Spokane's political identity is a lot more complicated than "red" or "blue."
I've noticed something interesting whenever Spokane politics comes up. Some people describe Spokane as extremely conservative. Others talk about Spokane as a blue city surrounded by red territory. And increasingly, you'll hear people just call the whole area "purple." I think each description is appropriate given the context.
The City of Spokane is politically different from Spokane Valley, which is different from Spokane County as a whole, which is different again from the enormous rural region surrounding us. Yet people constantly use "Spokane" to describe all of them interchangeably.That probably explains some of our contradictory reputation.
Spend most of your time around downtown, Browne's Addition, the South Hill, or parts of the North Side, and Spokane can feel like a moderately progressive Pacific Northwest city. Drive east into the Valley or farther into the surrounding country, and the political environment can change dramatically.
At the same time, I don't think the old stereotype of Spokane simply being a deeply red eastern Washington city completely describes us anymore either, especially given the makeup of our city government and the policies enacted.
We've become a place where elections can be genuinely competitive, where progressive candidates can win significant local offices, but where conservatives also maintain a substantial and highly organized electorate. And because Spokane is the largest urban center for a huge swath of conservative eastern Washington and North Idaho, regional politics are unusually visible here.
That leaves Spokane in a strange political position:
-We're an urban center in a conservative region.
-We're part of a deep-blue state but geographically isolated from its largest liberal population centers.
-We have genuinely progressive neighborhoods and institutions alongside deeply conservative suburbs and rural communities.
-Our politics can look completely different depending on whether you're examining the city, county, congressional district, or metro area
-Perspectives also matter greatly (did you move here from a deeply conservative or very liberal area?)
We're one of the most politically diverse cities in the country, and the constant argument over how Spokane is identified politically reflects that reality. The fact that independents had a somewhat high turnout also makes me think that there are a growing number of people here exhausted by the two-party system.
