Tag: election 2015

Elections

The C Is for Crank Interviews: Tim Burgess

Now that the primary-election field of 47 has been narrowed to a comparatively manageable 18, I’m sitting down with all the council candidates to talk about what they’ve learned so far, their campaign plans going forward, and their views on the issues that will shape the election, including density, “neighborhood character,” crime, parking, police accountability, and diversity. I’ll be rolling out all 17 of my interviews (Kshama Sawant was the only candidate who declined, after repeated requests, to speak with me) over the next few weeks, starting today with incumbent city council member Tim Burgess, running for citywide Position 8 against former Tenants Union director Jon Grant.

I sat down with Burgess at Pegasus Coffee near City Hall earlier this month.

The C Is For Crank [ECB]: Now that the results are pretty final, it’s clear that you’re ending up the primary election well under 50 percent. [From an election-night high of 48.34 percent, Burgess slipped by the time results were certified to 45.74 percent. Grant ended up with 30.85 percent of the total].

Tim Burgess [TB]: I don’t know if I was surprised. I think he has been tapped in, both with the Stranger endorsement and some of the [independent expenditures] he got [from groups like SEIU 925],  to the whole equity issue. He has played on that effectively with his rent control approach and his anti-[Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda] approach. We’ll see if that can be more broadly based. We have to work hard. We wanted to have 48 to 52 percent on election night and we got 48. That’s gone down to 45 or 46 since.

He did well. The race is going to be much more difficult than what we expected.

ECB: What do you think the race will look like between now and November?

TB: He’ll do in the general what he’s done in the primary—all kind of accusatory, outlandish stunts. The classic so far is to point over to me and say, “Tim burgess is the biggest obstacle to police reform we’ve had in ten years.” He never gets specific. He makes the point that John T. Williams [the Native woodcarver who was shot in a crosswalk by a rookie SPD officer] was killed while [I] was chair of the public safety committee, as if I was complicit in that horrible murder. He points to 200-plus cases of excessive force and says I did nothing. Well, I was only public safety committee chair during my first term. I’m not even on the committee. I don’t even know where he got that number. For all I know, he’s just making it up.

I talk back when he says that and say, “Here’s what I’ve done.” At the downtown Seattle library forum, he made some comment that no police officer has been fired for excessive force under Tim’s watch, and I just pointed out that if he gets on the council, he’ll realize that the council has no power to do that. I think that will continue. That will be his MO—very accusatory.

ECB: The “council’s most conservative member” tag has dogged you since you were elected. It seems to me that on a liberal council, there’s some legitimacy to that label. [Burgess infamously sponsored a bill that would have cracked down on aggressive panhandlers, for example].

TB: People like to label people. I get that. But if you actually look at my record on the city council, it’s a progressive agenda. In fact, it’s a very liberal agenda. Just this week we passed the firearm tax [now being challenged by the NRA]. That’s a very progressive law.

I don’t like the label. I don’t think it’s accurate. I don’t have a need to label people or put them in boxes.

ECB: As we’re talking, Mayor Murray just backed down on a symbolically important part of the HALA plan—the recommendation to allow more housing types, including triplexes and row houses, in single-family areas. Do you think that, by doing so, he hurt the HALA cause?

TB: What people miss is that, for the first time in Seattle, we have an effective coalition of leaders of labor unions, environmentalists, housing advocates, and social justice advocates all on the same page and pulling in the same direction. That is huge. If you look back in the last eight years, during the battles around incentive zoning and height, those groups were all battling with each other. The mayor has created a coalition that’s really strong and committed to pulling things through. That is huge, and that is a game changer.

Jon opposed all that. He was the one negative vote against HALA, and his subsequent actions have been to pursue a set of policies that would break that coalition.

ECB: You announced that you were no longer supporting that portion of the recommendations before the mayor made his announcement. I heard he was really pissed at you about that. Did you try to tell him before you made your announcement backing off the single-family changes?

TB: I certainly had communicated with his staff for two and a half weeks. That’s when Ed was over in Rome, so he and I were not communicating directly on that. We probably could have done a better job. We had not communicated [that I was going to disavow the single-family changes] to him directly, but I told his staff Sunday night, and then Monday morning, I made the announcement.

ECB: Why did you decide to pull support for the most controversial part of HALA? Doesn’t that send a message that you’ll cave on other controversial recommendations, like citywide height increases in multi-family zones?

TB: That issue is too fractious. Single family was so volatile and toxic in the neighborhoods that it could have bogged down the whole process.

