Category: Election 2017

Addiction, City Hall, Cops, criminal justice, Drugs, Election 2017, homelessness, Police, Poverty, Seattle magazine

Meet Seattle’s Reformer-in-Chief, Lisa Daugaard

This story first ran in the print and online editions of Seattle Magazine.

Image credit: Hayley Young, Seattle Magazine

It’s a little before 10 a.m. in the courtroom of King County Superior Court Judge Veronica Alicea-Galván, and the crowd is getting restless. Dozens of spectators, many wearing red scarves to indicate their opposition to supervised drug consumption sites, are murmuring quietly, waiting for Alicea-Galván to emerge from her chambers. Advocates say the sites—safe spaces for people to consume illegal drugs and access medical care and treatment—will save lives and put drug users on the road to recovery; opponents say they will enable drug users and lead to crime.

What’s at stake today is a ruling on an initiative, filed by Bothell City Council member Joshua Freed, that would preemptively ban the controversial sites throughout King County.

Suddenly, Lisa Daugaard, the 5-foot-2, 51-year-old director of the nonprofit Public Defender Association (PDA), which advocates for criminal justice and drug policy reform, bounds from her seat in the second row and makes a beeline for Freed, who is sitting at the defendants’ table. Before Freed can process what’s happening, Daugaard is pumping his hand, politely forcing the antidrug activist (he once told KVI-AM’s Dori Monson that safe consumption sites would make Seattle a magnet for the nation’s heroin users) into a bit of friendly courtroom small talk.

Daugaard’s friendliness is strategic. “I always go talk to the opposite side,” she says, laughing. “It’s a way of saying, ‘I’m not afraid of you. I get where you’re coming from.’”

For Daugaard, who has spent decades waging legal battles on behalf of people with few advocates in the criminal justice system, maintaining an open dialogue with the “opposite side” is a key part of the formula that has helped her win some of the most significant political and legal victories for civil rights in Seattle of the past 20 years.

The era isn’t long past when Seattle police officers set up “buy-and-bust” operations (undercover stings in which an officer buys drugs from a suspect, then arrests him) to put addicts behind bars, arrested people for sitting on the sidewalk and seized people’s cars for failing to pay their parking tickets. Today, that kind of draconian enforcement is unheard-of, and Daugaard is a big part of the reason why.

As Seattle has shifted leftward (from a place where people were arrested for smoking weed in parks to one where the big drug debate is about safe consumption sites), Daugaard’s focus has shifted, too. Instead of fighting on behalf of individuals against overreaching police, she’s advocating for policies that “advance the common interests of people who have suffered a lot of harm as a consequence of traditional policing,” such as progressive drug policy reform, and fighting against homeless encampment sweeps and for increased civilian involvement in how the Seattle Police Department conducts its business.

Daugaard cut her teeth as an activist during the South African apartheid era, when she was a grad student at Cornell. She found defending activists arrested and expelled during the anti-apartheid movement more interesting—and transformative—than writing her thesis on the criminalization of homelessness, and she decided to go to law school to pursue “a career trajectory where [activism] was the work rather than a distraction from the work.”

She has been at the center of many of the key civil rights battles of the past two decades, starting in the early 2000s, when thousands of low-income Seattleites lost their cars due to an initiative called “Operation Impound.” Daugaard, then a founding attorney of the PDA’s Racial Disparity Project, which worked to promote police accountability and reduce racially biased policing, says it took her a while to connect the dots between the thousands of seemingly routine license suspensions and the impoundment cases she came across through her work. The cases seemed unrelated—a litany of individual injustices.

“I knew the relationship between race, poverty and the justice system, but before I worked in public defense, I hadn’t realized the systematic way in which people of color were being deprived, as a generation, of the ability to drive,” Daugaard says. Over time, however, Daugaard started to see a pattern: Poor people, overwhelmingly people of color, were losing their licenses over moving and equipment violations or unpaid parking tickets, then losing their cars under a city law that allowed the city to seize the car of anyone caught driving it whose license had been suspended. This fed a cycle of poverty, as people who couldn’t afford to pay their tickets lost their cars, and then, with no way to get to work, their jobs.

 

“She’s an organizer, an analyst, an advocate, a strategist, an academic, an orator, a social worker and a spin doctor. You don’t come across that very often.”—Seattle City Council member Lisa Herbold

 

Supporters of Operation Impound presented the issue as a simple question of personal responsibility, but Daugaard, along with a community group called Drive to Survive, reframed the impoundment law as an assault on the rights of low-income people and people of color. They packed public meetings with people who had lost their cars, putting a human face on what had been a fairly obscure administrative issue. And they won. By the early 2000s, Operation Impound was a thing of the past.

This kind of no-holds-barred, uncompromising activism earned Daugaard accolades from unlikely corners. “Nobody I’ve met in my professional career can negotiate as effectively, and has the stamina and persistence that Lisa has,” says Scott Lindsay, a former candidate for city attorney who worked as a criminal justice adviser to former Mayor Ed Murray. City Council member Lisa Herbold, who worked with Daugaard on numerous issues when she was an aide to former council member Nick Licata, describes her as the full package. “She’s an organizer, an analyst, an advocate, a strategist, an academic, an orator, a social worker and a spin doctor. You don’t come across that very often,” Herbold says.

Daugaard’s status as a child prodigy—she started classes at the University of Washington at age 12, leaving at age 17 to study at Cornell and earn a law degree at Yale—is one of the first things people mention when talking about her. But her longtime employee and close friend Patricia Sully, who works at the PDA running a drug policy group called VOCAL (Voices of Community Activists and Leaders), argues that it’s the least interesting thing about her. The two met shortly after Sully graduated from law school, when they were both working with legal teams defending clients arrested during the Occupy Seattle protests. What’s most unusual about Daugaard, Sully says, is her ability to relate to a wide variety of people. “There’s no one I’ve met who is as comfortable being in a board room and talking to people in suits, and walking straight from that board room into an encampment and having a totally authentic relationship to the people in that encampment.”

Daugaard hasn’t always been so comfortable working both sides of the fence. In her early days as a public defender, some issues just seemed black and white—you either supported taking away people’s cars because they were poor or you didn’t.

But in 2005, when the PDA was fighting the police department over buy-and-busts, an SPD precinct commander challenged Daugaard to come up with a better plan, and she realized she didn’t have one. “That was a wake-up call for me,” she says. Instead of fighting the cops, she realized she needed to work with them; and instead of dismissing neighborhood concerns about public safety, she needed to find a solution that addressed those concerns.

That epiphany led to the development of a program that has become a model for criminal-justice reform around the nation. Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD), which began as a grant-funded pilot project in Belltown and has expanded throughout downtown and to the Chinatown/International District and the East Precinct area (Capitol Hill, the Central District and Little Saigon), gave beat cops the opportunity to offer people engaged in drug activity an alternative to arrest.

“Ten years ago, she might have thought [prosecutors] were the enemy, and now we’re important partners. She’s a formidable adversary, but she’s an even better friend.” —King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg

 

Instead of cycling through jail again and again, those people can enroll in LEAD, where they are connected to mental health and drug counseling, housing assistance, and education and job opportunities, among other services. Crucially, LEAD doesn’t require that participants stop engaging in whatever criminal behavior made them eligible for the program; instead, it gives people stuck in the cycle of addiction opportunities to access a better life, while recognizing that transformation doesn’t happen overnight. The program has been shown to reduce recidivism by as much as 60 percent. It’s also made arrests for minor drug possession essentially a thing of the past. “It’s a genuine paradigm shift,” Daugaard says.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, initially a LEAD skeptic, says Daugaard didn’t just convince him to give her long-shot proposal a try; she changed his mind about how the criminal justice system should respond to drug-related offenses. “She’s taught me a lot about harm reduction and how a community-based response can be a lot more effective than just dragging someone into the courtroom, where we don’t have the tools to change people who are in a drug-dependent state,” Satterberg says. “Ten years ago, she might have thought [prosecutors] were the enemy, and now we’re important partners. She’s a formidable adversary, but she’s an even better friend.”

Today, Daugaard believes that the way to reach consensus on contentious issues is to identify the 90 percent of the issue on which both sides agree—the “goals and values” that underlie the two sides’ common search for a solution. As for the 10 percent where there’s fundamental disagreement? Set that aside, Daugaard says, and “by the time you’re done, the 10 percent has been transformed. That’s the formula, and it always works.”

