Week in Review: August 16, 2024 - with Robert Cruickshank

“The City Council Says Cracking Down on Sex Workers Will Create Services, Stop Sex Trafficking, and End Gun Violence. Don't Believe Them.” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Funds for student safety foreshadow fierce debate on Seattle budget” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times

“Council Sacrificed $7.75 Million in Mental Health Funding to Mayor’s Plan to Avoid New Taxes on Big Businesses” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger

"Council Rejects Full 2024 Funding for Youth Mental Health, Calls Previous Council Lazy and Irresponsible" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Marysville schools in ‘alarming’ financial condition, WA auditor says” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times

“Rising costs for WA school districts outpace funding, report finds” by Grace Deng from Washington State Standard

“State public lands commissioner race too close to call” by Melissa Santos from Axios

“Immoderate money and moderates’ misery” by Paul Queary, Tim Gruver, and Sara Kassabian from The Washington Observer

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.

Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. Welcome back!

[00:01:07] Robert Cruickshank: Thanks for having me again, Crystal.

[00:01:10] Crystal Fincher: Well, an eventful week, in a number of ways, this week. Starting out - talking about the Seattle City Council - and they kind of had a meltdown this week, just very challenging week in terms of priorities that they articulated, that some of them ran on. So I want to start by talking about a proposal by Councilmember Cathy Moore to crack down on sex work on Aurora Avenue in an attempt to address gun violence. How is this supposed to work and what is happening?

[00:01:48] Robert Cruickshank: So there are genuine issues on Aurora Avenue. I know people who live very close to it - near Aurora and Northgate - and there have been significant acts of gun violence within the last few months. And so, of course, you want City leaders to do something about it, but what Cathy Moore has decided to do is blame sex workers. And if you go up and down Aurora lately, you will see a visible presence of sex workers at almost any time of the day. And Cathy Moore's theory is that - Well, because people are out there walking the street, soliciting sex, that's attracting gun violence and that's what's making these communities unsafe - which is itself a questionable argument. But to Cathy Moore and the rest of her allies on the City Council, this is another example of - any public safety problem is solved with more cops and putting people in prison - even if that's not what actually is going to work in this case. And that is a reality here. Her theory is that by arresting sex workers, you're going to crack down on gun crime - which means an already overburdened police department that already takes way too long to respond to actual violent crime, including gun violence, is going to instead spend its time harassing sex workers on Aurora. There's no demonstrated link between going after sex workers and reducing gun violence - you're going to distract the police from what they actually ought to be doing. Cathy Moore is saying - Well, we'll provide services for these sex workers. But what exactly are these services? Do they exist? Not really. Reporting by Erica Barnett in PubliCola points out that that's not really there. Cathy Moore is kind of hand-waving that these exist when they don't.

And one other factor around this that was really troubling is the way in which council central staff - which their job is to be the nonpartisan independent analysts that advise the City Council - wrote up in their original analysis of this proposal that there had been some flaws with the idea, both in the past in Seattle and elsewhere. Well, either Cathy Moore or Sara Nelson or someone went in and altered that memo to remove the criticism of the proposal. So the City Council is not getting unbiased and independent truth under Sara Nelson, who ousted the previous head of central staff to put her own person in. They're turning this central staff, which is supposed to be the policy wonk shop of the City Council, into more sycophants - yes men, yes women - on the central staff. They're good people who work there, but what's happening under the leadership of this Council is even the independent analysis is now being bent and shaped to the whims of the Council majority. A number of sex workers came and spoke and pointed out how this proposal is not going to help solve anything. All you're going to do, at best, is throw innocent people or nonviolent criminals into prison while pushing sex trafficking away from Aurora and into other neighborhoods and other streets. And you're not going to do anything to tackle gun violence because that's, again, tangentially related at best. And yet the Council just plowed right ahead, ignoring every objection that was put in their path.

