What About Eikenberry? -- Attorney General Endures, But He's Also The Biggest Riddle In The Race

When Don Brunell, director of the powerful Association of Washington Business, was asked at a Spokane Rotary meeting which Republican candidate for governor would be best for business, he had a quick response: Congressman Sid Morrison or state Sen. Dan McDonald.

Someone in the audience piped up, what about Attorney General Ken Eikenberry?

Brunell shrugged. "I told them, `We don't know Ken Eikenberry. We don't know what he's about.' "

Elected attorney general three times, Eikenberry is one of the state's most enduring political figures. Among the three GOP candidates, he started out with the most familiar name.

He is also the campaign's biggest riddle.

Is Eikenberry the conservative firebrand who breathed new life into the GOP as state party chairman in the 1970s, lending his name to a now-notorious pamphlet that counseled candidates to "attack, attack, attack"?

Or the buttoned-down lawyer who ran the attorney general's office for 12 years as a determinedly nonpartisan managing partner, appointing Democrats to key posts and without leaving, to the dismay of many fellow conservatives, much of a visible mark on public policy?

Is he the unabashedly pro-business candidate who calls for a "regulation revolution" to free businesses from government red tape? Or the populist consumer-rights advocate who once backed legislation giving the state control over gasoline prices?

In this year of the outsider, nobody is running harder against Olympia than Eikenberry, who warns of the public's "cold fury" toward bureaucratic excesses. Yet Eikenberry himself has spent nearly three decades on the public payroll - as FBI agent, prosecutor, legislator and the state's top lawyer.

"For the last 12 years, Ken has been more active as a public servant than a politician. He's kind of taken on the coloration of his office," says King County GOP Chairman Dick Derham, a longtime friend.

"He hasn't done a good job of communicating who he is and what he believes in. Ken has to change that."

HOME IN WENATCHEE

On a steamy 93-degree day, hot enough to sear the cherries still ripening on the trees, Ken Eikenberry is back in his hometown of Wenatchee for a high-school reunion and a day of politicking.

Slim, with steel-rimmed glasses and dark hair brushed in place, Eikenberry at age 60 looks every inch the earnest, no-nonsense lawyer - long removed from the kid who grew up on an orchard outside town.

As he drives by the local AG's office, he ruminates, "I can't get over the feeling of growing up as an insignificant kid here and coming back saying, `Wow, I'm the attorney general.' "

That Eikenberry - the private Eikenberry - can be a warm and funny person. But on the campaign trail, the formal, stiff-talking lawyer often takes over.

At his first stop, a banquet for elderly volunteers who know his name well from his office's extensive work with seniors, Eikenberry delivers a low-key speech filled with homilies about volunteerism and crime-fighting.

He keeps the normal currency of candidates - mingling with the crowd, handshaking and chitchat - to a minimum.

"Ken is not a very public personality, not naturally gregarious. Those kind of people don't usually grow up to be politicians," says Richard Larsen, former Seattle Times political columnist and an old acquaintance.

"But don't underestimate him. Check his numbers."

LOST ONLY ONCE

Indeed, Eikenberry has lost only one election since being voted student-body president of the junior college in Wenatchee. In his 1988 re-election bid for attorney general against spirited opposition, Eikenberry captured 62 percent of the votes and all but one county.

In 1970, after stints as an FBI agent and a King County prosecutor, Eikenberry was elected to the state House from the Queen Anne area of Seattle. He quickly became a leader in a gang of outspoken young conservatives.

Opposition to the income tax was their litmus test - much the same as abortion is now for the GOP right. And the enemy was its chief proponent, Republican Gov. Dan Evans. Eikenberry and others even wound up joining with Democrats to provide the first overrides of Evans' vetoes.

Once a group of legislators were leaving a reception when they spotted Evans' official car practically blocking the front door. The others went around. Eikenberry walked straight over the top, leaving fellow lawmakers in stitches and footprints behind for his political nemesis.

