The Political Machine Behind the Scenes
An 1873 editorial exposes the 'Tacoma Land Ring' and the manipulation of delegate votes to serve corporate monopoly interests in Washington Territory.
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.
No man who knows us can rest under any doubt as to our sentiments upon any question of public interest. Every body who knows anything of the matter knows that we are a Democrat of the strictest sect, and no man can point to a single instance where we have deviated from the doctrines of the Democratic party as delivered to us by its progenitors. It is true that more than eight years ago we committed ourself from party serfdom upon the adoption in party convention of a principle repugnant to our sense of public obligation—no less than a repudiation of the national debt.
We make this explanation because the organs of the party, with more zeal than knowledge, howl at us as a 'renegade,' a 'Republican,' and a 'traitor.' The Democratic doctrine of popular representation was utterly discarded in the Vancouver convention, and yet the score or so of self-elected delegates, with no regular authority to represent the Democratic popular will of the Territory, have the infinite effrontery to denounce as traitors all Democrats who refuse to recognize their usurped authority. Credentials by which a large proportion of the votes in the convention were held had no popular backing; they were transferable like a negotiable note, without the authority or knowledge of the constituency they assumed to represent.
Take King County, for example: at a mass meeting of not over fifty persons, held in this city, eight delegates were elected, only two of whom attended, and one of them (Col. Nash, an old law partner of Caton) was allowed four votes from this county in addition to two from the counties of Island and Snohomish. What constituency gave their consent or authority to him to cast more than one vote? We know of no way in which we could damage the cause of Democracy more than by endorsing this burlesque upon popular government, and advising the people to surrender their independence to trading politicians.
“Credentials by which a large proportion of the votes in the convention were held had no popular backing; they were transferable like a negotiable note, without the authority or knowledge of the constituency.”
This 1873 report on the 'Tacoma Land Ring' and the backroom maneuvering of Col. L.B. Nash mirrors modern anxieties about corporate influence in Seattle politics and the struggle to maintain grassroots representation against the interests of powerful developers and transit monopolies.
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