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Since her inaugural eleven months ago as one of the nation's two women Governors,* Ray has been attacked for being too eager to encourage development. She has a distinctive background for the battle. Until she first ran for office in last year's Democratic primary, Ray, 63, was not a politician at all. That pleased Washington's voters, who are fond of mavericks. They were enchanted by her no-nonsense manner and her knee socks, in which she often tucks a comb. When she is in the mood, she radiates a charm that makes her seem like a benevolent pixie, a chubby (5 ft. 4 in., 165 Ibs.) Peter Pan.
Unlike most politicians, Ray has an expert's knowledge of both sides of the debate over nuclear power. A marine biologist, she was named to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1972, and was its outspoken chairman in 1973-74. She is a strong advocate of nuclear power and is bitterly opposed on that score by environmentalists, although while at the AEC she moved aggressively to improve safety features for reactors. Ralph Nader once put her down as "Ms. Plutonium." Her view of him: "An ignorant man—he has no credentials, he has no experience in anything."
Without question, Ray knows how Washington, D.C., works—a great advantage for the Governor of a state whose land is 29% owned by the U.S. and that feels both exploited and ignored by the faraway Federal Government. When she left the nation's capital in 1975 and set out for Fox Island, driving her own motor home, she could feel the pull of the Northwest. By the time she crossed the Missouri River, she was singing at the wheel. Says she: "Every mile I put between me and Washington, D.C., I felt happier and happier. I drove all the way to the beach. I just had to see that old Pacific Ocean."
Whatever their views on Ray, Northwesterners can identify with her compulsion to hurry back home and, before doing anything else, drive down to the sea. In 1792, British Explorer George Vancouver discovered Puget Sound and marveled at the "innumerable pleasing landscapes" that he thought needed only "the industry of man to render it the most lovely country that can be imagined." Since then, the region has experienced the industry of man aplenty, and not all of it for the better. But the Northwest remains astonishingly unsullied and apart. There is brilliant color in the green forests—the yellow flash of the willow goldfinch, the state bird, and the white and rosy pink of the rhododendron. A commuter ferry going from Seattle to a suburban island can seem, for a few moments at least, as alone as an Indian cedar dugout canoe might have been centuries before. If the day is clear, a traveler can spy the heights of the Cascades, a range of 13 peaks over 10,000 ft., topped by Mount Rainier (14,408 ft.), that sweeps north toward Canada and south toward Oregon.