LAST NIGHT at the Prop 1B party. With the measures strong approval in early returns, it looks like Seattle will be taking its first steps toward universal preschool.
  • Kelly O
  • Last night at the Prop 1B party. With the measure's strong approval in early returns, it looks like Seattle will be taking its first steps toward universal preschool.

Somewhere out beyond the edges of our emerald bubble is the world in which Republicans just took control of US Senate for the first time in eight years. We had little to do with that. Neither of Washington State's senators were up for election this season, and as a result, last night offered an excellent moment to stare inward and avoid the grim beyond. Here in this city, at least, voters are willing to wade into the confusing thicket of a two-step ballot question and eagerly vote to tax themselves—their precious property, even!—in order to fund the start of universal preschool. This is not America.

Voters here also want to tax themselves, albeit regressively, to pay for improved public bus service. Not only that, but we and hundreds of thousands of other Washingtonians have pulled off the unique feat of using direct democracy as a means of closing the gun-background-check loophole.

In other parts of this country, all three of these efforts—universal preschool, Metro funding, gun control—might have been stymied by talk of "freedom." You know: the freedom to not have your property taxed to pay for some other family's kid to go to preschool. The freedom to drive your own car and not care about other people's public transportation. The freedom to buy a gun at a gun show without the government getting involved.

It's a hollow, selfish vision of freedom, and last night was another reminder: It's avoidable. Which is not to say it's very far away.

Just 60 miles down the road in the state capitol, Olympia, is a group of representatives who for years have refused to raise the revenue needed to fund basic things like K-12 education. Their cold intransigence, even in the face of a Washington State Supreme Court order requiring them to cough up more money, seems unlikely to change now that statewide returns show Republicans retaining control of the state senate.

In Seattle, though, election results show we'll be sending the senate a new and hopeful voice: Pramila Jayapal of the 37th District. She wants to get real on tax reforms that could raise the necessary money. It's unlikely to be an easy sell.

More likely, when the state legislature begins its next session in January, she'll hear a lot from other lawmakers about a concept they continue to think Seattle is unfamiliar with: freedom.