Teresa Mosqueda is an experienced leader with a mile-long resume and an incredible track record fighting successfully for equitable health care, fair wages, and paid sick and family leave. Of several qualified candidates running for this citywide position, Mosqueda stands out as the overachiever brimming with enthusiasm, ambition, and ideas.
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.
Contrast Mosqueda with Jon Grant, the former Tenants Union director who is seeking this seat for a second time. Grant deserves credit for turning the financially struggling Tenants Union around—and he takes it: “In just a few years time and tireless hours of work, Jon was able to… transform the organization into one of our region’s leading forces for housing justice,” his campaign website says. Grant also claims credit for his work on the statewide minimum wage campaign, which Mosqueda led; Grant worked briefly as an organizer for the group. And he used an anti-pipeline protest at Chase Bank as a photo opportunity for his campaign, which ran a photo of him being handcuffed with the caption, “Four activists arrested at Wedgwood Chase, including Jon!” (If the arrest was a ploy, it worked: The photo and story of Grant’s arrest has been mentioned by nearly every organization that has endorsed him.) Try to imagine a low-income candidate of color being that sanguine about getting thrown in jail. The most effective city council members aren’t the ones who grandstand and take credit; they’re the ones who do the unglamorous, nose-to-the-grindstone work of drafting legislation and rounding up support. It’s appropriate that Grant—who recently declared his conversion to socialism, earning him a coveted endorsement from the Stranger as well as the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America—is supported by the council’s grandstander-in-chief, Kshama Sawant, who holds frequent rallies to place public pressure on her colleagues but has never set up a district office.
Grant’s time at the Tenants Union wasn’t without blemish. Before he resigned in 2015, a group of his employees wrote a letter to the Tenants Union board accusing him of “oppressive and tokenizing treatment” of people of color at the organization. The letter, which surfaced in an unfair labor practice complaint against the organization, accuses Grant of failing to show up to appointments with staffers, soliciting campaign contributions at a staff meeting, and delegating low-profile, menial, and administrative tasks to women of color. (In response to my questions about the complaint, Grant said that while “I tried in every situation to empower my staff … I want to take responsibility for that as a person with both white privilege and positional authority, it is clear I did not meet the expectations of these staff members to support them as people of color within the organization. I take that feedback seriously and always strive to do better.” He also denied asking for campaign contributions at a staff meeting.)
Grant agrees with Mosqueda on many issues, including safe streets (he supports road rechannelizations like the one on Rainier Avenue), Sound Transit (he wants to speed up implementation so people in Ballard and West Seattle don’t have to wait until 2035 to get service) and homeless encampments (he opposes the current strategy of sweeping homeless people from place to place.)
But his views on housing are in line with anti-growth groups like the Seattle Displacement Coalition, which has endorsed him. For example, he supports an unworkable plan to require developers to make 25 percent of new units affordable—a proposal that would condemn Seattle to San Francisco-style underdevelopment at a time when tens of thousands of new workers are moving here every year. He wants rent control, which would also suppress housing development at a time when our rents keep rising specifically because the city doesn’t have enough housing to accommodate everyone. He believes police union negotiations should be open to the public, which—however reprehensible the city’s police union may be—would only politicize and stalemate the bargaining process. The Stranger slammed Mosqueda for opposing public union negotiations, but her position is more nuanced and actually workable: She wants a community representative at the table, but argues, correctly, that if the union’s collective bargaining process happened in public, both sides would grandstand and dig in their heels instead of negotiating in good faith.
Mosqueda has been criticized as too polished, too connected to the unions, and too “mainstream.” This is a familiar, sexist refrain. Female candidates—too often targets of condescending comments about their appearance, tone, and youth (or lack thereof)—are often held to a suspect double standard, told to wait their turn, or treated like they’re running for middle school class president.
But take notice: Mosqueda is running for Seattle City Council. And voters shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to elect her, a smart, engaged, driven woman of color with a track record of fighting and delivering on issues that matter to all of us.
The C Is for Crank endorses Teresa Mosqueda.
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.
The 2017 mayoral election comes at a pivotal time for the urbanist movement. The most contentious parts of outgoing Mayor Ed Murray’s keystone achievement, the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, remain unfinished, and conservative anti-density advocates have made common cause with anti-gentrification activists on Seattle’s far left, a potent alliance that could thwart efforts to address the city’s housing shortage.
Three candidates in the race for mayor—Jessyn Farrell, Cary Moon, and Mike McGinn—like to be considered urbanists. But only one, former state legislator and ex-Transportation Choices Coalition director Farrell, has a record of translating pro-transit, pro-housing urbanist values into policy. From her advocacy as TCC director for policies that changed the way the state thinks of road “capacity” (not just for cars anymore), to her work leading the 2008 campaign for Sound Transit 2, to her successful efforts to secure $500 million for Seattle during the debate in Olympia over Sound Transit 3, Farrell doesn’t just talk—she makes things happen.
