Gregoire blames Sims in sorority flap

05:47 PM PDT on Wednesday, August 25, 2004

By ROBERT MAK / KING 5 News

KING Attorney General Christine Gregoire is running for Washington state governor.

TACOMA, Wash. - Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire accused her primary opponent, King County Executive Ron Sims, of instigating stories about her membership in an all-white sorority Wednesday.

In an appearance before the Washington State Labor Council, she alleged that Sims’ campaign helped publicize her membership in Kappa Delta, a sorority at the University of Washington, in the late 1960s.

“Knock it off, Ron,” she said. “It’s time for this to stop.”

Gregoire said this is politics as low as she has ever seen, likening this controversy over her history to the Swift Boat gunners now questioning Sen. John Kerry's military service.

"For anybody to stand up and suggest that I'm a racist is outrageous," Gregoire said.

At a convention of the Washington State Labor Council Wednesday, explaining why in 1966 she joined a whites-only sorority at the University of Washington, Gregoire said:

"I could cut and run, or I could stand up and fight, and I chose to stay and to fight against discrimination then and for the rest of my life, I did it, I'm happy I did it," she said.

Gregoire says her record should speak for itself, pushing for hate-crime legislation, anti-bullying laws and running an Attorney General's office, in which a third of division heads are minorities.

"I started going back to Howard university which is an almost all-black university to make sure that we had a diverse workforce," she said.

On Wednesday, Gregoire tried to steer attention to how the story became public, placing blame on her opponent Ron Sims. Sims denied being the source of the story and the Seattle Times, which first reported the story, confirmed Sims was not involved.

The Times said the idea came from an editor within its newsroom, who happened to be a Kappa Delta member around the same time as Gregoire.

Late Wednesday afternoon Sims issued a more pointed statement on the whites-only sorority, saying:

"Some people took a stand, others didn't. And I would not begin to judge them. People can only look inside their own hearts and decide if their actions were right."

Sims acknowledged that when he was a college student he led the black student union but said there's no comparison.

"We're talking about a light years difference in philosophy and purpose," he said.

Gregoire said she has reason to believe that people from the Sims camp were involved in urging the NAACP to call Tuesday's press conference.

The spokesman for the Sims campaign said absolutely not, that sometimes people just want to voice their own opinions.Gregoire told the Times she did not learn of the sorority’s unwritten policy until just before initiation in 1966. Rather than quit, she said, she decided to remain and try to change the policy from within.

She took little action during her time as a sister—even though as chapter president in 1969 she had to inform new recruits of the rule. But in 1973, as an alumna adviser, she spoke out against the policy during the sorority’s national convention in Virginia.

Eventually, the rule was abolished.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.