[00:04:51] Crystal Fincher: They did plow right ahead and ignore every objection. It seems like they have a serious issue with just receiving feedback - positive, negative - if it doesn't exactly fit their preconceived notion of what someone that they agreed with at some point in time in the past said, that they seem to reject it outright. Which is concerning because as we have talked about several times, that they've talked about - they're new to governance, they're new to a lot of these issues. They've had to basically get 101 courses on how government works on these issues. And it seems like they take issue with just some of the basic information about how government works, about how previous initiatives have played out. And interestingly, this isn't a new attempt at policy. Seattle actually did this for a while before - under Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran, who was the city attorney before Pete Holmes - and that is part of the reason why he was voted out of office and why Pete Holmes was initially voted in. I completely agree with the need to do something here, to intervene in violent crime that we've seen. And interestingly, while violent crime is going down in most of the nation, it's actually increasing in Seattle. Which is odd - because what you see the City Council aggressively addressing are misdemeanors, are going after sex workers - seem to be everything except for directly funding and implementing interventions that have shown to be effective in reducing violent crime. That is actually a surprising disconnect that I didn't think was going to be apparent. So I do wish they would do more. And I think most residents are in the place - wanting them to do more of what we know works and actually addressing the problem that everyone sees with violent crime - but it doesn't seem like they're doing that.

[00:06:53] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and there is a solution that's been on the table since 2020 - and that is alternative response. Public continues to strongly support the idea of standing up some public safety division, whether it's under SPD or independent of it, in which you have public safety people - we call officers or not - who go around without guns, but who have authority to intervene. And these are the people who should be tackling misdemeanors. These are the people who should be talking to the sex workers. These are the people who should be dealing with encampments. Instead, what this City Council wants is armed officers to do it all. And that's not going to happen - there's a nationwide shortage of cops. This Council believes that - Oh, we have a shortage because the previous Council was mean to the police. No, it has nothing to do with it at all. When you have a shortage of officers, you need to stand up an alternative so that the people who do carry guns can focus on gun violence. But instead, you're just going to burden them with even more work - and so cops are going to be talking to sex workers rather than going after someone seen with a gun. This doesn't make any sense. But to this City Council, it's not about sense. It's not about good public policy. They have a very deeply ideological belief that the problem with public safety is not enough cops and not enough jails. The answer, therefore, in their mind is more cops, more jails. And they have made it clear they're going to just mindlessly push that as long as they're in office - regardless of what the public says, regardless of what the facts say, and regardless of the actual consequences on the ground.

[00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's quite concerning. In fact, they also discussed the LEAD program - the city's leading diversion program - which had received praise and had shown to be effective. Everyone from the county prosecutor, police officers, social workers, people from the city had long praised this. This was actually an uncontroversial, moderate progressive lauded, law enforcement-supported program. And yet we saw the City Council really seeming to not understand what the purpose of it was, but seeming to want to make a point that - Hey, this isn't working right. Well, why aren't they taking more referrals for these issues that we're seeing on the street? Well, the reason why is because the City Council passed a law making several misdemeanor offenses, like using drugs in public, illegal. And so they're getting referrals from police - their time is now being tied up in these petty crimes and issues. It's like City Council put into motion some things that are impeding a response that's going to prevent violent crime. And they can't even recognize the consequences of their own actions and how it is inhibiting a response that's going to make a difference for residents on the street.

[00:09:43] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah. And that just gets to the other big thing they did this week, which is defund by almost half the $20 million that was approved last year in new JumpStart Taxes for student mental health services at local schools. And this came out of a shooting at Ingraham High School in North Seattle a few years ago where students - Seattle Student Union - came together. And they first went to the school district and said - We need more money for mental health services. The school district said - We're out of money, the Legislature's not giving us what we need. And so they have the very smart idea of going to the City Council, which does have more ability to raise money. And they got it - $20 million for student mental health services. Well, now all of a sudden, the mayor's office, Sara Nelson, Maritza Rivera, and others decided - Well, let's cut that in half. Spend $10 million to help prevent student gun violence. And as we saw earlier this year, gun violence at schools is still a major problem - at Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle, at Garfield High School in Central District - and this money was designed to help provide something we know, from extensive evidence and what the students themselves are saying, will help solve the problem. The City Council said no. The underlying reason here is the JumpStart Tax comes at the expense of the Chamber of Commerce and big corporations who believe - probably rightly - that they own the City Council and run the City Council. The City's facing a $260 million budget deficit, and the mayor and the City Council want to use that JumpStart money to fill the hole. They don't want to have to go raise any other taxes on big businesses to keep public services going. And so the City Council thought it was a bright idea to raid the money for student mental health services.

That's bad enough, but the way in which they went about it was pretty awful. The condescension that we heard from Councilmember Rivera, from Councilmember Moore, from Councilmember Bob Kettle towards his colleague Tammy Morales, was appalling. This idea that you just spoke about with regards to the prostitution ordinance, we saw it again with the student mental health funding - where this group of fairly incompetent legislators who don't really know what they're doing, telling everybody else that - No, it's the public that doesn't get it. It's the public that doesn't understand. We, on the City Council, do. You know, they actually don't. And what they're doing is systematically ignoring and silencing the voices of the public, the voices of the students who get this.

