On a nice day, former Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis would have a view encompassing Bainbridge Island, ferries, and Seattle's skyline from his seat at Pioneer Coffee across Harbor Avenue from Alki Beach. But beyond the door, the beach ends in a grey haze of clouds and waves, and the dicey weather makes the cafe feel as though it exists at the edge of the world.
Stubborn Sideburn
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"There is no truth to the rumor that I arrived with the Denny Party," Ceis quips. "My dad did, though."
In truth it was his great-grandfather who grew up in a house not far from where Ceis is sitting. His parents still live in the neighborhood, as does Ceis himself. In fact, for four decades, West Seattle has produced politicians who have risen to the top elected positions in the city and the region, steering infrastructure projects and cash to the neighborhood.
If the viaduct's imminent demise cuts off West Seattle and its approximately 83,000 citizens (as estimated by King County demographer Chandler Felt, using data from the Puget Sound Regional Council and the U.S. Census Bureau) from a mainland that has a tendency to forget the peninsula is part of the city, West Seattleites won't be worrying. There's enough political experience and expertise, from local precinct officers to players on the international stage, to keep the peninsula humming all by its lonesome.
It wasn't always that way. Fifty years ago, West Seattle tended to be left out of city politics. It was too disconnected physically and politically from the rest of Seattle, lurching further right than the mainland, Ceis explains. His father, Philip, was a rare far-left liberal in the neighborhood in the 1940s and '50s, and for a time the family suffered for it. A member of the communist party, Philip was dragged before a regional branch of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It kept his father from getting construction jobs, Ceis says. Even as a child, he adds, "there were people who wouldn't let me come to their house."
But that didn't deter the Ceis family's political activism. Tim's mother, Margaret, joined forces with other progressive-minded Democratic women who thought city government wasn't doing a good job of taking care of a burgeoning city, especially its west side.
Phyllis Lamphere was one of the women working with Margaret Ceis to reinvigorate the West Seattle Democrats. Lamphere moved to the neighborhood with her family in 1953 and provided a much-needed tie between West Seattle and the rest of the city. "My family was always involved in the city; most of my family worked for the city," she says.
An active member of the city Democratic Club and the League of Women Voters, Lamphere didn't start out as a neighborhood advocate. In 1965 and 1966, she worked on various campaigns, including one to get the state to allow the city to switch to a strong-mayor system of government—something that would hugely benefit West Seattle decades later. During that time she also took various appointed positions, including a spot on the now-defunct city air-pollution-control board.
In 1967, Lamphere ran for city council. She says she didn't think of it as running to create a neighborhood council seat. Nor did she have much trouble getting elected. Thanks to her involvement in in a variety of civic activities, she was well known throughout the city. "When I became active in the Democratic Party in West Seattle, we had some pretty powerful legislators, but I don't believe that they had a big enough vision for the city," she says. "I was in the thick of it, so to speak."
Ironically, around the time Lamphere finally snagged the peninsula a voice in city government, a group led by the local Chamber of Commerce circulated petitions to secede from the city. "It was sort of half-serious and half-promotional fun," says Clay Eals, a former West Seattle Herald reporter who edited a book on the history of West Seattle called West Side Story. "It was all about transportation." The West Seattle Chamber of Commerce had been fighting for a higher bridge spanning the Duwamish, but, despite Lamphere's presence on the council, didn't yet have the clout to make it happen through normal political channels.
The petition got about half the signatures needed to put secession to a vote. But it would be wrong to characterize it as a failure, as it accomplished something more important: It got business leaders to join forces with the left-leaning women in the interest of West Seattle.
King County Executive Dow Constantine, who grew up in the neighborhood and still resides near his boyhood home, says West Seattle's vast number of active groups, from the local Democrats to the West Seattle High School Alumni Association to business owners to the many churches, create a more cohesive voting bloc than in other neighborhoods. The groups "reinforce each other and create a sense of sort of shared purpose," he says. "People who don't really line up with me philosophically or politically are willing to support my candidacy for office because I understand them. I understand where they come from; I understand what they think. I'm one of them."