Experience, a quality that’s frequently belittled in national politics, is crucially important in a mayor. Mayor of Seattle is not an entry-level job. As a longtime advocate and negotiator who has worked in government for many years, Farrell understands the need for negotiation and compromise. In a race where other candidates are promising to tax foreign investors and force developers to build affordable housing, consistency and competence can seem like unexciting qualities. But in a mayor, they’re crucially important.
In our conversation about her candidacy, Farrell rattled off a list of concrete policy ideas that seemed both innovative and achievable. (Of the six mayoral candidates I interviewed at length, Farrell was the one who had me scribbling furiously in my notebook, highlighting ideas I had never heard before.) For example: Farrell supports the city’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, which increases density across the city and funds affordable housing, but wants to expand it by spending some of the $500 million she secured for Seattle as a legislator to house kids and their families near their schools (as Sightline has documented, the vast majority of Seattle’s high-performing schools are in segregated single-family areas), creating a land bank of surplus public property as the backbone for a major new investment in public housing, and allocating $1 billion in affordable housing throughout the city on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. Under Farrell’s plan, no neighborhood would be allowed to veto affordable housing, but each area could use different tools (such as rental subsidies for existing residents, detached backyard cottages, or apartment towers) to achieve its mandate.
Seattle hasn’t had a female mayor in nearly a century. This isn’t a bit of historical trivia; it’s a stain on our “progressive” city. Our priorities are determined by the people who lead us, and when those people are exclusively men, policies that have the greatest impact on the lives of women—paid family leave, equitable access to affordable day care and preschool, policies that promote pay and hiring equity in the private sector—take a back seat. In our conversation, Farrell demurred when I asked if she would have different priorities than her male opponents (and predecessors), then rattled off a list of ideas that would specifically benefit women and families—like partnering with private donors to supplement existing housing tax credits so they can build family-size housing instead of one-or-two-bedroom apartments and spending some of the city’s $500 million Sound Transit windfall on preschool facilities near major employers.
Two other candidates, Cary Moon and Mike McGinn, have strong pro-transit and environmental bona fides. Moon, an urban designer and civic activist who fought against the downtown tunnel ten years ago, has never served in public office or worked in government. McGinn has the opposite problem. Look at McGinn’s record (rather than his rhetoric)—as mayor, he failed to accomplish crucial elements of his agenda, because he couldn’t get along with the city council and surrounded himself with yes-men; we don’t need to go back to the days when the mayor alienated the governor by calling her a liar, repeatedly flubbed the search for a new police chief, and managed to come up with a transit tax that even Seattle voters wouldn’t support. Now he’s cozying up to neighborhood NIMBYs, signing a gimmicky no-new-taxes pledge, signing on to a neighborhood campaign against a public-private partnership to build a new Green Lake Community Center, and vowing to “revisit” the HALA plan—code for surrendering to demands for interminable process and delay.
Jenny Durkan—the hyper-competent Hillary Clinton grownup in the race—is almost certain to make it through the primary, but will have trouble overcoming her establishment label to appeal to Seattle’s populist left. Bob Hasegawa, a state legislator who has partnered with Republican legislators to reduce Seattle’s influence over Sound Transit and reduce the agency’s authority, has proposed bringing back and re-empowering the anti-development neighborhood councils and thinks virtually every problem can be solved with a public bank.
Nikkita Oliver, a civic activist, attorney, and poet, has tapped into the Black Lives Matter zeitgest, galvanizing communities that have been underrepresented in Seattle politics and shining a race and social justice spotlight on issues like property taxes, law enforcement spending, and development. Fittingly, her focus has been on the city’s lack of affordable housing, which drives displacement and promotes gentrification. But for a candidate whose primary issue is housing, Oliver was surprisingly unfamiliar with recent efforts to build affordable housing in Seattle. During our interview, she was unable to say whether she had supported last year’s housing levy, and said she didn’t remember the details of the proposal. (Oliver has since claimed that I misrepresented her quotes; I’ve reviewed the tape and confirmed that I transcribed her responses verbatim, and in the order in which they appeared, with no deletions; the only edit I made to that portion of our interview was to condense my questions, which went into more detail about the content of the housing levy and the fact that Mayor Ed Murray has touted the levy as one of his primary achievements.)
Oliver has proposed policies—like requiring developers to set aside a quarter of their units as affordable housing—that would make gentrification and displacement worse. “Make developers pay” is a popular rallying cry, but it doesn’t create affordable housing any more than increasing business taxes improves wages; in a city where housing prices are rising faster than anywhere else in the nation, the solution isn’t to restrict growth but to encourage it. The only city that has imposed a 25 percent affordable housing requirement on developers, San Francisco, is also the only city on the West Coast that is more expensive than Seattle, thanks largely to restrictive housing policies.