But one other thing that stands out to me here is one of the few councilmembers who did vote to keep the full $20 million for student mental health services was Tanya Woo, who, as we know, last week got 38% in her primary, with Alexis Mercedes Rinck taking more than 50%. And yet her colleagues, who you would think would want to help bail her out, give her a win that she could take back the community and say - No, really, I'm listening - they threw Tanya Woo under the bus on this and ensured that they slashed the funding. Dan Strauss came in with an amendment to add two and a half million back. So the City's going to spend $12.5 million on student mental health services rather than the full $20 million, which is just the City Council saying that they don't actually care about students. They don't actually care about solving gun violence. They really only care about locking people up, hiring more cops, and giving the Chamber of Commerce whatever it is that they want.

[00:13:00] Crystal Fincher: Well, and this was especially cynical because, again, violence at schools is concerning everyone. It has parents and families across the city concerned about sending their kids to school, the kids concerned about whether them and their friends are safe at school. This was an issue going into last year's election. And Councilmember Rivera ran on this issue. She said she was so concerned about gun violence at Ingraham High School in her district, and that's part of what motivated her to run - keeping kids, her kids, everyone safe. So clearly, this evidence-based intervention that families turned out to support - parents and students jointly - saying this is exactly what we need. All of the body of evidence across the country saying - yes, this is a very useful intervention, this does prevent youth violence. And to essentially tell the families and kids - You just don't understand. You don't understand the difference between a symbolic vote and a real vote - as if real money is not attached to this vote somehow, I don't know how she's defining symbolic versus real. And basically - You should be thankful for getting anything. I know we're going back on our promise, but if you think about it, it's more than you could have gotten. Like, they could be giving nothing. Just the dismissiveness that we hear in response to criticism and response to really holding these elected officials accountable to what they said themselves is alarming. And I think that it is a continued misstep to continue to ignore it. I think that the city spoke very loudly and clearly that they absolutely care about addressing youth violence, that they want to make sure that we are bringing in the additional revenue necessary to provide that and additional social safety net services that help. And to not provide this funding so they can avoid taxing many of their corporate donors, and saying - You know what, we really think we just want to use this money to close the budget gap that we continue to make bigger instead of addressing violence - is whoo, that's a choice that I don't think history is going to look upon them fondly for that one.

[00:15:22] Robert Cruickshank: And I don't think the voters will either. This is another example of this City Council being out of step with what the people of Seattle want, and there are going to be consequences for that.

[00:15:33] Crystal Fincher: I also want to talk about just schools across the state. We are in the midst of a school funding crisis. We are just about at the point where students are going to head back to school after the summer break. But a number of these school districts, whether it's Marysville or others, are in peril and financially unstable. What is happening?

[00:15:57] Robert Cruickshank: Well, there's a lot of attention being focused this week in the news on Marysville - the public schools just north of Everett - where they had levies fail in 2022, which sent them into a financial tailspin. OSPI is having to monitor their budget. A State Auditor report came out earlier this week saying it's the worst school district funding crisis they've seen in 17 years. But the underlying problem is not that Marysville is mismanaging its money. The underlying problem is the State Legislature isn't fully funding our schools. And you can see it because Marysville is not the only district that's in trouble - they're just the furthest along because they had those levy failures. Districts all over the state, including here in Seattle and elsewhere - talked to people from Bainbridge Island, in the Northshore District in Bothell and Kenmore and Woodinville, from eastern Washington, southwestern Washington and Vancouver parents are organizing around this. It's pretty much every district in the state - large or small, east or west, urban or rural - are facing serious budget problems, partly because of inflation. But also largely because the State Legislature has been slowly letting the air out of the funding balloon - they are $2 billion short of where they should be if the money had kept pace with inflation.

