Jay Pearson, 1948–2020: Mellow manager of Democrats’ victories and comebacks helped build Washington’s governing party

The punch-in-the-gut phone call came mid­day last Sat­ur­day from friend Jeff Smith. We had lost Jay Pear­son, a friend since he turned out young can­vassers for Sen­a­tor George McGovern’s 1972 pres­i­den­tial campaign.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to the accursed pan­dem­ic, there can be no gath­er­ing of friends, lift­ing cups togeth­er and telling sto­ries. Zoom is no substitute.

Instead of griev­ing, I leaned back, closed my eyes, and remem­bered Jay’s role as builder/nurturer of Washington’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty for almost half-a-century.

The book­ends of Jay’s involve­ment began with cham­pi­oning Sen­a­tor McGovern’s anti-war can­di­da­cy as a Young Demo­c­rat in Everett, home­town of Sen­a­tor Hen­ry “Scoop” Jack­son, McGovern’s hawk­ish rival for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. The final time Jay tuned in was on a Zoom call with friends cel­e­brat­ing Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden.

The 1972 Demo­c­ra­t­ic race saw a con­fronta­tion between old-school Democ­rats and the insur­gent McCarthy-Kennedy-McGov­ern wing of the party.

With state con­ven­tion shenani­gans, Jack­son forces pre­vailed here. “Lone­some George” car­ried the day at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Convention.

The rivals of spring had to work togeth­er that fall. Wash­ing­ton was a tar­get state for McGov­ern. Lone­some George paid us four vis­its, run­ning mate Sar­gent Shriv­er was here twice, and Eleanor McGov­ern watched her hus­band speak on Viet­nam at a low-bud­get fundrais­er in a school lunch­room at Blessed Sacra­ment parish.

Jay Pear­son was the McGov­ern coor­di­na­tor who put boots on the ground and decid­ed where to deploy them. He gift­ed a sense of humor to the ten­sion of set­ting up can­di­date events, notably when a grumpy Jack­son was thrust into intro­duc­ing McGov­ern at a Seat­tle Cen­ter rally.

Sen­a­tor War­ren Mag­nu­son was tit­u­lar chair of the cam­paign here. When it was over, Maggie’s aides recruit­ed Jay to work on the senator’s 1974 campaign.

Mag­nu­son was run­ning for a sixth term.

He didn’t walk very well. Still, it was Jay who sug­gest­ed how he would run: “Young, lib­er­al and for the peo­ple.” Mag­gie had come out for an end to the Viet­nam War, was oppos­ing the anti-bal­lis­tic mis­sile. He mum­bled wicked­ly fun­ny jokes about Nixon. Mag­nu­son was reelect­ed in a walk.

The liberal/activist wing was ascen­dant in the King Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Jay was embarked on a thir­ty-five year col­lab­o­ra­tion with coun­ty (and future state) Chair Karen Mar­chioro. Jay moved on and up, man­ag­ing Jim­my Carter’s 1976 cam­paign in the state. Two years lat­er, Jay was man­ag­ing the shoe­string cam­paign for Con­gress of for­mer Belling­ham broad­cast­er Al Swift.

Swift was an under­dog, to Jackson’s press sec­re­tary Bri­an Cor­co­ran in the pri­ma­ry, and to Repub­li­can John Nance Gar­ner, who had near­ly knocked off retir­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lloyd Meeds.

The cam­paign was run out of the back of a bar­ber­shop. Its min­i­mal tele­vi­sion bud­get was spent on “60 Min­utes.” A big boost came when Jay leaked (to the Post-Intel­li­gencer) a Gar­ner “game plan”. It treat­ed the can­di­date as a ser­vant of his man­ag­er, with such instruc­tions as nev­er hold­ing a drink in his right hand.

Why not? To avoid a “wet and clam­my handshake.”

Jay became Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Swift’s dis­trict direc­tor, at a time when the 2nd Dis­trict stretched from the Cana­di­an bor­der to the Olympic Penin­su­la. A coun­ter­part, work­ing for Tom Foley, once defined the job as “keep­ing the boss out of trouble.”

Jay took the oppo­site approach, keep­ing Swift ahead of any trouble.

A self-described “great indoors­man,” Al became a major archi­tect of the 1984 Wash­ing­ton wilder­ness bill. Per­pet­u­al­ly dis­sat­is­fied Bel­lling­ham activists found Mount Bak­er, Noisy Diob­sud and Bound­er Riv­er Wilder­ness Areas in their back­yards. Al Swift’s first hike was through mag­nif­i­cent cedar forests of the Boul­der Riv­er. Arriv­ing at the trail­head, Al asked: “Do you have a sedan chair?”

Swift was kept out ahead.

He voiced doubts about Puget Power’s (now Puget Sound Ener­gy) giant pro­posed Skag­it Nuclear Project, just before UW sci­en­tists dis­cov­ered an active earth­quake fault in the area. Swift came out against Seat­tle City Light’s pro­pos­al for a fourth dam on the Skag­it Riv­er, which would have wiped out salmon spawn­ing habitat.

The 1980 elec­tion was a disaster.

Swift was reelect­ed, but Carter lost. Mag­gie lost.

A Repub­li­can was (for the last time) elect­ed Gov­er­nor in Wash­ing­ton State.

The Repub­li­cans took over the Legislature.

