Murray and Cantwell take up gavels in the Senate as heirs to Scoop and Maggie’s legacy

As a baby boomer, I grew up in times when the Ever­green State was rep­re­sent­ed in Con­gress by the leg­endary Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors War­ren G. Mag­nu­son and Hen­ry M. “Scoop” Jack­son, or the “Gold Dust Twins” as they were known from Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to Wash­ing­ton State.

They served togeth­er for twen­ty-eight years. Each chaired a pow­er­ful com­mit­tee. Each left a lega­cy: As Sen­ate Inte­ri­or Com­mit­tee chair, Jack­son wrote the Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Act. Mag­gie caused the great sec­ond pow­er­house at Grand Coulee Dam to be built. It is help­ing heat us on this cold snowy win­ter day.

Wash­ing­ton is now rep­re­sent­ed by two solons, Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray, who have been seat­mates for twen­ty years. With Democ­rats now run­ning Con­gress’ upper cham­ber again after over a half-decade of Repub­li­can con­trol, each vet­er­an sen­a­tor chairs an influ­en­tial Sen­ate committee.

Mur­ray is “Madam Chair” of HELP, the Sen­ate Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor and Pen­sions Com­mit­tee. Cantwell heads the Sen­ate Com­merce, Sci­ence and Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee. Mag­nu­son wield­ed the gav­el at Com­merce from 1955 to 1977, when he moved up to chair the Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions Committee.

What’s the dif­fer­ence of being in the majority?

In 2017, then-Chair Lamar Alexan­der of Ten­nessee, a Repub­li­can, held a HELP con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing on Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­na­tion of bil­lion­aire donor Bet­sy DeVos as U.S. Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion. The rushed hear­ing was held before DeVos had sub­mit­ted her finan­cial dis­clo­sure infor­ma­tion to Congress.

Although the committee’s rank­ing Demo­c­rat, Mur­ray had exact­ly five min­utes to ques­tion DeVos. No sec­ond round of ques­tion­ing was allowed for. The five min­utes were well spent. Mur­ray went on to mar­shal fifty “No” votes on the DeVos nom­i­na­tion. V.P. Mike Pence broke the tie and sent her into the Cabinet.

At Com­merce, Mag­gie relied on gut instinct – but what a gut it was.

He super­vised draft­ing of the pub­lic accom­mo­da­tions sec­tion of the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act, deft­ly turn­ing back assaults by seg­re­ga­tion­ist Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond, R‑South Car­oli­na. He also presided as auto­mo­bile giant Gen­er­al Motors apol­o­gized to Ralph Nad­er for spy­ing on the author of Unsafe at Any Speed, an expose of the Cor­vair that trig­gered auto safe­ty legislation.

Cantwell is a wonk’s wonk, serv­ing on three “A” list com­mit­tees – Com­merce, Finance and Ener­gy & Nat­ur­al Resources. In tak­ing the gav­el, she promised that Com­merce will “oper­ate in a col­le­gial fash­ion,” not­ing Coast Guard reau­tho­riza­tion leg­is­la­tion that has bro­ken the ice on get­ting new polar icebreakers.

She recalled meet­ing Mag­nu­son in retire­ment at his home in Mag­no­lia when he was enter­tain­ing Sen­a­tor Dan Inouye of Hawaii.

“We live in an infor­ma­tion age, and we just have to own up to it,” she said. “To me it’s bet­ter to pre­pare for that infor­ma­tion age, so every­thing from pri­va­cy to broad­band to AI to cyber­se­cu­ri­ty to STEM. “

As the first woman to chair Com­merce, she added: “To my fel­low col­leagues, all of you but par­tic­u­lar­ly the women, I hope that we can do a bet­ter job on strate­gies to help women in the work­force, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the STEM fields of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and math.”

Wash­ing­ton is one of five states (along with Neva­da, Min­neso­ta, New Hamp­shire and Cal­i­for­nia) to have been rep­re­sent­ed by two women in the Senate.

Dur­ing much of the reign of Mag­gie and Scoop, the total was one or two women in the whole Sen­ate: Now there are twen­ty-three female senators.

Our state’s new “gold dust twins” have flexed mus­cle already.

The Trump regime ignored Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s request for a fed­er­al emer­gency dis­as­ter dec­la­ra­tion for coun­ties and reser­va­tion land hit hard by last summer’s wild­fires. Prob­a­bly a func­tion of Trump’s call­ing Inslee “a snake.”

Mur­ray and Cantwell wrote to Pres­i­dent Biden two days after he took office.

Biden came through with a dis­as­ter dec­la­ra­tion with­in two weeks.

Sen­a­tor Cantwell man­aged to be a pro­duc­tive leg­is­la­tor while Trump held office. She worked with Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki, R‑Alaska, to get Coast Guard cut­ters under design and con­struc­tion. She secured per­ma­nent autho­riza­tion and fund­ing for the Land and Water Con­ser­va­tion Fund, under pro­vi­sions of last year’s Great Amer­i­can Out­doors Act. A big deal.

The Trump years were more frus­trat­ing for Mur­ray, a mem­ber of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship. She bom­bard­ed the pres­i­dent and Cab­i­net sec­re­taries with let­ters that went unan­swered and intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that Repub­li­can com­mit­tee chairs sat on. But she nev­er let DeVos out of her sights.

Chair­ing HELP again will, hope­ful­ly, reignite Murray.

She has late­ly assumed all the trap­pings (e.g. mul­ti­ple offices, staged meet­ings, pro­tec­tive han­dlers) of an entrenched U.S. Sen­a­tor, to which she used to be a refresh­ing excep­tion. It has been years since Mur­ray held a town meet­ing. Plain speak­ing has giv­en way to press release boil­er­plate and canned quotes.

Once upon a time, how­ev­er, Mag­nu­son had a close elec­tion scare, as some­one described by Time mag­a­zine as “a skilled politi­cian with few pre­ten­sions of states­man­ship.” The 1962 elec­tion trans­formed him.

Mag­nu­son became Con­gress’ fore­most con­sumer cham­pi­on, and the leg­is­la­tor whose “lit­tle amend­ment” to an obscure law kept super­tankers off Puget Sound. Young aides, nick­named “the bum­ble­bees,” refash­ioned his staff.

“Mag­gie Has Soil” but­tons dec­o­rat­ed his 1968 campaign.

Mur­ray has shown her stuff back­stage, notably as an ear­ly crit­ic of Trump regime lethar­gy on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. She belongs back out front, with a staff trans­fu­sion akin to Mag­gie in lat­er years.

On Com­merce, if they haven’t expe­ri­enced this already, staff aides will go through prepar­ing Maria Cantwell for a hear­ing. The exer­cise involves col­lect­ing every­thing there is to know on a sub­ject and get­ting that knowl­edge deploy­able by Cantwell. She’s been known to mas­ter sub­jects from deriv­a­tives used by Wall Street spec­u­la­tors, to a pro­posed mine’s cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences for the Bris­tol Bay fish­ery, to the intri­ca­cies of NOAA’s coastal weath­er radar.

Of course, spon­tane­ity has a role.

Mag­nu­son was famous for his bloop­ers, but one was delib­er­ate. Arro­gant, over­bear­ing Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee boss Avery Brundage came before Com­merce in the midst of a feud with Amer­i­can athletes.

Mag­nu­son mem­o­rably brought him to the wit­ness table say­ing the com­mit­tee would now hear from “Mr. Aver­age Brundy.”