Novoselic rails against the Washington election system at Northshore Rotary meeting
With his 6-foot-7 frame, Krist Novoselic towered over the Northshore Rotary Club members last Thursday during their meeting at the Inglewood Country Club in Kenmore.
In previous years, the 44-year-old Washington resident was recognizable with a bass guitar slung over his shoulder and blasting out songs by his band Nirvana.
For a while now, Novoselic has been politically active, first with JAMPAC (Joint Artists and Music Political Action Committee) and then as chair of FairVote. He is a member of The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry in Wahkiakum County and authored a book, “Of Grunge and Government: Let’s Fix This Broken Democracy.”
Rotary member Joe Marshall invited Novoselic to speak at the meeting about the Washington election system, namely the Initiative 872 nonpartisan blanket primary. And when the meeting time came, Marshall fittingly sported a T-shirt naming “grunge” bands like the Supersuckers, Mudhoney and more.
“I want to speak about association and how people come together and why I think that’s an important part of our community culture,” Novoselic began.
The bearded activist spoke of his musical beginnings and how it all tied into him becoming involved in politics:
• “When Nirvana started in Aberdeen in the early 1980s, we had a music community. Just a handful of us kids, basically, we liked punk-rock music, which is what is called alternative music now.
“We found each other, so we had shared needs of what we wanted to have in the community, see shows and learn about new music. And we had our values kind of outside of the mainstream. We came together with folks in Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle, and out of that grew the Seattle music scene by the late ’80s and early ’90s. One thing led to another, and it was in 1991 that Seattle music came to rule the world,” he said with a chuckle and raised eyebrows.
But the nirvana they found wasn’t particularly teen-spirited:
• “The music scene came about in a an era of really bad regulations, like an anti-music attitude in the city and state, the teen-dance ordinance (clampdown on all-ages venues), and (music was seen as) harmful to minors in the Legislature. So what we did is we associated again, but this time we started a political-action community, some other groups like JAMPAC to advocate on behalf of the music community that Seattle music and Washington music is an asset, not a liability. That we add cultural and economic vitality to the region. So our group, we came together and took that message to the lawmakers. (“We turned it around,” he added, noting the addition of the Experience Music Project to the Seattle arts scene.)
Novoselic said he’s always voted in elections, but through his early music-related political experiences, he “became quite a champion with this thing called democracy.”
He added about his early JAMPAC days:
• “The interface between democracy and the citizens and government is voting, it’s a ballot.
“I tried to spread enthusiasm, but it seems like I came across a lot of barriers for participation. People were excited, like, ‘Yeah, I’ll come to the benefit, we’ll go to the hearing,’ but, (I’d say), ‘Are you gonna vote on Tuesday?’ (And they’d say), ‘No, not really.'”
Novoselic said he could understand his friends’ frustration that they thought their votes didn’t matter and that Legislative races were often uncontested and uninteresting.
Fast-forward to today, and the man who registered but withdrew from his campaign as county clerk of Wahkiakum County as a “Grange Party” candidate is outspoken as anyone on I-872:
• “So what the parties are doing is they’re suing the top two (primary, for associational issues), they wanna go back to that pick-a-party primary. And I think that’s totally delusional.
“If the Democrats and Republicans wanna nominate ‘loser’ candidates, I think the voters can see that and voters will vote for Independents and maybe even some new kind of party.” (Novoselic is a former Democrat-turned-Independent.)
“I-872 does the Republicans and Democrats a big favor by just this whole preferred-party business. What I’d like to see if there is a settlement — but I don’t think that is gonna happen because the major parties don’t want this — is basically the Republicans and Democrats just have their own nominations.”
On running as a “Grange Party” candidate in order to protest the Washington system in which a candidate can claim any party as their own, real or fictional, he added:
• “The Grange does not endorse candidates, the Grange is a nonpartisan group.
“I could be the Northshore Prefers Rotary Party, Prefers American Legion Party … whatever works for me. American Legion can say, ‘He’s not American Legion,’ I can say, ‘Well, I’m not, but I think it’s a great group.’ That’s my right as a Washingtonian.”
Spoken like a true punk rocker, or “grange” rocker.