There's a new report that came out this week from League of Education voters showing that the State Legislature is systematically shortchanging our public schools. And this wasn't supposed to happen. The McCleary case, which many people have heard about, was filed in 2007 by a family from Chimacum out on the Olympic Peninsula where levies had failed and the school district had to cut its spending. The idea was that the state will come in and provide money so that levy failures don't harm students anymore. And yet here we are looking at Marysville - yet again, we're back right where we started - where if a levy fails, then budgets are balanced on the backs of students. And the sad thing is that this is now on the Democrats. When the McCleary decision was implemented by the Legislature - they came up with a funding solution in 2017 - Republicans had a single seat majority in the state Senate, so there had to be some sort of deal cut. But since that fall, when Manka Dhingra won her Senate race in Redmond, Democrats have controlled the State Legislature. So they've had seven years to fix it. This is now entirely on the Democratic Party to step in and provide the funding needed to prevent more cuts in our public schools. And it's just a remarkable contrast to me to have Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who not only made universal free school meals happen when the Washington Democrats wouldn't, he also poured $2 billion of money into public schools in Minnesota last year, whereas Democrats in Washington state's legislature aren't doing that. And I think this is a urgent crisis. It is hitting everyone everywhere. Our kids are paying the price for our State Legislature, and especially the Democratic majority, seem to not really care about this crisis facing our public schools.

[00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: There definitely is a crisis. The Legislature definitely has to fix it. I don't know that it's a fair characterization to say that - Uh, the Democratic legislators just don't care. I do think that we have had a structural issue, particularly in the Senate, where we've had people like Mark Mullet really standing in the way of any additional revenue. I think that we've seen the House be willing to step up and take on a number of issues. Revenue is probably an element of this, which the House has been more willing to do. But really that there has been a moderate roadblock in the Senate that I think has been challenging. On the bright side, I think there is a chance where we could fix that issue potentially and make the landscape in the Senate much more hospitable to taking on issues like this and fixing it once and for all. Because I think essentially - negotiating with people like Mark Mullet is like negotiating with a Republican. He has stood in the way of revenue and of funding in the same way that Republicans had. So I don't know that it's a fair characterization just to say Democrats overall. But I do think there have been particularly some Democrats in the Senate that have stood in the way of progress for the whole - and I'm excited about the opportunity, hopefully, to change that this cycle.

[00:20:08] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think that is certainly true. And I think you're seeing - with Mark Mullet now out of the state Senate, Kevin Van De Wege out of the state Senate, some of these moderates out of the way - there's more that can be done. What stands out to me, though, is you can contrast with Congress, where we have a robust progressive caucus led by our own Pramila Jayapal, who stand up pretty vocally and push. And what I don't see happening, at least in the public here in Washington state, is progressive legislators in Olympia standing up and pushing back. We hear from the leadership of the Legislature, including the House - they've told parents that public education is going to have to wait, it's not a priority right now. These are things that we hear from the legislators that lead a lot of parents and teachers to believe that the Democratic majority doesn't have their back on this. I think once we come into the 2025 session - seeing the scale of the crisis facing our schools will put this to the test. If the Democratic majority does take their paramount duty to amply fund our public schools seriously, then we should see a solution finally, especially with these roadblocks in the Senate gone. We'll see what happens. Obviously, a key piece of this - is worth mentioning - is the capital gains tax. With that being on the ballot this fall, we have to preserve that. Keeping the capital gains tax will make it significantly easier to fund our public schools - they're one of the recipients of the revenues of that capital gains tax. We fought hard for it and we need to protect it.

[00:21:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I want to talk about the state of the primary races that we have now. What we, I don't think were anticipating, is recording a week plus after the primary election - we're recording this on Thursday, August 15th - we still don't know who won the Commissioner of Public Lands race. It is still too close to call. Looks like it's going to wind up with a razor thin margin, probably finish within the margin that will require a recount of the ballots. What is going on with that race? How do you think that's going to turn out?

[00:22:12] Robert Cruickshank: Well, it's super close. And the reason it matters is first place is Jaime Herrera Beutler, former Republican member of Congress. Second place is Democrat Dave Upthegrove, King County Councilmember, and maybe 2000 votes behind him right now - at least the last time I looked - is Sue Pederson, who's a MAGA Republican. And Upthegrove and Pederson have been trading second place, third place ever since Election Night, which means there's a very real possibility that it would be two Republicans. in the general election - the top two - for the Commissioner of Public Lands and Democrats would be shut out. There's talk about maybe running a write-in campaign, but Republicans have tried that when they get shut out of the top two and it doesn't really work. It's hard to convince voters to do this. It's a fairly onerous process. And then who would the candidate be?

[00:22:58] Crystal Fincher: It'd probably be Hilary Franz, but yes, we don't want to go there.

