On November 5, 1974, Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989) wins his sixth and last Senate term by defeating State Senator (and future U.S. Representative) Jack Metcalf (1927-2007), whom Magnuson also beat in the 1968 race. Six incumbents (five Democrats and a Republican) are re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democrat Don Leroy Bonker (b. 1937) wins an open House seat in the Third District representing Southwest Washington.
Magnuson ("Maggie" to constituents, Warren to family and friends) represented Washington in the United States Senate longer than anyone else, using seniority and legislative skills to enact laws that profoundly affected many aspects of American life. After a close electoral call in 1962, he revitalized his career by enacting numerous landmark bills to protect consumers. In the 1968 election, he easily defeated State Senator Jack Metcalf, a champion of the Republican Party’s right wing, who got campaign help from conservative national direct mail fundraiser Richard Vigurie.
Metcalf Again
In 1974, Governor Dan Evans (b. 1925), who headed the liberal-moderate wing of the Republican party in Washington, sought a more liberal Republican to challenge Magnuson. However, the candidate Evans preferred, Richard Kirk Hart, a University of Washington professor and political pollster, could not get state Republican contributors to donate the money he believed was needed for the race. Vigurie offered fundraising support, but wanted "certain stands on issues as a condition of his aid. I said to hell with it," Hart later recounted (Scates, 292).
Instead, the Republican nomination again went to Metcalf, who accepted Vigurie’s assistance. With the Republican President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) resigning in disgrace that August following the Watergate scandal, 1974 was not a good year for Republican candidates. Although Magnuson was being slowed by his age and health problems that would later be diagnosed as diabetes, he remained politically strong, and again defeated Metcalf handily. Magnuson won 61 percent (611,811 votes), Metcalf took 36 percent (363,626), and three other candidates divided the remaining votes. It was Magnuson’s final victory. In 1980, he was defeated by state Attorney General Slade Gorton (b. 1928), bringing to an end his 44-year Congressional career (eight years in the House of Representatives and 36 years in the Senate).
As Magnuson was being re-elected in 1974, Seattle voters were siding with the Senator and Seattle officials including Mayor Wes Uhlman (b. 1935) and City Councilwoman Jeanette Williams (1914-2008), by voting to reject continued aviation use of the former Sand Point Naval Air Station on Lake Washington. When the Navy de-activated the station, Magnuson led passage of a bill giving the land to the city, on condition that the runways be plowed under to make way for park uses. Aviation buffs waged a five-year fight to keep the airport operating, but lost the November 5, 1974 vote and subsequent legal battles. In 1977, Sand Point was dedicated as Warren G. Magnuson Park, a rare honor in that Magnuson was not only still living but still serving as senator.
Incumbents and Bonker Win
In the 1974 House races, Republican Joel Pritchard (1925-1997) in the First District and Democrats Lloyd Meeds (1927-2005) in the Second District, Mike McCormack (b. 1921) in the Fourth, future House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (1929-2013) in the Fifth, Floyd V. Hicks (1915-1992) in the Sixth, and future Secretary of Transportation and Senator Brock Adams (1927-2004) in the Seventh, all won re-election. One new member joined the House delegation. Don Bonker, who had lost the 1972 Secretary of State election to Republican incumbent Ludlow "Lud" Kramer (1932-2004), defeated Kramer by 61 percent to 38 percent in the race for the Third District seat in Southwest Washington previously held by fellow Democrat Julia Butler Hansen (1907-1988).
Having given up his state senate seat to challenge Magnuson, Metcalf returned to the state legislature in 1980, serving until 1992. That year he made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives. He succeeded in winning the Second District House seat in the 1994 Republican landslide and held it until 2000, stepping down after three terms, in keeping with his term-limits pledge.
