Craswell’s Ever The Lady Candidate A Distinctly Non-Political Politician

Put most candidates at a political picnic and they puff and strut like roosters.

Then there’s Ellen Craswell, Republican candidate for governor and a distinctly non-political politician.

At the GOP’s state party picnic on Vashon Island last summer, Craswell cut her usual beatific figure.

While other candidates hawked their literature, Craswell graciously received droves of voters wearing Craswell T-shirts, buttons and hats as a plane towed a “Craswell for governor” banner overhead.

She’s the kind of candidate who will wait peacefully for a ferry, sipping lemonade, instead of getting out of the car to pump every commuter’s hand.

At candidate forums before the primary election, Craswell typically spoke her piece succinctly when called on, then sat quietly while others harangued and competed for attention.

“She listens,” said Rep. Steve Fuhrman, R-Kettle Falls. “And she does not use the words I did this, or I did that. She will refer to we, our family, or something done by citizens as a whole.”

Greg Casey, a Spokane attorney, remembered the first time he visited Craswell in Olympia. Craswell served four years in the House and 12 in the Senate before losing her seat in 1992.

“I was quite surprised when I first met her. She was very attentive to what I had to say, looking me in the eyes.

“She’s a person where what you see is what you get. She has that same gentle spirit in her private life as you see in public.”

Some find Craswell cold, but they probably haven’t met her. She can look severe, but that’s more a hairstyle thing. When she smiles her face creases with warmth.

“My first adjective I think of when I think of Ellen is tender,” said Rep. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, a close friend.

“Years in politics have not made her coarse and hard. That says a lot.”

Always the lady, it’s hard to imagine Craswell in blue jeans, sweating or shouting. Reese’s peanut butter cups are her strongest vice.

She doesn’t watch television or read newspapers, except for what aides and family clip or videotape for her. Her son Jim remembers that when Oprah Winfrey invited Craswell on her show, “She didn’t know who (Winfrey) was.”

Instead Craswell, 64, studies the Bible, the writings of the founding fathers, and spends time with her family, including 14 grandchildren.

“My first impression of Ellen was she was almost too nice, too sweet to be tossed into this arena,” said Ron Dunlap of Bellevue, a friend of the Craswells for nearly 20 years.

“The lady was and remains gracious and sweet. That’s not to say she isn’t tough. She’s carved out of the Margaret Thatcher mold.

“I picture Ellen as a Victorian mansion that’s all kind of pretty but built on solid granite.”

Jim, her son, initially opposed her getting involved in politics. “I thought they would eat her alive. She wasn’t a politician, and she still isn’t.

“She is never going to be the one with the slick sound bite to answer every question.”

Craswell typically answers questions with references to the founding fathers, Scripture, and state history.

She wound up in public life by accident. “I never, ever intended to get involved in politics. It was Bruce that got me into this. It’s his fault,” she said with a laugh.

Bruce, her husband of 42 years, was the one who was supposed to run for office, but he changed his mind at the last minute. It was 1976, and no other Republican would run for the House seat in their Kitsap County district. Bruce turned to Ellen and said, “‘You’re going to have to do it,”’ Craswell remembered.

She told a Christian women’s group her reaction during a campaign stop this summer: “I said no way, that’s the last thing I would ever do. But there was no getting out of it.” Panic set in.

“This meant campaigning. This meant public speaking. I wouldn’t even take public speaking in college because I knew I would be too nervous to ever get up in front of the class.

“I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I lost 18 pounds. I thought, there’s no way I could do this. No one was more shocked than I when I won.”

Four years later, Craswell’s life changed again. She told the Christian women’s group: “Bruce came home one night and told me he’d given his life to Jesus Christ. I thought, ‘That sounds really weird. Well that’s all right. You do your thing and I’ll do mine.”’

Six week later Craswell was standing in her bedroom looking out onto Puget Sound on a gray day, and experienced her own conversion.

“I remember Him showing me that I was going the wrong way down a one-way road on the path to destruction, as we all are, going apart from Jesus Christ in our life.

“I remember at that point coming under great conviction, closing my eyes, standing there in front of the window crying out to God, that I didn’t want to do it my own way anymore, I was sorry for going my own way, and asking Him to take total charge of my life, that I wanted to give my life totally to Him.

“I was warmed all over. And when I opened my eyes I realized it wasn’t the sun coming out, it was the Son coming in.”

Craswell said she felt a tremendous weight lifted from her shoulders as she turned to God not only in her private life but in making decisions in Olympia. She said she believes in miracles, and says God cured her ovarian cancer.

Before long Craswell said three of her four children accepted the Lord, as well as her mother and a son-in-law.

Two of her children, each with six kids of their own, live on the Craswell family farm in Poulsbo, reached through an arch painted with the commandment “Thou Shalt Love the Lord Thy God.”

Her family, when growing up, was poor, but Craswell said she didn’t know it. “Even though we were poor I remember my mother always had something to spare when other kids came around.”

Her father died of pancreatic cancer when she 9 years old, leaving Craswell’s mother to care for seven children. She grew up in a big rambling house just down the road from the farm.

When Bruce and Ellen raised their own family, they made a motor home out of a chassis scavanged from a van, and took their kids and friends on camping trips.

A former mountain climber, Craswell has scaled many of the state’s peaks. Jim, climbing alongside her to the top of Mount Rainier, says he saw the same determination during her 16 years in the Legislature.

“She acts on principle, not polls.”

Craswell often stood alone in Olympia, whether it was against tax increases, or to push her bill year after year banning fund raising during the legislative session. Voters finally adopted the ban by initiative.

“She does what she needs to do,” said Jim. “Most people would get upset when they are the only one on an issue. With my mom, it only seems to strengthen her resolve.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: COMING SATURDAY Profile of Gary Locke