Hardman `Lives What He Believes'

As a college freshman at the height of the Vietnam War, Scott Hardman was active in a straight-laced, all-American sort of way. He played football. Studied, angling for a scholarship. Didn't smoke even one cigarette, never mind marijuana. Took ROTC classes and thought about joining the Air Force.

Then he contracted a case of mononucleosis that, his father says with a drip of drama, changed his life.

Recuperating at his parents' home in Ballard, Hardman grew reflective. He quit football, quit ROTC. He missed a crucial test and lost out on the scholarship. And at the urging of a friend, he began devoting more time to Young Life, the nondenominational Christian organization that matches high-school and junior-high students with college-age peer counselors.

The decision, and his underlying religious faith, have influenced almost everything about him since: his most enduring friendships, his politics, two marriages, three children, three careers and, 26 years after that summer of convalescence, his current outsider campaign for the U.S. Senate.

For Hardman to win the Democratic primary in Tuesday's election, he has often said, the people of Washington must first get to know him. But introducing himself hasn't been easy, even with the $225,000 he has loaned or contributed to his campaign, and time is running short.

In a race that has remained oddly outside the public's attention, the 46-year-old Hardman is the least known of the major Democratic challengers to Republican Sen. Slade Gorton. Unlike Ron Sims and Jesse Wineberry, he has never held public office. And unlike Mike James, he hasn't had a quarter-century of television exposure.

It maybe hasn't helped that Hardman the candidate rarely talks about himself on a personal level, especially his religious faith. He describes himself instead as a New Democrat, as somebody who combines business savvy with a long history of public service. He talks about his careers with the State Department and the Peace Corps and as a business consultant and manufacturer. He's a non-politician, he likes to say, who has thought deeply about public-policy issues and has the will and know-how to make government better.

All of that sounds accurate to the people who know him best. Yet, they say, it leaves out a lot of what they like about him most.

There's no sense, in that sound-bite self-description of the manufacturing executive who treats his shop janitor and his international banker with the same respect, of the friend whose optimism, even through a difficult divorce, was a source of inspiration, of the volunteer high-school counselor who, not long after that collegiate bout with mono, made it seem OK, even cool, to be a straight kid.

Talk to his friends and family and you hear the same thing: a wish that the state's voters could meet Hardman personally rather than through speeches and newspaper articles and television ads.

His younger sister, Dana Sigley: "If you know him, he's exactly what you see. He's such a good, honorable, honest man. I've never seen him do anything out of vindictiveness or spite."

"When you meet him in person for the first time," says Richard Richings, Hardman's business partner, "you say, `Is this guy for real?' He sounds a little too good to be true. But he is what he seems to be. He lives what he believes without talking a lot about it."

Followed politics from sidelines

When Hardman told his family last Thanksgiving that he was contemplating the Senate race, the reaction was a mixture of recognition, surprise and wonder.

His father, Dan Hardman, said it didn't seem strange that Scott would show an interest in public office. "But his mother and I both said, `What? Most guys running for office start out with dogcatcher or something a little lower.' "

Hardman has followed politics from the sidelines - he contributed money to Maria Cantwell's congressional campaign in 1992 and helped organize a group of business leaders for Bill Clinton - but never seriously considered running himself before last year.

Energized by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Seattle last year and by passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement - and by his feelings about Gorton - Hardman began thinking about the U.S. Senate as a place to push for worker retraining and other changes to help the nation compete in a global economy.

He encouraged two of the state's congressional Democrats, Cantwell and Rep. Norm Dicks, to take on Gorton. When they both declined, he began contemplating his own bid.

"Somebody gave me some good advice," he said. "They said, don't ask people what they'd like to see in a Senate candidate and then try to fit that. Just start talking about what you believe. If people respond, you'll know you're on the right track."

So he started talking: about the importance of trade, about reforming health care, about banning assault weapons, about cutting the federal budget and using the savings to invest in better schools and in social programs such as Head Start, about how politicians ought to say yes when they mean yes and no when they mean no.

He received enough encouragement, he says, to jump in.

Deep roots in Ballard

Hardman is a third-generation Ballard resident. His father's parents arrived in Seattle from Indiana in the early 1920s, his mother's parents from Portland a few years later. Hardman lives four blocks from his parents, who live in the same house where he grew up with his sister and a younger brother. Not far away, his 94-year-old grandmother lives in the same house where she raised his father.

After graduating from Ingraham High School in 1967, Hardman enrolled at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. It was there, after a year as a big but slow offensive tackle, that Hardman became involved with Young Life, counseling high-school kids.

