By Josh Feit
PubliCola isn’t making endorsements this year, but election season (see item 3 below) gives me the perfect opportunity to debut this new opinion column with its simple premise: X > (is greater than) Y.
1) The Case for Firing SPD Chief Shon Barnes > The Case for Keeping Shon Barnes
The case for firing police chief Shon Barnes, a holdover from the Harrell administration, might seem disproportionate to the happenstance of being out of town during a shooting (and subsequently fucking up media briefings on the shooting because of your absence).
But if you’re a regular PubliCola reader, you know there are plenty of reasons beyond Barnes’ alarming OOO MO that made him an odd fit with Wilson’s progressive administration. Among them: His aversion to the CARE Team; SPD’s violent treatment of counter-protesters at an anti-trans rally in Cal Anderson Park; lawsuits accusing him and his team of discriminating against women and LBGTQ staffers; the department’s ongoing failure to recruit more women, and his questionable hiring and promotion decisions.
Wilson can get pretty anxious about diverging from Seattle’s older Black community, which I think partially explains why she recently disappointed her activist base on surveillance cameras. But Wilson is also known for listening to the facts, assessing the situation, and acting accordingly. Thankfully, in weighing Barnes’ rocky tenure against the vague call for stability, she made the right call last week.
And by the way: Barnes’ recent chest-forward display of toxic machismo (after a South Seattle Emerald reporter dared to ask him about Erica’s reporting on those frequent absences) was red card material. If not a fireable offense in its own right, Barnes’ playground behavior surely gave Wilson an unnerving reminder of why he wasn’t a fit.
2) Seattle City Council Members Eddie Lin, Dionne Foster, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Bob Kettle, and Dan Strauss > Seattle City Council Members Joy Hollingsworth, Debora Juarez, Maritza Rivera, and Rob Saka
A million years ago, I used to write a column on Seattle City Hall called Five to Four. So pardon me for being extra excited about a narrow city council vote last week that distinguished the pro-housing council members from the anti-housing council members.
Erica has the rundown on the 5-4 win for Southeast Seattle Councilmember Lin’s pro-density legislation that will stop homeowners from turning the Seattle Hearing Examiner into a weapon against renters and new housing, something NIMBYs have been doing for the 20-plus years I’ve been reporting on this issue. I just want to add: WTF Joy Hollingsworth? You represent one of the most progressive, densest, renter-centric districts in the city. What’s the gatekeeping about?
3) Ron Davis (and even Will Dreher) > State Rep. Gerry Pollet
In this year’s North Seattle election battle between mansplainers, longtime North Seattle rep Gerry Pollet (D-46, N. Seattle) versus know-it-all housing pundit Ron Davis, at least Davis is the YIMBY in the race. Pollet is a NIMBY who spent the bulk of his tenure as housing committee chair stalling legislation that would have created more housing in his district. The pro-housing, urbanist wing of the Democratic Party eventually got fed up with Pollet and removed him as chair of the housing committee.
In contrast, Davis is gung-ho on urbanist housing policies such as funded inclusionary zoning (FIZ) (a PubliCola favorite). He also advocates for increasing density around schools and parks.
In addition to supporting upzones as a way to increase density, Davis also supports hacks to the building code that will allow more density without changing overall zoning, such as Sightline initiatives like parking, stairway, and elevator reform; Davis has been a regular contributor to Sightline, the state’s leading pro-housing, urbansit think tank, and is endorsed by Mayor Katie Wilson and The Urbanist.
But Davis isn’t solely a free-market, density guy. He sees a role for good governance to support affordable housing through progressive taxes, rental assistance, social housing, and universal childcare.
Private attorney and first-time candidate Will Dreher is a former clerk for liberal SCOTUS Justice Elena Kagan and a DOJ prosector who went after J6 rioters. He’s also, yikes, a former clerk for pre-SCOTUS Brett Kavanaugh who signed a letter supporting Kavanaugh’s nomination in June 2018. However, three months later Dreher and two other clerks withdrew their support, calling on the FBI to reopen its background investigation into Kavanaugh over Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.
