Category: Washington Politics (Page 5 of 27)

1984 presidential results in Washington State.

The 1980 and 1984 elections in western Washington baffle me a little bit. The Reagan Revolution was strong throughout the entire Cascadian coast, except for a few counties at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Both Thurston and King counties (among other Puget Sound counties) are traditionally Democratic now. But, just about 30 years ago, they were heavily in Reagan’s camp. I’m trying to figure out why this is. But, I’d appreciate anyone that has a more precise explanation.

So, working down from the things I know:

1. Dan Evans, John Spellman (and other moderate Republicans like Slade Gorton) that started their careers in the 1950s and 60s came from out of King County. Both Gorton and Spellman were elected in 1980, so (even though Spellman lost in 1984 to Booth Gardner) its likely that the “main stream” Republican mojo in Puget Sound was strong in the early 1980s. From what I’ve read, Spellman’s loss to Gardner had more to do with Spellman being a bad manager than party identification.

2. Republicans (even Reagan) weren’t attached to social politics like abortion) in 1980 and 1984. I-471, which would have prevented public funding for abortion, failed statewide in 1984, with major losses in both Thurston and King counties. Reagan won in counties that voted against an anti-abortion initiative. Not what you’d really consider possible now 30 years on.

3. The social conservative wave didn’t seem to crash in Washington State until the 1988 Republican presidential caucuses. That year, conservative Christians took over the party caucuses and threw off the moderate business friendly brand, voting for Pat Robertson. Eight years later, Ellen Craswell repeated history, taking the Republican nomination for governor (but getting beat by a lot by Gary Locke).

So, to me, the two statewide elections in the early 80s seems like the lag time between the Evans revolution in the 1960s and the Christian social conservatives catching up in the late 80s. The memory of Reagan’s is of a stalwart social conservative. But, at least in Washington, it seems like the momentum of more moderate Republicans carried him through two elections.

Does that make sense?

My historic look didn’t drill down very far, just looked back in time a bit. But, if you do look down into the voting precincts, as this paper does very well, you find racism present in the vote:

The Yakima and Grant County results indicate that racially polarized voting exists in Central Washington and crosses party and ideological lines. While voters in these counties have consistently voted for more conservative candidates in most recent elections, Danielson outperformed all other candidates, and by very large margins. This is remarkable considering he did not campaign at all. In a similar Supreme Court election, conservative candidate Douglas McQuaid, who also did not campaign at all, received only 28 percent of the vote in Yakima, compared to 64 percent going for Danielson. Not only did Danielson significantly outperform McQuaid, but he also won more votes than the leading Republican candidates for U.S. Senate and Washington Governor who both campaigned vigorously during the election. The data show that Danielson received votes from the same precincts who preferred Cantwell to Baumgartner and Inslee to McKenna. This is in spite of Danielson raising no money, holding no campaign events, making no public statements, and receiving no meaningful endorsements. Voters in Central Washington, who were not provided a voter’s pamphlet, preferred Danielson to González in a party-neutral contest. This patterns revealed here a are textbook definition of racially polarized voting.

UPDATE 9/29/12: A few smart folks took a close at the precinct level numbers and came up with some pretty solid evidence about race based voting patterns. I stand by my take below, but this research is much more significant and relevant to the election.

Since State Supreme Court Justice Steve Gonzalez won a full term last week, there have been questions about how Bruce Danielson — who didn’t raise or spend any money in a campaign — was able to get more than 40 percent of the vote.

Initially mentioned by Eli Sanders, there have been claims that Gonzalez didn’t get more of the vote because of racist tendencies of rural Washington voters against candidates of Hispanic background. Here are clips from Tacoma News Tribune, Seattle Times and the Everett Herald that show some of the discussion.

It may very well be true that a certain percentage of people voted against Gonzalez because they don’t like minorities, but this doesn’t necessarily bear out against historical context. In two other state Supreme Court races in 2000, candidates that spent no money at all got at least 38 percent of the vote.

Here is a spreadsheet that puts these three races (two in 2000 and Gonzales vs. Danielson this year) in terms of vote percentages and campaign expenditures. Just a side note, these two 2000 races were the only two when one literally unfunded candidate opposed a well funded candidate in a state Supreme Court race.

