When Washington State Attorney General Christine Gregoire, '71, heads to the grocery store, she is often recognized by strangers. On a recent plane flight, the crew offered her complimentary champagne. She's even been recognized in Guatemala. Such celebrity is not exactly the norm for an attorney general. Then again, Gregoire is not your average attorney general.

Last November, Gregoire did what many thought impossible: she negotiated a $206 billion settlement with the nation's tobacco companies--the largest legal settlement in U.S. history. The accomplishment catapulted her to fame, but it is just the latest victory in a career marked by successful negotiations.

Hints of Gregoire's potential were evident as early as junior high school. As president of her school's girl's club, Gregoire asked permission to have a band, whose members were classmates, perform at an upcoming dance. The principal refused, but Gregoire thought there was room for negotiation. "I negotiated this ridiculous agreement," she recalls with amusement. "The band could play and we could dance to one song. Then they would go back to recorded music. It wasn't a great deal, but it was better than not having the band play at all."

Gregoire polished her skills of persuasion at the UW, where she majored in speech communication and sociology. She hadn't planned on those majors--she thought she'd be a pharmacist--but found herself intrigued by the course content. "I hadn't imagined that those emphases would help me later, but they definitely have," she says.

Not long after graduating in 1971, Gregoire became a caseworker for the state, eventually heading up a unit investigating welfare fraud. That's when she first considered a career in law.

"I was working with the prosecutors of seven counties," she recalls, "and each prosecutor would tell me, 'You really should go to law school.' I started to see that law would afford me a greater opportunity to contribute."

So off she went to Gonzaga University School of Law. After earning her degree, she worked at the Attorney General's Office in Spokane, first as a law clerk and eventually as head of the office. There she successfully defended the state's anti-pornography law in the U.S. Supreme Court--one of three appearances before the nation's top court. An appointment as Deputy Attorney General followed, with Gregoire arguing an historic comparable worth case.

Impressed by Gregoire, then-governor Booth Gardner asked her to serve as director of the Department of Ecology, which she did for five years. Then, in 1992, the time seemed right to run for attorney general. It was a good call. Gregoire has been in the job ever since.

It was in her fourth year as attorney general that Gregoire became involved in negotiations with the tobacco industry. She was among a group of attorneys general invited to a two-day meeting with industry representatives to discuss a settlement. Gregoire recalls thinking, "This industry will never settle. I'll just go for the two days and it will be over." To her surprise, the industry demonstrated a willingness to negotiate in good faith, so she decided to participate. "Little did I know that it would be my life for two years," she says.

Gregoire and her colleagues proved themselves formidable negotiators. Their strength, she says, was that none of them were in it for the money. "It was all about the kids--the fact that the companies were targeting children," she says, adding that the tobacco companies never quite understood that this was a key issue.

After months of negotiation, the two sides settled in June 1997. But because some terms of the settlement involved the government, the agreement had to be approved by Congress--which voted it down. "I didn't expect it to fail the way it did," says Gregoire. "I was immensely disappointed with the Congressional process."

When negotiations were renewed in 1998, Gregoire was less optimistic. "It was a rollercoaster, a huge rollercoaster," she recalls. "At any moment it could have broken down and been over." One attorney general abandoned the negotiations, heightening media speculation that the talks had collapsed; on another occasion two of the four tobacco companies refused to move forward and decided to split off. "When we were near a settlement with the remaining companies, those two companies came back in," says Gregoire, "but they wanted to renegotiate everything. I told them, 'If you get one ounce from us, we want one ounce back from you.'"

Almost miraculously, a settlement was finally reached. This time it was carefully crafted to avoid involving Congress. Gone was the federal regulation of nicotine in tobacco. But this settlement also eliminated something the industry wanted--protection against class-action lawsuits and immunity from punitive damages for past misconduct.

Was the settlement worth the personal price for Gregoire, who had precious little time for her husband and two children during the lengthy negotiations? "If my family had said, 'Enough is enough,' I probably would have pulled out of the case," she says. "But I'm blessed with a wonderful husband and two great daughters who stood behind me the whole way. They contributed in ways people will never appreciate or understand."

But people do appreciate what Gregoire has accomplished. "They will come up to me on the street and offer heartfelt expressions of gratitude," she says. "Often they have lost a loved one to cancer. I get overwhelmed by how much it has touched people in a very personal way."

What's next for Gregoire? Although she's being encouraged to run for other elected offices, she's in no rush to make a change. She's just eager to get back to her life and her work.

"I have a passion for the practice of law," she says. "I didn't run for attorney general as a political office, but for what it does. It's important to ensure that the average citizen gets justice in a timely and affordable manner. What can I say? I love the job."

[Winter 1999 - Table of Contents]