Topic: Government & Politics
Clayton Van Lydegraf's career as a revolutionary began when he joined the American Communist Party as teenager in the 1930s. In the 1940s he became the party's second in command in the Pacific Northwe...
Gordon Franklin Vickery served the City of Seattle for 34 years, first as a firefighter, rising to the office of Chief, and then as Superintendent of Seattle City Light. In both offices he exercised s...
He was known as "Mr. Tri-Cities," the "Man from Hanford," the "Godfather of the Tri-Cities," and, occasionally, by less-flattering terms. For more than 60 years, just about everyone at Hanford and in ...
On November 8, 1910, the male voters of Washington state went to the polls, and voted nearly 2-1 to amend the state constitution, extending the right to vote to Washington women. This 1910 article on ...
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...