It certainly worked with LEAD. Since the program launched in 2011, the question for the city hasn’t been whether to expand the program outside central Seattle, but which neighborhood will get it first.

Daugaard believes her 90 percent approach will work with safe drug consumption sites, too. The common ground is a shared desire to do something about the opioid epidemic; the experiment will be a single safe consumption site in a neighborhood that supports it; and the measure of success will be how quickly other parts of the city and region start clamoring for safe consumption sites of their own.

Sully says working for Daugaard has changed her attitude toward political adversaries. “People have legitimate concerns, and we need to actually grapple with that,” Sully says.

But Daugaard’s willingness to compromise has its limits, and it has caused friction with some allies.

As co-chair (from 2013‒2016) and now a commissioner of the Community Police Commission (CPC)—the civilian group charged with overseeing the implementation of police reform in Seattle—Daugaard says she saw the city make good strides toward police accountability. However, she has clashed with city attorney Pete Holmes over the role of the CPC and how much power it should have over the police department. Holmes, Daugaard says, “inexplicably chose not to work in support of the approach to the police reform process that community leaders wanted to take.”

The police-accountability issue helped drive a wedge between the longtime allies, so much so that during last November’s election, Daugaard endorsed Holmes’ opponent, Scott Lindsay (Holmes was reelected). While Holmes is quick to acknowledge Daugaard’s success in pushing through reforms like LEAD, he takes issue with what he calls a “take-no-prisoners approach” once she’s decided how things should go.

“If you’re not completely on board with every element of her program, then you’re the enemy,” he says. As for her endorsement of his opponent, Holmes says: “People are going to have to think that if you’re going to work with Lisa, remember that she may turn on you, even if it’s a good-faith disagreement.”

Daugaard says her dispute with Holmes wasn’t personal, and she doesn’t regret her endorsement. “I did so for specific reasons based on how the last four years actually went,” she says bluntly. Despite Holmes’ dark assessment of the way she does business, Daugaard does not think the relationship is beyond repair. “I have told him I’m glad to work with him during his new term,” she says. “Hopefully, he will prove I was wrong.”

campaign finance, City Council, Election 2017, Elections, Environment, homelessness, housing, legislature, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, Transportation

Morning Crank: All the Gee-Whiz Enthusiasm In the World

1. Yesterday, I broke the news that former Position 8 City Council candidate Sheley Secrest, who lost in last year’s primary election to Jon Grant and Teresa Mosqueda (Mosqueda ultimately won), is being charged with one count of theft and one count of false reporting over allegations that she illegally used her own money in an effort to qualify for up to $150,000 in public campaign dollars last year. To qualify for public campaign financing through democracy vouchers, which enabled every Seattle voter to contribute up to $100 last year to the council or city attorney candidate or candidates of their choice, a candidate had to get 400 signatures from registered Seattle voters along with 400 contributions of at least $10 each. Secrest denied the allegations to the Seattle Times earlier this year, before the charges were filed. She has not responded to my request for comment on the charges against her.

As I mentioned in my post, the former campaign staffer who first brought the allegations against Secrest to the attention of Seattle police, Patrick Burke is also saying she failed to pay him more than $3,300 for work he did as her campaign manager. (The Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission reports that the Secrest campaign paid Burke just over $1,300 and owes him $1,675, but says he was also promised 11.8 percent in bonus pay based on how many signatures and contributions he brought in.) Yesterday, Burke says, he had a hearing in a small-claims court case against Secrest, but says he and Secrest were unable to reach a deal through mediation, so the case will be heard before a judge next month.

Burke says he is now living at a Salvation Army homeless shelter. He says that by the time he left the campaign, his phone had been cut off and he couldn’t afford to pay for bus fare, so he was doing most of his work from a room he rented in Shoreline. He says Secrest told him repeatedly that if he could just hang on until she qualified for democracy vouchers, she would pay him everything she owed him. (Burke provided copies of what he says are text messages between himself and Secrest that support this.) “[Secrest] said, ‘If you can stick with this until we get the democracy vouchers, it will be worth your while,’” Burke says, “and I said, ‘If that’s what we need to do, let’s just push it and get done, but you have to understand that I can’t be at all the events that you need me to be at.” One point of contention, Burke says, involved $40 Secrest paid another person to design a flyer advertising a fundraiser at Molly Moon’s Ice Cream (Molly Moon’s owner, Molly Moon Neitzl, donated $250 to Secrest’s campaign.)

Secrest ended her campaign nearly $4,200 in the red. When a campaign ends up in debt after an election, it is generally up to the candidate to pay her vendors and employees, who have the right to pursue the former candidate in court if she fails to do so. In 2011, city council candidate Bobby Forch, who ran unsuccessfully against former council member Jean Godden, ended his campaign with $61,000 in debt, most of it—more than $48,000—to his former campaign consultant John Wyble. Wyble and Forch worked out a payment plan. If a campaign does not work out a way to pay its vendors, after 90 days, the amount they are owed turns into a contribution. For example, the $1,675 the Ethics and Elections Commission says Secrest owes Burke would become a $1,675 contribution, and since that amount is over the $250 individual contribution limit, the commission could launch an investigation into the campaign. However, the most the commission could do is fine Secrest—a solution that wouldn’t help ex-employees who are owed money like Burke. And Secrest is potentially in much more trouble now, anyway.

Secrest, for her part, says Burke “has been paid for all services performed before the date of his termination,” adding, “Washington is an at-will employment state, meaning an employer does not need cause to fire an employee.  In this matter, we repeatedly informed Patrick that we could not afford to keep him on staff. We clearly told him to stop working for pay, and we repeatedly told him that we will reach out once funds were available.” She sent her own screenshot of what she says is a text message exchange between her and Burke, in which she apologized that “we didn’t get fundraising in or qualified to pay you. You are a rockstar. As soon as I can pay staff I’ll reach out.”

3. Legislation currently moving through the state House, sponsored by Rep. Jake Fey (D-27), would broaden and extend the current sales tax exemption on electric vehicles, which was set to expire this year, until 2021 and would require all revenues that the state will lose because of the exemption come from the multimodal fund, which is supposed to fund walking, biking, and transit projects. Over three years, the bill report estimates, the tax exemption will cost the multimodal fund $17.65 million.

Electric-car proponents, including Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan (who announced a number of new electric-vehicle charging stations this week), argue that electric vehicles are a major part of the solution to climate change. “Seattle will continue to lead on climate action and green energy innovation,” Durkan said in announcing the new charging ports this week.

But all the gee-whiz enthusiasm in the world won’t erase the fact that cars, even electric ones, enable sprawl, and sprawl is what destroys forests and farmland, causes congestion, paves over habitat, contributes to sedentary and unhealthy lifestyles, and is in every conceivable way anathema to a sustainable climate future. What we need are not technological quick fixes like electric cars and carbon sequestration, but large-scale solutions like urban densification and taxes on suburban sprawl. Standing next to shiny new Teslas is easy. Standing up for long-term solutions to the root causes of climate change is harder.

3. The city council-appointed Progressive Revenue Task Force met for the third time Wednesday, seeming no closer to finding any viable alternatives to the employee hours tax rejected by the city council last year than they were a month ago. (Perhaps that’s because they are ultimately going to propose… passing the employee hours tax rejected by the city council last year.) The meeting was taken up largely by a review of potential municipal revenue sources proposed by the progressive Center for American Progress in a 2014 report, most of which, staffers noted, were either already in place or unworkable in Seattle or Washington State.

The meeting did include a lively discussion about the cost of building housing for unhoused Seattle residents, and a mini-debate over which shelter clients will be prioritized for housing, given that there simply isn’t enough housing for everyone entering the city’s shelter system. “Basic” shelter, the task force learned, costs an average of $5,597 per bed, per year; “enhanced” shelter, which tends to be open longer hours and offer more services and case management, costs $14,873 per bed. (Advocates from SHARE/WHEEL, which lost funding from the Human Services Department during last year’s competitive bidding process, were quick to point out that their bare-bones mats-on-a-floor model costs much less than the average basic shelter).

