The ninth in a series of Q&As with the candidates for city council. (Previously on PubliQ&A: Position 6 candidate Martin Kaplan , Position 4 candidates David Bloom and Sally Bagshaw , Position 2 incumbent Richard Conlin and challenger David Ginsberg , and Position 8 candidates David Miller , Jordan Royer , and Mike O’Brien .)
Jessie Israel, a King County Parks employee who’s been active with groups like the Center for Women and Democracy and the Washington State Women’s Political Caucus but has never run for office herself, was the first candidate to declare which seat she was running for, and she chose a tough one: Position 6, currently held by 12-year incumbent Nick Licata.
Licata, an unrepentant lefty known for holding down the losing end of 8-1 and 7-2 votes on the council, has long been accused of being an obstructionist on issues like the $200 million Mercer project (he opposes it), Sound Transit (he was against it), and the Sonics (he led the fight against public subsidies for the team).
And indeed, both of Licata’s opponents, Israel and Martin Kaplan , have jumped on the "Nick is an obstructionist" bandwagon. What both challengers have going against them is that Licata is popular, and not just among those who agree with him; a refrain I’ve heard countless times over the years is, "I don’t agree with Nick, but I like having him on the council." Israel—a smart, funny 35-year-old who’s obviously not afraid of a challenge—says she thinks that point of view isn’t actually that common. We sat down at the Cherry Street Coffee shop by the Seattle Art Museum to talk about why Israel thinks she can win.
PubliCola : Let’s start with the obvious question: Why challenge a 12-year incumbent as popular as Nick?
Jessie Israel : I think there’s a lot of frustration with city politics, which you can see in my endorsements. [Israel has been endorsed by the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Washington Conservation Voters, the Cascade Bicycle Club, and the Alki Foundation, among many others.] We need new ideas, we need new energy, we need a new attitude on the council. People are looking down the road a ways and seeing that we’re not prepared for what’s coming. We don’t have enough housing for all the people that are coming here. We don’t have enough jobs. We’ve dismantled the youth violence initiatives.
Nick was part of the council when all that was going on. He was part of the council that dismantled those [gang violence] programs. He hasn’t been moving the ball forward on increasing the amount of affordable housing. During his time on [the] public safety [committee] he focused mostly on accountability issues, which is important, but he didn’t focus on how we should be ramping up patrols [Licata's office points out that his public safety committee presided over a public safety plan that increases the number of patrol officers by 105 over the next five years], programs in schools, community policing. [Israel supports putting police officers in public schools] There’s been a lot of talk, but no action.
PubliCola : The impression I have, though, is that Nick is really popular—even among people who don’t agree with him. How do you beat someone like that?
Israel : I disagree. Nick has never had a real opponent. The last two times he ran, he raised between $80,000 and $100,000 and his opponents raised between $2,000 and $5,000. We did a poll two weeks ago. My race has the highest undecided rate of any race out there for council, mayor or county executive. Seventy-three percent are undecided. And of the people who are decided, it’s within the margin of error.
People see Nick as an obstructionist. The difference between Nick and me is not values. The difference is that, I look at problems and figure out how to solve them. He looks at problems and figures out how to talk about them….
Nick Licata has cost the taxpayers more than a million dollars of our money over the last 12 years [in salary] and I don’t see that I’m getting my money’s worth. I like him, I voted for him, but have we gotten a million dollars worth out of that office? I don’t think so.
PubliCola : Can you give a few examples where you think he’s been an obstructionist?
Israel : Growth management. We protect open space outside Seattle, which is great, but we need to make sure we’re building density in our urban centers and around transit stations. Consistently, he has opposed proposals that would make that density happen.
Mercer. South Lake Union is probably the least walkable area in the downtown core. If you’re in the Whole Foods area [at Westlake and Denny] and you want to go to the new park or Seattle Center or Belltown, you can’t walk there. We’ve divided our South Lake Union neighborhood into four quadrants. We need to revisit that and recreate the [street] grid. It’s no about just fixing Mercer. It’s about reknitting the street grid together.
I think he’s effectively defined the conversation [about Mercer] in a way that works for him. But I think it’s disingenuous to the goal of the Mercer project [to say that it's about transportation, not neighborhood-building].
PubliCola : All the candidates, including Nick, say they support density around transit stops. What’s trickier is adding density in the neighborhoods themselves.
Israel: I’m a fan of backyard cottages because I think it’s an easy way of increasing our density. The trick is, how do we do it in ways that preserve the character of our neighborhoods? The six-pack townhouse that everybody loves to hate is a poor example of how to do urban density. But our land use code is so constrained that you can only build those.
PubliCola : One specific way the code is constrained is that it requires a certain amount of parking, which a lot of people blame for bad townhouse design. Would you support getting rid of parking requirements for new developments?
Israel : I’m a fan of getting rid of parking requirements in areas where it makes sense. You have to have concurrency [amenities to go along with increased density, like parks and schools] and you have to make sure you have transit, sidewalks, and bike facilities.
In Ballard, I’m disheartened by the fact that we’ve put in all that density but we haven’t increased bus service. We haven’t increased parks or school. It only works if we have the infrastructure that goes along with it.
PubliCola : If you do get elected, as a new council member, how do you think you’ll be able to accomplish something as politically difficult as adding density in neighborhoods?
Israel : At King County Parks, we lost 80 percent of our funding when Tim Eyman’s initiative [695, limiting tax growth in local governments] passed. We had to figure out the right way to keep the parks open. We brought together the cities and the county and private companies. If you look at density in the neighborhoods, that’s a touchy issue. Equally touchy is corporate sponsorship of parks. I’ve successfully been able to bring corporate sponsorship into parks because I work with communities and bring them together.
Part of Seattle’s problem is we consistently try and boil the ocean and get to 100 percent buyoff on everything. And we end up getting to 90 percent and everything falls apart and crumbles, and we have to start all over again. Seattle doesn’t do a great job of listening to communities. They do a good job of listening to communities as a way of checking off that public participation box.
The city has not done a good job of working with the county council, the state, or the feds. Seattle got nothing from the federal stimulus. The council was absent from those discussions. I would have been down there lobbying constantly for that legislation and trying to build a working relationship [with legislators in Olympia.] The suburban cities—they lobby. I think in Seattle, everyone has their little fiefdoms and likes to stay in those. That may have been how we ran government in the last ten years but I don’t think it’s how we’re going to run it in the next ten years.
PubliCola : If you’re elected, what committees do you want to serve on?
Israel : I would like to be on the City Light committee, to focus on energy efficiency in the built environment. Land use and neighborhoods—that’s wehre the rubber hits the road. And transportation.
PubliCola : Those are all really sought-after committees—as a freshman, you’re more likely to get one of the less glamorous committees.
Israel : I’m going to go after one of those. If I can beat a 12-year incumbent, hopefully that will prove my negotiating and campaigning skills and I’ll get the assignments I really want.
