1. Kristine Moreland, whose group The More We Love received city funding last year to run shelter in Renton for women leaving the sex trade, stars in ads supporting an initiative from MAGA multimillionaire Brian Heywood that would overturn the state’s “millionaire’s tax,” a marginal tax on annual income above $1 million. So does at least one woman who says she was helped by Moore’s nonprofit, The More We Love—a controversial group that received around $600,000 from the city of Seattle last year.
In the videos for the Yes on I-645 campaign (top five donors: A venture capital fund, a retired tech executive, two trucking company executives, and Bellevue megadeveloper Kemper Freeman), Moreland, “fewer families in need are being helped today because of Olympia’s income tax. Fewer kids are being rescued from fentanyl exposure. Fewer battered women have a safe place to go.”
In the second video, set against the same generic kitchen background, a woman named Marisa says she became addicted after a car crash and ended up a victim of sex trafficking. “A local charity”—The More We Love—”got me back on my feet. … Now, the same program is losing funding because Olympia’s income tax is pushing away the people who donate to places like this.”
No one has been impacted by the tax on income above $1 million because no one has paid the tax yet.
Many of The More We Love’s former shelter clients spoke to PubliCola earlier this year. They said they felt abandoned once they moved into the Renton motel where the group ran its shelter for women trying to leave the sex trade, describing unlivable conditions and scarce help obtaining counseling, addiction treatment, transportation to appointments, and assistance with housing and jobs. Women also said the shelter staff pressured them to participate in religious ceremonies, including an exorcism.
The More We Love also refuses to serve trans women, according to a report on the contract produced by the Seattle Human Services Department—a position that puts them right in line with another Heywood initiative—I-638, which would exclude trans girls from playing sports and require some girls, including those who don’t have personal pediatricians, to submit to invasive genital exams.
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2. Voters for Honest Endorsements, a PAC created by former 46th District state house candidate Ron Davis after the Stranger didn’t endorse him, sent a second round of texts to voters in the 43rd and 46th Districts last week, lambasting the Stranger and promoting a site called the Lefty Cheat Sheet as the true progressive alternative to the Stranger’s endorsement “cheat sheet
“By now you’ve heard the Stranger was bought by investors in 2024, including by Amazon’s top Lobbyist, and they have started endorsing more corporate-friendly candidates in many races,” both texts begin. “Fortunately, the Lefty Cheat Sheet has stepped in to fill the gap.”
Davis, safe to say, is a little obsessed with the Stranger, which endorsed his fellow challenger, Will Dreher, in the race against 46th District incumbent Gerry Pollet. The paper also endorsed longtime 43rd District incumbent Jamie Pedersen over his challenger, Hannah Sabio-Howell. (Also: Militant socialist Kshama Sawant).
Davis’ preoccupation with the Stranger’s Dreher endorsement came through, inadvertently, in his text supporting Sabio-Howell, which includes a paragraph complaining that Dreher (running in a different district) is “personal friends” with Stranger CEO Brady Walkinshaw. The Stranger’s entire unionized editorial staff put out a statement earlier this year saying management had no say in their endorsement decisions.
The claim that the Stranger is owned in part by “Amazon’s top Lobbyist” appears to stem from the fact that one of the board members for the company that owns the Stranger, Lynn Hubbard, is the wife of Amazon’s general counsel.
The Lefty Cheat Sheet, which describes itself as “a quick guide on how to vote lefty” in Seattle, is a website that makes voting recommendations based on an aggregation of selected endorsements. Generally, the “cheat sheet” excludes groups that endorsed Dreher or Pedersen.
It’s unclear who is behind the site or what criteria they used to choose and exclude endorsements from the “lefty” list; when we asked these questions, the group did not respond. On Bluesky, an account representing the site called our questions offensive and said disclosing who was making the recommendations would put people in danger and could harm people’s future political careers.”
Whatever the criteria, no reproductive rights, gun control, climate change, or civil liberties groups made the “lefty” list, and the urbanist groups that made the cut are the ones whose picks align with the Lefty Cheat Sheet’s. Fuse Washington’s Progressive Voters’ Guide, which is excluded, comes in for some pretty harsh, and inaccurate, criticism, while.unions are listed but excluded by default as too “risk-averse.”
Davis did not respond to our questions o n Friday. Voters for Honest Endorsements has reported raising nearly $20,000, most of it from programmers and software engineers; former city councilmember Mike O’Brien contributed $2,000 to the effort.
The Stranger endorsed Dreher and Pedersen in the primary, which led Davis and many of his supporters to conclude that their new-ish owner, former state legislator and Grist CEO Brady Walkinshaw, had tipped the scales.