The mayor has enlisted former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton to help keep the Seattle SuperSonics and Storm in town.
Gorton, a Republican who represented Washington for 18 years, has experience with this sort of thing: He sued the American League to land the Mariners and later brokered an ownership change to keep them here.
It's not clear exactly what role he'll play, and he hasn't been formally hired, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis told The Seattle Times for a report published Thursday. But at a lunch Tuesday with Mayor Greg Nickels and City Attorney Tom Carr, Gorton agreed to add his political and legal weight to the city's efforts to keep the Sonics at KeyArena through the end of the team's lease in 2010.
"We're lawyering up," Ceis said.