Carl Maxey: A Fighting Life

12. The Seattle Seven Circus

office,” said Maxey, trying to put the best face on it. “I’ll offer to open my books to anyone and I wish Jackson would do the same.” The funding gap was so lopsided that Maxey’s entire war chest was a quarter of what Jackson had received from Republicans alone. That’s right, the Republicans had pledged $100,000 to the campaign of a Democratic senator. Maxey made hay out of this revelation, saying that it only proved what he had been saying all along: “The incumbent is more of a Republican than a Democrat.” The Republican donors said the money was for use in the Democratic primary only, to ensure that Jackson was renominated. It went without saying that they viewed the prospect of Senator Carl Maxey with horror. In any case, Jackson never used most of the Republican money and returned it to its donors. As for Maxey, it didn’t help his finances much that he had pledged to give half of what he raised to college students to spend on any antiwar candidate of their choice. When reporters asked if he could run a Senate campaign on such a shoestring, he replied, “Most of us do not have Boeing Co. money.” This was yet another dig at Jackson, who had long been saddled with the moniker, “The Senator from Boeing .” Yet despite his funding shortfall, Maxey still managed to campaign all over the state, nearly nonstop. “He hired a private plane,” said Lou Maxey. “He would speak in any little town to any group. And when he’d talk to a labor group, they were hard-line traditional Democrats. But they would always leave just blown away. He knew all about farm policy and labor policy, and he spoke directly to the people specifically.” Lou, who was working for a Spokane ad agency, created a Maxey campaign ad that spoofed Jackson’s ads, which depicted him as a committed environmentalist, walking through the woods. The Maxey ad showed a silhouette of a soldier marching into battle, with the words, “No Deposit, No Return. Is Vietnam Henry Jackson’s idea of conservation ? Vote for Carl Maxey.” The ad ran in the sports sections of both Seattle papers. She later heard the Jackson campaign was furious over the ad, which they thought was a low blow. For a few stunning weeks, it began to look as if Maxey could pull off a coup. Maxey rolled into Seattle’s King County Democratic a right hook to scoop jackson 155 convention—the biggest county in the state—with a well-organized group of supporters. It was, according to Marchioro, the only county in the state in which Jackson did not control the party apparatus. Many of Maxey’s supporters were young; most were unconnected with the “traditional” state Democratic machine; all were fervently antiwar. One week after the Kent State shootings, emotions were boiling over. During the vote on who to endorse for Senate—Jackson or Maxey— the Maxey delegates filled the hall with the chant, “Peace! Now! Peace! Now!” One old-line delegate pleaded with the crowd: “If you reject Sen. Jackson, you will throw out 18 years of seniority in the U.S. Senate . It will make us, not him, look like a jackass.” The crowd was unmoved. When the votes were counted, the King County Democratic convention had thrown its endorsement to Maxey by a vote of 508– 485. The result “really tore the sheet within the party,” said Marchioro. A jubilant Maxey called it “a good right hook to Jackson’s belly.” That wasn’t the only pugilistic metaphor that Maxey delivered. “It was a slap in the face of a man who has served eighteen years in the Senate ,” said Maxey. “It was a well-deserved slap in the face, however.” Jackson pretended not to care. He said the “real convention will be held in November and I have no doubt about the outcome.” He said the King County results had been rigged. But they were not rigged at all, according to William W. Prochnau and Richard W. Larsen, veteran Seattle Times political correspondents who witnessed these events. In their 1972 book A Certain Democrat: Senator Henry M. Jackson, they said that the antiwar Democrats and the Washington Democratic Council (the leadership of which Maxey had resigned in order to run for Senate) had “moved aggressively into precinct caucuses,” seized control in several counties, and had caught the old-line Democrats by surprise . Prochnau...