It’s really important to understand what we took off the table. We took off the table duplexes, triplexes, and stacked flats in all single-family zones. What we did not take off the table were [detached accessory dwelling units] and [attached accessory dwelling units] because we want to do that. I think there is a very broad acceptance that those are changes that will produce immediate affordable housing. There will likely be some opposition, but nothing like what we got with single-family.

I’m neutral in District 4,  but I was very disappointed when Michael Maddux went with the Jon Grant approach to HALA [by signing off on Grant’s HALA alternative].

ECB: But now that you’ve changed your mind on single-family, what’s to say you won’t change your mind on other aspects of the plan?

TB: I think you’re not going to see me cave. During the Roosevelt upzone [a density increase for transit-oriented development near light rail], the neighbors were furious. I pushed it through. In Pioneer Square, I tried to get one more story. I had the votes and in the last week, the historic preservationists turned some of my colleagues against it, but I tried.

ECB: Right after doing a 180 on single-family in HALA, the mayor made what many consider another political misstep, when he announced city plans to shut down all 11 of Seattle’s hookah lounges because, he said, they were linked to violent crime and possibly the death of International District community leader Donnie Chin. You backed the mayor up on that. Why?

TB (putting head in hands): All of those hookah lounges have been cited for illegal behavior, including smoking indoors. I get the legal basis of his decision. I’m very conscious of the use of the city’s police power in situations like this. I think the mayor will [back off on shutting down] hookah lounges that don’t have certain activities associated with them. I have not heard any  indication that [Chin’s] death was connected with hookah lounges. I don’t know. Some of them do have problems. We’ve had mismanagement, and I know some of them don’t pay the city taxes. In its enforcement of tax laws, the city is very focused on education and compliance, and we don’t shut businesses down for a minor offense.

City Council, Elections

And Then There Were 18

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It’s been a little quiet around here at C is for Crank HQ the last couple weeks, but for good reason: I’ve been sitting down with all the city council candidates* who made it through this month’s primary election to talk about what they’ve learned from their campaigns so far, what their plans are for the November general election, their (sometimes evolving) views on issues like density, transportation, crime, and diversity. I’ll start rolling those interviews out next week..

In the meantime, here’s a belated wrap-up of the (underwhelming) First Forum of the General Election Season, held by the Metropolitan Democratic Club in the Bertha Knight Landes room at City Hall last week in front of a crowd of several dozen MDC members, some city staffers, and me.

Despite the fact that fully a third of the candidates declined to attend a forum that was, in some cases, literally downstairs from their offices, the MDC forum did give a glimpse into what the nine council races could look like in a field just culled from 47 candidates to 18.

Of the nine races, four are basically noncompetitive. Of those four, two–Deborah Zech-Artis vs. incumbent council member Sally Bagshaw in the 7th and Catherine Weatbrook vs. incumbent council member Mike O’Brien in the 6th–have been that way from the start.  Zech-Artis, who garnered 13 percent of the vote in a race where no credible candidate emerged to take on Bagshaw, betrayed how ill-suited she is for the job of candidate by calling Seattle’s transportation planning “lazy and retarded,” then backpedaling (at embarrassing length) by explaining, over polite shouts of “stop talking!”), “Sorry, I’m getting tired.” Later, Zech-Artis said she couldn’t “tell you all the times I’ve been hit by bikes” and said she opposed upzones because they were bad for the elderly, like “a lot of people here who probably are on Social Security.” (In fairness, the crowd was overwhelmingly gray-haired.) Bagshaw, not surprisingly, did not attend.

Weatbrook, a neighborhood activist running on an anti-development platform, railed against Move Seattle and the HALA plan, respectively, because the former did not “force developers to pay linkage fees to help maintain our roads” and the latter “completely dismissed the value of open space in single-family zones,” which she sees as the best way to combat global warming.

O’Brien used his one-minute intro to talk up Initiative 122, the public campaign finance measure, and also defended his controversial proposal to impose a linkage fee on all new residential development. However, he added, “It’s because I believe that we have a better program that I’m willing to hold back on the linkage fee and move forward with” the HALA recommendations.

The other two essentially noncompetitive races, in District 2 and Position 9, will still showcase plenty of contrasts between the frontrunners and the also-rans, if almost-certain losers Tammy Morales and Bill Bradburd choose to run spirited campaigns despite their quixotic status.

Bradburd, running against Lorena Gonzalez for Position 9, had the stage at the MDC forum, since frontrunner Gonzalez was a no-show. He used his time to decry the “gentrification” of the city’s single-family areas and call for major new taxes on development, plus anti-displacement laws that would preserve old rental units that serve as de facto affordable housing. His issue with HALA, Bradburd  said, is that it centered “largely around market solutions. The problem is that the market will never produce affordable housing for us. We need alternative funding mechanisms, [like using] the city’s bonding capacity.” Bradburd, like many others who adamantly oppose even modest “upzones” that would allow duplexes and triplexes in single-family areas, touted mother-in-law apartments and backyard cottages as an acceptable way for single-family areas to “accommodate” more density. Mother-in-laws and cottages, of course, are already allowed, but the HALA changes would make them somewhat easier to build.