Much has also been made of Oliver’s voting record (as Danny Westneat at the Times reported, Oliver voted in just seven of the 24 elections since she registered in 2008); although I don’t think frequent voting should be a litmus test for people seeking public office, her explanation—that structural barriers such as lack of Internet access and rising rents prevented her from voting consistently—was defensive and less than credible. Pointing out structural racism, an overlooked and legitimate issue in Seattle politics, is misleading in this case: African American women turn out to vote in huge numbers, outpacing white men even in 2016, when black turnout declined. (She also accused Westneat of “degrading character assassination”—before he had even published his story.) Half of Seattle’s residents are renters, and many of us move often but still update our voter registration, which you can do online, in person, or through the mail.
Farrell doesn’t have a flawless record. She voted for a bill that rolled back Sound Transit’s taxing authority after Republican light-rail opponents (and Hasegawa) complained that the taxing schedule they approved in a previous session was unfair. She defends that vote by calling it insurance that will make it possible to pass other progressive taxes in the future, but acknowledges that “it stinks.” I’m more inclined to have confidence in a politician, like Farrell, who owns up to her own controversial decisions and missteps, over one who responds to coverage and criticism by lashing out at journalists and critics.
Nearly 90 years after the end of Bertha Knight Landes’ two-year term, it’s beyond time for Seattle to elect a progressive woman as mayor. Of the four women at the top of this year’s ballot, one—Jessyn Farrell—stands out as a pro-transit, pro-city, pro-housing big thinker who will bring new ideas to Seattle’s fight for an equitable and sustainable future. Farrell’s impressive record of accomplishment is a sign that she can actually deliver on her ambitious agenda.
The C Is for Crank endorses Jessyn Farrell.
If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please considerbecoming 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.
1. Depending on your perspective, a meeting tomorrow night to discuss efforts to prevent displacement and gentrification in light of a proposed upzone in the Chinatown/International District is either: a) A “special meeting” of the city council’s planning and land use committee, with a “focus on Chinatown/International District” (the city’s version) or b) a “town hall” to “Save the Chinatown – ID—Stop Displacement Now” (the Interim Community Development Association’s version). “WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED! Come and make your voice heard to City Council!” Interim’s announcement urges—and if that use of a Civil Rights-era slogan didn’t put a fine enough point on what the activists think is at stake in the upzone, these flyers, which appeared around the neighborhood in the past week, certainly did:
And here’s the source material:
The second poster is a notice posted during World War II, when the US rounded up tens of thousands of Japanese Americans and sent them to internment camps. The (very slightly) coded message is that if the city upzones the Chinatown/ID, the gentrification and displacement that result will have a similar impact on its residents as the forced removal of Japanese Americans in the 1940s.
2. The Chinatown/ID meeting will actually be the second contentious meeting in one day for the land use committee. Tuesday morning, they’ll take up a proposal related to the design review process—ostensibly a process to consider the design of proposed new buildings; in reality an opportunity for anti-density activists to stall projects they don’t like—that could make it easier for development opponents to file appeals. (In August, the council will consider more sweeping changes to design review that could streamline the process for developers.)
The proposed change would remove one step in the process that opponents of new projects must go through before filing a formal appeal to stop a proposed development. The step, called a land-use interpretation, costs $3,150 and is required before a project can go before the city’s hearing examiner, the judicial official who ultimately decides whether contested projects can move forward. According to a council staff analysis, removing the interpretation step could “facilitate judicial appeals of land use decisions for projects that may be considered locally undesirable by near-neighbors, such as low-income housing projects, work-release centers, and homeless shelters.” According to the Livable Phinney website, the group “with other activists in West Seattle and Council member Lisa Herbold” to eliminate the interpretation requirement.
Endless appeals are a common tactic used by neighborhood groups to prevent new housing near single-family areas. For example, a group of Phinney Ridge homeowners has successfully stalled a four-story, 57-unit studio apartment building on a commercial stretch of Greenwood Avenue for more than a year by filing appeal after appeal; although previous complaints have involved everything from the lack of air conditioning and washer/dryer units in the apartments to the size of the units, they’re now arguing that Metro’s Route 5, which runs along Greenwood, is inadequate to serve the 57 new residents. Ultimately, like many such battles, this argument comes down to parking—the opponents believe the new residents will all own cars, which will make it harder for existing Phinney Ridge homeowners to park their cars on the street.
