Everett’s First Commission Election Heats Up
The Labor Journal urges voters to look past the 'wet vs. dry' moralizing and focus on the structural challenge of the city’s transition to a new government form.
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.
We had hoped that the 'wet and dry' issue could have been kept out of the coming election of city commissioners. It has no business there, inasmuch as the question will come up for a vote on its merits next November. The transition from ward government to centralized government is an epoch in the history of the city. The commissioners will have a hard row to hoe. We have need of strong men—resolute men—who not only have a working knowledge of the duties of the positions to which they aspire, but backbone enough to lay down well-defined policies and carry them through even in the teeth of the threat of a recall. We are not at all in love with this so-called 'dry regime' and make no bones of the fact that we prefer a regulated saloon system, but we would far rather see the issue settled at the November election and the present campaign left free from a wet and dry embroilment.
“The transition from ward government to centralized government is an epoch in the history of the city.”
Everett’s transition to the commission form of government in 1912 was a major civic shakeup, mirroring current debates about municipal charters and the power of local vs. state control. The Journal’s frustration with single-issue politics shows that the difficulty of separating ideological culture wars from the nuts-and-bolts of city administration is a persistent hurdle in Everett’s civic life.
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