Afternoon Crank: Farrell Out of Legislature; Valdez In?

1. State Rep. Jessyn Farrell (D-46) will announce tomorrow that she’s stepping down from her legislative position to run for mayor full-time—a move that will allow her to raise money for her campaign, which she has been barred from doing under a voter-approved initiative that prohibits lawmakers from fundraising while the legislature is in session. Last week, Farrell hinted in an interview that she would step down, since the legislature appears to be headed toward a third special session. “I take my duties as a legislator very seriously, but in getting in to this race, I want to win. It’s important to put skin in the game and put something on the line, and I’m willing …to walk away from a job I really love to do what it takes to win this race,” she said.

“I got in this race to win. … I have to be able to get my message out.”

Crank also hears that state Democratic Party executive board member Javier Valdez, who currently works as an advisory on women- and minority-owned businesses to Mayor Ed Murray, will seek appointment to Farrell’s House seat. Valdez is active in the 46th District Democrats and, in 2011, sought appointment to the 46th District state senate seat left vacant after the sudden death of state Sen. Scott White; that seat was filled by then-state Rep. David Frockt.

Last week, state Sen. Bob Hasegawa, who is also running for mayor, told me he does not plan to step down. “When I ran for the senate seat in 2012, I did it with no money, so to me it’s the opportunity to show that people united can defeat money in politics,” Hasegawa said. “Having this bar against fundraising really provided a way to put an exclamation point behind that concept.”

I have a call out to Valdez.

2. Is the Seattle Times just straight-up trolling us now? That’s the conclusion some on Twitter reached after the paper juxtaposed two stories on its front page yesterday: One about drivers who complain that “pedestrians” wear dark colors in Seattle, making it hard to avoid hitting them, and one about new gadgets that make it easier for people to use their cell phones behind the wheel.

Distracted driving is a real problem in Seattle; according to the Seattle Department of Transportation’s latest Vision Zero progress report, the city has seen a 300 percent increase in distracted driving over the past three years, contributing to 3,000 crashes a year, or about a third of all crashes in the city. The notion that pedestrians—which is to say, anyone who ever sets their feet or wheels on a sidewalk—should “prevent” distracted driving by wearing neon outfits or pinning lights to their clothes is proof of the Times’ fundamentally suburban mindset. In suburbs, people must make way for cars; in cities, cars should respect the primacy of people. The law itself respects this fact, by requiring not a dress code for pedestrians, but a traffic code for drivers.