Urban Values Voters are: Erica Barnett, The C is for Crank;  Keiko Budech, environmental leader; Elisa Chavez, poet/writer; Emilio Garza, youth civic engagement leader; Jessyn Farrell, former State Representative, 46th District; Josh Feit, PubliCola founder; Shefali Ranganathan, transportation leader; David Sarju, strategist; Brady Walkinshaw, former State Representative, 43rd District; Nicole Willis, political consultant.

This is new. You haven’t seen something from this group before. Who are we? We are a group of civic-minded folks who believe our city is at a crossroads, and we need city leaders who will work collaboratively with the community to get things done on homelessness, affordable housing, education, transportation and other urgent challenges facing Seattle. Call us Urban Values Voters.

We were disappointed last week when the city’s two most prominent news publications, the Seattle Times and The Stranger, erred by endorsing Jon Grant over Teresa Mosqueda in the important citywide Position 8 Seattle City Council race.

Frustrated by the overlapping endorsements, we have written an alternative—a resistance as it were—to say clearly: Teresa Mosqueda is the best candidate in the race.

Will this new group endorse in the future? Maybe. Who knows. We might become the definitive source for Seattle endorsements. We might not. But for now, our civic crew is endorsing Teresa Mosqueda for City Council.

We are in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. We need more housing options and we need them now. Yet, the city’s two most prominent editorial boards chose to endorse a candidate who is pandering to Seattle’s anti-growth status quo with untenable policy ideas and no real track record of getting things done.

On the other hand, Teresa Mosqueda is the rare kind of all-star candidate who has the potential to transform City Hall.

Mosqueda, currently a hyper-competent advocate in Olympia for the Washington State Labor Council, is an inspiring longtime champion for workers, women, children, and other marginalized people. Her resume is several pages long—unlike white guys, women of color still need to be overachievers to be taken seriously in Seattle.

In addition to her current job fighting for workers in Olympia, Mosqueda has worked as the campaign chair for Raise Up Washington, 2016’s statewide minimum wage and paid sick leave initiative; the legislative director for the Children’s Alliance; and the consumer advocate on the Washington Affordable Care Act Exchange Board, where she lobbied successfully to require insurance companies to be more transparent about what was in their plans.

Mosqueda’s resume certainly reflects Seattle’s progressive values. But more germane to the job she’s seeking, and less common, her resume is also a tally of serious results.

Under her leadership, Raise Up Washington won its fight for a higher statewide minimum wage and paid sick leave. The Children’s Alliance successfully implemented Apple Health for Kids, the state’s cutting-edge health care program for low-income families. And with Mosqueda as their representative in Olympia’s fast-paced negotiating fray, the WSLC won legislation that will provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave for workers so they can take time off to care for a new or newly adopted child, to recover from a serious illness, or to take care of a sick family member.

Mosqueda, some sort of super hero it seems, continued to work on family leave even after she declared her candidacy—a reflection both of her strong commitment to women and families and the reality for many women of color that she, unlike her opponent, couldn’t afford to quit her job to run for office full-time. (Grant left his job as director of the Tenants Union to run for council, unsuccessfully, in 2015; his most recent job was working for Mosqueda, as an organizer for the 2016 minimum wage campaign.)

Both the Times and Stranger supported Grant, in large part, because he opposed the Housing Affordability and Livability agenda—a transformational plan that wedded housing affordability and housing growth by allowing upzones in exchange for mandatory payments into an affordable housing fund.

Given that the underlying link between the Times and Stranger endorsements is a knee-jerk provincialism that wrongly couples opposition to gentrification with policies that preserve Seattle’s exclusive single-family zones, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Grant is a homeowner himself and Mosqueda is a renter. Although the majority of Seattleites are renters, their council members are not; if elected, Mosqueda will be the only renter on the council.

As the City’s Department of Neighborhoods has moved in the last year to institute formal
policies to build equity for renters, immigrants, people of color, and young people into local decision-making processes, the council needs more members who will be keenly aware of that perspective and can bring the aspiration for equity to fruition at the legislative level. As young woman, a Mexican-American, and a renter herself, Mosqueda will be an unwavering voice for the underrepresented majority in our city.

Seattle must not squander the rare opportunity to elect a candidate like Mosqueda, a political community leader talent with a track record of successfully advocating for and enacting substantive policies that prioritize universal equity by lifting up the people in our city who have been unable to share in its success.