Topic: Government & Politics
Phyllis Hagmoe Lamphere was a longtime prominent Seattle civic leader and, from 1967 to 1978, a member of the Seattle City Council. She was born and raised in Seattle and graduated from Barnard Colleg...
Bertha Knight Landes, elected mayor of Seattle in 1926, became the first woman to lead a major American city. She ran on a platform of "municipal housekeeping," vowing to clean up city government. She...
Arthur B. Langlie was the only mayor of Seattle to become governor of the state and the only Washington governor to regain that office after losing it. Langlie was born in Minnesota and moved with his...
When humans began creating laws for each other to follow, the legal profession was born. As the number of people increased and life became more complex, the number of both laws and lawyers multiplied....
The League of Women Voters, a non-partisan organization founded in 1920 and concerned with public policy and citizenship issues, grew out of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). U...
Ernest Lister served as Washington's eighth governor from 1913 to 1919. Born in England, he is one of two governors in the state's history who was not born in the United States. His candidacy in 1912 ...
Gary Locke rose through the political ranks from humble, minority beginnings to become King County's first Asian American executive in 1994, the first Asian American governor in the United States in 1...
Michael "Mike" Lowry served 21 years in elective offices in Washington -- 1976 to 1978 in the King County Council, 1979 to 1989 representing the 7th District in Congress, and 1993 to 1997 as governor....
Wing Luke was elected to the Seattle City Council in 1962, and became the first Chinese American from a large mainland city to hold such an office. Just three years later, in 1965, his promising polit...
Marjorie Lynch served 10 years in the Washington State House of Representatives, from 1961 to 1971, representing the 14th Legislative District in Yakima County. Born in England, Lynch came to the Unit...
Following Mao Zedong's declaration of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, U.S. Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989) became one of the leading advocates of normalized relations and tra...
Warren G. Magnuson ("Maggie" to constituents, Warren to family and friends) represented Washington in the United States Senate longer than anyone else and used his seniority and persuasive skills to e...
Norman Kim "Norm" Maleng was King County Prosecuting Attorney for 28 years, during which he implemented legal reforms, mentored future judges and politicians, and made national news while prosecuting ...
When Walt Sickler (b. 1927) was promoted from line crew foreman to Supervisor of Overhead Construction at Seattle City Light, he brought to the utility's management his knowledge of field operations a...
Karen Marchioro was a mover and shaker in the Washington State Democratic Party for more than four decades from the early 1970s to her death from an extended bout with cancer in 2007. She was, accordi...
August P. "Augie" Mardesich was a Washington state representative from 1950 to 1962 and a Washington state senator from 1963 to 1978. He holds the rare distinction having served as both the state Hous...
Washington became one of the first two states, along with Colorado, to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana when voters approved Initiative 502 on November 6, 2012. The vote was the culminatio...
On November 2, 1971, Seattle voters approved Initiative One, creating a seven-acre historical district in the heart of the city and saving the 64-year-old Pike Place Market from demolition. In 1981, t...
On November 2, 1971, Seattle voters approved Initiative One, creating a seven-acre historical district in the heart of the city and saving the 64-year-old Pike Place Market from demolition. In 1981, t...
Washington became one of the first three states, along with Maine and Maryland, to enact same-sex marriage at the ballot box when voters approved Referendum 74 on November 6, 2012. (Other states had l...
Clarence Martin served as Washington's 11th governor between 1933 and 1941. Elected near the nadir of the Great Depression, he proved to be one of the state's most effective governors of the twentieth...
John Martinis served Everett and Snohomish County in a number of public offices between 1967 and 1991. His early roots in commercial and sports fishing instilled in him a desire to protect natural res...
Democrat Dawn Mason served in the Washington State House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, representing the 37th District encompassing much of Central and Southeast Seattle. She was assistant mino...
Peggy Joan Maxie was the first African American woman to be elected to the Washington State House of Representatives. As a Representative from the 37th District in Seattle she served for six consecuti...