Morales was the no-show in her race, giving Harrell the opportunity to vamp, perhaps his favorite campaign activity.  Here’s how Harrell introduced himself: “I have an empty chair on my right, so I can say whatever I want with impunity.” According to my notes, though, he didn’t say much, and spent much of his time cracking jokes to District 1 candidate Lisa Herbold, who was seated to his left. (He did say he thought Amazon should be more accountable for its impacts on the city, and that Move Seattle could have included more progressive taxes so a person who drives a Yugo wouldn’t have to pay as much as a guy who drives a Maserati).

The five remaining races, in increasing order of competitiveness based on primary-election results, are: District  1, where Nick Licata aide Lisa Herbold and King County Council member Joe McDermott chief of staff Shannon Braddock are vying to represent West Seattle; District 4, where 43rd District Democrat and parks activist Michael Maddux and Transportation Choices Coalition director Rob Johnson collectively ousted longtime incumbent council member Jean Godden; Position 8, where scrappy ex-Tenants Union director Jon Grant is giving incumbent council member Tim Burgess a run; District 3, where Urban League president Pamela Banks is taking on popular incumbent council member Kshama Sawant; and District 5, where former Church Council leader Sandy Brown finished surprisingly far behind attorney Deborah Juarez in North Seattle.

Herbold (who, full disclosure, is a  close friend) went deep on both Move Seattle and HALA, noting her support for Licata’s unsuccessful alternative to the transportation levy, which would have offset some of the $930 million proposal’s property taxes with a tax on commercial parking and an employee hours tax on businesses. “One thing people don’t understand is why we’re doing this again. They thought the [2006] Bridging the Gap Levy was supposed to fix everything,” Herbold said. “We need to start educating our voters about the fact that we don’t get to end these levies unless we deal with the regressive tax structure that’s simply unsustainable to meet our needs for city services.” Herbold also supported a proposal by Position 8 candidate Grant to scrap the HALA deal and replace it with a plan that would include an immediate maximum linkage fee on residential development and the option of rent control.

Herbold’s opponent, second-place finisher Shannon Braddock, was a no-show.

In District 4, so far one of the most collegial competitive council races in recent memory, the main difference between the candidates this forum drew out was their approach to taxing Seattle residents for housing and transportation. (Well, that and the fact that Maddux is, as he put it, “the last gay candidate standing in the Hunger Games that has been this election,” after District 3 candidate Rod Hearne got knocked out in the primary.) Both say they support HALA, although Maddux, like Herbold, signed on to the Grant alternative, and both like Move Seattle, although Maddux thinks the Licata alternative would have been more progressive. It’ll be interesting to see whether these two turn on each other as election day draws closer; so far, they’ve acted like BFFs,  texting each other and sharing meals and rides between events.

You won’t see that happen in Position 8, where Grant has already shown that he’ll do whatever it takes to take down his opponent Burgess. In the primary, Grant’s mission was to take down John Roderick, who succumbed to Grant’s relentless attacks in editorial board meetings and public forums and came in third. Now Tim Burgess is the only thing that stands between Grant and a seat on the council dais, and Grant is taking him on with charges of ignoring police misconduct, being “too comfortable with developers,” and opposing progressive taxation to pay for city services.

“My opponent repealed the employee hours tax, which was a progressive taxation source that we tried to reinstate to actually bring down the property tax ,” Grant said. “My opponent led the charge to repeal that progressive tax.” Grant also decried HALA, of which he was a member, for “representing the interests of private developers. … We left hundreds of millions on the table because our city council is just too comfortable with developers, including Mr. Burgess.” In response, as he has throughout the campaign so far, Burgess adopted the role of seasoned elder statesman, touting accomplishments such as universal preschool and mostly ignoring Grant’s charges. Sample stump speech line: “This campaign is about experience, leadership, and the ability to get things done.” If Grant has its way, it’ll be about much more than that.

In District 3, both Banks and Sawant were no-shows.

Finally, in District 5, where Brown (widely considered a frontrunner in the early days of the campaign) finished 20 points behind Juarez, the candidates offered a preview of what their campaign will look like going forward. Although (unlike the Grant-Burgess matchup) neither candidate has an unkind word to say publicly about the other, it’s clear there’s no love lost between the two. In general, Juarez is more of a fan of HALA and Move Seattle than Brown, who expressed skepticism during the forum about the housing recommendations and said he would vote for Move Seattle, but only reluctantly.

