Union Leader and Life Long Republican

On Behalf of WEA’s More Conservative Members #26 The “Other Washington” Republicans 6.8.20 I’m sure it sounds strange to some readers that this writer is both a union leader and a life long Republican. Since this will become an ongoing dialogue, I think it appropriate for me to explain. I grew up in Yakima, WA, in the late 1940s, 1950s, & early 1960s. In those days, Yakima was a center of ultra-conservatism in the form of the John Birch Society. An entrepreneur/inventor by the name of Floyd Paxton, who was president of the JBS at one time and founder of the “American Eagle” as the JBS’s newspaper, was in his prime. His niece and I attended school together in elementary, junior high, and high school. I still remember her as a fine person. I was also the grandson of a small businessman, who ran a Rexall Pharmacy called the Pioneer Drug Store, and a straight ticket Republican voter, who was the wife of that small businessman. To give you a sense of my grandmother, she came out from Martha’s Vineyard, RI, by herself, before the turn of the century to teach the children of Roselyn coal miners. She married the local druggist, which ended her teaching career, but not her influence on our family. To be honest, I’d rather have fought a cougar than cross my grandmother. My wife, Linda, herself the daughter of a union organizer and a WEA leader in her own right, said I never had much of a chance. In Yakima in the 50s, as she put it, you were either a Repubican or a communist. Sound eerily like today? So, when the time came to stake my ground as a local teachers’ union leader, it was either change parties or work in uncharted territory between Republicans and unions. I chose to keep my conservative roots and work to bring those two groups closer together. And for 25 years, I was being reasonably successful. ------------ Ken Mortland is a member of WEA-Retired, continuing a long career of activism in WEA/NEA. He is also a lifelong Republican and a member of Mainstream Republicans of WA Board.

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