Dreher’s focus is on corporate accountability, particularly when it comes to the environment and regulating A.I. He’s been endorsed by A-student progressive Seattle City Council member Dionne Foster and progressive City Attorney Erika Evans.
Slow growther Pollet has been endorsed by the Seattle Times of course.
Pollet is a consistent voice for education in the state house. Fortunately lawmakers were able to set a state standard for density. While I continue to hear neighbors worry about the neighborhood changing, increased housing—albeit high priced—is coming to D4. But for students with disabilities, Pollet is a champion. With special education one of the major issues in SEA negotiations, having that voice at the state level is critical
Joy Hollingsworth is likely aware of the history of local administrative appeals filed with the city’s hearing examiner regarding SEPA – and she knows the right to appeal has been an indispensable tool for Seattle’s Black community in fighting overreach by the City, forcing redesign of freeways disrupting neighborhoods, and stopping enactment of policies that cause displacement and gentrification. Nothing about the SEPA appeals is about being “anti housing” or keeping renters out of the neighborhoods. Publicola’s repeated insistence on reducing opposition to Eddie Lin’s bill to these false accusations damages the credibility of someone who wishes to be seen as a serious journalist.
As for Ron Davis? It is time people get a grip on where the Urbanist fever (and funding) really comes from, and what its motives are. Many on the ground in the affordable housing movements have experienced the bullying and arrogance of the density advocates, and the co-option of housing activist rhetoric to suggest that there is an environmentalist or “Leftist” agenda behind their lobbying. I suggest readers here take a look at The American Prospect’s deep dive into how Silicon Valley has funded the “Abundance” movement and highjacked any attempt to build truly affordable housing. https://prospect.org/2026/06/12/new-documents-detail-nine-figure-silicon-valley-funded-abundance-movement/
Then look again at the lists of easy platitudes on Davis’s campaign page. His fundamentalist belief in trickledown housing economics has zero proof of credibility. In his privileged world, environmental problems are mysteriously solved with more concrete and cranes, more private equity takeovers of multifamily housing, and more upzones for housing only the top 10% can afford. The average price of a new house after nine years of the Abundance agenda controlling Seattle’s housing legislation? Since 2017, and the first HALA upzones, the price of a newly built home has gone up between 54 and 62%, while renting costs 30% more. We have torn down existing affordable rentals and starter homes, and set a new level of gaslighting, when we are told that the average price of Seattle’s new-built homes in 2026 ($961,460) is less expensive than $1.2 million, and would cost MORE if we had let existing affordable homes stay standing.
Jerry Pollet is a principled and thoughtful legislator, and he takes the tough stands for his constituents, which is why the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party, which never saw a private equity deal it could say no to, and which gets its housing platform from the Master Builders’s Association, eventually removed Pollet as chair of the housing committee. Jerry knows that you don’t get affordable housing by removing it, and you don’t get “equity and social justice” through a campaign of gentrification and displacement.
Joy is NOT getting that plain fact that black folks are moving to Renton, Tukwila, Kent, Federal Way, etc. because they cannot afford to live in the city any more. Period. Fast-tracking affordable housing (non-market rate units) in the city creates a pathway for black folks to return to Seattle, especially the kids of those who left.
Most of these SEPA appeals are NOT about black folks at all, and are being backed by anti-density, wealthy neighbors who do not want more apartments in their neighborhoods. So Joy – like many of her Council votes in the past – is siding with rich folks while ‘hiding’ behind black folks. We are SO tired of that sh.t!
There is a narrative, which is hopelessly out of date, about those who make SEPA appeals. It is as though genuine environmental concerns are nonexistent, and simply a subterfuge for “greedy homeowners who are rich enough already, and are just trying to preserve their property values.“ The person who has filed the Orca Nexus appeal, which has paused the next phase of the comprehensive plan, does not fit that profile. And neither do most of the people who have filed these appeals.
