Prince Resigns From State Senate Cites Differences With Fellow Republicans

State Sen. Eugene Prince, a moderate Republican whose plea for bipartisanship became a mantra that ultimately cost him clout in his own party, abruptly resigned his seat Monday.

The Thornton wheat farmer accepted an appointment by Gov. Gary Locke to chair the state’s Liquor Control Board, a job that will more than double his annual pay to $72,351.

Prince, 68, had planned to leave when his term expires in 2000. But he said his decision was hastened when GOP leaders recently removed him as ranking Senate Transportation Committee member after he had fought them over the $2.4 billion road-work referendum on last November’s ballot.

“I expected to go through the session, but when they took my position away, I just wasn’t comfortable anymore,” Prince said Monday.

His departure leaves parts of four Eastern Washington counties without a senator just as the session begins, and sets up a series of political dominos as people line up to replace him. Filling his position could take a month or more.

Prince also leaves as the state and nation grapple with the politics of rawness - something he’s been crusading against for years.

“The new style is to make the other guy look bad,” Prince said. “Look at what they’re doing to the president. Lying under oath is a problem, but the bulk of those people would have lied under oath, too, if they’d been asked about the same thing.”

Prince prided himself on being a different kind of politician from a bygone era. His career in the Legislature started as a bill clerk in 1959, and included stints as assistant chief clerk and sergeant-at-arms. He spent six years in the Senate and 12 in the House - including a period in the 1980s as one of the party’s chief political strategists.

But in recent years he pushed for gas-tax increases despite his party’s anti-tax position. He appeared with Locke and other Democrats at press conferences to voice opposition to an anti-affirmative action initiative supported by most Republicans. He supported abortion rights, rarely sided with conservatives on social issues, and repeatedly took colleagues to task for not cooperating with Democrats.

“I just feel that partisanship has taken over,” he said. “Everybody wants to rule now, not govern.”

Prince holds both parties responsible for what he sees as the increasingly underhanded way of doing business. He was furious at Republicans in 1997 for a making a rule-change that allowed them to pass a budget after an unprecedented third vote. But he said Democrats pulled the stunt first four years earlier, when they changed rules in the middle of the night to allow a vote on a $600 million tax hike.

In fact, Prince still complains about a rule change in 1969 that allowed the majority party to ignore the voice of the minority when working out differences between the House and Senate versions of bills. He said it eliminated one of the few mechanisms designed to force the two parties to cooperate.

“Gene marched to his own drummer, but he was right in some ways; we’re not as civil as we once were,” said Sen. George Sellar, R-East Wenatchee. “It used to be that when we poked at each other on the floor it was with finesse. Now we’ve got some real bulls in the china shop and they just come right at you.”

Sen. Minority Leader Dan McDonald, R-Yarrow Point, said Prince “was always sort of a conscience. He always made you think of ways to reduce controversy. We’ll miss his experience and institutional memory.”

But McDonald, and others, took issue with Prince’s view that such controversy is bad, or even new. “I think, with a few exceptions, we made divided government work,” McDonald said of the Republicans’ recent four-year stint as the majority party in Olympia.

Sen. Jim West, R-Spokane, said “when passionate people have competing ideas, you have conflict. That’s the point.”

Filling Prince’s seat will be complicated, and could eventually leave control of the House up for grabs, but only for the year 2000 session.

Republican precinct committee officers in Adams, Whitman, Asotin and Spokane counties will nominate three possible replacements, then the 12 commissioners from those counties will pick one.

Rep. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, already plans to apply for the seat, and Rep. Larry Sheahan, R-Spokane, might. If either of them is appointed, the same process would have to be used to appoint his replacement. And all new appointees would then have to run for re-election in November, which would give a Democrat a shot at a seat.

For 1999, however, Prince’s departure won’t upset the balance of power. Neither Schoesler nor Sheahan will leave his seat until that replacement is chosen, at the risk of upsetting the 49-49 tie in the House.