Enhanced shelter, which is aimed at people who are chronically homeless, has lower overall exits to permanent housing than basic shelter, primarily because it’s aimed at people who are among the hardest to house, including those with partners and pets and those in active addiction. Of about 20,500 households the city anticipates it will serve with enhanced shelter every year, it estimates that just 2,000 will exit to permanent housing. “What, if any, cautions or counterbalancing is going on in evaluating the performance of the providers that were awarded contracts to ensure that they don’t meet their exits to housing [goals] by prioritizing the easiest to house?” task force member Lisa Daugaard asked, somewhat rhetorically. “That’s a good question,” council staffer Alan Lee responded.

The task force has until February 26 to come up with its proposal.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site or making a one-time contribution! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as reporting-related and office expenses. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Addiction, Drugs, Election 2017, Elections, legislature, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank

Morning Crank: “Clearly An Undisclosed Pledge”

1. Last week, former mayoral candidate Cary Moon wrote her campaign a check for $207,000, bringing the total she contributed to her own campaign to nearly $400,000—the largest amount spent by any self-financed candidate in Seattle history.

The campaign for now-Mayor Jenny Durkan now argues that the contribution confirms what they predicted in two complaints they filed last year, alleging that Moon was engaging in a campaign-finance “shell game,” accepting a loan-on-paper from her campaign consultant Moxie Media with a promise to pay Moxie back after the campaign was over.

Shortly before the November election, the Durkan campaign filed a complaint with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission against the Moon campaign, charging that Moon had unlawfully contributed tens of thousands of dollars to her own campaign within 21 days of the election, in violation of a state law prohibiting candidates from giving more than $5,000 to their own campaigns within that period, or had promised to repay a large loan to her campaign during that period, which, they argue, would also violate a city election rule prohibiting vendors from extending credit to campaigns in a way that is outside the “ordinary course of business.” A week later, the campaign filed a separate, similar complaint at the state Public Disclosure Commission, charging that the campaign’s final report before the election “clearly indicates that Moxie Media is relying on Ms. Moon to cover debts that are clearly beyond the pace of their other fundraising efforts. The increase in debt by $77,459.18 [over the last two weeks of October] is clearly an undisclosed pledge from Ms. Moon and is over 15 times the amount that Ms. Moon can pledge during the 21 days before the election.”

According to the SEEC complaint, “A close look at the Moon campaigns [sic] filings indicates that one of two things, both illegal, is going on: either her campaign’s vendors are making tens of thousands of dollars in illegal in-kind donations to her campaign, or Moon is contributing (or promising to contribute) tens of thousands of  dollars to her own campaign in direct contravention of the 21-day self-contribution limit,” the complaint alleges.

The complaints zeroed in on tens of thousands of dollars campaign consultant Moxie Media spent in the final weeks of the campaign on up-front expenses like postage, which can’t be deferred until after the campaign is over. In the last two weeks of October, according to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, the campaign’s debt increased by more than $85,000, to $186,000 (the election was November 7). This amount of last-minute debt, the Durkan campaign suggests, violates the spirit of the ban on late contributions. “If these actions by the Moon campaign and Moxie Media are acceptable, then there are essentially no limits to the amount that a campaign consultant can spend out of their own funds on media, mail or other paid communication buys on behalf of a wealthy candidate for whom they work, under the assumption that the candidate can reimburse them for all of those up front payments after election day, when campaign contribution limits (like the 21-day restriction on candidate self-contradictions [sic]) no longer apply,” the state complaint says.

Moon’s camp says the loan (or pledge) was completely within the normal course of business, and notes that Durkan’s own debt increased by about $45,000 in the same period, to $98,000. They also point out that the debt was hardly a secret—the campaign reported it on every election filing.

Moxie Media’s Lisa MacLean did not return a call for comment.

Although consultants are allowed to extend credit to candidates for 90 days, the complaint charged that the Moon campaign and its consultant, Moxie Media, were aware that the debt would ultimately be paid by Moon, not other campaign contributors. At the time of the complaint, October 25 of last year, the campaign was reporting more than $125,000 in debt, which was almost as much as Moon had raised from individual donors at that point in the race, raising questions about her ability to generate enough in donations after the election to pay back that debt without using her own money. By the end of November, three weeks after Moon had lost the election, campaign finance reports indicated her campaign was $206,000 in the red.

If the SEEC tosses the complaint, the Durkan campaign says, it will essentially be saying that there is are no limitations on campaign contributions by self-financed candidates, opening the floodgates for candidates to make massive loans to struggling campaigns in the hopes that a big last-minute financial push will make up for a lack of grassroots support. (The PDC will consider the campaign’s complaint, too, but on a much slower timeline because the agency is working its way through a huge backlog caused primarily by a single conservative activist who has filed dozens of complaints against local Democratic Party districts alleging various reporting violations.)

But officials with the SEEC and the state PDC say this is the direction the courts seem to be going already. In addition to Buckley v. Valeo, in which the Supreme Court ruled that limiting a candidate’s spending on her own campaign violated the First Amendment, there’s Family PAC v. McKenna, in which the Ninth Circuit district court ruled that a 21-day limit on large contributions to ballot initiatives (though not individual candidates) was unconstitutional.

The direction the courts are going, in other words, is in favor of unlimited spending and contributions by wealthy candidates to their own campaigns. This may mean more self-financed campaigns in the future, but it may also mean more laws meant to encourage candidates to raise their money from individual donors, like the initiative that provided each voter $100 in “democracy vouchers” to spend on city council campaigns this past election. There’s also the distinct possibility that Moon—a candidate whose consultant, Moxie Media, bragged was “well-resourced” before she had even declared she was running—was simply an outlier in Seattle politics: A progressive candidate with deep pockets who failed to win the imagination of the public (Moon received 1,088 individual contributions to Durkan’s 4,210) yet was able to eke out a second-place primary election finish in a very crowded (21-candidate) field. A big test for the viability of non-wealthy candidates will come in 2021, when democracy vouchers go into effect for mayoral candidates. Although vouchers do not include restrictions on self-financing, they do place other limitations on candidates, such as spending limits, in exchange for public funds.

2. At 10:00 this morning, the state Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee will hold a public hearing on a bill, SB 6150, that would update the state’s current abstinence-first approach to opiate addiction and require the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) to promote the use of medication-assisted treatment and other evidence-based approaches to opiate addiction. Currently, state law says explicitly that there is no fundamental right to medication-assisted treatment for addiction, that total abstinence from all opiates should be the “primary goal” of any opiate addiction treatment, and that if a doctor does prescribe medication, it should only be a stopgap measure on the way to total abstinence.

Overwhelming evidence has concluded that medication-assisted treatment with opiates is effective at saving lives, reducing the harm caused by buying and consuming illegal drugs, and reducing or eliminating the use of harmful opiates. There is still some debate about whether people should continue taking replacement drugs like suboxone for the rest of their lives—they are opiates, and do cause dependency—but there’s no question that punitive, abstinence-only policies result in more deaths and ruined lives than compassionate, evidence-based approaches like medication-assisted treatment, and it’s high time that state law reflected that.

The bill would also declare the opiate epidemic a public health crisis, seek a waiver from federal Medicare and Medicaid rules to allow opiate addiction treatment in prison, and develop a plan for purchasing and distributing naloxone, the overdose-reversal drug, throughout the state.

If you enjoy the work I do at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a monthly Patreon subscriber or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. All the content on this site is free, and I don’t run ads, which means that your contributions are what makes my work here possible.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site or making a one-time contribution! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as reporting-related and office expenses. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

City Council, Election 2017, endorsements

Best of Crank 2017: C Is for Crank Endorsements

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be hard at work meeting a big deadline (finishing up my book—eek!), so I’m re-running some posts that represent the best of The C Is for Crank in 2017. The posts I’ve chosen include breaking news, longer features, endorsements, and editorial pieces that capture the year in local news.

This was the year that I decided to start doing endorsements at The C Is for Crank, starting with the races for mayor, city attorney, and city council. This post, which ran on October 23, includes a link to my original (and first-ever) endorsement for now-City Council member Teresa Mosqueda, the longtime labor leader who defeated former Tenants Union director Jon Grant for council position 8, previously occupied by Tim Burgess.

The C Is for Crank General Election Endorsements

Mayor: Cary Moon

The 2017 election season began in earnest when former mayor Ed Murray, once considered a shoo-in for reelection, was felled by charges of sexual assault. Twenty-one people put their names in the running, and things have only gotten more interesting since then. For the first time in Seattle’s history, women came in first, second, third, and fourth, and you had to go all the way down to sixth place to find a white guy (former mayor Mike McGinn, for the record, at 6.5 percent). That’s amazing, but of course, it shouldn’t be—the fact that Seattle hasn’t elected a female mayor in nearly a century (and has never elected a woman to a full four-year term) is a sign of how far this “progressive” city has to go.