3. Just weeks after issuing a statement denouncing “the politics of personal destruction” after a man who had accused Mayor Ed Murray of sexual abuse in the 1980s withdrew his lawsuit, mayoral candidate Jessyn Farrell reversed course, saying last night that the mayor should resign instead of serving out his term. Farrell said newly disclosed information in a separate sexual abuse case “severely undermines our confidence in his ability to carry out the duties of his office,” according to Seattle Times reporter Daniel Beekman. On Sunday, the Times reported that an investigator with Oregon’s Child Protective Services concluded that Murray had sexually abused his foster son in the early 1980s. Murray denied the allegations, noting that the case was withdrawn and no charges were ever filed.
Farrell’s dramatic reversal (dramatic in part because there was no reason she had to weigh in at all) makes more sense in light of events that transpired after she defended Murray the first time. Back then, Farrell was still seeking the mayor’s endorsement, and believed she had a real shot at getting it. Since then, Murray has endorsed Jenny Durkan, saying the former federal prosecutor “has the best chance of winning.” While Farrell may be relieved that she lost Murray’s endorsement to Durkan, the snub had to sting—and it’s hardly a stretch to see Farrell’s denunciation as payback.
4. If you still aren’t sure which mayoral candidate you prefer, there are at least two more chances to see the candidates debate before you fill out your ballot. The first, a live debate sponsored by CityClub, KING 5, GeekWire, and KUOW, is sold out, but a viewing party from 6:30 to 9pm at the nearby Flatstick Pub will also offer a post-debate opportunity to meet the candidates. And on Tuesday, LGBTQ Allyship will sponsor its own debate, featuring candidates for mayor and council positions 8 and 9, focusing on LGBTQ issues. That forum will be held at the Southside Commons in Columbia City from 6 to 9 pm.
If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please considerbecoming 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.
If you’re still wondering what to make of two polls that showed mayoral candidates Jenny Durkan, Bob Hasegawa, and Mike McGinn leading unless incumbent Mayor Ed Murray steps in as a write-in candidate, it’s helpful to remember two salient facts: 1) Polls that show nearly half of voters still undecided don’t reveal much (and are largely referenda on name recognition) and 2) robo-polls—polls that use computerized systems instead of human callers—tend to be less reliable than live surveys. Both the Washington State Wire poll, by Wilson Research, and the KING 5/KUOW poll, by Survey USA, relied wholly or in part on robo-polling. Survey USA used “the recorded voice of a professional announcer” for landline respondents and sent a written form to people they reached on their cell phones; Wilson Strategic’s robo-poll was limited to people with land line phones, who tend to skew older and more conservative.
The KING 5/KUOW poll found that McGinn was the frontrunner with 19 percent of voters saying they would likely choose the former mayor, followed by Durkan with 14 percent support. The Washington State Wire poll had Durkan in the lead with 30 percent support, followed by Hasegawa with just under 9 percent. (Hasegawa got 8 percent in the KING 5/KUOW poll and McGinn got just over 6 percent in the Washington State Wire poll.) A high percentage of respondents to both polls said they hadn’t made their mind up yet or didn’t choose a candidate—45 percent in the Washington State Wire poll, and 38 percent in the KING 5/KUOW poll.
Both polls asked some version of the question, “If Mayor Ed Murray was in the race, would you vote for him?” (Twenty-two percent of Washington State Wire respondents, and 33 percent of KING 5/KUOW respondents, said they would.) But, again, it’s worth pausing before interpreting those results. Mayor Murray is not going to be “on the ballot” (as the KING 5/KUOW poll put it) August, so that question misses the mark; a better question would be, “If Mayor Ed Murray reentered the race as a write-in candidate, would you write his name on your ballot?” Write-in campaigns are tricky because they require voters to take an extra step: Ignore all 21 names that are actually on the ballot, and write in “Ed Murray” on the bottom line. I’d be very curious to see how that question played in a poll, robo- or otherwise. That said, 33 percent is more than a strong showing in a 22-way race—it’s practically a landslide. (In 2013, the incumbent, Mike McGinn, took 29 percent in the primary—and, of course, went on to lose to Murray).
At a press conference on Wednesday, Murray said he was putting a poll in the field next week and will decide whether he will run a write-in campaign after he sees the results.
If he doesn’t, the poll results could suggest something else—that Murray’s endorsement could provide a real boost to one of the frontrunners. Durkan has Murray’s former consultant and Sandeep Kaushik, as well as money from many of his donors, along with a sizeable fundraising lead; Murray’s endorsement could help push her from frontrunner to inevitable status, and his endorsement for another candidate (say, Jessyn Farrell, who worked with Murray briefly in Olympia, where they were both state legislators) could shake up the race.
