The Political Erasure of Lewis County
Citizens in rural Washington cry foul as the 1889 constitutional convention districting map threatens to strip their county of political representation.
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.
To the Editor: The apportionment of the territory for the election of delegates to the constitutional convention has been a matter of universal comment since its publication, and to say that the people of Lewis county are chagrined and very much dissatisfied is putting it mildly. Lewis is one of the oldest counties of the territory—is in fact mother of several. She is one of the most important counties, both as to area, wealth and population, and if any county is entitled to preserve her autonomy in this apportionment, certainly she is. Yet this arrangement almost wipes her out of political existence.
Look at it: District No. 24 includes Thurston county and the following precincts from Lewis county: Lincoln Creek, Hanaford, and Centralia. District No. 25 includes the remainder of Lewis county, coupled with the eastern end of Pierce county. What have we in common with these Pierce county precincts? If it was necessary to give them to any other county, why could not they have been attached to adjoining territory, instead of to a portion of a county nearly a hundred miles away, with a full county intervening?
It is said by some who have been watching events that a part of this gerrymandering was done in the interests of a certain individual in one of the precincts set off to Thurston who has designs on the convention. By having certain precincts set off with those of the southwestern portion of Thurston county, he hopes to secure his election—an event impossible if the county as a whole could vote on his selection. However, whatever may have been the moving cause, Lewis county will not forget the slight put upon her in the first days of the new territorial administration.
“Lewis is one of the oldest counties of the territory—is in fact mother of several... Yet this arrangement almost wipes her out of political existence.”
In 1889, Lewis County residents feared being 'wiped out of political existence' by gerrymandering—a concern that remains a cornerstone of American political anxiety. The friction between growing urban hubs like Seattle and the political autonomy of rural counties like Lewis is a regional power struggle that has remained remarkably consistent in Washington politics for over 130 years.
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