Washington: Dan Evans, That’s Who

In his campaign to win a third consecutive four-year term as Washington’s Governor, Democrat Albert (“Rosy”) Rosellini took big advertisements in the newspapers showing the President of the U.S. talking on the telephone. “Dan who?” said the caption beneath the picture of Lyndon Johnson.

That was Rosy’s way of suggesting that his opponent, Republican State Representative Daniel Jackson Evans, 39, was a nobody and ought to remain exactly that. But on the morning after the election, it turned out that enough people had known who Evans was to enable him to beat the daylights out of Governor Rosellini in a state that went overwhelmingly Democratic in every other way.

W.O.W. Who is Dan Evans? He’s a Republican to keep an eye on. A Seattle-born structural and civil engineer, he began dabbling in precinct politics in 1948, and in 1956 agreed to run for the legislature from a safe district. By 1961 he was the Republican floor leader and he was considered to be one of the most effective parliamentarians in the house.

He was credited with more guts than good sense when he decided to throw himself into the Republican gubernatorial primary this year, for his chief opponent was an evangelistic former preacher named Richard Christensen, who had amassed a zealous Goldwater following, notably including a band of women who paraded around in Indian costumes and called themselves W.O.W.

(Women on the Warpath). Undismayed, Evans ran a tough campaign with emphasis on his earnest and considerable intelligence and a progressive brand of Republicanism. Though the pros counted him out early in the campaign, he pulled ahead and beat Christensen 308,000 to 204,000.

Running against Rosy, however, was something else again. Rosellini’s record as Governor was lackluster, but he was known as a fine, friendly and formidable campaigner. Evans at first appeared withdrawn and diffident. At one point, visiting a highly automated Spokane factory, he spent more time examining the machines than he did shaking hands with workers. “My managers had to push me away,” Evans recalls, adding wistfully: “But those machines were fascinating.”57-Count ‘Em. As the campaign continued, Evans wound up as a public personality, came off to advantage in a series of debates by articulating his moderate Republican stance. He frankly suggested that he would pattern his administration after the successful and vigorous record of G.O.P. Governor Mark Hatfield in neighboring Oregon. He issued a 35-point “Blueprint for Progress”that detailed fresh projects for mental health, for boosting lagging tourism and industry, and for streamlining the state government. He produced photostats purporting to show that state employees had illegally solicited money for Rosy’s 1960 campaign treasure chest-a charge to which Rosellini heatedly objected but never fully replied.

Finally, Evans succeeded in convincing the voters that he was a man of action. “When a Governor goes to Olym-pia,” he told his audiences, “he faces an enormous task. From the day of his inauguration, just 57 crucial days remain in the legislative session-57 days in which to appoint key department heads and remake an entire $2,000,000 budget, 57 days to set the guidelines for two years, 57 days to shape and to pass a new legislative program designed to end drift and dissension and to provide drive and direction. It is a whirlwind 57 days, each one of them crucial, each one of them filled with decisions.-To make good on that man-of-action image, Evans no sooner read the Nov. 3 results than he established a temporary statehouse and appointed a commission to iron out the state’s redistricting problems. “There are two dangerous things which a Governor can do,” says Evans.

“One is to lead with knowledge and without conviction. The other is to lead with conviction and without knowledge.” Obviously, Dan Evans plans to avoid both these dangers.