Three broad and not very compatible trends from last week's election:

The All-Powerful Seattle Establishment: To nobody's surprise, voters ratified Mayor Schell, who had already been elevated to office by Seattle's elected officials and daily papers months ago. (Hint to the overly credulous: our lead story two weeks ago was a joke.) As a final insult, both dailies trumpeted Schell's 56% win, with the usual low off- year election turnout, as a "landslide." Jan Drago is still head of city council, a solid pro-business majority is in place, and it's open season at the corporate welfare trough.

The All-Powerful Seattle Establishment Is Naked And Not Very Powerful: In the three open council seats, strong advocates for change won. Peter Steinbreuck's victory statement--that it's time to work to get rid of the council incumbents--was a virtual declaration of ideological war. For the first time in memory, neighborhood activists and progressives have a presence in city decision-making, despite downtowners doing everything they could to block the election of Steinbreuck and Licata. Civic Foundation types have a much more solid base for future organizing than they did with the unpredictable Chong; the Seattle Greens, in the first major election, would up closely allied with two new council members (Conlin and Steinbreuck) and, despite backing his opponent, are ideologically close to a third (Licata). Licata and Steinbreuck both won despite being considerably outspent by their opponents.

[Side Note: The Seattle Ethics and Election Commission is investigating complaints filed two weeks ago that Jan Drago's campaign manager, Bill Dubay, was illegally helping Aaron Ostrom's campaign. The response of Drago's office was that, for example, Dubay was acting as paid staff when putting up Drago yard signs, but as an unpaid Ostrom volunteer when simultaneously putting up Aaron's. You read about the Drago/Ostrom collusion here--and nowhere else--over two months ago.]

Seattle Is Not America: The election of the new council members and the election of Paul Schell point up how different, politically, the city of Seattle is from King County, Washington State, or the country. And the most important electoral outcome in the state for future grass roots prospects wasn't even in Seattle; it was in Spokane.

Many local activists are astonished at the loss of all of this year's state initiatives, many by wide margins. They shouldn't be. There are lots of compelling reasons: for one, special interest opponents spent a fortune (in the case of the gun safety initiative, the NRA and friends poured in $3 million). But the major reason is demography.

Seattle--self-absorbed center of the universe--has less than 1/3 of the voters in King County, and only about 10% of the voters in the State of Washington. Pierce County (including Tacoma) has more people than the city of Seattle, and Snohomish County has just about caught up. What's 'obvious' in Seattle (e.g. gay rights) is even more obvious, in the opposite direction, in the other 90% of the state. Licata, Steinbreuck, and Conlin won in Seattle; it's doubtful that any of them could have won on a similar platform in even a county-wide race. Only one grassroots candidate--David Ortman at the Port--even tried, and he nearly lost in the primary to someone who didn't even run.

There are also--here's where Schell comes in--enormous class divisions between Seattle and the rest of the state. There are jobs here, and money; there aren't in Aberdeen and Moses Lake. The initiative campaigns were all run from Seattle--and resented in the hinterlands.

The U.S. has had, essentially, a quarter-century of Republican presidents. Almost every U.S. citizen gets the vast majority of their news and political images from a handful of corporate-controlled news sources. Political diversity among elected officials is a contradiction in terms, and cynicism and perceived powerlessness a permanent condition of most adults. In terms of international political awareness, we have one of the most ignorant citizenries in the world. Political debate is generally confined to image (welfare mothers) or idiocy (O.J.), not substance.

The point isn't that all is lost; it's that advocates for economic and social justice need to get out of Seattle and into the rest of the world. Politics has to start locally, and it's great that we have a toehold on decision-making in Seattle--but one of the most reactionary state legislatures in the country is about to re-convene in Olympia, and they hate Seattle. Seattle activists need to stop going to demonstrations and chanting "Go back to Bellevue" to counter-demonstrators; they need to go to Bellevue, and Moses Lake, themselves now and then.

That's where initiatives (like gun safety and gay rights) can be won, and new alliances forged. And where the election's real good news was. Spokane's new mayor won by attacking the corporate welfare of his opponent, incumbent Jack Geraghty, who championed an expensive downtown redevelopment scheme for Nordstrom's (ETS! #2/4, Sept. 30, 1997). That's a far more impressive outcome than anything hip, progressive Seattle managed. We could learn something.

Many of the concerns and fears of people out there 'in America' are the same issues Seattle activists care about and speak to. Us city folks need to stop assuming the people who voted down I-685, 676, 677, and so on are ignorant hicks, and start finding the common ground. The alternative is to keep plugging away in our groovy little ghettos, until the revolution happens everywhere else without us.

--Geov Parrish