LIVE from the Crosscut Festival: Bridging the Cascade Divide

The first ses­sion I attend­ed today was “Bridg­ing the Cas­cade Divide” dis­cussing the polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, but also the com­mon­al­i­ties, between East­ern and West­ern Wash­ing­ton. Mod­er­at­ed by jour­nal­ist Ted McGre­gor, pan­elists include high­ly-rat­ed, non-par­ti­san poll­ster Stu­art Elway, Grant Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge David Estudil­lo, Kel­li Scott of The Wenatchee World, and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive J.T. Wilcox of Wash­ing­ton’s 2nd Dis­trict includ­ing south­east Pierce and Thurston Counties.

McGre­gor, pub­lish­er of The Inlan­der and Spokane Week­ly, start­ed off with some jokes and fun com­men­tary using the stereo­types both that West­side folks have of East­ern WA, and vice versa.

Elway start­ed with a bunch of sta­tis­tics, only a hand­ful of which I was able to cap­ture. Of note was the fact that 25 of the Wash­ing­ton coun­ties that vot­ed for Trump in 2016 were among the least eco­nom­i­cal­ly pros­per­ous in the state. He not­ed that part of where the Cas­cade Divide comes from is that fact that “pol­i­tics is orga­nized by inter­est, but gov­ern­ment is orga­nized by geography.”

He also not­ed that his polls show that a lot of resent­ment for West­ern WA on the part of peo­ple in East­ern WA is based on the (false) assump­tion that their tax­es pay for things in West­ern WA, which they don’t ben­e­fit from. In real­i­ty, there are six “donor coun­ties” in Wash­ing­ton that pay more in tax­es than they get back in ser­vices from the state, and those are five Puget Sound coun­ties plus Kit­ti­tas. Only 12% of poll respon­dents cor­rect­ly answer that their coun­ty receives more than they give.

Wilcox, who describes him­self as a “mid­dle-of-the-road­er” in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, not­ed that he has noticed a change over the years, in that there has always been an ide­o­log­i­cal divide to some extent, but there used to be a lot more moderates.

He points out that most Repub­li­cans, in Wash­ing­ton and across the coun­try, rep­re­sent the least wealthy coun­ties. The old adage that “he who has the gold makes the rules” is true to some extent in Wash­ing­ton, he said, and that is at the root of a lot of the resent­ment from East­ern and rur­al Wash­ing­ton towards West­ern and urban Washington.

Scott lives in East­ern WA and is the edi­tor of a news­pa­per in Wenatchee, but lived for many years in Taco­ma, so she feels like she sees both sides of the divide. She sees a lot of false nar­ra­tives that play out in East­ern WA, with folks believ­ing in the stereo­types of “lazy urban peo­ple vs. hard­work­ing rur­al folks.” This is con­nect­ed to the eco­nom­ic resent­ments and inac­cu­rate beliefs about tax­es that Elway and Wilcox mentioned.

She also not­ed that there is resent­ment in the Leav­en­worth and Chelan areas around avail­abil­i­ty and afford­abil­i­ty of hous­ing. There are many peo­ple from the West who buy sec­ond hous­es in those areas, and use them pri­mar­i­ly as short-term rentals, reduc­ing the amount of hous­ing avail­able for peo­ple who work in those communities.

Scott also made a pre­dic­tion about this fal­l’s Con­gres­sion­al elec­tions, say­ing she would be sur­prised if Dino Rossi, the Repub­li­can can­di­date in the 8th Dis­trict, did­n’t get at least 60% of the vote in Cen­tral Washington.

Judge Estudil­lo agrees a lot of the divide comes down to socioe­co­nom­ic issues. He said that it seems like a lot of peo­ple in Grant Coun­ty see King Coun­ty, and Seat­tle specif­i­cal­ly, as elit­ist. They have resent­ment over tax­a­tion and reg­u­la­tions that the feel hin­ders small busi­ness, and don’t see the ben­e­fits that their com­mu­ni­ty receives from the more pop­u­lat­ed counties.

He sees the biggest chal­lenge to bridg­ing the divide is the lack of inter­ac­tion across the lines. This makes peo­ple unable to see the com­mon ground they share. He finds that if peo­ple have the chance to sit down face to face and have real con­ver­sa­tions, they come to under­stand each oth­er more.

When asked by McGre­gor how the state leg­is­la­ture could help to bridge the divide, Rep. Wilcox not­ed that the leg­is­la­ture is prob­a­bly not well suit­ed for the best kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion because it is set up to have oppo­si­tion. How­ev­er he said that elect­ed offi­cials on both sides of the aisle do have social rela­tion­ships and get along, but that more often hap­pens in pri­vate, not in public.

Wilcox also men­tioned that this pan­el was the third one he had been asked to par­tic­i­pate in on the same top­ic in the last few months, so it is clear that peo­ple are con­cerned about this issue.

Elway then talked about how he used to say that Wash­ing­ton state was “one-third Demo­c­rat, one-third Repub­li­can, and one-third Inde­pen­dent, with the largest third being Inde­pen­dent.” But he says that is not real­ly the case any­more. Since 2010, Repub­li­cans are down to about 25%, and that Democ­rats and Inde­pen­dents go back and forth of who has the largest portion.

McGre­gor next point­ed out some indus­tries that have moved to East­ern WA in recent years, includ­ing serv­er farms in Quin­cy and car­bon fiber being made in Moses Lake. He then asked if there was any mod­er­a­tion in resent­ment for West­ern WA because of the jobs brought to the area by indus­tries sup­ply­ing the West.

Judge Estudil­lo thought yes, to some extent. He not­ed that when out­side com­pa­nies come in to the com­mu­ni­ty and invest, they also send employ­ees from out­side the area who move in. They then are work­ing and liv­ing along­side locals, and through these inter­ac­tions peo­ple begin to see the com­mon ground they share. He said this shows that change is possible.