By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle’s Republican city attorney, Ann Davison, ran unsuccessfully for state and local office twice before defeating abolitionist Nicole Thomas Kennedy in 2021. Davison said she became a Republican in 2020, during the first Trump administration. Now, she wants to continue directing the city’s legal branch during Trump’s second term.

The city attorney’s office will decide whether, and how hard, to fight federal efforts to track down undocumented immigrants and their families, and weigh those decisions against the potential loss of federal funds that help pay for things like housing, transportation, and human services. Whoever wins the position will also have to advise a very green city council on legislation, defend the city in police misconduct lawsuits, and decide how and whether to prosecute a maze of new laws designed to crack down on drug users, sex workers, and people living outdoors.

Election reform and tenant advocate Rory O’Sullivan says he’s the best fit to lead the city attorney’s office through these uncertain times. A former managing director at the Housing Justice Project, democracy voucher enthusiast, and onetime candidate for state senate, O’Sullivan now runs his own law firm helping primarily low-income people get the unemployment benefits they’re owed. He also helped create the city’s public election funding program and served on the commission that redrew Seattle’s city council districts.

I sat down with O’Sullivan in Columbia City last month. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PubliCola [ECB]: We haven’t talked in a long time—maybe since you were seeking the 37th District seat. So tell me a bit about why you’re interested in this position.

Rory O’Sullivan [RO]: I think the city attorney’s office has an opportunity to do a lot of good things, and I’ve been really disappointed in the direction that that current city attorney is taking things. The office has an opportunity to work with the Seattle Municipal Court on therapeutic court options instead of closing down community court, as Ann Davison has done. They have an opportunity to negotiate contracts with the jails to ensure that jails are providing appropriate services so that when somebody is released, they’re going to be in a better position to succeed.

The city attorney’s office also has an opportunity to do really good enforcement of some of Seattle’s wage ordinances. The way Seattle’s labor laws are enforced is that we have the Office of Labor Standards, and they do the investigation, and they have an enforcement opportunity. But when an employer is resistant, the case gets referred to the city attorney’s office for litigation.

I think that Office of Labor Standards just doesn’t want to refer cases over, because they’re worried that the city attorney is not going to handle it properly, because Ann Davison has questioned the those attorneys on the positions that they’ve taken against employers. [I would make] sure that the folks at the Office of Labor Standards have confidence that the city attorney is going to take these cases seriously. I think just an immediate change of philosophy at the top is going to change a lot of things pretty quickly.

ECB: What are some of the policies that Ann Davison has put into place in her time at the city attorney’s office that you would want to reverse?

RO: Ann Davison closed down community court. I would want to reinstate therapeutic court options to ensure that we’re giving folks the services that they need to avoid interacting with criminal legal system in the future and reduce recidivism.

ECB: Community court is very easy to end. You just refuse to send cases there. It doesn’t have any cases. It shuts down. It seems harder to reopen and fund again from scratch.

RO: What Judge [Damon] Shadid and [former city attorney] Pete Holmes set up before is, they had gotten grant funding. They had partnerships with Seattle-King County Public Health. All of that infrastructure is there and there are still grants that you can apply for. Obviously, it would be a lot better if you had partners in the city council and the mayoral administration who were on board with it as well. And yes, it’ll absolutely take time. It’s not something that you can just snap your fingers and make happen. But I think there are opportunities there.

ECB: What’s the next item on your list?

RO: Ensuring that the office is appropriately spending resources on things like DUI and DV prosecution. Right now, the office is way behind on DUI prosecutions. There are multiple cases where somebody has been arrested for DUI, the case has been referred to the city attorney’s office, the city attorney’s office sits on it, and then the person reoffends. So  we are being put in danger, our public safety is worse off, because the current city attorney is prosecuting protesters and spending resources on other things that don’t improve public safety.

ECB: A lot of Ann Davison’s priorities are law now, like the “stay out” areas for drugs and prostitution and the law allowing police to arrest people for using drugs in public How will you unwind those priorities, given that those laws are on the books?

RO: One of the things that makes the city attorney position a powerful position is you have prosecutorial discretion. When Pete Holmes came into office, he immediately dismissed every single marijuana possession case that the city had, and he did not file any new ones. So as the city attorney, you can decide what you’re going to prosecute and where you’re not going to prosecute. If there are statutes that you think are not a good use of the city’s resources, you do not have to pursue those cases.

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