Like many others in Seattle in the mid 1970s, I formed my first impressions of Charley Royer, who died last week at the age of 84, by watching his nightly commentaries on KING 5 News. KING was still owned by the Bullitt family in those days, and they had given Charley license to say whatever he wanted for a few minutes at the end of the evening news.
Royer had earned a reputation for enterprise reporting at KING’s sister station in Portland. Among other noteworthy stories, he had produced a documentary about conditions on Portland’s Skid Road by going underground disguised as a homeless alcoholic, with a microphone hidden in a cast on his arm and a cameraman hidden in a nearby building. The series, called Man Down, won numerous awards and led to improvement in the conditions he had revealed.
His nightly commentaries on KING covered a wide range of topics, from the state of the public schools to the twists and turns of local and state politics, but the one that really caught my attention was a five-part series he produced with his brother Bob Royer and their colleague, Carol Lewis. The series reported that the State Insurance Commissioner was using his office to run an extortion racket. Before the series reached its last episode, the Insurance Commissioner resigned and was soon facing criminal charges.
Rather than bemoaning the corruption his team had uncovered, Charley used his next commentary to make the case for public service. He said politics should be the most honorable profession, and it was every citizen’s responsibility to make it so. Viewers responded by telling him he should put his money where his mouth was and run for office. When he responded by running for mayor in 1977, I took a leave from the community health center where I was working and joined the campaign.
The election was a free-for-all, with 13 candidates running for mayor, including five members of the city council and the director of the Department of Community Development, Paul Schell. Charley emerged from the primary in first place, with Schell as his opponent in the general election. The two finalists debated each other more than 30 times during the campaign, with Charley successfully defining Schell as the downtown candidate and himself as the candidate of the neighborhoods.
Twenty years later, when the mayor’s office was up for grabs again, Charley wrote a note to Paul Schell. The note told Paul that Royer used to come back to his campaign office after those debates and tell his staff that Paul Schell was a pretty smart guy and would make a good mayor. Charley’s note said he still thought that and urged Paul to run in the coming election.
One of Charley’s first acts as mayor was to appoint his brother Bob as his deputy. When people questioned Charley’s decision, he joked that he’d done it because his brother was unemployed and needed a job. Anybody who knew the two of them knew better, because, while Bob had some unusual ways of doing things, he was immensely talented, and he and Charley were so inseparable that political observers referred to the administration as “Charleybob.”
It was my good fortune to work with Bob on speechwriting for the new administration. For important speeches, Charley, Bob and I would gather long enough for Charley to outline the major points he wanted to make, and then Bob and I would take over, with me working in longhand on a legal pad and Bob banging away on his old Smith-Corona typewriter.
We would each draft our own version and then literally cut and paste them together, with Bob deciding which paragraphs to use from each version. Then we would hand over the taped-together manuscript to the word-processing team to produce a version for Charley’s final edits. Charley used his speeches in the same way he had used his TV commentaries–to influence public opinion, often on controversial topics.
In 1980, the U.S. Conference of Mayors held its annual conference in Seattle a few months before the presidential election. As the host, Charley was to give the welcoming speech at the first plenary session. But as the preliminary meetings got underway the day before the plenary, some of the mayors were using ugly language to describe the refugees who were arriving in their cities in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
Their rhetoric troubled Charley so much that he decided his speech needed to be rewritten. At 10:30 that night he summoned Bob and me to his hotel room and told us to rewrite the speech to defend the refugees and remind his fellow mayors of the positive role immigration plays in the life of our country. His “Statue of Liberty speech” had the desired effect: if some of the mayors still harbored animus toward the refugees, they kept it to themselves for the rest of the conference.
The articles that have been written in the last few days about Charley’s time as mayor list many of the good things he accomplished, but they don’t provide much insight into how he managed to get them done. I believe his success hinged on his extraordinary ability to connect with people of all kinds, and that ability depended on his terrific sense of humor. There were many times when he lightened the mood in difficult meetings by telling humorous stories about his lobbying trips to Washington, D.C., or his trips abroad. Usually, he made himself the butt of the joke.
One of his favorite stories was about being a member of one of the first delegations of American mayors to visit China after it opened to the West. The delegation was shepherded by handlers from the State Department, who were concerned that the wise-cracking young mayor from Seattle might do something to upend the delicate protocol.