The night after the elec­tion, Pear­son was at The Pines Tav­ern in Everett, telling dis­con­so­late young vol­un­teer Kevin Hamil­ton that this, too, shall pass.

Today, Hamil­ton is one of the Democ­rats’ crack nation­al elec­tion lawyers, work­ing on the par­ty’s behalf to scru­ti­nize the Biden-Trump recount in Georgia.

The Democ­rats, with Mar­chioro as state chair, came back – big time.

They retook the state House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1982, retook the Governor’s office with Booth Gard­ner in 1984, defeat­ed Sen­a­tor Slade Gor­ton in 1986, and car­ried the state for Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Michael Dukakis in 1988. The state hasn’t elect­ed a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor since 1980, and it has­n’t vot­ed for a Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date since 1984.

Jay could lift his cups at The Pines, or lat­er after work at the New Orleans Café in Pio­neer Square, with Mar­chioro and par­ty exec­u­tive direc­tor Jeff Smith.

Away from work, how­ev­er, Jay had a life. He was a gourmet cook.

He would duck down to Ash­land, Ore­gon, for Shake­speare performances.

Jay was state direc­tor for the 1992 Clin­ton-Gore cam­paign, nur­tur­ing two more future tal­ents – Josh Drew and Rick Des­i­mone – and hand­i­ly car­ry­ing the state.

With a new admin­is­tra­tion in office, young Democ­rats of the 1970s entered gov­ern­ment. Jay became Region 10 direc­tor of the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion, Gretchen Soren­son went to work for the U.S. Depart­ment of Com­merce as region­al boss of the Small Busi­ness Administration.

Jay immersed him­self in build­ing man­age­ment, learned that the GSA could do a lot to ease stress­es on fed­er­al employ­ees, and improve work­ing con­di­tions for fed­er­al judges and juries. A cap­stone came when the SBA offered a small busi­ness export assis­tance cen­ter in Seattle.

Who should show up but Repub­li­can U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jack Met­calf, who had called for abo­li­tion of the U.S. Depart­ment of Commerce?

“(Jay) not only made mul­ti­tudes of friends among his staff and also among the fed­er­al work­ers through­out the North­west, espe­cial­ly among the fed­er­al judges who sat on the courts here,” said Jeff Smith.

The Supreme Court’s post-2000 elec­tion deci­sion gave us Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Still, Rick Larsen recap­tured Swift’s old U.S. House seat, and Maria Cantwell sent Sen­a­tor Gor­ton pack­ing a sec­ond time (with assis­tance on pro­vi­sion­al bal­lots from super lawyer Kevin Hamil­ton). Jay Pear­son took on anoth­er task, as man­ag­er of con­stituent ser­vices for Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell.

He did his job too well. Cantwell’s office became the go-to place for knot­ty immi­gra­tion dis­putes and prob­lems of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans stuck in for­eign coun­tries. Jay had one more, unspo­ken, role. The Sen­a­tor is a demand­ing boss.

“(Jay) was my every­day calm, steady-Eddie in Cantwell’s office, and just a beau­ti­ful soul,” remem­bered cowork­er Bill Dunbar.

In retire­ment, Jay host­ed annu­al Swift staff reunions, set­ting a splen­did table.

A friend dat­ing from 1972, Tere­sa McMahill, noted:

“A sim­ple but won­der­ful Jay-the-gourmet cre­ation I’ll always remem­ber is his Grand Marnier with blue­ber­ries and can­taloupe salad.”

Jay’s was a life well-lived, from which activists can take lessons.

He hung in there work­ing off great vic­to­ries, and the occa­sion­al shel­lack­ing (1980, 1994, and 2010). He helped rebuild and regain lost territories.

He nur­tured young talent.

He nev­er lost per­spec­tive and o sense of humor, even get­ting Al Swift to laugh off a bloop­er in which Mag­gie referred to the con­gress­man as “your man Al Smith.”

I can well remem­ber Jay inter­ven­ing to break up a furi­ous argu­ment over the pro­posed Gate­way Pacif­ic coal export ter­mi­nal, pit­ting a pro-coal port labor leader against a green Belling­ham envi­ron­men­tal activist. The coal port was killed thanks to oppo­si­tion from the Lum­mi Indi­an Nation.

A final sto­ry: Mar­chioro, Smith and Pear­son were enjoy­ing a liba­tion at the New Orleans Café. A King Coun­ty Cour­t­house con­tin­gent arrived, full of itself. At vot­ers’ direc­tion, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil was being reduced from thir­teen to nine seats. The cour­t­house insid­ers were chuck­ling that they’d just drawn bound­aries to elim­i­nate the dis­trict of a first-term Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­cilmem­ber who’d backed the shrink­ing of the Coun­cil, a mea­sure cham­pi­oned by the jail guards’ union.

Karen, Jeff and Jay lis­tened to talk at the neigh­bor­ing table, adjourned one by one to the next room, and hit the phones.

They tipped off off a friend in the press, called pro­gres­sive activists they knew, and got word to the tar­get­ed councilmember.

That coun­cilmem­ber was Bob Fer­gu­son. He moved, unseat­ed a sup­pos­ed­ly pro­tect­ed incum­bent, and picked the New Orleans Café to cel­e­brate his reelection.

The rest is history.

Karen, Jeff and Jay rec­og­nized tal­ent. They had fun doing good.