I sat down at Don’s Market & Deli in Ruston to chat about the town’s politics. The first person I talked to was Craig Fletcher, who offered up this theory on why Ruston politics are so sticky:

“It’s a bit more vicious because we know these people intimately,” he said. “Some of them are former friends. Some are current friends.”

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Don Torbet, the store’s owner and fire chief, pointed out his window.

“See those cranes?” he asked. “That’s why things are so divisive.”

“I think what we have is comparable to a large family squabble,” he continued later. “Members of families are generally more comfortable telling each other what they’re thinking.”

He dismisses the idea that recent arrivals to Ruston are ruining the city.

“I don’t buy that you have to live here a long time to know what’s going on,” he said. “I think good ideas can come from anybody. We’re all paying the same taxes.”

The change has been coming for a while, Beth Torbet said.

“About five years back, you could feel the new families coming in and change happening,” she said. “A lot of them wanted to know why they weren’t Tacoma. I knew then I had to educate them about why we are who we are and why we’re staying who we were. And then the Commencement happened and the fights began and sides were formed and no one would listen to each other.”