There are legitimate reasons to ask the city to do an accurate and thorough assessment of environmental risk. One very practical concern is that when they don’t—Or when the state or county doesn’t—that leads to billions of dollars of costs in things like reparations for salmon culverts that were not attended to and the not so vanishing fact of treaty rights. The cost of trashing the environment always comes back to haunt those who ignore it.
If you research a bit about the horrific Madison Valley drowning (see: “Kate Fleming”) due to a lack of Seattle stormwater management you’ll begin to get the picture. The city submitted a SEPA based on a comprehensive plan adding slightly over 100,000 units of housing, — and yet the actual plan calls for over 300,000 units of housing. You actually can’t get away with doing that— it’s not legal. And the courts have concurred, which is why the suit is moving forward. We neglect environmental infrastructure and overbuild without sufficient infrastructure and people die, species die, water sends houses over a cliff. This is just plain old good management and stewardship and has nothing to do with the politics of homeowners or affordable housing, it’s environmental survival.
We also currently have an oversupply of market priced housing. On any given day, right now in 2026 we have between 12,000 and 14,000 rental units sitting vacant. Even the affordable housing, the subsidized housing, is sitting vacant. We have more houses for sale on the Seattle housing market than we’ve seen in decades.
What we absolutely don’t have, is workforce and affordable housing, and nothing about the coming comprehensive plan or the comprehensive plan just completed is going to create affordable housing. We cannot get there by simply building more market rate housing. What the current comprehensive plan proposes is just more deregulation, gentrification and displacement.
And quit attacking Erica’s professionalism as a journalist simply because you disagree with her. It is VERY immature, and tends to suggest that the only ‘credible’ journalists must work for corporate owned media. If you have been paying attention, nearly ALL of Seattle’s local media has been taken over by Republican billionaires like the Sinclair brothers (David D. Smith – Trump booster) at KOMO, KIRO is owned by Apollo Global Management (Leon Black – Trump booster and Epstein pal), and KING News was recently acquired by Nexstar Media (Perry A. Sook – Trump booster). It is a near complete right-wing takeover of Seattle media, so Erica is actually a breath of fresh air.
Erica wrote: “WTF Joy Hollingsworth? You represent one of the most progressive, densest, renter-centric districts in the city.” I have been scratching my head on Hollingsworth for a while, not understanding why she believes it is OK to continue to vote against the majority of her constituents in her district. It’s as if she has secretly decided not to run for re-election next year, or she is math-challenged and believes the ‘symbolic’ (not really changing the reality on the ground for most Black folks) stuff she keeps pushing in the Black community (6.6% of District 3 residents) will override upsetting the progressive majority in her district. “I do stuff for the Black community so you can’t touch me” seems to be her political philosophy, which is just plain stupid. Non-Black voters make up 93% of voters in her district, and this fact doesn’t seem to be registering with Joy at all.
Kettle was more of a surprise vote, as Magnolia-Queen Anne is not known to support greater housing density. In fact, it is the relatively smaller, denser parts (renters) of his district that are more likely to support progressive candidates. Kettle has been voting to the right of this district so far, so voting to the left of his district is surprising. Maybe he knows his days are numbered unless he lurches to the left.
Friends of Ron Davis sent me a mailer claiming the following (modulo my removal of all-caps and colour effects):
“In 2018, Trump picked Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. Dreher signed a letter praising him.
“Then Christine Blasey Ford testified, under oath, that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her but
“*Dreher never took his praise back.*” [whole line italicised]
You write:
“However, three months later, Dreher and two other clerks withdrew their support, calling on the FBI to reopen its background investigation”.
No footnotes to either quote.
So, do you have evidence of the withdrawal? I can’t very well ask Davis’s camp to prove the negative they say is reality, but if you contradict them, I can certainly ask you for proof of the positive you assert.
My uninformed guess is that Hollingsworth is planning on running for Mayor and she sees a path to winning the Seattle Times audience.