Remembering Mike Lowry: Theatre of a Rich Career

The call from Mary Lowry reached me at St. Mark’s Cathedral on May Day, as the “Holy Box” was declaring itself a sanctuary for “illegals” pursued by the first Trump administration. I learned from that call that Michael Edward Lowry had just left us on May Day, 2017.

My reaction then was to think of how the ex-governor could have enlivened and galvanized the scattershot protests taking place across the city that day. The obituary did not give adequate voice to this theatrical aspect of a rich political career.

It comes into focus now, watching Trump as a political Godzilla dominating a disorganized resistance. Trump has opened many fronts at once, and the conservative movement, which once stood for limited executive powers, has thrown its lot behind a would-be authoritarian ruler. Opportunity has mated with intimidation.

We in the media used to make fun of Lowry’s hyperbole. The shutdown of a Job Corps training center was not only ABSOLUtely outrageous but absoLUTELY outrageous. The Reagan Star Wars program was I-N-S-A-N-E. The annual shrimp feed on Kay Bullitt’s lawn on Capitol Hill saw Mike predict that progressives would prevail. Why? With arms waving skyward, then pointed downward, Lowry would proclaim: “Because we’re right and they’re wrong.”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus protests of today do not carry the same force. Or more importantly, the same impact at thwarting bad policy and funding good stuff. A key to Mike Lowry was that he was skilled both on stage and in the trenches.

Asked what he would do to counter anti-environmental policies of the Reagan administration, Oregon Rep. Jim Weaver answered: “Raise hell!!!” But you need to buttress that, as Lowry managed to do.

Mike did business in the narrow corridor outside the House Budget Committee hearing room. So narrow that members not only put heads together doing deals, but rubbed bellies. Moderately conservative Southern Democrats (we had them then) championed spending on veterans programs. Lowry wanted bucks to go also to housing and the homeless. And he deployed a skilled aide to that task.

Mike was originally a farm boy from the Palouse and was buddies with guys named Buddy. They dealt. Back home, while business bigshots raised money against him, Lowry never cold-shouldered a constituent. I delighted in reporting the sponsor lineup at a Lowry fundraiser, spotlighting Boeing, the Teamsters Union, and the Human Rights Campaign.

I watched a recent Rep. Pramila Jayapal town hall held at Town Hall Seattle. It was a packed love fest as she called for resistance to Trump II. But it presented America as a collection of silos — identity politics with each standing for ethnic origin or skin color. 

In its self-satisfaction, the Seattle left’s disconnect with that part of America, roughly between the coasts, is striking. The left enjoys its own silo within “Seattle values.” The Stranger assures us of its superiority to the America of racists, sexists, and fundamentalists — the “deplorables.”  Trump has effectively played off such demonization of America.

Lowry looked for ways to bridge gaps, where it was possible. He advocated for wilderness protection, but defined it as a means of preserving habitat for endangered salmon. In turn, safeguarding of spawning streams meant saving low-elevation old-growth forests, not just high-elevation glaciers and meadows.

Mike was a good loser, unlike the current narcissist in the White House. He was coming up short, in the 1983 special U.S. Senate election, to Dan Evans when, in a live broadcast, Jean Enersen on KING asked the inevitable TV news question: How do you feel? The answer came back: “You ought to come down here, Jean. We’re having a great time.”

In retirement, he and Dan Evans would form the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition, raising and leveraging millions of dollars to preserve human and natural habitats. Numerous blue herons in our interior waters owe their existence to this collaboration of the regal ex-governor and his rumpled, populist successor.

Mike had his flaws, notably a temper that produced frequent eruptions. Such anger was fueled by Pioneer Square bars (until curbed of his own volition). He once bellowed in my direction, “You’re a (bleep)ing biased reporter and you should resign.” This broadside came after a largely favorable story.

Indisputably, the guy had guts. On a night that Reagan sent U.S. planes to bomb Libya — Operation El Dorado Canyon was retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque favored by U.S. military — Lowry went live on KOMO and denounced the airstrike. Numerous viewers wished him dead, and calls overwhelmed the TV station’s switchboard.

It was a different era, where conviction-driven disagreement in public gave way to private respect. I recall Lowry bashing Slade Gorton at a news conference, but that night he was engaging Gorton in animated conversation in the backyard of Rep. John Miller’s Capitol Hill home. (Yes, back then, members of both parties attended each other’s fundraisers.)

If still with us, Mike Lowry would get in Trump’s face — the POTUS would need a raincoat — and get under Trump’s skin. He would be mobilizing constituencies, e.g. in rural America, to protest the closure of their hospitals and arrest of their farmworkers. He would have been furious and furiously engaged. After all, as a King County officeholder, he was once defined by David Brewster as “the one Councilman who works.”

My conservative mother voted for Lowry in his second Senate race, against Gorton, with a straightforward explanation. Mike was “obviously flawed,” she said, but he was authentic and passionate — and used salmon to salvage rural valleys.

In the new era, with a bully president and welfare for billionaires, guts and genuineness are in short supply, along with ability to connect. Mike, we miss you.

This story also appears in Cascadia Advocate.