Perhaps predictably, there have been complaints from certain quarters that neither of the two women who made it onto the general election ballot—Cary Moon and Jenny Durkan—has the requisite “experience” or “gravitas” to be mayor. While it’s true that neither Moon nor Durkan has experience directly relevant to the job of mayor—neither has ever served in elective office, nor run an organization with thousands of employees—I think concerns about “experience” are overblown. Durkan has experience managing a US Attorney’s office with dozens of staffers and a complex portfolio, and is familiar with the way the city works from her time working on the historic consent decree between the US Department of Justice and the city; Moon has a long record as a civic activist working on land use and transportation issues in Seattle, most notably on the waterfront, where she fought against the downtown tunnel (and, for the record, was right). Either candidate will face a learning curve; both bring skills and knowledge that will serve them well as mayor of Seattle.

I’m endorsing Moon because her vision of Seattle is the Seattle I want to see—a Seattle where people of modest means can afford to live in city limits, where all parts of the city are accessible to all people via high-quality, high-frequency transit, and where solutions to homelessness don’t begin and end with market-based vouchers and punitive encampment sweeps. Homelessness is a go-home, bottom-line issue for the future of Seattle; the next mayor can choose to pursue half-measure solutions that only help a few people on the margins while pushing the rest from place to place while dozens more join their ranks every day; or she can go big, tackling Seattle’s homelessness problem like the crisis that it is.

Moon is best known for her work to stop the construction of the downtown waterfront tunnel, which she argued would do little to improve traffic flow through downtown while decimating the waterfront with a massive highway-like “boulevard” that cuts off the waterfront from the rest of downtown as surely as the elevated viaduct does today. Moon was right about that (and about the inevitability of cost overruns) and her vision for a car-lite waterfront remains the single most forward-thinking proposal for the future of downtown in the last 20 years. Although her idea for the waterfront was ahead of its time, the vision Moon showed back in 2004 demonstrates her capacity to think about the city at a 20,000-foot level, and—importantly—to prioritize people over automobiles. Her opponent has expressed general support for transit, sidewalks, and electric cars, but Moon’s record demonstrates a real commitment to, and understanding of, the fact that thriving 21st century cities cannot put cars—any kind of cars—first.

As the city grows at an astounding pace, we don’t have time for leaders who cater to narrow constituencies (like the aging minority of Seattle residents who own single-family homes) or spend their days rushing from crisis to crisis (sweeping homeless people from place to place to placate housed residents who would prefer that humanitarian crises happen somewhere else). When asked whether she would revisit the portions of the city’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda that preserve 1950s-style single-family zoning indefinitely, Durkan has been noncommittal, suggesting that HALA is the best we’re going to get; Moon has said she supports reopening single-family areas to row houses, townhomes, duplexes, and stacked flats, which is the bold plan that Murray abandoned as soon as he came under pressure. Both candidates are clearly committed to increasing density to accommodate population growth, but Moon will make pro-housing policies a priority.

More than any other issue, Seattle’s response to the homelessness crisis (and the separate but related addiction epidemic) will determine what kind of city we will be in the coming decades. Under Murray (and on the basis of two reports by out-of-town consultants), the city has pushed homelessness policy in the direction of “market-based,” “results-oriented” solutions that look good on paper but won’t pencil out in an expensive city where homelessness is directly tied to a lack of affordable housing. The city’s Pathways Home plan, which Durkan supports, assumes that a majority of homeless people will be able to go from living on the street to making a living wage within just a few months—an unrealistic plan that privileges the easiest-to-house while leaving people suffering from addiction, mental health issues, or simply long-term joblessness behind. Moon is the only candidate in any race who has zeroed in on this plan, criticizing its unrealistic promise to “permanently” house thousands with short-term housing vouchers.

At a time when Seattle is deciding what kind of 21st century city it wants to be, it needs a leader who can think in broad strokes, not one who promises more incremental changes. Moon has shown the capacity to be that kind of leader. More than Durkan, she has expressed broad support for big-picture solutions, and a healthy skepticism that the “free market” will solve problems like the lack of affordable housing for low-income and homeless individuals and families. She has also demonstrated a willingness to listen to people and perspectives that have historically had trouble getting a foot in the door at city hall, and—importantly—to reconsider her views when challenged with new information. Mike McGinn, the former mayor to whom Moon is often compared, had a fatal flaw—he didn’t listen. Moon listens, even to people with whom she disagrees. She’s collaborative, not combative, and driven not by ego but by a genuine desire to build a more inclusive city, even if that means listening to people with whom she disagrees.

Moon’s platform isn’t perfect, by any stretch. Her plan to expedite Sound Transit expansion by offering to extend loans to the agency is almost certainly unworkable and unaffordable. Her commitment to city-funded broadband, after study after study (and mayor after mayor) has failed to justify its expense, feels like pandering. She has continued to insist that Vancouver-style property speculation is a major driver of housing prices here despite evidence that this is not the case. And her commitment to “inclusiveness” and “collaboration” in city government could tip too far in the wrong direction—listening to stakeholders is important, but excessive stakeholder input is a major reason Seattle is stuck with a 1990s zoning code in 2017.

All mayors learn on the job. My hope is that, if elected, Moon will learn which of her campaign ideas are realistic and worth pursuing and which should be abandoned. If she achieves a fraction of the vision she has outlined, the city will be visibly changed for the better. I’m voting for that vision.

The C Is for Crank endorses Cary Moon.

City attorney: Pete Holmes

City attorney Pete Holmes has a long record of fighting for progressive causes. He defended protections for hotel workers against a lawsuit by their employers; ended the widespread practice of prosecuting drivers who lost their licenses (and often their cars and livelihoods) because they couldn’t pay their traffic fines; and reduced sentencing for minor crimes to protect undocumented immigrants from unjust deportation. He has also been deeply involved in the city’s efforts to counteract the Trump Administration’s efforts to crack down on progressive cities, defending Seattle’s status as a sanctuary city.

Holmes was active in the creation of the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which connects drug users with health care, human services, housing, and treatment instead of throwing them in jail for minor crimes, and has worked to reform laws against drugs and prostitution—most notably, by directing police to target sex buyers, not sex workers, in prostitution stings. He was an early, vocal leader on drug reform, working to pass I-502, which legalized recreational pot, while leading a crackdown on shady (and illegal) “medical” dispensaries and home-delivery services that gave the legal weed industry a bad name. And he has led on police reform, navigating a tricky process in a way that has, at times, angered both the police union (which has opposed efforts to impose additional oversight on its members) and some police reformers (who want the power to reject or approve contracts and to hire and fire the chief of police.)

Holmes’ opponent Scott Lindsay, a former public-safety advisor ex-mayor Ed Murray, has shown a troubling affinity for law-and-order approaches to the problem of homelessness and downtown “disorder” (a Rudy Giuliani-style dog whistle if ever there was one). Earlier this year, Lindsay leaked legislation sponsored by council member Mike O’Brien that would have provided additional protections for homeless people living in their vehicles, in a transparent effort to torpedo the proposal. Lindsay’s willingness to violate city officials’ trust for political ends speaks to a lack of judgment that’s concerning in a candidate for a job that requires strict attorney-client privilege. Lindsay raises concerns about declining prosecutions for domestic violence that appear to be legitimate, but it’s hard to know whether to believe him when, for example, he also claimed recently that Seattle has the highest property crime in the country, an alarmist assertion that turned out to be misleading. (Holmes disputes Lindsay’s interpretation of the domestic-violence numbers). Lindsay has also exaggerated the impact of the Navigation Teams (groups of police and social-service workers who do outreach to homeless people living in unauthorized encampments) and suggested that homeless people are far more likely to commit crimes than data suggests—a disturbing tendency toward alarmism for someone seeking an office where measured realism is a far more important quality than the ability to rally a reactionary base.

Holmes could be more active on certain issues, like expanding LEAD to the rest of the city and promoting restorative justice for people accused of low-level crimes. However,  sometimes a steady hand is better than an itchy trigger finger. The C Is for Crank endorses Pete Holmes. 