One acquaintance from that time, a Tacoma high-school student named Barbara Anne Keely, remembers Hardman as smart, funny, gregarious and a lasting influence in her life; she's now a Presbyterian minister in Minnesota. At a time, the early 1970s, when a lot of kids were experimenting with drugs, alcohol and sex, she said, Hardman "showed us all kinds of ways to be cool without doing things that were dangerous."

His interest in religion led him to the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., where he received a master's degree, and indirectly to Washington, D.C. He met his first wife, Louise Hilson, through Young Life. When she went to work for Don Bonker, another Young Life friend who was elected congressman from Southwest Washington in 1974, they moved east. There, Hardman did some consulting and landed a job as a State Department adviser on Haiti and Cuba.

That job led to a position as the Peace Corps director in Western Samoa. When his marriage broke up, he returned to Seattle in 1984 and began a new career as an international banking consultant. University of Washington sociology professor George Bridges, who met Hardman through Young Life in 1969 and considers him among his closest friends, says the divorce devastated Hardman but also strengthened his character.

"We've gone through some very hard times together, but he remains optimistic and that gives me strength, too," Bridges says. "His faith gave him strength through all of that, and his relationships gave him a good deal of strength. He is strong. And I think that affects the people around him."

Real-life `investing in people'

Business partner Richings, who doesn't share Hardman's Christian beliefs, says he nonetheless came to appreciate what he saw as a strong, consistent character. The two met while in an MBA program at the UW. A year later, in 1989, Hardman called Richings one day with the idea of buying Steel Products Inc., a Fremont manufacturer of shipboard doors that had been in bankruptcy proceedings for nearly five years.

They each put up a small amount of money, about $1,000, and then borrowed $500,000 more to get the company back on its feet. Five years later, Steel Products is a leading supplier of meal carts and wheelchairs for airlines and, with annual sales of about $3 million, is coming off its best year ever.

Sometimes, to illustrate his "investing in people" campaign theme, Hardman tells a story about how he and Richings provided health insurance to Steel Products employees on the first day they owned the company. Political embellishment? Richings says that his partner, with typical humility, has actually downplayed the story.

In fact, he says, Hardman insisted on giving every employee not only top-line Blue Cross health coverage - at a company where there had been no benefits previously - but included vision and dental insurance, full coverage for dependents, and retirement and other benefits as well. In return, he said, Hardman insisted on - and got - phenomenal increases in productivity.

When he stepped down as CEO in February to run for the Senate, Hardman sold most of his interest in the company. His $1,000 investment had become worth about $200,000.

Strong stands but clumsy style

On the campaign trail, Hardman has had mixed success bringing his story to life. He does best in small groups, especially given time to warm up in a conversation and explain his positions.

He seems less afraid than most politicians of disagreeing with his audience. Of the four major Democratic candidates, he has taken the strongest position against invading Haiti. He called for military cuts, and didn't back down when asked in a debate whether that should include Boeing's B-2 bomber. "Yes, it should," he said.

Of the four, he alone was willing to tell the Washington State Labor Council that he strongly supported NAFTA. He didn't win the group's endorsement - finished last, in fact - but hasn't had to backtrack since then, as James has, or downplay his position, as has Sims, who won the endorsement.

At the same time, his lack of experience sometimes makes him seem a clunky candidate. He doesn't look comfortable in front of large groups. At the Washington Education Association endorsement convention, he began his speech by knocking over the microphone.

And although he's the true outsider in the race, he uses a jargony bureaucratese and a string of political cliches that can make him sound more entrenched than his insider opponents.

"I want to run my campaign like I'm going to run the office, and run the office like I'm running the campaign," he often says. He uses an odd grammatical construction - "take and" - in about every other sentence when he gets going.

"We need to take and look at how to take and fund health care in this country," he said at a recent debate.

And every problem requires "stepping up to the plate."

As the race moves into its final days, Hardman is running a lone television commercial that, in 30 seconds, attempts to introduce his character, explain his views and attack Gorton. It's a lot to do for one TV spot and, like Hardman himself, it leaves much unsaid.

---------------------------------------------- HARDMAN'S STAND ON ISSUES ---------------------------------------------- CRIME: -- Supports the crime bill recently signed by President Clinton

-- Education should be cornerstone of long-term fight against crime -- Supported the "Three Strikes, You're Out" law for violent offenders and construction of new prisons -- Supports a ban on assault weapons

HEALTH CARE: -- Wants universal coverage; favors employer mandates

ABORTION: Pro-choice

BUDGET: -- Favors pulling Social Security out of the federal budget -- Says that if a balanced-budget amendment came to the floor, he would favor separating the budget into a construction budget and operating budget

TRADE: -- Strongly supports NAFTA and GATT

FOREIGN POLICY: -- Opposes invasion of Haiti -- Favors scaling back defense spending approximately 30 percent over the next five to 10 years