2. Speaking of fundraising: As of last week, Durkan had raised $256,814, with $41,165 of that coming in last week alone. Cary Moon, with $88,912 ($770 last week), came i second in fundraising, although that number is somewhat misleading; $38,169 of it came from Moon’s personal funds. Nikkita Oliver is next with $57,365 ($6,576 of that last week), followed by Jessyn Farrell ($54,111, $10,472 last week), Mike McGinn ($29,269, $35 of it last week) and Bob Hasegawa, who has $6,279 in personal funds but is barred from fundraising while the state legislature is in session.
So other than the conventional wisdom that Durkan is the “establishment” frontrunner, what do those numbers tell us? First, they say something about momentum, which Durkan, Farrell, and Oliver (seem to) have, and McGinn and Moon (seem to) lack. Second, it confirms that—as she herself said when she got into the race—Moon, whose net worth is second only to Durkan’s among the mayoral candidates, will self-fund her own campaign if necessary. And third, it suggests that McGinn may have less momentum, despite his high name recognition, than he did in the past. By this point in 2009, McGinn had raised more money ($38,775), and was receiving new contributions at a faster pace ($6,232 during the same period in 2009), than he has this year.
3. The 43rd District Democrats opted not to endorse for or against King County Proposition 1, which would provide science and arts education and access to cultural opportunities for low-income kids, after executive board vice chair Tara Gallagher rose, announced that “King County council member Larry Gossett couldn’t be here” to speak against the measure, and read a voter’s guide statement that was written by King County Council member Larry Gossett, a Democrat, and [mumble].” The mumbled part, which one person present said was inaudible, was “Dino Rossi”—the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate who is currently filling the 45th District state senate seat previously held by Republican Andy Hill, who died last year. The statement bears Gossett’s imprimatur—suggesting that arts are a frivolous expenditure when people are homeless—but also, undeniably, Rossi’s; it reads, in part, “An unelected board would control over half-a-billion dollars of taxes which lacks accountability. King County’s arts community is already well funded.”
In another surprise move, the 43rd also not only declined to endorse incumbent King County Sheriff John Urquhart, as at least 16 other Democratic groups have done, but gave their sole endorsement to his opponent, Mitzi Johanknecht, a 32-year veteran of the department who has worked to break down barriers for women at the sheriff’s office.
King County recently settled a lawsuit by one current and two former deputies who say Urquhart retaliated against them for reporting gender and sexual harassment, including rape jokes and crotch-grabbing; the county settled a similar lawsuit for $1 million in 2013. A former deputy has accused Urquhart of raping her in 2002, and the lawsuit also accused him of ordering internal investigators not to document or investigate those charges.
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, equipment, travel costs, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.
1. One of the lead investors for Oak View Group’s winning bid to redevelop Key Arena, billionaire investor and Boston Celtics minority owner David Bonderman, resigned from the board of Uber yesterday after cracking a sexist joke about female leaders during a company-wide meeting of the ridesharing company. The meeting was aimed at addressing sexual harassment and hostile working conditions for women at Uber. Bonderman made the comment as board member Ariana Huffington was trying to explain how having one woman on a company’s board made it more likely that more women would join when Bonderman interrupted her and, according to the Washington Post, said, “Actually, what it shows is, it’s much likely there’ll be more talking.” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick took a leave of absence this week, promising to come back as “Travis 2.0,” after ignoring complaints of sexual harassment at the company for years.
Bonderman issued a statement apologizing for his “joke” and is no longer on the board. Still, in the wake of a massive online effort to silence the five female council members who voted against the other stadium deal, should Seattle be inking an arena agreement with a guy who “jokes” that women should be seen and not heard?
2. Fundraising for the August (really mid-July) mayoral election kicked into high gear last month, particularly for presumptive frontrunner Jenny Durkan, who raised more than $160,000 in May and has continued to bring in donations at a steady pace in June. Durkan’s contributors are a who’s who of the Seattle political establishment, ranging from developers (Martin Smith III, Martin Smith Real Estate) to current and former city council members (Sally Bagshaw, Tim Burgess, Sally Clark, Jan Drago), philanthropists (Dorothy Bullitt) and ex-governors (Christine Gregoire and her husband Mike).
Civic activist Cary Moon came in second in fundraising this month, with $67,800, including $250 from city council member Mike O’Brien. O’Brien also contributed $250 to Nikkita Oliver, an attorney and criminal justice reform advocate who is also running for mayor. So far, O’Brien has not thrown any financial support to former mayor Mike McGinn, a close O’Brien ally during McGinn’s 2009-2013 term. Overall, McGinn raised less money in May than not just Moon and Durkan but Oliver, and only shows higher fundraising numbers than former state representative Jessyn Farrell because Farrell was barred from campaigning for most of the month, until she resigned her state position; yesterday, Farrell announced that she had raised more than $50,000.
