Topic: Government & Politics
Angelo V. Fawcett served four terms as mayor of Tacoma, accomplishing much and frequently stirring controversy. A Civil War veteran, he left Illinois to find success in booming Tacoma, arriving there ...
Elisha Ferry was the first governor of Washington state, the only two-term governor of Washington Territory, and the only person to serve as governor of both the territory and the state. He is the nam...
Unlike many future politicians, as a child Thomas Stephen Foley never imagined himself as a future occupant of the White House, or even in Congress. Yet, as his background placed him in positions wher...
This timeline of Washington's volcanic politics was prepared by HistoryLink.org for The Seattle Times and published in its Sunday Opinion Section on October 30, 2005.
This op-ed piece was written by Walt Crowley after the passage, on November 4, 1997, of Initiative 41, a Seattle initiative that called for an expanded monorail. It appeared in the Seattle Post-Intell...
One of the first women to practice law in Seattle and the first to represent the 44th District in the state senate, Lady Willie Forbus was a liberal Democrat, nicknamed the Steel Magnolia for her tena...
In 1929 General Joseph Castner, using troop labor and army engineers, laid out the first Fort Lewis golf course on prairie land west of the fort. In 1938-1940, a professionally designed Work Projects ...
Frank Fitts (1884-1967) grew up in Seattle at the turn of the twentieth century. He was a founder of the Phinney Ridge Improvement Association which worked to extend electrical service in Seattle's No...
Rosa Gourdine Franklin was the first African American woman to serve in the Washington State Senate and the first Black woman in the United States to be voted Senate President Pro Tempore by her ...
Jacob Furth played a pivotal role in the development of Seattle's public transportation and electric power infrastructure, and he was the founder of Seattle National Bank. As the agent for the utiliti...
Diana Hadden Gale first began public service in the City of Seattle in 1977 and worked for the city for 25 years, 20 of them as a department head or division director. During her long and illustrious ...
Booth Gardner, Washington’s charismatic 19th governor, was a collection of complex contradictions. He exuded genuine warmth while dogged by demons. A privileged childhood was pockmarked by emotional...
In 1875, Bailey Gatzert became the first and to date (2005) only Jewish mayor of Seattle. Gatzert was partner and general manager of Schwabacher and Co., one of Seattle's earliest hardware and general...
Gary David Gayton, a prominent Seattle lawyer and businessman, was the fourth child of John J. (Jacob) Gayton (1899-1969) and Virginia Clark Gayton (1902-1993), and the grandson of Seattle pioneers Jo...
This appreciation was written by Walt Crowley in 2003 while assisting George Benson in organizing and publishing a memoir for his family. A popular Capitol Hill druggist, brass band musician, and five...
Hiram C. Gill served as a Seattle City Councilman for 12 years and as mayor twice. His support for an "open-town" where "vice" carried on in brothels, gambling parlors, and saloons went unsuppressed, ...
Carl C. Gipson traveled a winding and often-difficult path from his birth in the Deep South to a long career of public service in Everett. Born in rural Arkansas, he attended high school in Little Roc...
William Gissberg was a powerful Democratic senator in the Washington State Senate between 1953 and 1973. Blunt, outspoken, a hard-charging man, many of his contemporaries considered him to be among t...
Bernie "Kai Kai" Gobin (his Indian name means "blue jay" or "wise one") was a fisherman, artist, musician, and political leader on the Tulalip Reservation, where he lived most of his life. Gobin's for...
A key player in Seattle public life for more than half a century, Jean Godden (b. 1931) made a name for herself as a writer, editor, and columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and ...
Bob Gogerty overcame a difficult childhood in Seattle to build a successful career as a political adviser and public-affairs consultant of the first rank. In 1976, after serving as deputy mayor under ...
John E. Goldmark was a Washington State legislator from Okanogan who served three terms in the state House of Representatives from 1957 to 1962. He rose into Democratic leadership ranks and was consid...
On March 30, 2004, HistoryLink Executive Director Walt Crowley (1947-2007) interviewed Gordon Clinton (1920-2011), who served as Seattle's mayor from 1956 to 1964. This was during a pivotal period in ...
Slade Gorton, a leader in Washington's Republican Party for more than four decades, served three terms as U.S. Senator, three as state attorney general, and 10 years as a representative in the Washing...