Pushing Back against BRAC: How the Democratic Party Won Rural Western Washington, 1976–94

Rural Western Washington presents a progressive paradox: despite being a white-working class region with a heavy military presence, attributes which would suggest support for the Republican Party, the region has consistently supported the Democratic Party for decades. These findings conflict with the historiography of political realignment in the United States, which converges on the narrative that white working-class voters have turned away from the Democratic Party in favor of the Republican Party since the late 20th century. However, the causal mechanism for why this realignment occurred has been debated among scholars of American political realignment. Some scholars, such as Theda Skocpol and Jake Rosenfeld, advance materialist structural arguments, for instance the decline of civil society, as contributing to this shift. Other political historians, such as Thomas Frank and Jefferson Cowie, argue idealist cultural explanations are responsible for this political realignment, with Republican Party leadership weaponizing “cultural issues” that appealed to white working-class voters. However, while structural interpretations correctly identify changes in social organization as contributing to realignment, this realignment did not form in a vacuum that lacked political leadership. Similarly, while idealist interpretations correctly identify the importance of leadership in influencing white working-class voters, material issues were more salient to white working-class voters than previously considered.

My research fills this gap in the historiography of political realignment in the United States through the case study of rural Western Washington from 1976 to 1994, in which I advance a materialist argument that political leaders emphasizing economic concerns mattered more to white working-class voters than scholars have previously considered. By examining the actions of the region’s two principal political leaders from both major parties – Democratic U.S. Representative Norm Dicks, and Republican State Representative and later State Senator Ellen Craswell – and their interactions with their constituents, I explore how the two parties’ interplay between material and cultural emphases constructed and deconstructed party loyalties in a region with demographics that had been growing increasingly unfavorable to the Democratic Party. Analyzing constituent correspondence, campaign material, newspaper articles, Congressional proceedings, and state legislative proceedings through archival research, I argue that the Democratic Party in rural Western Washington’s focus on material concerns, represented through its principal leader U.S. Representative Norm Dicks, appealed to white working-class voters in the region and developed lasting party loyalty despite unfavorable national trends. Conversely, the Republican Party’s focus on cultural issues, represented through its principal leader State Legislator Ellen Craswell, alienated white working-class voters. To supplement this archival material, I quantitatively visualized Congressional election results from 1976 to 2022 utilizing R.