Asked about his fun-loving reputation, Eikenberry responds dryly, "Let's just say I do think it's an overserious crowd in the Legislature right now."

In 1976, Eikenberry embarked on a strange and ultimately suicidal political mission, giving up his safe seat to run against his Democratic seatmate, Helen Sommers. He claimed the district wasn't big enough for a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican.

A gutsy decision, allies say, that reflects his integrity and willingness to fight for principles.

Eikenberry dismisses it as political miscalculation. And he hasn't lost a race since.

REBUILT GOP IN STATE

The next year, Eikenberry was elected state Republican Party chairman, inheriting a pile of unpaid bills, back taxes and an organization devastated by Watergate. He created a million-dollar-a-year fund-raising operation, molded the party's right-wing activists into a grass-roots army and helped the GOP win a 49-49 tie in the state House.

"Ken was the guy who revitalized and honed the party into a unifying force," says his successor, Doug Ellis. "The success the party had in the 1980s was all built on what Ken did."

A how-to pamphlet produced by the party during his tenure advised legislative candidates that ". . . negative campaigning has a bad name, but so do a lot of things that work" and that a communications strategy must play to local attitudes because ". . . truth is what the people believe. It has very little to do with fact."

Though the pamphlet cover bears his name, Eikenberry denies having any knowledge of it at the time it was written. But he has shown plenty of street-fighting skills since then.

When the 1984 attorney general's race against state Sen. Phil Talmadge turned into a mud-slinger, Eikenberry ran ads accusing his foe of taking "political payoffs" from public-employee unions.

As attorney general, though, Eikenberry shelved the partisan hard ball.

"Ken, when he hired me, said `Don't tell me if you're a Democrat or a Republican,' " says Seattle lawyer Bill Hochberg, a former deputy attorney general and longtime Democratic activist. "And that's how he ran his office and made legal decisions. That's absolutely to his credit."

Eikenberry has swallowed hard defending Gardner-administration policies he personally opposes, such as giving Indian tribes greater management powers over natural resources.

"This is a law-enforcement job. When you take the oath, you put on a different hat," he says. "Who the heck am I, as lawyer for the state, to stand up and say the governor is making the wrong policy choice?"

PROUD OF CONSUMER RECORD

Eikenberry is proudest of his record as an advocate for consumers and crime victims.

He fought successfully for amending the state Constitution to include a crime victims' "bill of rights," and senior groups praise him for educating the elderly about consumer scams. The office has also pursued high-profile consumer-fraud and price-fixing actions against health clubs, major oil companies, car dealers, insurers and even a prominent doctor's clinic in his hometown.

Some criticize his office for often resolving those cases with less punitive, often less costly, "consent-decree" settlements that rarely get money back to consumers. Spokane lawyer Michael Casey, a former AG who specializes in consumer law, complained Eikenberry "took the easy cases instead of taking on the big boys."

Still, his consumer work has created powerful enemies in the business community.

"The rhetoric would suggest he's this pro-business advocate," says Jan Fisher, an Arco lobbyist whose company clashed with Eikenberry over his attempt to get the gas-price bill. "But when it suits him, he acts completely different. That raises eyebrows."

But another lobbyist notes, "If you can say the only people who don't like me are doctors, oil companies and insurance companies, that's a great way to get elected."

One place Eikenberry hasn't found great success is in the Legislature, according to lawmakers of both parties.

Several times, he has sought unsuccessfully to expand the crime-fighting powers of his office and beef up his consumer-affairs unit. His gas-price bill was buried quickly, and this year he couldn't find a sponsor for a "lemon-law" bill protecting used-car buyers.

THE LONE RANGER

"Ken is the absolute lone ranger. He's detached from the process, and he's rarely seen around here," says House Judiciary Chairman Marlin Appelwick, D-Seattle. "As a former legislator, you'd think he'd know better how the game is played. You've got to wonder how he'd play it as governor."

