Will there ever be Another ‘Evans Republican’ in Politics?

Bipartisanship in Seattle usually means a Democrat and a Socialist posing for a selfie, but it used to be different. Seattle used to have Republicans, not only Republicans, but progressive urban reformers—think of city council members like Tim Hill who rode his bike on the campaign trail, Bruce Chapman and John Miller, who launched the city’s neighborhood P-Patch system, Chris Bayley who cleaned-up corruption in the prosecutor’s office.

But like a species threatened by climate change, politics shifted and by the late 1980s Seattle began to harden into a one-party town. GOP office holders from Seattle became as rare as the prehistoric ground sloths that are occasionally unearthed here in ancient bogs.

A photo-op that revived memories of this civic era was last week’s Historylink annual luncheon honoring the life and career of Dan Evans, the Seattle Republican who became the state’s beloved governor for three consecutive terms after his election in 1964. The event, at the Fairmont Olympic downtown, featured a room full of liberals like Mike Lowry, Gary Locke, Greg Nickels, Norm Rice and Charles Royer joined by Republicans like former Sen. Slade Gorton, Secretaries of State Ralph Munro, Sam Reed and Kim Wyman dining, remembering, dining and applauding together.

The event marked Evans’ 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary year of his 1965 inauguration. Evans was an environmentalist—he insists today that he is conservative but that “conservation” derives from the same root. He helped found and was later president of the alternative Evergreen State College (my alma mater). Evans embraced the Vietnamese “boat people” refugees and under his leadership Washington took in thousands. Evans also embraced the “third rail” idea of a state income tax, but the plan was defeated twice at the polls. Evans still argues that it was the wiser course and would have raised billions more annually than our current tax system.

It all sounds like a distant Camelot. A conservative heading a hippie college, pushing for progressive taxation, expanding wilderness areas, and refusing to build a wall to keep immigrants out? Very un-2016.

The term “Evans Republican” came to mean a kind of sensible, green moderate progressivism that could work in a bipartisan way. Evans still has his vigor and his marbles, and speaks in a calm, deliberate, intelligent and statesman-like way with dry humor that, if anything, not only redefines what is possible in politics, but redefines what it means to be 90.

The term “Evans Republican” is nearly lost today. King County Port Commissioner Bill Bryant who is running for governor as a Republican, would like to carry that mantle into a race with Gov. Jay Inslee. Bryant was at the luncheon and has been endorsed by Evans—whether that blessing matters to an electorate that doesn’t remember the old days is another matter, but it might help among the gray-haired set. Bryant was reassured that his low identity numbers statewide were slightly better than Evans’ were when he started out, a reminder that leaders aren’t inevitable, they are made.

The state GOP leadership in Olympia has included some moderate Republicans from the county, including the Eastside’s Andy Hill and Steve Litzow, who stand in contrast with some of their rural, Tea Party-inspired brothers and sisters. And King County prosecutor Dan Satterberg, a justice reformer, seems the lone holdout of the strand of Evans DNA that has had hold of the prosecutor’s office since the early ‘70s.

Yet the party’s image nationally and statewide has moved so far to the right, moderates running statewide like Bryant will have a hard time convincing Seattle area progressives that they can be trusted to hew a middle course. Rob McKenna tried to sell himself as an Evans-style conservationist, to no avail. Still, some Republicans would like to recapture the old Evans magic.

Is it possible to imagine a progressive state GOP politician elected today that would be honored like Evans 50 years from now?

It’s hard to see that through the lens of current politics, unless they moved the state forward dramatically on tax reform, education, climate change and urban transportation.

To do that, the candidate’s worst enemy might be his or her own party.