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| Just some social media that I hung onto. But it tells a consistent tale. Not only government can be trusted, big business can’t be either. |
During the peak of the restaurant-centered protest wave during our COVID-19 winter, I started noticing a consistent talking point among speakers at protests and on social media posts. It was normally centered around a Costco on the Eastside of the state that had been able to stay open despite more than 150 employees testing positive with COVID-19. The logic was that the state government was favoring large corporations over small mom-and-pop stores.
The actual details of the debate notwithstanding (even chain restaurants were closed for sit down service and mom-and-pop retail was open), the consistent beating of this drum is a reminder falls into what looks like a new theme for conservatives in our region. The most telling of these examples is a post on former gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp’s website targeting Republican lawmakers that have taken money from “Big Pharma.”
(The farmers’) response to the California market — their enterprise — was motivated as much by a modest desire to improve their landholdings, assure their household’s self-sufficiency, and enhance their families’ material comfort as by a drive to command greater market share or increase production as an end in itself.
Many of the delegates entered the convention with a strong mistrust of corporations. They had seen abuses in the Midwest and elsewhere in which unscrupulous corporate operators had left innocent stockholders deep in debt and workers unpaid… Some of the debate would revolve around stereotypes of corporations as large and uncaring machines of the economy that routinely chewed up farmers and workers.
This is years before the Wobblies and the more institutional development of strong labor unions in Cascadia. But the anti-corporate attitudes of the decedents of the small Willamette farmers was baked in to the batter. You can see it in Washington’s failed 1870s constitutional convention (“Some of the provisions adopted by the Walla Walla Convention reflected distrust of corporations and railroad”). And the proclamations of Senator Homer T. Bone against a nascent Boeing in the 1930s.
If we dig deeper, we can see the clear settlement patterns of where this anti-corporatism comes from, the Appalachian settlers that at first came to the Willamette Valley, but also were dotted by settlements of New Englanders. This thesis is most clearly laid out in Woodard’s “American Nations,” but that work draws from Johnson’s “Founding.” What we are seeing now is the Appalachian anti-corporatism having a moment inside the nationally-favorable to business Republican Party.
And the criticisms seem to be correct. Democrats in Washington seem to fit comfortably dealing with corporations. Former Governor Gregoire famously worked the backrooms in the run-up to the COVID-19 lockdown almost a year ago:
Seattle is home to some major international companies, and two of them, Microsoft and Starbucks, have major operations in China, where COVID-19 started. They also had access to some modeling from medical research that raised concerns about the possible spread.
They quickly came to the conclusion the region needed to start preparing for a significant outbreak, Gregoire said. The executives decided they had to communicate the seriousness to their employees, about 250,000 total, but based on science, data and facts.
They began reaching out to other businesses and the rest of the community, trying to help increase the blood supply and acquire personal protective equipment.
“We have created a unique public-private partnership that is not just for Seattle but literally for the whole state,” Gregoire said.
The daily noon conference calls continued, and have grown to about 250 people, including business leaders from Spokane and experts from Washington State University. They get briefings from public health experts and from state and local officials who are about to make a public announcement about government action and want feedback.
The reason I blockquoted a huge portion of that article is to emphasize that this coordination didn’t come from thin air. The hand-in-glove relationship between big businesses and Democratic Party led government was not in the least strange bedfellows. At least for right now, Democrats occupy the political space that was created by city-based New England settlers. Comfortable with capitalism and comfortable with government.
This isn’t to say that many of these businesses wouldn’t rather see regulation-wary Republicans in charge of the state. But that is a far cry from not being able to work with Democrats.
If the rhetoric from this last winter is just a convenient weapon to use against Democrats who happen to be in charge or less conservative Republicans who also happen to take Pharma money, that’s one thing. But if this is a return to anti-corporatism defining one of the regional political parties, that is something completely different. I would be interested in seeing where that goes, policy-wise.
