Topic: Government & Politics
A condensed edition of this essay was published in The Seattle Times Sunday Opinion Section on October 30, 2005. This version offers a fuller tour of Washington's "tectonic" political shifts and elect...
Monrad Charles "Mon" Wallgren (1891-1961) served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and four years in the U.S. Senate before becoming Washington's 13th governor in 1944. Swept into office...
Pearl Wanamaker was a long-serving Superintendent of Public Instruction (1941-1957), whose years in the non-partisan office addressed World War II educational and vocational demands, and managed the b...
Charles "Wappy" Wappenstein was a colorful character who was twice Seattle's chief of police (from 1906-1907 and from 1910-1911) and served as a member of the Seattle police force for a much longer pe...
"A Pioneer of Three States -- Adventurer, Prospector, Miner, Trader, Explorer, Promoter, Soldier and Public Official," was how Edward Warbass was once described ("San Juan's Best Known Pioneer"). He c...
The Washington State Grange was founded on September 10, 1889, at the Pioneer Store in La Camas (now Camas), Clark County, spurred in part by objections to the proposed state constitution that had jus...
The Washington State Library was established by the organic act which created Washington Territory in 1853, and it has served as the official library for state government since Washington gained state...
On May 24, 2002, Walt Crowley delivered the following historical "primer" on Washington state politics to the Western States Caucus of the Democratic National Committee held in Seattle. The talk revie...
Washington's tax system, as in all states, is a contentious arena in which politicians, businesspeople, workers, parents, property owners, and educators wrestle over their share of taxes. Washington h...
Soon after the creation of Oregon Territory in 1848, settlers north of the Columbia River began demanding a territory of their own. Congress acquiesced on February 8, 1853, with the creation of Washin...
The Duwamish River, located in King County, has borne the burden of municipal and regional development over the past century. Its channel straightened and dredged, tributaries rerouted, and floodwater...
Along with every other major West Coast port, Seattle's harbor was paralyzed from May 9 to July 31, 1934, by one of the most important and bitter labor strikes of the twentieth century. The struggle p...