Topic: Government & Politics
In Washington -- as in the rest of the country -- the question of who, if anyone, should control, manufacture, import, possess, and consume alcoholic intoxicants has been contentious and complicated b...
Washington has 75 public port districts, more than any other state. Each is an independent government body, run by commissioners elected by local voters. They operate major marine terminals and small ...
Washington's public port districts play a critical role in the state's economy by stimulating business development and job creation that private companies cannot or do not undertake on their own. Run ...
Kent Pullen served on the King County Council for 13 years representing the 9th Council District -- the southeast corner of King County. Pullen held public office in Washington state for more than 30 ...
With the Puyallup Land Claims Settlement of 1990, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians was able to resolve many of the conflicts over land ownership between the Tribe and local commercial, private, and gover...
Dr. Dixy Lee Ray was a marine biologist, associate professor at the University of Washington, and director of Seattle's Pacific Science Center. In 1972 President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) appointed he...
Belle Reeves was Washington's eighth Secretary of State, second woman to hold statewide elective office, and first female Secretary of State. Several times in her 10-year tenure, she was acting govern...
This is Reuven Carlyle's farewell to Jermaine Magnuson, widow of Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989). Jermaine Magnuson died in Seattle on October 14, 2011. She was 87 years old. Reuven Carlyle is ...
Randy Revelle, a third-generation Seattleite and King County Executive from 1981 to 1985, was born into a family with a tradition of public service and politics, a tradition he diligently tried to uph...
Norm Rice was elected mayor of Seattle in 1989 and served two four-year terms. He was the first African American to win the office and the first in the nation to govern a city that had an African Amer...
Al Rochester, a lifelong Seattle resident, was active in the Democratic Party, served on the Seattle City Council (1944-1956), and published The Seattlite. Rochester was the original advocate and foun...
John Rogers, who served as Washington's third governor from 1897 until 1901, was the state's only Populist executive. Despite concerns that he would be an activist administrator and bring embarrassmen...
Mary Lou Hanify was a teenager in 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Port Angeles to look at the wilderness area proposed for Olympic National Park. More than 30 years later, Hanify wr...
Albert D. Rosellini, governor of Washington state from 1956 to 1965, was born to Italian American immigrants in Tacoma on January 21, 1910. The family relocated to Seattle's Rainier Valley in 1916. De...
James Delmage (J. D.) Ross is known as the Father of Seattle City Light. A firm believer in the municipal ownership of power utilities, Ross helped design and build the power plant at Cedar Falls on t...
Bob Royer was one of Seattle's deputy mayors from 1978 to 1983, working closely with his brother Charley Royer (b. 1939), who served three terms as the city's mayor from 1978 to 1990. Their mayoral ar...
The careers of Charles T. ("Charley") Royer span journalism, politics, and civic activism -- sometimes independently and sometimes in concert. He served three four-year terms as mayor of Seattle, the ...
Bill Ruckelshaus played a wide and varied role in American political and agency history during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1970 he was nominated by President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) to become the first ...
John Henry Ryan and his wife Ella Ryan were two of the earliest African American business owners in Tacoma, where they owned and were the editors of The Forum, a weekly newspaper in the Tacoma area. A...
The San Juan County Land Bank was established in 1990 when county voters approved a new excise tax on real-estate sales to fund acquisition and stewardship of public lands. San Juan County, an archipe...
The "Pig War" is the name commonly given to the 13-year standoff between the American Army and British Royal Navy on San Juan Island that began in the summer of 1859 after an American settler shot a B...
The military confrontation between the United States and Great Britain over the San Juan Islands known as the "Pig War" lasted for 13 years from the shooting of the pig in 1859 until its belated but p...
Bob Santos (1934-2016), born and raised in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, spent most of his life as an activist in his old neighborhood -- saving it, nurturing it, defending it against ou...
Paul Schell was a politician, attorney, developer, and urban planner who helped guide Seattle's transformation from a medium-sized city into a vibrant metropolis. Born, raised, and educated in Iowa be...