“There are some things missing from HALA that should be added, [such as] rent stabilization,” Brown said. “Another big problem is that we … still don’t really have a plan for people making between zero and 30 percent of [area median income],” AKA the poorest of the poor. As for Move Seattle, Brown said, he would vote for it because “I’m from Seattle and I always vote for whatever levy there is,” but that “I grieved about it. I looked  to see what’s going to be done in District 5 and nothing’s going to be done on Aurora, nothing’s going to be done on Lake City Way.” And, he said, the city has been promising North Seattle sidewalks since it was annexed in  the 1950s. “We’ve got huge needs in North Seattle. We should have provided in this levy for sidewalks along all arterials in Seattle. We have waited many, many years in North Seattle,  since annexation, for the city to provide this infrastructure.”

Juarez, a member of the Blackfeet Nation (her Indian name, she said, means Holy Mountain Woman and is “a true Indian name; it didn’t come off the Internet”),  emphasized her experience as a tribal attorney helping to build “golf courses, hotels, houses, community centers, elder centers, bridges, and roads” and praised the HALA committee for a “consensus based” set of recommendations. “That made me proud of the city,” Juarez said.

Keep an eye out this week for the launch of my council interview series.

*  One, and only one, council candidate refused to meet with me. Can you guess which one?

Elections

Snapshots from Election Night
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Tim Ceis, David Meinert, Sandeep Kaushik

I was up until way past midnight hanging out with politicos (including Mayor Ed Murray) and tweeting my insta-thoughts about the primary election results last night, so my post on the results, and what they mean specifically for the Housing and Livability Agenda recommendations, will come later. For anyone curious about what I had to say last night, I’ve put together a Storify of my tweets from last night.

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Roger Valdez, Mayor Ed Murray

The upcoming  general election promises some extreme contrasts (Jon Grant vs. Tim Burgess), some Sophie’s choices (Rob Johnson v. Michael Maddux) and some death-throe snoozers (Lorena Gonzalez v. Bill Bradburd). I’ll have more to say about all that as well, later today and in the coming months.

 

Elections

On Eve of Election, Grant Mobilizes Underdog Support

Council Position 8 candidate Jon Grant, who previously released his own “alternative” housing plan minutes after the HALA committee released a compromise plan ten months in the making, said in an email today that he plans to “announce a progressive housing plan to vastly increase affordable housing funding, strengthen tenant protections, reduce homeowner foreclosure, and prevent displacement.” Really, though, he’s announcing the support of several other council candidates, many of them viewed as viable (or not-so-viable) underdogs in their races.

I’m assuming this plan won’t look vastly (if at all different than the one he released a few weeks ago, which included rent stabilization and the maximum linkage fee, but it does have a few new supporters–Tammy Morales and Josh Farris in the 2nd, Michael Maddux in the 4th, and Mercedes Elizalde in the 5th–in addition to previous allies Bill Bradburd in Position 9, Kshama Sawant in District 3, and Lisa Herbold in District 1. (Lisa is a longtime aide to Nick Licata, who announced the plan jointly with Grant and council member Sawant).

Maddux and Morales are both clients of consultant John Wyble. Prior to Grant’s announcement today, rumors were floating that more (or all) of Wyble’s clients would be signing on to Grant’s plan, but his clients Brianna Thomas in the 1st, Morgan Beach in the 3rd, Halei Watkins in the 5th, and Mike O’Brien in the 6th do not appear to have signed on to Grant’s plan. (All of those candidates have rivals who have done so).

During Seattle Transit Blog’s interview with Thomas (in which I participated; first batch of outtakes here), Thomas likened the timing and content of Grant’s earlier announcement to “mud in your eye,” and said it was like saying, “‘HALA, nothing you came up with is as brilliant as what I could come up with’, which is sort of rude. Manners go a long way in this business, quite frankly.” That, or the presence of her electoral rival Herbold, could be why Thomas’ name wasn’t on Grant’s latest list.

Grant reported raising $2,039 in the last two weeks. His top opponents, John Roderick and council incumbent Tim Burgess, report raising $13,502 and $10,377, respectively.

Ballots must be returned to King County Elections by Tuesday, August 4.