Meanwhile, incumbent Mayor Ed Murray, who announced last month that he would not seek reelection, returned $8,825 in contributions in May, including donations from Bullitt Foundation founder Dorothy Bullitt, developer Richard Hedreen, and at least three members of the mayor’s own staff: Ryan Biava, Joe Mirabella, and Drue Nyenhuis, who received refunds of $350, $375, and $500, respectively.
I’ve put together a spreadsheet showing how the candidates’ fundraising stacks up for May, which I’ll update as new numbers for that month come in; the sheet includes a few notable contributions as well as a somewhat eye-popping expenditure by mayoral candidate Michael Harris, a self-proclaimed “no-new-taxes” candidate who announced his campaign on a conservative radio talk show. Harris, according to his filings, spent $1,386 on “alterations for candidate’s clothing” at Nordstrom.
3. By the end of this year, if all goes according to plan, I’ll have lived in three different apartments, and at least two city council districts, over a three-year period. As a renter, that’s just part of the deal: My last landlord (this guy) raised my rent without addressing some major problems with the place, and my current apartment costs too much for a studio unit in an old house that’s held together with duct tape, 100 years of paint, and prayers that SDCI doesn’t knock on the door. That means that I’ll have to re-register to vote at my new address—something homeowners never have to think about, but renters are supposed to take care of every time they move.
Naturally, between scrambling to come up with first, last, and deposit, arranging for movers or renting a U-Haul, setting up heat, electricity, Internet, and water, and filing dozens of change-of-address forms, tenants sometimes forget that they have to re-register if they want to vote. This has consequences; according to the US Census, just 21 percent of renters who moved in the last year voted in the most recent election, compared to 41 percent who had lived in their residence for five years or more.
Yesterday, the city council’s energy and environment committee voted unanimously to move forward with legislation that will add voter registration and change-of-address information to the packets that landlords must give tenants when they sign or renew their leases. The proposal, council staffer Aly Pennucci noted, has been controversial among some landlords, who have argued that it represents an unnecessary additional burden. It would be easier to sympathize with that argument if landlords were actually being asked to do anything new, but the pages with voter information will be added to the packet the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections already makes available to landlords online; the only conceivable “burden” is the need to print out latest version of the document. The new information would add about five pages to renter packets.
4. Pedestrian Chronicles has the scoop on an innovative new proposal to give low-income tenants access to reduced-fare ORCA cards where they live, giving renters access to a benefit that is typically provided by employers. Sixty-eight percent of residents at market-rate buildings get reduced-cost ORCA cards through their jobs, PedChron notes, compared to just 21 percent of tenants in subsidized housing. Find out more about how Capitol Hill Housing hopes to flip that equation at Pedestrian Chronicles.
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, equipment, travel costs, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.
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, equipment, travel costs, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.
Note: This post has been edited to reflect that Bertha Knight Landes was elected, not appointed, to a two-year term; she was defeated in her reelection bid by a politically unknown man. No other woman has ever been elected mayor of Seattle.
Former US Attorney Jenny Durkan, if elected, will be the first woman elected mayor to a full four-year term in Seattle’s history as well as the first lesbian mayor (Bertha Knight Landes was elected and served for two years nearly a century ago). But ask anyone who pays attention to local politics to describe her in a couple of words and they’ll likely say, “Establishment candidate,” or perhaps, “Ed Murray 2.0.”
Durkan, an early Obama appointee whose work on police accountability helped lead to a Justice Department investigation into allegations of biased policing and excessive use of force at the Seattle Police Department, has a long history of fighting for civil rights and police reform at the federal level. She also has a reputation for being tough on crime, as the attorney who shut down the Colucurcio crime family in Seattle and prosecuted Ahmed Ressam, the wannabe terrorist who trained in Afghanistan and crossed the Canada-US border with materials for a suitcase bomb in 1999. But it’s her status as a member of a wealthy and influential family of Democratic Party players that has earned her the “establishment” label, along with an endorsement from the political arm of the Metropolitan Seattle Chamber of Commerce and a platform that tracks the current mayor’s positions on issues like homelessness, density, and the legality of a city income tax.
I sat down with Durkan last week at Voxx Coffee in downtown Seattle.
The C Is for Crank [ECB]: You mentioned at a recent forum that you agreed with Murray’s decision, early in the process of proposing the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, to pull back on allowing duplexes and triplexes in single-family zones. You also suggested there should have been more neighborhood input into the final HALA package. What do you think the mayor got right and wrong about HALA?
Jenny Durkan [JD]: I think he landed in mostly the right spot. I think he was dealing with some pretty strong competing interests—from people who wanted affordable housing to people who wanted to keep the neighborhoods the same to developers who said, ‘I have an economic reality myself,’ and I think they struck a pretty good balance. I think the mayor’s decision to pull back that portion of the plan that would have allowed the duplexes and triplexes in single-family zones was the right decision, from a purely political, pragmatic standpoint.
