I was raised in what had been, for like a couple of months, the City of Lacey. And, by order of the Supreme Court of Washington, is inside the City of Olympia. My childhood neighborhood, generally Wilson Street between 22nd and 18th, was part of a push and pull between Lacey and Olympia for a…
Year: 2022
How an incumbent sheriff loses
Sheriffs have incumbency power. A lot of elected officials do, but with the acquittal of Sheriff Ed Troyer in Pierce County last week, it is worth looking into how sheriffs stick around and how some of them lose. Troyer survived the court case (which would not have kicked him out of office), and will also…
A deeper look into Sheriff Sanders’ Thurston County
In my original post about the results from the 2022 general election, I vaguely pointed to results comparing how well successful candidates Sheriff Sanders and Senator Murray did against each other. Basically, both won by doing well in the dense, urban part of Thurston County. But, when you take their precinct results and compare them,…
Some maps to help you understand the November 2022 General Election in Thurston County
1. Sanders won the Sheriff’s race leaning on urban voters, but… Here are Sanders’ results in raw numbers. Blue he did better, and red worse. This is the prototypical Thurston County partisan map. Democratic candidates tend to do better and run up the score in the urban areas, and try to tamp down their losses…
What a map of taxes-by-acre in Thurston County teaches us about downtown Olympia
This is a map of election results in Thurston County. It shows a fairly typical result by precinct. More liberal candidates (in this case Joel Hanson in last year’s port race) doing well in the urban core and more conservative candidates (Amy Evans) doing well in rural areas. This is a map of property taxes…
In response to “In Defense of Priest Point Park”
In the debate over renaming Priest Point Park to Squaxin Park, David Nicandri has written “In Defense of Priest Point Park.” I’m glad David’s thoughts were finally posted. I had heard through the grapevine that he had come to a position counter to honoring the wishes of the Squaxin Island Tribe. His long-time work in…
The easy and actually best way to rename Thurston County
Yeah, in fact, I do think we should rename Thurston County. Or everything named after Samuel Thurston, including Thurston Avenue in Olympia. Here’s a brief update on why Samuel Thurston is not a good namesake. He never lived here, never visited here. His only actual impact here is the worst thing about him. Yes, he…
We should be able to rename Priest Point Park if we feel like it. And Squaxin Park makes perfect sense.
If you wanted to design someone who would be outraged at the prospect of renaming Priest Point Park, you could do much worse than me. Priest Point Park is probably (outside state-owned parks around the capitol) the jewel of Olympia’s park system. More than 300 acres, featuring everything (except athletic fields) you’d want in a…