Editorial Notebook -- There'll Never Be Another `Slim' Rasmussen

HE looked like a bulldog. He often acted like one. He could be stubborn, crude, contemptible. He was the unpredictable fly in the ointment of state government.

State Sen. A.L. "Slim" Rasmussen was his own kind of Democrat. If he disagreed with his party, he said to hell with it.

A lot of people tried and failed to get Albert Lorenz Rasmussen. Cancer did last week. He died at the age of 82, ending a career that began in the state House in 1944.

In the 1960s, Rasmussen upset Democratic leaders by raising embarrassing questions about campaign-contribution ethics. "A politician will spend every dime of your money, but none of his own," the populist Rasmussen would say.

Democratic leaders fixed Slim's wagon. They blantantly redistricted one of their own out of office with the infamous "Rasmussen smokestack" - that plucked him from Demo land and deposited him in unfriendly GOP environs.

Rasmussen struck back. He ran for mayor of Tacoma. He won. Then he moved back into his old district and was re-elected to the Legislature. He liked to tweak government big-wigs by intentionally mispronouncing their names.

They said Slim was classless. At times, he was. He wasn't slim. He was rotund. His nickname came from childhood days to differentiate him from his twin brother, Lester "Fat" Rasmussen.

Rasmussen once told me: "You've heard about lemmings who all follow their leaders over a cliff. Sheep are like that. My constituents didn't elect me to be a lemming or a sheep."

I knew Slim well. He had a warm side. He was a devoted family man. He voted his conscience - not what he was told to by his party caucus.

Slim didn't know the meaning of you've got to go along to get along. He had one loyalty - to the residents of the blue-collar district that kept re-electing him. That's not a bad one.

- Don Hannula