PORT ANGELES — Mike McGavick gave them his stump speech, so they gave him the stump.
About 100 people braved Thursday evening’s chilly breeze to hear McGavick, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, and GOP icon Slade Gorton address an outdoor rally at the Fairview Grange east of town.
The Clallam County Republican faithful gave McGavick an actual Douglas fir stump at the end of his talk and a question-and-answer session that together lasted about an hour.
McGavick, who as a college student chauffeured Gorton during his 1980 campaign, said it was “a little bit disorienting” to trade places with his 78-year-old mentor.
“It makes it a little bit strange not to be working my tail off for him,” he said. McGavick also served as an aide in Gorton’s first term in the senate and as his 1988 campaign manager and subsequent chief of staff.
However, McGavick told Peninsula Daily News his views on Native American tribes were different from Gorton’s, which political observers say cost Gorton his senate seat in a whisker-close race with Maria Cantwell.
Now McGavick, who left government to become an insurance executive, most recently CEO of Safeco, aims to unseat Cantwell.
Gorton declined to say what advice he’d given McGavick about Washington’s tribes, deflecting the query to McGavick.
McGavick noted that Gorton’s anti-Indian reputation started with his tenure as Washington attorney general from 1969 to 1981, including arguing the state’s losing case against the tribes in front of U.S. District Judge George Boldt.
Boldt’s 1974 decision granted treaty tribes half the harvestable salmon in Washington waters.
“I don’t share that history,” said McGavick, whose father as a Washington legislator worked with tribal leaders. “I just hear those issues with a different ear.”