City Council Position 8: Teresa Mosqueda

The C Is for Crank stands by its endorsement of Teresa Mosqueda, a longtime labor leader who has spent her entire career fighting for workers, women, children, and other marginalized people. Back in July, I wrote,

As the campaign chairwoman for Raise Up Washington, Mosqueda helped draft and lead the successful campaign last year for Initiative 1433, which increases the statewide minimum wage to $13.50 an hour and requires employers to provide paid sick leave. As legislative director for the Children’s Alliance, she fought for implementation of Apple Health for Kids, the state’s Medicaid program. And as campaign director for the Washington State Labor Council, she was deeply involved in this year’s paid family leave negotiations, which resulted in a bill that will provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave for workers who 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 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 fact that she, unlike some of her opponents, can’t afford to quit her job to run for office full-time. If she wins, she’ll also be the only renter on the city council. (No wonder the Seattle Times didn’t endorse her.)

Much of Mosqueda’s work has been behind the scenes—the kind of efforts that tend to go unnoticed but have lasting and important consequences. As the head of the state’s largest health care advocacy coalition, the Healthy Washington Coalition, Mosqueda served on the state’s health insurance exchange board, where she fought to require insurance companies to disclose what services they provide, including reproductive health care. She also insisted that the state of Washington provide information about voter registration to people buying plans on the exchange, an ACA requirement the state tried to circumvent. These issues aren’t flashy. They don’t make headlines. But they matter.

The C Is for Crank endorses Teresa Mosqueda.

Seattle City Council Position 9: Lorena Gonzalez

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Lorena Gonzalez, the capable head of the city’s public safety committee, a leader on gender equity issues on the council, and the first council member to publicly call on former mayor Ed Murray to step down, is being challenged by Pat Murakami, a Mount Baker neighborhood activist who has spent decades fighting against density and light rail in the South End. The choice in this race is obvious. If you’d like to learn more about  Gonzalez’s record and plans for her first full four-year term on the council, I encourage you to read my interview with her from earlier this year, where we discussed a wide range of issues, including displacement, homelessness, and police accountability. And then vote for Lorena Gonzalez.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Affordability, City Council, Density, Development, Election 2017, gentrification, housing, neighborhoods, Poverty

Best of Crank 2017: Candidate Interviews

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be hard at work meeting a big deadline (finishing up my book—eek!), so I’m re-running some posts that represent the best of The C Is for Crank in 2017. The posts I’ve chosen include breaking news, longer features, endorsements, and editorial pieces that capture the year in local news.

This year, I sat down for interviews (in some cases, multiple interviews) with the top six candidates for mayor as well as the two candidates for city attorney and the top two candidates for City Council Positions 8 and 9, which were both on the ballot this year. This post is a compendium of my pre-primary mayoral interviews, which included conversations with former mayor Mike McGinn, former state legislator Jessyn Farrell, current state legislator Bob Hasegawa, educator and activist Nikkita Oliver, and the two candidates who made it through the primary, now-Mayor Jenny Durkan and urban planner Cary Moon. Each excerpt links to my full interview with each candidate.

This piece ran on July 31.

Election Day Is Tomorrow. If You Haven’t Voted, Read This.

If you haven’t voted yet, you still have until tomorrow, August 1, at 8pm to get your ballot into a King County Elections drop box (locations here); if you’re planning to mail your ballot, do it today so you won’t miss the August 1 postmark deadline.

And if you haven’t decided who you’re voting for in the mayoral election, check out my interviews with the top six candidates, which cover topics ranging from the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda to the controversial North Precinct building to gender and transportation equity. Or check out  a few key moments from each of those interviews below.

Former mayor Mike McGinn

ECB: One specific thing Murray has done is to distance the city from the neighborhood councils, and as you know, there was a backlash to that. His response to that backlash, and I think it was a appropriate one, was to say, ‘We’re not excluding you, we’re just including other people too.

MM: I personally was bothered by the way Ed kind of got rid of them. I do think they have a place but—you should go reread the article I wrote on Crosscut. I expressed that there were weaknesses. But I think that [cutting ties with the councils] was a divisive act. It was perceived by those folks as an attack. And I think there’s a way to say, ‘Look, you’re a voice and we’re going to continue to solicit your views, but we’re also going to invite more people in. That’s a process issue as well.

ECB: But I feel like those people hated you anyway. So how are you going to convince people that Ed is divisive but you’re not?

MM: You have to define what you mean when you say [divisive]. Are there are people in every neighborhood who are resistant to changes? Sure. But I think there are also people in every neighborhood who are open to change. I’ll give you an example: Bicycling in the the city. When it was portrayed as, the mayor is imposing his will on neighborhoods on biking, that was not something that went so well. That was one of the beauties of the road safety action plan. We actually brought folks in the room and we found a different way of talking about and approaching the issue. That helped change the debate. Now I’m not saying that all of a sudden everyone says, ‘Oh, I’m for a bike lane.’ There are going to always be some people who hate a bike lane. But when you have neighbors talking to neighbors about what an outcome should be, you remove the process objection. I look at the HALA focus groups. The reason people dropped out is that ultimately, it didn’t feel meaningful to them, for whatever reason. And so that’s what I’m trying to get at, is you need to have that engagement on the front end. When I went to a town hall and had a group of people saying we can’t do something on this street, and we had other people saying, ‘I live in this neighborhood, and I do those things.’ That fundamentally changes the debate.

ECB: It’s my impression that the neighborhood-versus-city or homeowner-versus-renter divide is much sharper now than it was when you were mayor. What’s the breaking point, when you have to say, ‘Sorry, you might not like this policy, but we’re going to do it anyway’?

MM: Ultimately, you have to make the call, but first you have to listen.

And I walked into rooms with hundreds of people yelling at me, and I brought my staff with me and I brought my department heads with me. Has [Murray] ever just walked into the room and said, ‘Anybody in the neighborhood who wants to ask me a question, go, one after the other’? I did. And what I learned was, the first meeting, people really unload. And the second meeting, it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s showing up again.’ And by the third meeting, maybe you feel like you’re starting to make some progress. But you need to show that you’re going to have a continued commitment to showing up in the room, and the next time you show up in the room, you show that that you’ve delivered something, and that you’ve heard what they say and you’re trying to deliver an outcome. Who you speak to, who you let question you, changes what you do, and if you’re just in the room with the lobbyists, if you’re just in the room with the donors, certain things are going to become priorities. If  you don’t hold yourself accountable to the neighborhoods, other things become priorities.

Educator and attorney Nikkita Oliver

ECB: You’ve focused on the issue of displacement, particularly in the Central District. What is your policy plan to prevent displacement? If you could erase HALA and MHA today, what would you replace them with?

NO: I don’t think it’s about erasing HALA and MHA. I think the real problem there is that the Grand Bargain [between social justice advocates and developers] really created a developer incentive to just build as much as they want to at whatever cost they want to, because they don’t have to actually invest in the communities that have been impacted by the very fast change that’s happened in our city.

The same areas have taken the brunt of that zoning over and over again, and there are solutions for that. Some of that’s [building] mother-in-law [apartments in single-family areas]. Some of that is simply saying to a neighborhood, ‘Look, our city is growing. We’re absolutely going to have to build some places, maybe somewhere in your neighborhood. Where would you want that density to go?’

What HALA and MHA does is, one, it doesn’t ask for enough in investment from developers in the city. It makes us very reliant on the private market to develop enough housing to meet the needs of the people who are already here and the people who are coming, and we just know from basic supply and demand that that’s going to increase the cost of housing. So yeah, we do talk a lot about displacement, because Seattleites of all colors and ethnicities and backgrounds have actually been displaced from the neighborhoods. So when we think about displacement, there’s making sure we don’t continue to push people out, and there’s finding ways to build enough housing fast enough that people could in theory actually come back.

And I think it’s a multifaceted strategy. It’s not just MHA and HALA. It’s also thinking about market intervention strategies, like looking at who’s buying what, what places are left unused, addressing the conversation about speculative capital and how that’s impacting our overall economy.

And also, if the city truly cares about ensuring that people have the right to stay, the city will get invested in building housing and will expand what our own housing authority is doing around providing affordable housing, as well as redefining what is affordable.

ECB: Did you support the housing levy? Because Murray touts that as a big achievement in that direction, in the direction of providing for zero to 30 [percent of Area Median Income]– you know, whatever you think of AMI, because I know it is like $70,000 or something like that—*

NO: Which levy?

