Lowry’s Record: 4 Stops, No Tickets

Gov. Mike Lowry, whose powers include control of the Washington State Patrol, has been clocked speeding three times by troopers but has not been ticketed.

The governor flatly denied Tuesday getting any special consideration, expressed regret for having speeded and asserted, “I certainly want the state patrol to give me a ticket if they’re going to give anybody else one” for the same behavior.

Lowry, dubbed “Governor Leadfoot” by one newspaper, was clocked by troopers on Interstate 5 in Pierce County last year going 10 mph to 15 mph over the posted 55 mph limit.

The Seattle Weekly reported Tuesday that Lowry got on his patrol-supplied car phone and ordered the trooper to back off. The governor said he did no such thing but merely was checking in with the trooper as he had seen his own patrol driver do.

The governor was pulled over on I-5 near the Capitol exit a few months later, after a trooper said he was going at least 10 mph too fast. Lowry wasn’t ticketed.

He said Tuesday: “I frankly didn’t think I was exceeding the speed limit. I was coming over to take the exit that comes into the state Capitol and I was moving over into the right-hand lane. I was told by the patrol that in that particular instance, that 90 or 99 percent of the time, there would not have been a ticket.”

In October, he was clocked going 23 mph over the 55 mph speed limit on state Highway 283 in Grant County. He was pulled over but not ticketed, the patrol said.

“Normally, we wouldn’t write a ticket to the governor. He is a pretty high public official,” patrol Capt. Tom Robbins, commander of the Wenatchee district office, told The Weekly.

There was a fourth incident, too.

Patrol officials said Lowry was pulled over for driving erratically on I-5 in the Everett area shortly after he was elected, but before he was sworn in.

The governor-elect, returning from taking his daughter, Diane, to Western Washington University, told the officer he had been leaning over to pick up something from the car floor and veered into the other lane, said former patrol spokesman Bill Burkett, who looked into the incident. The trooper accepted Lowry’s story and let him go without a ticket, he said.

That incident and others led him to recommend to the governor’s office that Lowry not drive himself around, but rather to use one of the troopers who are assigned to him 24 hours a day, Burkett said.

The governor’s patrol bodyguards told him Lowry likes the independence of occasionally hopping into a car and going off on his own, he said.

“What I said was ‘The governor’s reputation needs to be protected,”’ Burkett said. Nothing ever came of his recommendation, and he was later laid off, a decision he is appealing.

In a passing remark to the Citizen Salary Commission Tuesday, the governor said he likes to drive himself to the neighborhood Safeway - “and it drives my security people crazy.”

Lowry was contrite about the speeding, amused at the press attention and concerned that people would think he got special consideration.

“Certainly, as governor I want to be held to the highest standards, higher than anyone,” he told reporters. “Certainly, the governor should never exceed the speed limit and I want to say that should be the case.

“In case there was any question, I certainly did not ask the State Patrol to not give me any ticket. That is totally their choice. I didn’t ask them to give me a ticket, either, but I doubt if too many people do.”

State troopers decide on a case-bycase basis whether to issue tickets to motorists stopped for speeding, patrol spokesman Lt. Ron O’Gwin said.

“The fact he wasn’t ticketed isn’t highly unusual,” said the governor’s press secretary, Jordan Dey, citing patrol statistics that half or more of those stopped for traffic violations don’t receive tickets.