(10 of 10)
Dismal examples of how not to grow are easy enough to find. The magnificent setting of Anchorage, Alaska, for example, has already been tainted by a sprawl of thousands of mobile homes. Much of southern California's coastline is a jagged scar of freeways and factories that bar the way to the sea. Washington, at least, has caught a glimpse of the future and is not at all sure that it works. So has neighboring Oregon, which has decided to throttle back on growth and has developed a master plan requiring its 276 local governments to work out their own schemes, which must conform with state guidelines.
Washington has no such restrictive blueprint. Ray doubts that anybody could draw one up that made sense. "Where could you find such a group of wise people?" she asks. One quick answer is right in Seattle, where a group of talented people helped transform the economy of the Puget Sound area.
Faced with the task of guiding the future of one of the most scenic states, Ray finds the job "fascinating, exasperating, dismaying, frustrating, challenging —all those things." Blithely disregarding her fall in favor, she has already announced that she will run for another term when her first one is up in 1981. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wryly thanked her for not announcing for the presidency. Small chance of that—Dixy Lee Ray relishes too much delivering thunderbolts from the Olympia of her own Washington. ∎
* The other: Connecticut's Ella Grasso.