ECB: Sorry, the $290 million one—

[Oliver campaign manager Gyasi Ross]: You mean the one he retracted? [Murray initially proposed, then retracted, a property tax to pay for shelter, housing, and services for homeless Seattle residents.]

ECB: No, no, no, we’ll talk about that in a sec, but no, the one to actually build affordable housing.

NO: Honestly, I don’t remember.

ECB: Because that was aimed at building that kind of housing, you know, and it was a property tax levy.

NO: That’s where we’re at, right? Using property taxes to pay for things. If we’re not asking developers to invest at a higher level, we’re going to have to continue to leverage the dollars of people that have already taken on the burden of what development is doing in our city instead of asking the developers to take their fair share of that burden.

* Although I usually edit interviews for length and clarity (adding or removing explanatory information from the questions, omitting redundant answers, etc.), this portion of my interview with Oliver has been repeatedly called into question by some of her supporters, who have accused me of misquoting or misrepresenting our conversation to do a “gotcha” on the candidate. For this reason, I have transcribed the interview to include a background comment from Oliver’s campaign manager, sentences that trail off, and verbal tics like “you know.” The question followed immediately on Oliver’s previous answer about the need for the city to provide affordable housing; I was pointing out that the city did just vote to spend $290 million on affordable housing, and asking if Oliver had supported that ballot measure. 

Urban planner Cary Moon

ECB: To what do you attribute rising housing prices?

CM: If you look at what’s happening in other world-class cities, you see this phenomenon of outside investors piling on and taking advantage of everyone wanting to move here. It’s just like Wall Street—when Wall Street sees a stock go up two days in a row, all of Wall Street piles on to that stock. That same phenomenon is going on in our housing market.

Housing used to be local. It used to be local players, building housing for local people. Now they’re acting more and more like Wall Street, where outside predators are piling on just left and right.

ECB:  You’ve mentioned this theory before—that foreign investors from places like China are snapping up properties here as investments and leaving them vacant, which helps drive up housing prices. But all the available data seems to show that while this is happening in Vancouver, it isn’t happening here. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen in the future, but what evidence do you have that so-called hot money is driving up housing prices now?

CM: I don’t have any secret information that nobody else has, but the dynamic is there. I’ve read enough articles that have said that investors that have been in Vancouver are now looking at other cities, and Seattle is one of their choices. It’s not just hot money, it’s not just foreign investors, but everything has changed in the last 10 years. It used to be, you buy property, you build a building, you get a certain rate of return, and you get your money back, maybe 7 percent in 20  years. It’s completely different now. Now, you buy a building and sell it right away, and the return on investment comes not from the slow, long revenue stream of rents coming in, but from the quick turn of selling at a higher rate and doing the same thing again and again and again and again. Our development world is behaving more like Wall Street than it used to. It’s developers leaving buildings vacant, it’s people buying investment properties, it’s Airbnb, it’s people building second and third and fourth homes that might not have anybody living in them for most of the year. Real estate is a great place to put your money, if you have money.

Former US Attorney Jenny Durkan

ECB: Do you support the idea of a supervised drug-consumption site?

JD: Here’s what I think. We have a huge injectable heroin problem in this city. You go to any city park, alley, street, or neighborhood in any part of the city and you can see that it’s there. The battle and the discussions we’re having now almost mirror exactly the debates around safe needle sites. I mean it is the same arguments: ‘Its legitimizes heroin.’ ‘It’s saying it’s okay to shoot up.’ It’s not. It was harm reduction and this is a harm reduction measure now. It makes no sense that we can have a site where we can have someone come in for a needle exchange, and you hand them the clean needle and you say, ‘Okay, go to the alley. Go to the park. Go to the street where you might OD and die in the middle of the night.’ And you have no access to health care treatment services or even someone to talk to. It is not a solution standing by itself, but I think it is part of a humane health care solution for dealing with a very real problem.

ECB: You said recently that you’re skeptical that a citywide income tax would be legal. Can you elaborate on why you think it might not be, and would you pursue it further if elected?

JD: If I could wave my wand, we would have a statewide income tax tomorrow.

ECB: OK, you don’t have a wand.

JD: Nobody does, but that’s what they’re trying to do, is wave a wand.

Look: I think if there’s a time to make a test case, now’s the time to do it. I am not persuaded that the legal landscape has changed. You have two barriers. The first is the RCW, the state law that prohibits cities from establishing an income tax. Then you have the state constitution, and in multiple cases, the [Washington State] Supreme Court has held that an income tax is unconstitutional. People think the makeup of our state Supreme Court might change that second outcome, but you still have to get around the first one. I’m skeptical that it will meet the legal test.

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Former state legislator (D-46) Jessyn Farrell

ECB: There’s been a lot of debate over the payments developers will be required to make under the city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program; some social justice advocates say they’re too low to make a dent in displacement, while some urbanists, including the Sightline Institute, say they’re so high they discourage development. What do you think? Would you change anything about MHA, or the mayor’s larger Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA)?

JF: I am fundamentally supportive of HALA. I deeply believe that Seattle needs to increase its housing stock and housing options across the economic spectrum in a really significant way. I think the zoning changes, though, are only one piece of the affordability puzzle, and I would like to go much beyond that.

We need to inventory all the surplus property in the city—whether it’s WSDOT, Sound Transit, Seattle Public Utilities—all publicly held property, and land bank it as the cornerstone for a major new investment in public housing. That has traditionally been a really important strategy for providing housing stability and economic mobility for people, especially in Seattle. And it then becomes an effort around matchmaking, so that you find the nonprofit or private developer resources to do the development.

Just as we allocate population growth across the region through [the Puget Sound Regional Council’s] 2040 plan, I think we need to set a target of $1 billion in affordable housing and allocate affordability targets across the entire city, so you’re not really letting any neighborhood off the hook. Then you create neighborhood-based plans that use an array of affordability tools, so some neighborhoods are going to focus more on rental vouchers so that people who are living in current housing can stay there; some neighborhoods are going to focus more on [accessory dwelling units]; some neighborhoods are going to have more traditional density. We need a strategic plan for the city that allows us to hold ourselves accountable, and then we can create programs within every single neighborhood.

That, obviously, is not easy. There are neighborhoods that aren’t necessarily going to want it. But here’s what I see: There are people in every single neighborhood who are worried about affordability, whether it is their kids not being able to buy into Seattle, whether they’re worried about property taxes or whether they’ve been in their houses for 40 years and now they’re on a fixed income. Clearly, renters are worried. And I think that you appeal to people from that perspective: Look, we are all in this together. We cannot solve this problem in traditional ways. Our traditional frame in Seattle has been around zoning, and that is a piece of the puzzle, but it cannot be the only piece. We need major public-sector investment, and then we need to really open up all of the different tools. And I think it becomes really micro, property-by-property, arterial-by-arterial planning. Part of that is preserving cultural spaces in neighborhoods and preserving environmental spaces in neighborhoods. Upzoning certainly has a role, and there are places where we need to do it, but there are so many other affordability tools that we can use and that I think neighborhoods would embrace.

11th District State Senator Bob Hasegawa

ECB: What do you think of Mayor Murray’s decision to cut ties with the neighborhood councils? That was an effort to get more new voices included in city planning, including, importantly, people of color.

BH: I think we need to be going the opposite direction from dismantling the neighborhood councils to empowering them more. The city’s argument was that the community councils don’t necessarily represent the diversity of the people in the community, and I think that’s true. They’re pretty much white, middle-class, older—even in the Rainier Valley. That’s the people that have the time to do it. I think grassroots organizing is the hardest job in the world, and the most underappreciated, and that’s why it never gets done. But it is the only way democracy can succeed. So if we are going to reverse our top-down structure, which is what the city has become, to a more bottom-up structure, we have to put a lot of work into it. So I want to fund the neighborhood councils so they can go into the neighborhoods and start organizing.

ECB: What is your definition of gentrification and how would you deal with it?

BH: I don’t know if there is a definition. It’s the loss of the economic, ethnic, and cultural diversity—what the city has always had. The income inequality that’s facing the whole country right now is being demonstrated to an extreme in Seattle, because you’ve got so many people making six-figure salaries moving in and displacing minimum-wage people.

When you look at the [Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda] set-aside for South Lake Union, they only require 2 percent of the units to be affordable, whatever affordable is. I think other cities are at 25 percent or above.