“If people believe in something here in Seattle, we’ll put our money where our mouth is. But the obligation you have as an elected leader is to make sure that you honor that trust, because you want to be able to go back to them and say, ‘You gave us this money for this purpose. Here’s what we’ve done with it.'”
ECB: If the goal was to get more neighborhood buy-in on HALA, it didn’t work—the same people who opposed the plan then seem to all still oppose it now.
JD: That’s true. But I think you could have seen the whole thing unwound. I don’t think you’d have the agreement and the upzones that are going to provide and bring online tens of thousands of new units of affordable housing and create a public fund of additional money that we can use for that purpose. I think it very well could have come unwound and the whole thing would have been gutted, and once you pull that thread and unwind it, you’re back to a process that’s going to last years. We can’t wait years for housing. We just can’t.
ECB: Former mayor Mike McGinn has repeatedly implied that Murray has been profligate with spending on new initiatives during his term, and that the level of spending the city has been doing during the boom may not be sustainable in a downturn. What do you think of that critique—has Murray been a spendthrift?
JD: Here’s what I think is going to be critically important for the new mayor coming in. There has got to be a scrub of where we are in each one of these large levies, some of which are expiring, some of which aren’t, to make sure that we can account for how the money is being spent. I’ve lived in this town for a very long time—I was born and raised here—and I’ve seen many economic downturns. One will happen. And what happens in boom times in Seattle is, people tax themselves. Government starts trying to figure out, how can we push parts of the budget to other areas, and offload what you would normally consider operational costs that a city would do with its core resources into one-time funding.
“What I hear everywhere I go is people want to know, what’s the plan [for homelessness]? I think the city gets in its bunker sometimes and doesn’t communicate loudly or clearly enough to the public at large what the plan is and how it’s going to be measured.”
ECB: Can you give a couple of examples?
JD: Road maintenance. Are we paying for what we’re supposed to be paying for out of the [Move Seattle] levy that we passed [in 2015]? Are we paying for regular maintenance projects that should be coming out of of the general fund? I’m not saying that is what’s happening. but I know what government does is, you start thinking, ‘I need more money today for homeless encampments—where am I going to get it from?’ You’ve got to know what’s there. You’ve got to understand what budgeting mechanisms have been used to carry various parts of the city forward and which of those are sustainable and which of those will expire, and if they expire, how much is it going to cut into your central mission? We have a bunch of big and important levies that are going to start expiring, and the needs haven’t gotten less. They’ve gotten more. But there’s only so much capacity you can have to tax people and to spend it efficiently.
ECB: And yet, as long as I’ve been in Seattle, through downturns and boom times, we’ve always been willing to tax ourselves to pay for our priorities.
JD: I think we’re one of the most generous cities, because if people believe in something here in Seattle, we’ll put our money where our mouth is. But the obligation you have as an elected leader is to make sure that you honor that trust, because you want to be able to go back to them and say, ‘You gave us this money for this purpose. Here’s what we’ve done with it.’ In this region, we’re so lucky, because if people feel like you’re using the money for what you said you were going to use it for, and they can see results, they’ll keep giving you the green light.
ECB: I think one frustration you’re seeing right now is that people feel like they can’t see the results on homelessness, because it’s getting worse. What approach would you take to produce results that would be visible and measurable?
JD: The first thing you have to do is, you have to have an honest and open plan that includes making sure that the service providers are brought to [meet] the current needs of the homeless community and not the needs of 10 or 15 years ago. We have to continue to demand that they meet the standards that we’re setting and that they’re in alignment with not just providing short-term emergency shelter, but that we actually have a path to providing homes.
What I hear everywhere I go is people want to know, what’s the plan? I think the city gets in its bunker sometimes and doesn’t communicate loudly or clearly enough to the public at large what the plan is and how it’s going to be measured. And so I think you have to do that. I think you have to sit down with people, and the next mayor has to come in and say, Where’s our pathway? Now, what are our conclusions? And lay out very clearly, Here’s our framework. Here’s what we’re going to do for these various populations. And make it a strong collaborative effort not just in Seattle, but regionally, because you can’t solve this problem just at the borders of the city.
“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.”
ECB: Since you consider homelessness a regional problem, do you support the regional sales tax that’s supposed to be on the ballot in 2018?
JD: It hasn’t been proposed yet. I support the concept and the need for regional solutions, and I want to look clearly at what is going to be proposed.
ECB: You’ve said that in the Trump era, cities are going to have to figure out how to have local policies that reflect our values, and a local tax to address homelessness would seem to fit right into that.
