Republicans, Democrats are trying to bridge political divides

Nina Shapiro, Tribune News Service

Judie Messier wanted to talk to people with different political views. The liberal Seattle retiree felt the desire especially urgently in the wake of ‘s rise to the presidency — a phenomenon she found utterly scary. But it wasn’t easy to find people who lean red and were game for the kind of probing, one-on-one conversations she envisioned using a format developed by the national nonprofit StoryCorps. Sometimes she would send email after email, only to be “totally ghosted,” she said.

Persistence eventually paid off. She’s had at least a half-dozen conversations with people coming from a different political and often geographic place. One was with Sue Lani Madsen, a conservative writer and rancher from Eastern Washington. It turned out both women had trained as EMTs and served on disaster medical assistance teams deployed to Olympic Games. Messier was astonished. An “almost infinitesimal” number of people share that experience, she said. Their ongoing rapport illustrates the kind of breakthrough dreamed of by a proliferating number of groups trying to bridge partisan divides. It’s a goal that seems all the more pressing as November’s presidential election approaches, ratcheting up the political toxicity that makes the new movie “Civil War,” about an uprising against the US government in a dystopian future, a not-so-veiled allegory.

But Messier’s trouble finding discussion partners shows a challenge facing such efforts: To build a bridge with people on the other side, you have to get them in the room. And some are finding Democrats more eager to participate than Republicans. The question is why. Republicans who do take part in such efforts, like Madsen, Washington co-chair of the prominent national bridge-building group Braver Angels, say it’s not because conservatives don’t hunger for civic unity. Discerning other reasons can be a bridge-building exercise in itself. The impetus for depolarization is all around us.

Red and blue America haven’t seemed this far apart in a long time, illustrated in some cases by diametrically opposing laws. After the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, some states enacted prison sentences for abortion providers. Others, like Washington state, adopted measures to protect providers and patients. As November approaches, former President Trump and President Joe Biden, along with their supporters, frequently say a win by the other side would result in catastrophe.

Madsen said people may turn to groups like hers out of frustration. “If they don’t check out completely, they’ll be looking for a place to do something positive,” she said. To some extent, that’s already been happening. “This really is an embryonic movement,” said Washington Lt. Gov. Denny Heck.

The Democratic former member of Congress started the Project for Civic Health last year, along with partners at the University of Washington, Washington State University and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation. The project intends to tackle public incivility, like shouting matches, insults and threats, and in doing so remind people of what they have in common and upend government dysfunction. The project held a daylong summit in October, and it hopes to have another event in the fall bringing together local groups with the same aim, Heck said. He lists a few, including Braver Angels and a nonprofit started this year by two Snohomish County Council members who, despite belonging to different political parties, have developed a strong working relationship: Republican Nate Nehring and Democrat Jared Mead. Their nonprofit, The Building Bridges Project, focuses on young people and is developing a “future leaders academy” to work with high school students from different backgrounds, Nehring said. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol forged the council members’ resolve to do something about polarization, Nehring said, starting with a series of town halls and a summit last year that led to forming the nonprofit.