Plateau politics: the rise and decline of an idea

The Sammamish Plateau has created an independent form of politics, which has spread throughout the state and established an identity of its own.

The Plateau is relatively new to Washington's political spectrum; the idea of the Plateau itself stems at its earliest from the 1980s and 1990s when the community was born.

Plateau politics is deeply invested in the notion of the exurban nation, a place that is not fully Republican or Democrat but imbibes a sense of independence and separateness.

The Sammamish Plateau is not part of Seattle; it is barely part of King County and it drifts, as the political winds stir, to an ascension of self-determination. It's foremost, and most disappointing, flowering is the second defeat of Dino Rossi for governor of Washington.

Let's go back to the formation of the Plateau as a political pasture. In the early 1990s, the Plateau — defined by me as the region at the edge of the Growth Management Boundary line between Redmond and Issaquah — resonated with growth and growth's impact on communities, churches and schools.

Families arrived and bought homes in Sammamish (long before it was incorporated) and on the hills overlooking the old timber town of Issaquah. Early indications confirmed they voted Republican, yet strongly for schools and the government's investment in neighborhood streets and greenery. Those homes were, and remain, the outlying frontiers of the urban boundary, from Tiger Mountain to the encapsulated developments of Redmond Ridge. To find this place, go out Highway 520 east as far as its reach and traverse Novelty Hill Road until it turns into the true countryside of Duvall and beyond.

In this defined space, from the top of Redmond to the top of Renton, the Republican party of King County was reborn, and now, after some defeats, seeks to find itself.

At a gathering in Issaquah some years ago, Dino Rossi accepted the hand of Dave Reichert as the King County sheriff launched his bid to be the first elected chief enforcement officer of the county. Then-state Rep. Cheryl Pflug, R-Maple Valley, was part of that gang, just as her race to continue as a state senator represents the clan called Plateau politics.

Rossi was, and is, the clan's star. He is smart and affable. In two tough races, he was defeated by a well-versed governor and the traditions of the Democratic Party in Washington's western hemisphere. The most recent, conclusive defeat may mean the end of his tenure, but it is difficult to believe the ideas of Plateau politics will not remain within Washington's suburban GOP.

The future of Republican politics, I believe, is not in rural Washington with its hectares of space, but in the confines within the Growth Management Boundary line that sees its space as the antithesis of Seattle.

Democrats are doing well on the Eastside of metropolitan Seattle, either through onslaughts by good candidates or the inevitable party-switching that represents tidal change. Yet before the Republican majorities in the far Eastside are snuffed, something remains of their efforts: a general sense that self-absorbed Seattle is not the definer of metropolitan life, that political independence is not the sponge to be soaked up by King County Democrats, and that a way of life on the exurban Plateau has meaning beyond Seattle's persistent, and effete, condemnation.

Rossi's defeat is important because it does not blunt the mastery of urban life upon the semirural life of the Plateau. It confirms growth management as a philosophy of urban design and it confines political dialogue to questions of urban, not suburban, life.

How will we live here? In depressions of density or in explosions of growth? The current pattern seems clear: a concentration on density in preparation for 1.5 million folks on their way here in the coming decades, groping for places to live.

Yet a dialogue that is urban-only in its emphasis and postelection domination, condemns the region to a single strain of thought, a single exposition of what life can be like here. It is that urban banality that Plateau politics sought to redefine, and is the legacy of elections lost.

James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at www.seattletimes.com/edcetera