ECB: So what’s your alternative?

HB: A public bank.

This year, The C Is for Crank also made endorsements in two races—the mayor’s race and Seattle City Council Position 8. Read my endorsement of Jessyn Farrell for mayor here, and my endorsement of Teresa Mosqueda for council here. And look for more endorsements for the general election in October.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

City Council, City Hall, Election 2017, Elections, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, Morning Fizz

Morning Crank: “If There Were Easy Solutions, Seattle Would Not Have Elected a Woman Mayor.”

This post has been updated to reflect the fact that Moxie Media worked on an independent expenditure campaign on behalf of then-mayoral candidate Ed Murray in 2013; it did not work directly for the Murray campaign.

1. Jenny Durkan was sworn in as the first female mayor of Seattle since the 1920s yesterday, and although much of the local press coverage has downplayed that aspect of her victory (in part, perhaps, because her general-election opponent, Cary Moon, was also a woman), I saw quite a few women wiping tears from their eyes and doing little victory dances when Durkan noted that it had been “Almost 92 years since we had a woman mayor,” adding, “if there were any easy solutions, Seattle would not have elected a woman mayor—again.” After Durkan’s speech—delivered with more dynamism than her predecessor Ed Murray, but otherwise pretty standard “let’s-get-to-work” fare—a woman I didn’t know grabbed me by the hand and said “Isn’t this great??” while another woman I do know wiped away tears and told me, “We’ve waited a long time for this.”

After her official swearing-in, by US District Court Judge Richard Jones, Durkan headed out to continue a series of swearing-in ceremonies around the city, where she signed two new executive orders. The first, aimed at helping low-income renters find housing or keep their existing housing, directs city departments to identify people eligible for utility discounts and other benefits and sign them up; create a proposal for a rent assistance program for people who are “severely cost-burdened” (meaning they pay more than half their income on rent and utilities); speed up housing placements from the lengthy Seattle Housing Authority waitlist; and streamline the process of signing up for multiple benefits by creating an “affordability portal.” The second executive order commits the city to evaluating the Race and Social Justice Initiative and making changes if necessary, and requires all department heads and mayoral staff to go through implicit bias training within Durkan’s first 100 days in office.

2. Yesterday, Moxie Media—the consulting firm that charged self-financed mayoral candidate Cary Moon more than $257,000 for its services—and Winpower Strategies, most recently the consultant for city council candidate Jon Grant and mayoral candidate Mike McGinn’s unsuccessful campaigns, announced that they were merging. “We’re excited to blend our teams into a bigger, stronger Moxie Media, providing our clients with all the strategic acumen and creative innovation we can leverage toward ensuring everyone has a voice in our democracy,” Moxie founder Lisa MacLean said in a statement. Winpower is run by John Wyble, a longtime local consultant who was part of Moxie from 2001 to 2009; in 2003, I described the firm’s client base as “moderate, Prius-driving Seattle environmentalists.” Since striking out on his own, Wyble’s client base has included people further out on the left of whatever the current Seattle spectrum happens to be, from firebrand former council member Nick Licata to Seattle Displacement Coalition co-founder David Bloom to Grant.

Vintage cutline and photo via the Stranger.

A look at Winpower’s local electoral record suggests this is not a merger of two equal partners—as does the fact that the firm will retain the Moxie name.  Wyble’s biggest win locally happened in 2009, when Mike McGinn beat Joe Mallahan in the mayor’s race, but since then, his Seattle clients have mostly failed to catch fire. Think Bobby Forch (2009 and 2011), Brian Carver (2013), Morgan Beach, Halei Watkins, and Tammy Morales (2015), and Jo(h)ns Grant, Creighton, and Persak this year. You don’t even have to look at his client list to know that Wyble’s political analysis has been off-base locally; just check out his blog, where he predicted in August that Durkan would not be the mayor, because all the “progressive” votes, combined, would hand the win to Moon. “The electorate has changed in Seattle and change is what the electorate wants. … When you add [up all the Moon, Farrell, Oliver, Hasegawa, and McGinn] votes and a more progressive electorate, it’s not hard to believe that the candidate who came in second in the primary has the best shot at winning the general,” Wyble wrote.

Durkan won with 56 percent of the vote.

Winpower’s client list does include a number of well-funded campaigns for incumbent state legislators (Steve Hobbs, Jeannie Darnielle, Nathan Schlicher) as well as Democratic challengers (Michelle Rylands, who lost to incumbent Phil Fortunato in her race for 31st District state senate; Lisa Wellman, who defeated incumbent Sen. Steve Litzow in the 41st). But state elections are only in even years, which means most consultants also have a local client base. For obvious reasons, serious candidates want consultants who can demonstrate that they win election, which is why the fortunes of Seattle consultants tend to rise and fall with their win-lose ratios. On this score, Moxie’s recent record is also mixed; their local clients in recent years have included Ahmed Abdi, who lost to Stephanie Bowman for Seattle Port Commission this year; Debora Juarez, elected to the Seattle City Council in 2015; Fred Felleman, who defeated Marion Yoshino for an open Port seat in 2015; and an independent expenditure campaign for Ed Murray, who beat Winpower’s client McGinn in 2013. (The IE paid for this controversial ad accusing McGinn of being soft on domestic violence.) They also worked on 2015’s Honest Elections campaign, which led to public financing of elections, better known as “democracy vouchers.”

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Election 2017, King County, Media

Was John Urquhart’s Election Night ‘Joke’ on a Seattle Times Reporter Retaliation?

This post originally appeared at Seattle Magazine.

Local politics Twitter blew up late Tuesday night over the news, buried in a piece about the King County Sheriff’s election by Seattle Times reporters Steve Miletich and Mike Carter, that incumbent Sheriff John Urquhart had directed Miletich to a nonexistent election party, presumably in retaliation for the Times’ coverage of sexual harassment and assault allegations against the sheriff.

The Times reported that Urquhart “sent its reporter to a non-existent campaign party across town from where the sheriff showed up Tuesday night at Shaun O’Donnell’s American Grill and Irish Pub in the Smith Tower. When the reporter tracked him down, Urquhart said he had sent the reporter to the wrong place as a ‘joke.’”

Contacted by phone, Urquhart campaign manager Juliana da Cruz said she thought Urquhart’s misdirection “might have just been a misunderstanding.”

“I personally didn’t know about our election night plans until the very last minute,” she added.

Another Urquhart staffer, who did not want to speak on the record, suggested that what Urquhart called a “joke” was just that—an obvious goof between Urquhart and a reporter, Miletich, with whom he had a good relationship. The location where Urquhart said he was having his party, according to the staffer, closed several years ago, a fact Urquhart reportedly highlighted by sending Miletich a Seattle Times story on the closure. The Urquhart campaign posted the actual location of the sheriff’s election-night party on Facebook on November 6.

Both Miletich and Carter declined to comment on Urquhart’s “joke” or confirm that Urquhart had sent an email pointing to the Times’ story about the closure of the fake party location.

Whether he intended to send Miletich astray as a “joke” or whether his prank was more malicious, there’s a history of bad blood between Urquhart and the Times. Last year the paper began reporting on sexual misconduct allegations against the sheriff. As criticism of Urquhart’s handling of the allegations resurfaced last week, Patch Seattle reported that Urquhart’s attorney sent a strongly-worded letter to the Times discouraging the paper from running a story about a $160,000 settlement to a former King County deputy sheriff who claimed that Urquhart had touched him inappropriately and attempted to keep him from exposing wrongdoing within the department.

Late Wednesday morning, Times reporter Mike Rosenberg tweeted a list of “some of the stories that upset the sheriff,” suggesting that Urquhart’s “joke” was retaliation for coverage he perceived as negative. Among those stories: A piece about advocacy groups who accused the sheriff of mistreating deputies who had accused him of sexual assault, and a story about a finding by the King County ombudsman’s office that Urquhart had mishandled the sexual assault allegations against him. Times reporter Mike Baker also responded to Urquhart on Twitter.

Urquhart did not return a call to his office seeking comment.

Results in the King County sheriff’s race remain inconclusive, but were trending strongly toward Johanknecht. As of the latest count Wednesday afternoon, Johanknecht led Urquhart 52.61 percent to 47.69 percent—a margin of 15,778 votes.

