The “Fourth Cor­ner” of the low­er forty-eight states will like­ly keep a 4–3 pro­gres­sive major­i­ty on the What­com Coun­ty Coun­cil, a leg­isla­tive body that recent­ly extend­ed a mora­to­ri­um on new refiner­ies, ship­ping ter­mi­nals and coal-fired pow­er plants at the Cher­ry Point indus­tri­al area north of Bellingham.

The key race, for an at-large seat, has Coun­cil Chair Bar­ry Buchanan with a sev­en per­cent lead over con­ser­v­a­tive-backed chal­lenger Kamal Bhachu, ini­tial Novem­ber 2nd elec­tion returns sug­gest. A notable pro­gres­sive on the Coun­cil, West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty elec­tions expert Todd Dono­van, ran unopposed.

The Council’s mora­to­ri­um at Cher­ry Point has left this Belling­ham native wide-eyed at what’s hap­pened to a coun­ty once nick­named “Wide Open Whatcom.”

I can remem­ber local offi­cials grov­el­ing in the mid-1960’s when Intal­co Alu­minum was lured to build a giant smelter at Cher­ry Point, whose pol­lu­tants would quick­ly kill off the hol­ly farm owned by the fam­i­ly of a Belling­ham High classmate.

But life in the Fourth Cor­ner has changed in the years since.

When I was grow­ing up, can­di­dates for Blos­som Time Queen would tell the Belling­ham Her­ald that their ambi­tion was to get out of Bellingham.

Nowa­days, how­ev­er, Belling­ham makes mag­a­zines’ top-ten lists of the country’s most liv­able cities. The down­side: High­er hous­ing prices.

The pol­i­tics have changed as well. The 2018 and 2020 elec­tions saw Democ­rats flip two Repub­li­can-held 42nd Dis­trict seats in the state House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. State Sen Doug Erick­sen, R‑Ferndale, Cambodia’s lob­by­ist in the Unit­ed states and the fos­sil fuel industry’s man in Olympia, sur­vived in 2018 by a mar­gin of forty-five votes. The Democ­rats are cer­tain to tar­get his seat next year.

What­com Coun­ty has, in the past six­ty years, been site of and near­by wit­ness to sev­er­al of Washington’s sem­i­nal land use battles.

Chica­go Bridge & Iron, in the 1980’s, want­ed to use Cher­ry Point to build oil drilling plat­forms for use in Alaska’s Beau­fort Sea. Its site was direct­ly atop where near­ly half of the state’s her­ring stock spawn, her­ring being a prin­ci­pal food for our endan­gered Chi­nook salmon. Faced with a furi­ous lob­by­ing effort Gov­er­nor John Spell­man, our last Repub­li­can chief exec­u­tive, vetoed CG&I’s plans.

The past decade saw a major strug­gle over the pro­posed Gate­way Pacif­ic coal export ter­mi­nal. Its devel­op­ers mobi­lized sup­port from busi­ness groups and labor, hired a respect­ed civic leader to front for the project, and lined up for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gres­sion­al aides as lobbyists.

One prob­lem: Belling­ham didn’t want it, par­tic­u­lar­ly the mile-long coal trains that would pass through the city en route to Cher­ry Point. Hun­dreds lined up to get into a Belling­ham City Club lunch where Gate­way Pacif­ic was debat­ed. Seattle’s then-May­or Mike McGinn was star attrac­tion at protests against coal trains that would pass through Seat­tle, Muk­il­teo, Edmonds, Everett and Marysville.

Ulti­mate­ly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers denied a per­mit for the project, cit­ing its dis­rup­tion of the Lum­mi Nation’s exer­cise of its fish­ing rights. The Lum­mis used to be a picked-on pres­ence in Bellingham.

Now they are a region­al eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal power.

“We’re going to make this place into anoth­er Pitts­burgh,” the direc­tor of the What­com Coun­ty Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Coun­cil once boast­ed to my jour­nal­ist mother.

Not so.

Just as Pitts­burgh is a city trans­formed, so Belling­ham has changed. The pulp mill, which made waters of Belling­ham Bay look like tobac­co spit, is history.

Alcoa, own­er of the old Intal­co smelter, shut it down in the sum­mer of 2020 due to falling alu­minum prices.

The smelter had lost $24 mil­lion in the first quar­ter of the year.

The polit­i­cal fights between pro-devel­op­ment and con­ser­va­tion-mind­ed locals have last­ed for years. Once a bas­tion of crony cap­i­tal­ism, the Belling­ham Port Com­mis­sion has become scene of hot con­tests. In ear­ly results from Tues­day, pro­gres­sive-backed incum­bent Michael Shep­ard led with 55% of the vote for one seat, which con­ser­v­a­tive incum­bent (and Repub­li­can activist) Ken Bell led the pro­gres­sives’ Kel­ly Krieger by 54.6% to 44.3% for the oth­er seat.

The Belling­ham City Coun­cil, mean­while, will wel­come two Black mem­bers for the first time in its his­to­ry. Skip Williams, a retired music teacher and long­time civic activist, was run­ning unop­posed for the Ward 4 seat. Pro­gres­sive-sup­port­ed Kristi­na Michelle Martens and Russ Whid­bee were in a tight race for an at-large seat on the Coun­cil. Both are African American.

Four bal­lot ini­tia­tives were on the Belling­ham bal­lot. The city was reject­ing a bal­lot mea­sure pro­vid­ing $4 an hour haz­ard pay for hourly and gig work­ers dur­ing states of emer­gency, with employ­ers required to give good faith esti­mates of week­ly work­ing hours. A sec­ond mea­sure, requir­ing land­lords to give nine­ty days’ notice on no-cause evic­tions, was also los­ing in ini­tial returns.

Two oth­er mea­sures were run­ning ahead, albeit nar­row­ly. One would ban police from using facial tech­nol­o­gy and pre­dic­tive polic­ing tech­nol­o­gy. The oth­er would block spend­ing of any city mon­ey to block unionization.

“Wide Open What­com” has giv­en way to very wide-open politics.

When I was a kid, city pol­i­tics were dom­i­nat­ed by a group of indus­tri­al­ists and busi­ness folk known as the “Mill Street Mafia.”

Pulp mill brass had a lord­ly presence.

The Puget Sound Pulp & Tim­ber Com­pa­ny wrote the Belling­ham Cham­ber of Com­merce state­ment oppos­ing a Glac­i­er Peak Wilder­ness Area in the Cas­cades. There was even an abortive move to wel­come a move north by the Navy’s infa­mous Port Chica­go ammu­ni­tion dump from its haz­ardous Bay Area home.

The city and coun­ty have acquired a sense and val­ue of place. The Gate­way Pacif­ic lob­by was astound­ed at the City Club turnout, and that both can­di­dates for May­or of Belling­ham were hos­tile to the gigan­tic coal export terminal.

I was very proud of the old home­town that day.