By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s campaign finance filings for October include an unusual series of five $5,000 payments, each one representing one week of work, to a Tukwila-based company called FF and J Consulting. According to Harrell’s public campaign records, the $25,000 was for “Management and consulting services: Community Engagement Consulting.”
For comparison, Harrell’s chief political consultant, Christian Sinderman of NWP Consulting, receives $5,000 for his services every month.
According to state incorporation records, FF and J is a one-person firm run by Abdisalam (Abdul) Yusuf, a prominent member of the Seattle-area Somali community who has frequently advocated on behalf of rideshare drivers as the founder of the company Eastside for Hire. Neither FF and J, , nor Yusuf as an individual, has ever done any paid work for any campaign in the state prior to this year. Yusuf is also the vice president of Drive Forward, the Uber-funded lobbying group that advocated for Seattle legislation that would have reduced the minimum wage for delivery drivers.
It’s unclear what kind of outreach Harrell is paying Yusuf $5,000 a week to do on his behalf. Harrell’s campaign did not respond to detailed questions on Wednesday, and Yusuf did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Yusuf was also involved in a previous Harrell campaign controversy. In 2015, when then-city councilmember Harrell was being challenged by Tammy Morales, Harrell was accused of paying for 15 of Yusuf’s Eastside for Hire employees to join the 37th District Democrats in order to sway their endorsement in favor of Pam Banks, then running against Kshama Sawant, and Harrell.
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According to reporting in the South Seattle Emerald, the memberships were paid for in one batch using sequential money orders from the same store. After some of the new members were disqualified because they didn’t live in the district, about 10 showed up to the endorsement meeting wearing Harrell t-shirts and helped both him and Banks win endorsement by one-vote margins. In response to the controversy, NWP Consulting sent out an “open letter” accusing members of the 37th District Democrats who raised concerns of attempting to “silence” “our East African members.”
Several people active in East African communities in Seattle told PubliCola they’ve observed Yusuf (along with Harrell’s director of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Hamdi Mohamed) working to drum up support in their communities, hosting meetings with Harrell and extending assurances about what Harrell will do for their communities in a second term.
The $25,000 Harrell has paid Yusuf’s firm so far this year is ten times the $2,500 he paid a different community leader, Somali Independent Business Alliance president Nafiso Samatar, for community engagement and outreach when he first ran in 2021.
Harrell’s campaign has raised just over a million dollars so far; among individual contributors the top three employers are “not employed,” the city of Seattle, and Amazon. A PAC supporting his campaign has raised $1.75 million so far, most of it from real-estate developers and building managers.
erica@publicola.com