One of the 2000 races, Jim Foley lost to Tom Chambers, but received over 43 percent of the vote in the November general election.. Similar to Danielson, Foley was ranked as not qualified to serve on the bench. But, in a sort of opposite name phenomena of Gonzalez-Danielson, the scuttlebut in 2000 was that Foley did so well because voters confused him with former Spokane congressman and Speaker of the House Tom Foley:

Chambers, 57, who raised more money, $355,947, than any of the other candidates, said he at times found himself hard-pressed to compete with Foley’s familiar name. 

Although he beat Foley by a wide margin, he said he wished the margin had been even greater.
“It would give me greater comfort,” he said. 

When Foley ran unsuccessfully against Faith Ireland in 1998, he said he had a “million-dollar name” because voters mistakenly link it with former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley, to whom Jim Foley is not related.

Here is another Seattle Times story that discuss the dynamics of that race.

In the other race (the deciding vote took place in the September primary), Bobbe Bridge defeated a Tacoma lawyer Scott Schweiger. Like Gonzalez, Bridge has earlier been appointed and had already been serving on the court when she won. She also spent $153,000 in a race that ended months before November because she was able to knock off her only opponent in the primary. But, despite her opponent not raising or spending any campaign funds, Schweiger received 38 percent of the vote, very close to Danielson’s total. This article indicates that there was little, if any, discussion at the time how Danielson finished so well against a well-funded candidate.

A significant difference between the 2000 races and Gonzalez-Danielson is the lack of a statewide voters pamphlet. It is hard to gauge the impact of the lack of this information had on voters this year, but you also can’t discount information available now more readily available from the internet and from newspapers.

What we should be able to take from this information is that there seems to be a floor that literally unfunded state Supreme Court candidates won’t fall below. And, Danielson performed within the normal range of similar candidates in recent years.

Months ago I read “Patchwork Nation,” one of those books that takes a long swipe at American Politics and creates an alternative to the Red vs. Blue model. I think it did a pretty good job, until I flipped forward to where it put Thurston County.

Instead of putting my home county in Campus and Careers (state capitol, four year college, Arts Walk, Procession, come on!) the authors put us in Military Bastions. Fort Lewis is nextdoor and militarily folks do live around here, but it just didn’t resonate with me.

Huh, I thought. Well, they’re model falls apart there, I’ll quit reading this book

But, now that I take a closer look at the map of our new congressional district, I think they might have hit something I didn’t see until now. Earlier I said that the new 10th CD will center on the Pierce County suburbs. But, now I think it’ll center on Joint Base Fort Lewis McCord.

While the early scuttlebut is that the district is centered on Olympia, the nature of the district will be that of a military base town. Let’s take a closer look.

Here’s a map where I split the district into two parts.

Basically, the gray area is the Olympia influenced side (hippies, state government). The white side is the Fort Lewis influenced side. I did allow for a lot of cross over into Thurston County, but I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.

The Olympia influenced side is 59.4 Democratic (from the 2010 Senate race) and is pretty small, only 148,000 of the more than 600,000 in the district.

The JBLM side is much much larger (521k) and only barely Democratic at 50.3 percent.

Here’s a map of the district by how it voted in the last Senate election. The deeper the blue, more Democratic, the more red, Republican.

Despite the observations that Washington’s new 10th Congressional District will be “centered on Olympia,” it actually won’t be.

While it really does look like the district is geographically centered on Olympia. But, in terms politics and population, the district is firmly centered on the Parkland/Midway/Puyallup metro area.

And, just a short note. If, in this redistricting process, if you haven’t discovered Dave’s Redistricting Tool, I’d suggest you check it out. Dave Bradlee has done a great service to all of us who like to tinker with this sort of stuff.

So, anyway, while the map puts Olympia at the center, the south Pierce County suburbs are the defining feature of this district. Just about two-thirds (415,000+) of the people in the almost 670,000 living in the district are in Pierce County.

The heart of the 10th CD

While the district as drawn is marginally Democratic (53 percent according to Dave’s tool), a lot of that is sitting in the non-Pierce County areas. Without Pierce County, the district is more safely (56 percent) Democratic.