In 1909 city councilman J.A. Schiller claimed the mayor of Spokane was taking orders from publisher William Cowles. “I am going to fight The Spokesman-Review!” Schiller proclaimed just before he disappeared from Spokane politics. A little background on the current controversy.
By William Stimson
WHAT CAUSES the acrimonious debates that turn Spokane city council meetings into the Monday Night Fights? Why have the fortunes of other Pacific Northwest communities flourished as Spokane’s have faltered? Portland the Beautiful has borne two decades of image-stressing development, yet let a reporter arrive in town and its politicians stand in line to praise each other. Kalispel ought to be a political powder keg, with its volatile mix of cowboys and Californians. But a former Kalispel mayor goes about the country giving speeches about how that town gained community harmony. Boise offers the most galling contrast of all. Not only is that other homely little inland town number five on Forbes magazine’s “best places to do business” list (Spokane is 159th, almost bottom), but people who have lived in both Boise and Spokane go on and on about what a wonderful, friendly, civically responsible place, by contrast, Boise is.
Why is Spokane locked in its venomous feud?
The answer that is obvious to many Spokanites-”The Cowleses”-is unsatisfactory on its face. Whatever the particulars of the River Park Square imbroglio, the real issue is decisions made by elected officials. If the city is, as critics maintain, susceptible to the influence of the Cowleses, that still begs the question of why Spokane developed in such a way as to be so vulnerable to this influence. Every American city has had its millionaire dynasty.
There is yet another problem with the The-Cowleses-Made-Them-Do-It theory. The product of this supposed fraud, River Park Square, remains, 
despite all the objections to the process and the cost, one of the most universally popular developments since Expo. The harshest critics of the deal tend to begin their accusations by saying: “I’m not against the development itself.” (Paul Sandifur’s office on the 16th the floor of the Metropolitan Mortgage Building looks directly down on River Park Square two blocks away. I remarked it must gripe him to have to look every day at the development he has criticized for five years. “Oh, I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I think it’s kind of pretty.”) If even critics have a good word to say for the final product, no wonder moderates- those who should be weighing in on one side or the other to end the stalemate-do not subscribe to a critique being conducted as if it were an exorcism.
The system is fine. It is the people who are inadequate.
The cynicism of Spokane citizens toward leaders is well-known. (A recent KXLY survey revealed 71 percent believe the council is performing poorly.) What is less known is the cynicism of leaders toward Spokane’s citizenry. Jim Ray, the IBM executive who led the long and frustrating effort to build the arena, wrote after it was all over: “We have a bunch of sheep around here when it comes to elections. Whenever any naysayers start questioning good things, they get right on board.”
One banker who has been deeply involved in Spokane politics for two decades suggested the reason Spokane has done so poorly economically is that its children are not sufficiently ambitious. A long-time top city government official thought Spokane’s reluctance to approve community-improvement bonds might be explained by Spokane’s high number of single mothers. A Spokane opinion leader summed up the feeling of many Spokane leaders when he blamed Spokane’s current controversy on the degrading influences of “our culture of poverty, our geographic isolation, [and] our climate.”
Hence, Spokane is contributing an original concept to American political science: the system is fine; it is the people who are inadequate.
When a community stoops to blaming its problems on its voters, its moms, its children, and its weather, it is time to step back and take another look.
What historical forces have sentenced Spokane to its long quarrel with itself? The answer lies in the dark secret of the city’s politics.
Spokane is a political community that long ago learned to live without political consensus. It lacks any mechanism for creating popular agreement, and its politics are designed to get around that problem.
The cynicism of Spokane citizens toward leaders is well-known. (A recent KXLY survey revealed 71 percent believe the council is performing poorly.) What is less known is the cynicism of leaders toward Spokane’s citizenry. Jim Ray, the IBM executive who led the long and frustrating effort to build the arena, wrote after it was all over: “We have a bunch of sheep around here when it comes to elections. Whenever any naysayers start questioning good things, they get right on board.”
Spokane leaders have become adept at getting things done without broad community support, but this approach has spawned many of Spokane’s problems. For example, it made the 1997 city council reluctant to take the obvious step of seeking popular guidance on the controversial public-private partnership with the Cowles. The fear that citizens themselves would demand a say in the matter caused the haste and secrecy of the decision. The same fear inhibited knowledgeable critics: no one wanted to be a “naysayer.” Ultimately, the lack of consensus meant that the exchange of a few seats on the city council changed city policy in mid-course, something that does not happen when policy is based on broad community agreement.
Why Spokane traditionally lacks political consensus is an involved story. No one planned it that way; it evolved out of Spokane’s peculiar history. The most important episode in the story was an election in 1910 that replaced a raucous, neighborhood-based political system with a self-absorbed government by technocrats.
But it is useful to start even further back, right at the beginning. No one could have explained the motives of the 1997 city council in approving River Park Square better than Spokane’s earliest citizens, who also had the responsibility for shaping Spokane’s downtown.
William Stimson is Director of the Journalism Program at Eastern Washington University and the author of Spokane, An Illustrated History, American Historical Press, 1999.
Link to: Part 2: Spokane’s Founding Political Idea: “Get It Done”