Ross Davis, a close political adviser, says Eikenberry has felt stung by the cold shoulder business interests have given his candidacy. And with McDonald running to the right of him on many issues, Eikenberry even finds his conservative credentials questioned.

Eikenberry comes from a generation of conservatives motivated by issues like crime, taxes and a strong defense.

While an abortion opponent, Eikenberry shies away from emotional "family-values" questions that now dominate GOP politics, saying he resents government intrusion whether from the left or the right.

"As a legislator I was known as a conservative. Or if the writer was really ticked off, an `arch-conservative,' " he says. "I guess my conservative patina is not as obvious as it once was."

In the September primary, he hopes to woo Republicans with some old messages: a vow never to raise taxes, along with promises to halt the growth in state spending and state employees.

With a somewhat vague promise borrowed from the title of a recent book to "Reinvent Government," he is trying to knit a coalition among some of those angriest at Olympia: hunters and fishermen, anti-tax and property-rights crusaders, developers and small businesses.

Eikenberry's vision of government is a product of his own Depression-era upbringing, when his dad was out of work after injuring his back hauling wheat. He recalls the family got help from the county: not welfare, but a loan so his mother could buy uniforms in order to take a nursing job.

GOVERNMENT SHOULD HELP

"State government should be a source of help and cooperation," he says. "Today, the atmosphere is hostile, adversarial and punitive."

Nowhere, claims Eikenberry, is that more evident than in environmental regulations. His solution: a "one-stop" permit process so rules won't stifle new business or expanding existing ones.

While Eikenberry insists his goal is to streamline rather than loosen environmental laws, he has called for revoking Gov. Booth Gardner's wetlands guidelines, amending the federal Endangered Species Act and stepping up hatchery production of salmon.

He has courted sportsmen's groups - and angered Native Americans - by calling for an audit of tribal fish catches, claiming Gardner's favorable treatment of tribes has given them more than their fair share.

The powerful National Rifle Association recently sent out a fund-raising letter to its members on Eikenberry's behalf, saying he would fight "gun bans" and red-tape restrictions on sportsmen.

Eikenberry is also skeptical of major health-care reform proposals, such as Gardner's to create a cost-control commission and requirements that businesses provide insurance for their workers.

Eikenberry favors incremental changes such as malpractice reform, preventing insurers from denying coverage to those with illnesses, and creating tax incentives for individuals or businesses buying health insurance.

NO RIGHT TO HEALTH CARE

"I don't think anybody has a right to health care like some sort of civil right," he says. "If government guarantees it, they'll screw it up. What we need is marketplace incentives to make health care affordable."

Ross Davis, Eikenberry's predecessor as state GOP chairman, was a Dan Evans loyalist who warned about the possibility of "haters" on the right taking over the party when he turned over the reins to Eikenberry in 1977.

But after watching Eikenberry in action, Davis became a close friend and now raises money for the campaign. Davis insists a lot of people, as he once did, misunderstand what Eikenberry stands for.

"Ken isn't an anti-government or anti-state-employee conservative," says Davis. "He's anti the way government is operating now. He's a reformer. He really believes he can change things down there." --------------------------------------------------------------- KEN EIKENBERRY:

"Who the heck am I, as lawyer for the state, to stand up and say the governor is making the wrong policy choice?".

Party: Republican.

Born: Wenatchee; now lives in Olympia.

Age: 60.

Family: Wife, Beverly.

Education: B.A., Washington State University; University of Washington Law School.

Leisure interests: Running, fishing.

Occupation: Attorney general.

Political Experience: Served in state House, 1970-76; chairman, state Republican Party, 1977-79; attorney general, 1980 to present.

Political heroes: Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan.

Money: Reported income last year of $77,300 from attorney general's salary plus income on a rental home. Raised $451,000 with large contributions from U.S. Ecology, Inc., a hazardous-waste firm; major law firms; the Vance Corp.; Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman Jr.

Campaign headquarters: 414 Olive Way, Suite 10, Seattle, WA 98101; 623-7167