At a formal dinner in Chongqing, Charley found himself seated next to that city’s mayor, and innocently asked him through an interpreter what he had done before becoming mayor. The mayor answered that he had been in jail, for he had been sent to prison during the Cultural revolution. There was an awkward silence until Charley responded by telling the mayor, “In our country it is different—first you are mayor, then you go to jail.” The Chinese laughed, and the folks from the State Department breathed a sigh of relief.
Charley needed his sense of humor—and his diplomatic skills—to meet the challenges that confronted Seattle in the mid-1980s. The City was facing budget limits that made it impossible to take on major projects without going to the voters to pay for levies or bond issues. That meant there was fierce competition to determine whose projects could get on the ballot. The leaders of the Seattle Art Museum had waited a long time for a chance to ask the voters for the funds to build a new museum. Meanwhile, advocates for the poor were pressing City Hall for another housing levy.
With the debate raging and both sides determined to prevail, Charley commissioned a public opinion poll. The poll showed the housing measure had the support of a majority of likely voters, while the Art Museum fell well below the 50-percent threshold. Armed with the results, Royer arranged separate meetings with the leaders of the two groups and shared the polling results with each side. He told the housing advocates that although they had support in the poll, their support might fade before election day unless they could find a way to raise the money for a good campaign.
When he showed the poll to the leaders of the Art Museum, and they realized they were coming up short with the voters, Charley suggested that it might still be possible to mobilize enough support to win if they teamed up with the housing advocates in a combined campaign. He urged the Art Museum supporters to provide the money for a joint campaign, while the housing advocates provided the foot soldiers to knock on doors. The two sides teamed up in the “Bread and Roses” campaign, and both prevailed on election day.
Of course, not every issue Charley took on had such a happy ending. His campaign to get Metro’s sewage treatment plant off the beach at Discovery Park fell short in the Metro Council by a single vote. His Harborfront Levy to spruce up the waterfront was turned down by the voters. But Charley never gave up on the causes he cared about.
Thirty-four years after leaving the mayor’s office, Friends of Waterfront Park, a non-profit organization Charley helped to organize and that he co-chaired for many years, is preparing to dedicate a magnificent park that is a hundred times grander than what could have been created by the Harborfront Levy.
When Charley and I spoke for the last time a couple of weeks ago, we planned to take a walk on the waterfront the next time he came up to Seattle to inspect the progress. That park was his last big public project, and I’ll never go there without thinking of him.
Lovely remembrance, and the point about Charley’s disarming sense of humor being important to his political success really rings true to me (though looking at these old tv talking head pics of Charley makes me think his “Vitalis Look” head of hair back then must have been a potent political weapon in its own right).
Plus both them Royers could write, which goes a long way in my book.
One addition: along with the waterfront Charley’s great passion in recent years was the Stadium District, which he passionately advocated should become more integrated into the adjacent Pioneer Square and the C/ID neighborhoods.
Thank you Tom. I really enjoyed this. Hearing all of the stories about my dad provides great comfort.
I loved your Dad. I knew him from Carmine’s. Any news on a memorial? I can’t seem to find service announcements.
Keep in mind that Charley was basically a reporter. That asset meant he was fair-minded, deeply curious, and knew that when you took on an enemy it was best done with a smile. True to these instincts, Royer learned a great deal from his opponent Paul Schell, befriended him, and became, like Schell, fascinated with urban design. He also detected more than others that Seattle in the 1980s was infatuated with bigness and reputation. I wish he had more skepticism about that go-go mentality.
My last meeting with Charley was to discuss the book he wanted to write. It was all about the Royer clan, its roots, and his closeness to brother Bob. Charley was trying to figure out how to write it since co-author Bob had died. I’m not sure Charley wrote enough for it to be rescued as a book.
Lovely article. But one correction: Charley did not work for the KING affiliate in Portland. He worked for KOIN-TVl
Thanks for your reflections, Tom. I ran into Charley several weeks before his passing in Carmine’s (where else?). He stopped by our table and chatted for about 10 minutes. Lynn was dining with her gal pals and he was hanging out. I am so glad for this memory.
The story about the Chinese Mayor was in Shanghai. His humor in Chongqing was when at dinner when the Mayor of Chongqing said he wanted to conduct business. Charley said what do you want. The Mayor said he wanted to buy three 737s. Charley asked”What color?” He tried to get a commission from Boeing