DC Isn't the Only Washington With Politics - Wall Street Journal
Kay Buccola’s Nov. 16 letter about how California has tainted Washington politics has too short a timeline. I also am native-born. You think we’re liberal now? In the 1930s Jim Farley described the country as the 47 states and the Soviet of Washington. Our first congressional district was represented by Marion Zioncheck, a wild liberal almost better known for bathing in the DuPont Circle fountain and driving on the White House lawn than for his politics or flamboyant suicide.
In 1946 we elected right-wing Republican Harry P. Cain to the Senate, where he was a pal and supporter of Joseph McCarthy. But true to our schizophrenic politics, before his single Senate term Cain was a progressive, even liberal, mayor of Tacoma. After leaving the Senate he was a great defender of liberal causes.
In the late 1940s the Washington legislature created a clone of the House Un-American Activities Committee that found a Communist under every bed in the state. My favorite memory of those hearings was the longtime Republican state senator who admitted to Communist Party membership in the 1930s. “After all” he said, “my people were Communists.” He stayed in the senate until he died.
Oregon, next door, was interesting, too. Sen. Wayne Morse was, depending on his whim, a Democrat, a Republican and an independent. He went back and forth. I can remember when Bill Knowland of California was a very conservative Republican majority leader in the U.S. senate.
Like the weather out here, politics changes. Just be patient.
George Cheek
Camas, Wash.
There’s an old saying regarding the large movement of populations either through immigration or migration: “Generally speaking, those who relocate tend to create the very same conditions they were so desperate to leave behind.”
Rick Hunnicutt
Cheyenne, Wyo.
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