Political Exile: The Tacoma News Attacks Seattle's Independent Democrats
A bitter feud between newspapers highlights the friction between regional interests and party loyalty in Washington.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Tacoma News of last evening contains a bitter attack upon Judge Burke and Hon. D. H. Gilman because those gentlemen have made it known that they will not vote as the bosses of Seattle dictate. The News undertakes to read these gentlemen out of the Democratic party. In its eyes, apparently, it is all right for Tacoma Republicans to vote the Democratic ticket, but altogether wrong for Seattle Democrats to vote the Republican ticket. Judge Burke and Mr. Gilman need no defense at the hands of this journal. All Seattle knows them, and all the state knows them. It knows them as men who are, and ever have been, loyal to the interests of this commonwealth and true to their own convictions. It knows them as men who will not be swayed from the path of duty by the assaults of such journals as the Tacoma News, or by the assaults of any whose ruling passion is hatred of the city of Seattle.
“It knows them as men who will not be swayed from the path of duty by the assaults of such journals as the Tacoma News.”
Inter-city rivalry between Seattle and Tacoma defined regional politics in the 1890s, much like the modern tension over regional transit or tax-base distribution. The struggle to maintain independent political thought within party-controlled machines remains a familiar frustration in civic discourse.
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