Election 2017, Elections, King County, labor, Media, Urbanism, Women

Election 2017: Vindications and Repudiations

Y’all, I’ve been traipsing all over Europe on my trust fund for the last few weeks (note: A JOKE) and I came back just in time to see Seattle elect our first female mayor in nearly a century, Jenny Durkan, and the first 6-3 female majority on the city council since the 1990s. Meanwhile, King County  voters may have elected their second-ever female sheriff, if early returns hold and Mitzi Johanknecht defeats incumbent John Urquhart for that position. Pundits elsewhere were dubbing last night a “great night for women,” and it was, but let’s get a few more female mayors, sheriffs, council members, and state legislators (not to mention pay equity, affordable day care, and hiring parity) before we declare the glass ceiling shattered to dust.

On to the celebrations!

I arrived at council member-elect Teresa Mosqueda’s party at Optimism Brewing Company at around 7 last night and the mood was already ebullient, although some supporters I talked to were still gritting their teeth as they waited for the 8:15 results. They shouldn’t have worried: The first vote drop showed Mosqueda winning decisively with 61.51 percent of the vote (to Grant’s 38.49 percent)—a rout that turned the cavernous room into a veritable nerd mosh pit.

Council member Lorena Gonzalez, who also won decisively over neighborhood activist Pat Murakami last night, introduced Mosqueda to the stage, shouting no fewer than three times that Mosqueda won because “she gets shit done!” In response to the results, the Grant campaign sent out a tepid non-concession, holding out hope that the remaining ballots would somehow reverse a yawning 23-point gap. (I was told that the statement he made at his own election-night party, down in Hillman City, was more decisively a concession speech.) At any rate, Grant’s defeat showed that not only is an endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America not a slam-dunk in Seattle (and that, in fact, it may be a liability), neither is an endorsement from the Seattle Times or the Stranger, both of which effusively supported Grant. (Although the two papers have decidedly different politics, they both backed Grant in large part because of his position on zoning and development—he opposed the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, which chips away at exclusionary Seattle zoning rules that restrict new housing to a small fraction of the city’s residential land, and supported punitive developer fees that would have contributed to Seattle’s housing shortage.)

Grant’s campaign was also hampered by charges that he had created a hostile work environment for women and people of color as head of the Tenants Union, and by persistent questions about why, if his campaign was truly about “giving a voice to the most marginalized,” he was running at all. Grant, who grew up on Bainbridge Island, is white; Mosqueda, who grew up in Olympia, is Mexican-American. Mosqueda, who was lambasted by Grant and his supporters for her support from labor unions, kept her job lobbying  for the rights of women, children, and workers in Olympia right through the end of the campaign, noting that she had to do so to pay her rent. (In addition to bein the third Latina on the council, Mosqueda will be the only renter.) Grant, in contrast, has been campaigning full-time since January, and lives in a house in South Seattle that was initially purchased for him by his parents after the previous owners lost their home to foreclosure. That class divide between the two candidates might not have been immediately apparent to the casual voter, but Grant’s insistence on portraying Mosqueda as an “establishment” candidate beholden to business and nefarious unions spurred Mosqueda to make Grant’s own more rarefied background an issue, and may have turned off voters initially inclined to support Grant because he purported to be the candidate of the people.

Speaking of which: Density was also a big winner last night, with HALA fan Jenny Durkan winning big (Moon, who touted urbanist values in front of urbanist audiences, was wishy-washy in front of neighborhood groups and on the citywide stage, proposing to start the HALA process over and let neighborhood groups have a larger say in the “character” and “culture” of their neighborhoods when deciding whether to let density in—as they did under “the great Jim Diers.”

Other takeaways from last night:

• Democracy vouchers and the Honest Elections initiative, once touted as a way to get money out of politics, have done nothing of the sort. Early on, both Grant and Mosqueda began filing requests to exceed the mandatory limits on contribution size and overall spending imposed by the 2015 initiative, and the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission promptly granted all their requests. Closer to Election Day, both candidates for city attorney—incumbent Pete Holmes and challenger Scott Lindsay—were also released from the initiative’s strictures. Mayoral candidates Jenny Durkan and Cary Moon didn’t have access to democracy vouchers (they’ll kick in for the mayor’s race in 2021), but it probably wouldn’t much matter—as of today, Durkan has raised a record-breaking $937,410 and is well on track to burst through the $1 million ceiling by the time late contributions come through, and Moon’s contributions, currently $347,734, will top $500,000 once she pays off her debts, which total $182,682. Unless the ethics commission has a dramatic change of heart, it’s unlikely that they’ll force mayoral candidates to abide by limits that they haven’t enforced on candidates for city council or city attorney.

Moreover: The Honest Elections initiative limits contributions to $500. Neither Moon nor Durkan had an average contribution close to that. Moon’s average contribution was $174, and Durkan’s was $234. Finally, both campaigns were heavily supported by funding that was outside the scope of the initiative: Durkan was backed by $727,139 in independent expenditures by a business-backed political action committee, People for Jenny Durkan, and Moon has spent $176,521 of her own money (so far) to self-fund her campaign, nearly as much as the $181,766 she received from 1,043 supporters. Until PAC spending is dealt with (unlikely, given the ruling in Citizens United that money is speech) or self-financing is banned (ditto), big money—whether from wealthy candidates or deep-pocketed donors—will continue to be a major factor in Seattle politics.

• The King County Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy, which King County Executive Dow Constantine and advocates for homeless residents argued should be even larger, passed so overwhelmingly that it’s tempting to second-guess the county council’s decision to play it safe with the ballot measure. As I’ve reported, Constantine initially proposed renewing the levy at 12 cents per $1,000, which would have added $9 to the typical property owner’s annual tax bill and funded an additional  $67 million in services over six years, but the county council rejected his proposal, arguing (among other things) that voters might be suffering from tax fatigue. Advocates for homeless services argued for an even higher rate, 15 cents, to extend services to the hardest to house. Last night’s results suggest that that council underplayed its hand in going with the lower, “compromise” rate.

• Outside Seattle: Manka Dhingra’s election to the (traditionally Republican) 45th District state senate seat solidifies the Democrats’ hold on both houses of the state legislature and is part of a wave of Democratic victories across the country, including in Virginia, Minnesota, and New Jersey. (Vox has a roundup of all of last night’s barrier-busting wins here.) In Bellevue, the results were a mixed bag: Supporters and opponents of a proposed men’s homeless shelter—which turned out to be a key issue in this year’s divisive council races—each one two council seats. Newcomer Jared Nieuwenhuis and incumbent Conrad Lee oppose the shelter, and newcomer Janice Zahn and incumbent Lynne Robinson support it. Down in Burien, where a slate of city council candidates calling themselves “Burien Proud Burien First” focused on Burien’s status as a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants, to races were still too close to call; in the other two, a conservative and progressive candidate have strong leads, according to KUOW, which reports that “Nearly a quarter of Burien’s population is Latino but none have ever been elected to City Council.”

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Election 2017, Elections, endorsements

Urban Values Voters Endorse Teresa Mosqueda

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.

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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.

Election 2017, Housekeeping

Out of Office Notification

I’ll be out of the country—that’s right, the country—until November 7, doing my best to stay out of local politics for the final two weeks of the election while I visit friends on a long-planned trip.

Answers to your frequently asked questions below.

Has the election literally driven you out of the country? 

No, but who knows? It might have if I hadn’t planned this trip several months ago, when I found a ridiculously cheap ticket that just happened to take me far away right at the end of the campaign cycle, when everybody has made up their minds and yet all the campaigns are still yelling.

Does this mean we won’t benefit from your insights during the final weeks of the election cycle?

Yes and no! I won’t be posting here regularly, if at all, but you can always check out my campaign coverage by clicking on the Election 2017 tag. And if you still haven’t decided how to vote, check out my endorsements.

What are you doing? Why are you abandoning us? 

I’m visiting some dear friends that I haven’t seen in a long, long time. And possibly some castles!

But I want to yell at you! 

Yelling is for Twitter.

Who should I support for mayor? 

That’s easy: Cary Moon, Teresa Mosqueda, Lorena Gonzalez, and Pete Holmes. Find out why in  my endorsements!

When will we see you again? 

I’ll be back on Election Day. In the meantime, if you want to show your support for the work I do here—which, believe me, necessitates a vacation from time to time— you can always become a sustaining supporter on Patreon or give a one-time contribution through Paypal.