5) HOW: What methods will be used to win victories?
“There are numerous tactics that can be used. The only question is whether the tactics employed fit within the experience of your organizations’ members, will they disrupt the institution, and build your organization.” – Organizer’s Notebook on Public Utilities and Energy, 1976
An old Seattle Post Intelligencer article from 1982 hangs on the wall in Dan’s basement. Dan’s picture is on the front page of the Sunday edition: “The commissioner and the rebel symbolize conflict over WPPSS.” This provocative headline falls under the more believable forecast: “Rain likely.” The serious mustached “Insurgent Dan Leahy” photo is juxtaposed with the “Defender Nick Cain” a fat-cat looking guy. And in the article, Dan is called the mastermind of the Ratepayer Rebellion.
When Dan left the Citizens’ Party, he was still interested in the movement potential of building a political party from the grassroots. He wanted to create a base, and building from non-partisan public institutions offered a place to start.
In the early 1980s, Dan organized a state-wide effort to take over Public Utility Districts (PUDs). His organization ran and won 11 out of 13 candidates in PUD Commissioner elections, and as a result, stopped four out of five nuclear plants in Washington state.
Dan looked to the populist history of Washington state which is unique in the U.S. Washington state maintains some of the hard-won infrastructure from the 1930s like the first preventative health care system attached to a hospital with a machinist base and Public Utility Districts. Washington laborers won public control over ports and worked to create an economy based in “production for use, not for profit.” Their goal of replacing capitalism with regional public investment was defeated in1934. But the infrastructure still exists, so Dan read all the notes and newsletters from the Employment Councils that were organized in the period right down to the precinct level, from the 1930s to WWII.
Washington households experienced uniquely low rates because of these publicly owned utilities. When electricity rates from the Bonneville Power Administration went up for the first time in history, Dan found out that the increases were not due to inflation but to a scam the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) was running with the private utility monopolies. They were raising rates and leveraging people’s electrical bills to pay the cost of building 5 nuclear power plants. It was a corporate debt scheme running right under people’s noses and showing up in their monthly bills.
Dan and Bethany, Dan’s brilliant wife, created a project to research publicly-owned municipal electric systems that had faced takeover votes initiated by private utilities. The two produced a report detailing how some communities resisted while others sold out, and published the results in an article “Why Munis Live or Die.”
The findings read like a set of organizing tactics presented as “Key Factors in Preserving Local Public Power Systems”. Those factors included: community pride; knowing the value of municipal ownership in terms of revenue and employment for the city; understanding the system; and strong political leadership leading the public institutions.
Dan started Progress Under Democracy (get it? PUD, like Public Utility Districts), to expose what WPPSS was doing. People were enraged beyond what anyone could imagine. They had no idea that their electric bills were going to pay for nuclear power plants. Serving PUD commissioners who had been flying under the radar and able to make these deals became public figures under intense scrutiny and attack. Women, the ones who were more aware of their electric bills month-to- month, were outraged. And as Dan mentioned often, when the women get involved, there’s no going back. Washington state communities went into full revolt.
People by the thousands packed into high school auditoriums and asked Dan to come tell them what was happening and what they could do about it. He would jump into his Alfa Romeo and go all over the state. In every community parked cars lined the streets, the energy was wild, and the crowds ended up wanting to hang their PUD commissioner. Dan told the same joke which, of course, was also instruction: “Don’t blow up your PUD, take it over.”
Using a battle plan that he replicated 30 years later to defeat oil trains, Dan organized the people affected by the rate hikes and the betrayal through research, education, communication, and training in support of an electoral strategy to take over the elected commissions. Expose the truth, name the targets, build organization, recruit members, and challenge power directly.
The overarching strategy advanced by these tactical moves was informed by Washington’s populist history and Dan’s vision to reclaim local control of power and resources. They won lower rates, ended the nuke plants, and elected people’s candidates to manage their publicly owned utilities into a new era.
Eleven of thirteen PUD commissioner candidates endorsed by Progress Under Democracy were elected. “It meant that most of the state will have a whole new set of people that believe in local public power and are opposed to the continued WPPSS fiasco.” Dan himself faced off with an apple baron family in Chelan County and despite tremendous efforts, lost that race even as he propelled the others to victory.
After the election, the victors of the Ratepayer Rebellion gathered in the Seattle Space Needle to celebrate and hold a post-election meeting with 21 counties representing PUDs. News helicopters circled the landmark trying to get a good look at these “insurgents.”
As in every story, even stories with a well-fought victory, there are hard lessons. Running for office runs over your family, and your partner has to be all-in with you. Leaders get isolated without an ongoing organization pressing institutions to stay accountable. PUD commissioners had been replaced but the managers and lawyers inside were the same, soon attacking the newly elected leaders. They needed full time staff to out-organize old boards. Fame is dangerous in two directions – leaders get separated from their base and become clueless about what they are saying. Dan himself became a target because of his visibility. He couldn’t get a job and had to leave the country.
But Dan and his beloved state of Washington also experienced the possibility of electoral revolts: “We did it against all odds, as the expression of a huge movement.” There are several binders on this fight. There are pages of research, meeting notes, talks, and newspaper clippings tracking this public and victorious fight.
There are also, as in every binder in Dan’s basement, lists of names. Dan believed in the list, the people who make things happen.
On a celebration flier for community leadership dedicated to the women who led the 1982 Ratepayer Revolt (presented by Progress Under Democracy Feb 19, 1983) there are 93 individual names and this sentence:
“I am a common woman; I have a common head; and every common woman is like a common loaf of bread – she will rise.”
Dan stood and declared it when he told this story, and this victory was not transactional or technical. It was emotional and necessary. He believed in history and in the people who make it happen.
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