The culture wars and urban electoral politics: sexuality, race, and class in Tacoma, Washington

Answering calls for increased sensitivity to context in studies of electoral conflicts in local gay rights issues, we offer an exploratory case study of an unsuccessful electoral initiative to repeal a Tacoma, Washington, gay rights ordinance. Using a mixed-methods approach, we explore the role of elections in contemporary cultural politics, especially the ways in which race, class, and sexuality are co-constructed in part through the discourses and practices of elections. We perform a qualitative analysis of the popular rhetorics and understandings deployed during the campaign and a quantitative analysis of the electionʹs sociodemographics. Results suggest that while there is a distinct social geography in Tacoma that was highly correlated with voting on the repeal effort, the contest was played out almost entirely at the citywide scale. It was enjoined as a debate over what kind of place Tacomans wished their city to be as it moves into the future, not as a struggle between contending place-based interests or values. The implication of these results is that the nuances of place at particular scales, including highly contingent constructions of sexuality, race and class, may now be more important than ever in these sorts of cultural conflicts.