JD: I think it’s a likely solution. But if you read the Poppe Report, in one reading, it says we have the resources we need—we just don’t have them arrayed in the right direction. But if you listen to people, not just here in Seattle but in the surrounding areas, it’s clear that if we have them, they’re not being utilized on a regional basis. So I think it’s possible that we need more resources, but I think we always jump to, ‘We need to support a tax.’
ECB: Barb Poppe has said herself that she thinks we need to spend more on our response to homelessness. And her report was talking mostly about shelter—the contention was that Seattle could get everybody under some kind of roof for the night, not that we could provide permanent housing for everyone without additional funds.
JD: Correct. And then you have the big component that’s not accounted for, which is mental health treatment dollars and addiction treatment, because you never will come close to addressing this need if you don’t have resources there. As you know, most of the money for treatment flows through the county and the shelter money flows through the city, and there’s never been a coordinated response to say, ‘Okay, what are we getting from that stream of money, and what more do we need to do to provide meaningful treatment and what are the other places where you can intercede?’ I think there could be much greater coordination between the city and the county. Because there are pretty clear and established pathways to homelessness and we have to have a holistic view in terms of not just getting people off the streets but preventing them from ending up there in the first instance.
“A friend that I’ve known for 20, 30 years—he’s a guy who’s on his feet 10 hours a day, working, working, working—finally was able to buy a duplex down in Georgetown four years ago, and for him, these laws had a huge impact.”
ECB: What would that holistic view include? Access to treatment on demand, including rehab? Because that gets very expensive very quickly.
JD: It’s very expensive. That’s why I say we as a society do not spend enough money on mental health services and addiction treatment. If you’re a poor person who has a problem with addiction, your ability to get meaningful treatment or access to treatment is marginal at best. One of the reasons our opiate addition problem has increased so much is that there just aren’t the [treatment] alternatives, and there are a lot of other barriers. Opioid addiction is one of the hardest addictions to really treat. Someone can start treatment, and they’ll drop out. And they’ll start again, and they’ll drop out. It take several efforts, usually, to keep anyone in any kind of sustained sobriety. And so we really suffer as a society, because we treat addiction as a moral failing or a personal failing. It’s not. It’s a health care problem, and it is one of the most misunderstood health care problems that we have in our society. There are so many other problems we have that we end, as taxpayers, paying for, so it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.
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: To take that example one step further, Vancouver is experimenting with providing heroin to some people with opiate addiction, which also reduces the risk of overdose from synthetic adulterants like fentanyl. Should we try that here?
JD: I don’t think a city can do that. I think you would just end up shutting down your possibility of having a health care solution. But what we do need to have is more access to methadone, to bupe [buprenorphine, a drug that reduces cravings and prevents withdrawal symptoms] , and to Narcan [an overdose-reversal drug] in every facility. One of the things that was said [at a community forum] last night that I think is true is that Narcan is kind of like the CPR of today. We’ve done a good job of distributing it to our first responders but we need to think about what are other places where we need to have that available and making sure people know how to use it. One of the [positive] things about having a monitored consumption site is that there is a health care professional on site who can make sure that someone doesn’t die, and who can give them information about treatment alternatives.
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 s 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. I’m not skeptical that we need different kinds of funding. We cannot continue as a city, region, or state to fund the things we need to fund on the tax system we have in place.
ECB: Some landlords have claimed that new renter protections, which bar landlords from refusing to rent to people because of their source of income and provide more time for tenants to pay all the up-front expenses of moving in to a new apartment, will put them out of business. Do you support those tenant protections?
JD: On [Section 8 housing voucher discrimination, you absoluately shouldn’t be able to do it. If a person otherwise is a suitable tenant, the fact that you wouldn’t take them because they’re poor is wrong.
On some of the other tenant protections, I think that these issues are real. There are incredible barriers for renters. But I also think we have to look at the landlords. A friend that I’ve known for 20, 30 years—he’s a guy who’s on his feet 10 hours a day, working, working, working—finally was able to buy a duplex down in Georgetown four years ago, and for him, these laws had a huge impact. He does okay, but it’s also his retirement [income]. What if you rent to someone and they don’t have to [immediately] come up with a security deposit, and they trash it in that first 30 days and leave? You then have nothing to fix it with. If you’re just a person who’s renting out the other side of your duplex, you feel lot more than the large property owner.
So seeing what the impacts are on these landlords and listening to them is going to be important to make sure that there aren’t these unintended consequences. There’s now becoming a gray market, where people just won’t post [rental listings], and they’ll only [rent] to people they know, and that’s going to shrink available stock too. So I think you have to look at what it’s doing to the market, what it’s doing to the small owners. But the concept of making rental housing affordable for people—absolutely.
