab enough Democrat support to offset Republicans who refused to support hiking taxes.
“In tough times, people did what was right,” remembered Spellman, who figures he paid the price with voters when he lost re-election.
Lowry, a Democrat who served from 1993-97, focused on building trust with lawmakers of both parties. A governor with a clear purpose can lead more effectively because the legislators know what to expect, he said.
Crossing them up will hinder whatever initiative the governor is pushing, while simultaneously undermining their public image, he said.
His advice to voters evaluating a candidates’ talent is to not condemn them for changing positions if it helps accomplish their objective.
“It takes courage to change one’s view and admit it,” he said. “You must be willing to change tactics if the information shows it necessary.”
Locke, who retires in January after eight years, said the relationship of a governor and lawmakers is “mutually dependent. There have to be trade-offs and compromises in order to get things done. “
“In the end, it is the governor who is ultimately in charge,” he said. “You are accountable to those who elected you. You can’t take things in a direction that no one wants to go.”
Reporter Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623
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