City Council, Elections

Council Candidates on Congestion, Parking, Density, and More

As a Seattle Transit Blog staff writer and adviser to STB’s editorial board, I participated in interviewing 18 of the 47 candidates running for Seattle City Council in the seven newly created council districts and two citywide seats before STB made its endorsements last week. The board chose candidates who were most closely aligned with its core principles, which include support for thoughtful transit investment, spending on key bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, density and transit-oriented development, and concentration of resources into high-quality corridors. They also gave points to candidates who shared the board’s skepticism of taxes on development and policy that promotes auto-oriented lifestyles. They did not interview candidates who they knew did not share these values, or in their view didn’t have a genuine chance to win, because they didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

In the interest of giving readers more information about the candidates than we could fit into a brief endorsement, I posted some outtakes from the interviews in Districts 1-4 today. (Part 2, featuring the rest of the candidates, will be up tomorrow). I encourage you to check them out (Bruce Harrell has a pointed thing or two to say about how his approach to getting things done differs from Jean Godden’s), and in the spirit of the more gossipy nature of this blog, here’s one outtake I didn’t include over there, about concerns that District 4 candidate Rob Johnson, supported by some of the same “downtown” interests that backed Mayor Ed Murray’s 2013 campaign, will be a “yes man” for the mayor.

Johnson:

“The mayor’s endorsed another candidate in this race. He has very publicly endorsed Jean. He hasn’t done that with other candidates. He’s working it for her. So I think we’re going to have some disagreements on stuff, particularly when it comes to transportation. [SDOT director] Scott [Kubly] and I like each other. I was on the committee that recommended Scott. I think Scott’s doing some good stuff. I don’t think he’s perfect. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for collaboration. I don’t think of myself as a yes man for the mayor. The mayor’s thrown me out of his office.”

Read the rest here, and check back tomorrow for Part 2.

 

City Council, Elections

Union, Landlord Spending Contribute to Unprecedented PAC Influence in Local Races

UPDATE: As of Friday afternoon, July 24, the total amount spent by independent expenditure groups on six city council candidates–in order of amount spent, Shannon Braddock, Rob Johnson, Kris Lethin, Debora Juarez, Halei Watkins, and Jon Grant–is $215,720, more than Seattle Ethics and Elections director Wayne Barnett said he had seen in council races during his 11 years at the commission. 

A new independent expenditure group has brought the total amount of IE dollars–spending unlimited by state election law–to nearly $200,000, most of it supporting two candidates, Shannon Braddock in the 1st District and Rob Johnson in the 4th. The outsize expenditures from outside groups puncture the notion that switching to district elections would reduce the influence of moneyed interests over local elections. If anything, reducing the number of voters a district candidate needs to win over has only made it easier for big money to target voters: Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission director Wayne Barnett says “it does seem like with fewer voters to influence, $48,000 might have a larger impact in a district race than it does in a citywide race.”

In addition to business-backed PACs, the unions have started putting money behind their endorsements. According to reports filed with the SEEC today, the Service Employees International Union Local 925–which represents child-care and education workers–just spent around $3,000 doorbelling and distributing literature for Seattle City Council candidates Jon Grant (running for citywide Position 8) and Rob Johnson (running in Northeast Seattle’s District 4).

The two men seem like incongruous picks for a single doorbelling drive. Grant is former head of the Tenants’ Union, a lefty group in line with the union’s working-class interests, while Transportation Choices Coalition director Rob Johnson is a middle-of-the-road liberal with a strong interest in progressive transportation policies. I have a call out to SEIU to find out why they chose to focus on these two candidates in particular, but the union backing definitely contradicts the framing by Johnson’s opponents that he is a shill for developers or in the pocket of big business.

As I first reported last week, the Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE), the Seattle Chamber’s PAC, spent $44,000 on TV ads for Johnson. (They also dropped a similar amount on Shannon Braddock, who’s a frontrunner in the eight-way race in West Seattle’s District 1). In addition, the Rental Housing Association PAC just contributed $10,000 to both People for Shannon and People for Rob, and the Washington Restaurant Association’s Hospitality PAC has contributed $20,000 to the pro-Johnson campaign.

The new IEs are interesting not just politically but because they disprove a central claim by proponents of district elections (which just went into effect this year): The idea that elections by district would push “big money” out of council races. This year so far, various IE campaigns backed by the Chamber, Realtors landlords, hotels, and tribes have collectively given nearly $200,000 to back local candidates, most of that to boost Braddock and Johnson. In the past, according to Barnett, IEs in all local campaigns have totaled just around $212,000, spread over three campaigns in 2007 and 2009.

The Chamber, restaurant, and hotel PAC contributions to Johnson also represent a big blow to Johnson opponent and council incumbent Jean Godden, who has historically enjoyed the support of Seattle business interests. This time, those folks are all-in for Johnson, who currently seems like the leading contender to take Godden’s seat on the council dais in the newly created District 4 position.