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.
Thanks for the clarification.
I would like to speak to two of the statements about the leftycheatsheet, that unions aren’t automatically included and the refusal to include fuse voter guide.
I’m not directly involved with them, though, I will disclose that I have spoken with people involved and did a short cameo in one of there videos that was being shot during a joint Hannah Sabio-Howell/ Ron Davis canvass. I also recommend them to people asking for a voter guide.
First to the fact that Unions aren’t automatically included. The idea that union endorsements are risk adverse is well known to people running campaigns. Unions endorsed Republican Steele in the 12th over Universal Healthcare candidate Maggie Adams. UFCW3000 endorsed Pederson without consulting general members in what i was told by a UFCW member was not the normal process and against the wishes of many members.
Many other candidates were entirely passed over due to not being incumbents. That is, they were told, your opponent voted for this legislation we wanted so we cannot endorse anyone except for them, even if you represent our interests better. A candidate I was working with was told this by the APRN’s of Washington state. The person who broke this news to us was apologetic that they couldn’t support us because we were the candidate more aligned with their overall policy goals, but our opponent voted for the millionaires tax, so they were ‘obliged’ to endorse them.
The reserved, and often quid pro quo nature of union endorsements is not an obscure secret. Many union members are aware and unhappy with it. And yet, the union name and often money from union dues will go to support candidates the people in the union do not support. This can also be true in favor of the left, with the membership being more conservitive than the candidate endorsed, however, for those reasons, we overwhelmingly see the incumbent endorsed by union leadership, and therefore the leftycheatsheet’s claim about union endorsements does hold up to scrutiny. Even if there explanation on why leaves much to be desired in my opinion.
The fact is unions often don’t endorse the most progressive or left candidate. And if the mission is: tell people who want to vote as left as possible who to vote for, then union endorsements don’t make sense to include based on how they tend to endorse.
(This part is just my opinion, but I don’t vibe with the model of leftycheetsheat, using endorsements at all is flawed in my mind and that’s why they run into these contradictions, because they need to get to a specific outcome and so have to make these decisions about what to include while presenting it as ‘you choose’)
As to the fuse voter guide/ progressive voter guide, they most heavily use union endorsements for their decisions. Which is how they end up recommending republicans over progressives occasionally. Most of the most progressive candidates this year were recommended. And as for in the 43rd, they are still recommending Pederson, in the 37th they are recommending Chipalo, in the 32nd they are giving dual consideration even with the clear progressives in the races being, Sabio-Howell, Brown and Saddiqi. (do the progressives have a shot of winning, no, but in a 1 v 1 general tactical voting makes little sense)
Given Fuse voter guide weighs union endorsements so heavily and they do a similar thing to leftycheetsheat in weighing endorsements (except with an even more closed process) I believe it does make sense not to include them by default as it largely would just double work they are already doing in weighing endorsements. Though, there can be an argument they should have the option to turn on Fuse’s recommendations.
I don’t know how much of this information you already have, but seeing as none of it was included in the article, I thought it useful to give this context. I don’t have direct insight into leftycheetsheats decision making, so it’s only speculation that they have these reasons for how they’ve made their choices. But I do know they have largely the same information I do as someone who operates in the space of running campaigns and have confidence my reasoning largely matches theirs.
That all being said, why they are not giving this context themselves or responding to questions, I truly don’t know. I have my issues with them and appreciate the reporting on them even if the framing comes off, in my opinion more harsh than necessary. I suppose given your interactions with them I don’t blame you for going that direction.
Thanks for the clarification.
On its website, the Lefty Cheat Sheet states it is a project of Share the Cities, an urbanist organization founded and led by Laura Loe. It is very clear who is “behind the site.”
Hi George – the Lefty Cheat Sheet describes itself as a collective of people and a project of Share the Cities, which was started by Laura Loe. If you look at the Bluesky posts I linked, you’ll see many people describing them as a “group” or “collective” who are scared to say who they are for various reasons. I think it’s likely that there are multiple people involved in choosing which endorsements to consider, but have not confirmed (to the point I could report it as fact) anyone else’s name. As you’re aware, as a reporter, I can’t just say Laura is the one person behind all this without confirming it, and others have insisted to me that it is a group of people.