(7 of 10)
For a while, anyway. Since election day, Ray's popularity has dropped sharply. NIX ON DIXY bumper stickers are starting to appear, and critics are complaining about "Raydiation." Her decline in esteem is due in part to the fact that Ray has turned out to be something of an autocrat, who insists on loyalty at every level. One of her first acts was to replace the staff at the Governor's mansion, including some servants who had been there for years. Her aides, says one fellow Democrat, "aren't just yes people. They're yes-yes-yes people. She intimidates all of them." Her audiences are no longer composed of students, but she treats them like students. At the Western Governors conference in Anchorage this fall, she would clasp her hands and begin to lecture, almost as if she expected other Governors to start taking notes.
Ray feuds with local political writers, charging unfair treatment. At times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which supported Spellman during the election, does seem to delight in baiting her. Publishers have also felt her wrath; she refused to meet again with some after they failed to stand when she entered the room—"not for me, but for the office."
When she is thwarted, Ray's mouth clenches as stubbornly as John Bull's, the engaging twinkle vanishes from her amber eyes, and she lasers her opponent with a lethal stare. Says one of the state's top Democrats: "She's unwilling to forgive and forget, and that's one of the cardinal rules of politics."
Ray is unpopular with the farmers, who miss Dan Evans, the more approachable Governor who served for twelve years before Ray. Her most dedicated enemies, though, are the more extreme environmentalists, whom she derides as radicals who "hate people." Ray's explanation: "The only way they like the earth is when it has no people on it ... because people, of necessity, change the environment [and] use its resources." But many others in the state, including farmers, fishermen and some businessmen, worry about her views on growth—that she wants to go too far too fast.
The hottest current issue is how to handle Alaska's North Slope oil. Washington's four major refineries are located on the eastern shore of Puget Sound at Cherry Point, 100 miles north of Seattle and 75 miles inland from the sea. The refineries are now supplied by tankers limited in size by state law to 125,000 tons. The oil companies and Ray want the figure raised to 250,000 tons, arguing that the bigger loads would allow savings leading to lower prices for consumers. Surplus oil would be passed on to the Midwest by pipeline.
Though the huge tankers would have to thread their way through narrow straits to reach Cherry Point, the Governor maintains that fears of an accident and oil spill are exaggerated. Says she: "There's nothing that tugs on the heartstrings like a few mallards with oil on their wings." Ray points out that some 13 million migratory birds are shot by hunters every year and notes that the number that die from oil spills is minute by comparison. Furthermore, the Governor claims that oil dumped into cold waters, like those of the sound, would cause almost no lasting damage.