[00:23:01] Robert Cruickshank: Right. She's looking for work - you know, she didn't do too well in her own primary. But a lot of people in Democratic politics are asking this - how do we prevent this from happening in the future? How did this happen in the first place? There was Rebecca Saldaña who'd been running for this seat, Mona Das had been running for this seat - and they got pushed out by a Democratic Party leadership that was worried about this scenario happening. But then two more Democrats filed late and all of a sudden you had four or five Democrats. Top-two system is a process that can lead to an outcome where only two candidates in the same party go forward. We tend to not notice as much or care when it's two Democrats - we're a blue state. Those of us who vote for Democrats think - Oh, that's great - but when it happens to be two Republicans in a fairly blue state, you've got a problem. And an obvious solution is to change the primary process - ranked choice voting solves this. Short of that, I think the Democratic Party is going to have to look at doing a single statewide endorsement. Right now, the 88 different county Democratic parties and legislative district Democratic parties can endorse whoever they want - they can endorse different people for the same race. In other states, such as California - no, there's a single statewide slate that all Democratic parties at the local level are bound by. And you can tell people, this is the Democratic candidate. Now, that has its own flaws. That process is not flaw-free, but it does have the advantage of saying - This is the Democratic candidate in a multi-candidate field. But I think the obvious best solution is to really push the legislature to adopt RCV, or we're going to have to have this fight on the ballot.

[00:24:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we will continue to pay attention to where that race ends up. Another notable event happened this week in a city of Seattle council race where Alexis Mercedes Rinck - leading a crowded primary. She wound up in first place with over 50% of the vote, which is an incredible result - powerful statement by the voters that they are really excited by her vision. Tanya Woo following - I think Tanya is at 38% right now. And this week we saw someone who often does not endorse in these races make an endorsement for Alexis Mercedes Rinck. Who hopped in and picked a side?

[00:25:18] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, that was King County Executive Dow Constantine, alongside now King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, endorsing Alexis Mercedes Rinck. I think Teresa Mosqueda's endorsement is notable, but perhaps not that surprising given her ideological affinities with Alexis. But Dow Constantine is a very cautious politician, very sort of normie Democrat, middle-of-the-road guy. And for him to come in and endorse Alexis, I think is a pretty big deal. It shows two things. One, Alexis is for real. You don't get more than 50% in a crowded primary without being for real. You don't beat the incumbent by 12 points without being for real. Alexis has run an excellent campaign - uniting progressives, unions, Democrats all behind her - and that showed in the primary. What also shows is that this Seattle City Council is unpopular with the electorate. There's polling from the Northwest Progressive Institute that showed that a few months ago. This has been confirmed with the primary results. And now you're seeing normie, moderate, mainstream Democratic politicians endorsing against incumbents on the City Council. The City Council is unpopular. They either don't understand that or they don't care - I don't know which is worse - but they are going to continue, I think, down this path until they keep losing seats. We talked about this earlier. It is just really stunning to me that they did not feel any need to change course or help out their colleague, Tanya Woo, after she got trounced in the primary. Woo is in deep trouble. I don't see how you come back from a 12-point deficit in a general election where the electorate will be even more favorable towards Alexis than it is right now. Dow Constantine has been around a long time - he understands politics - he's not going to make this move if he's not confident he's backing the winning candidate. And then we're going to go into 2025 with Sara Nelson up for re-election, Bruce Harrell up for re-election. I don't think the incumbents in City Hall understand the degree to which they are alienating the electorate. Everyone else seems to, though, including Dow Constantine.

[00:27:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really interesting to see how that's turning out. But certainly seeing people get involved in this race that we often don't see making endorsements, especially at the city level.

I also want to talk about a larger trend that we saw. We saw people who were Democrats - who were saying they're proud, moderate Democrats, almost running against what they consider to be the left wing, talking about people being extreme left wing of the party, in addition to running against MAGA people - really trying to make the case that there is an unseen, unheard, middle-of-the-road, moderate voter that is really the majority of voters in Washington. And there are people who feel like the Democratic Party has become too extreme and the Republican Party has become too extreme - and they're just stranded there in the middle - and they were going to be a unifying candidate. So we saw Mark Mullet, Kevin Van De Wege really strike in that vein and spend a lot of money in pursuit of doing so. And what happened?

[00:28:21] Robert Cruickshank: They lost and it wasn't close. Mark Mullet got blown out of the water. He got single-digit percentage, something like 40 points behind where Bob Ferguson is. And this should be no surprise. Voters don't actually want moderate centrist candidates. They want candidates who are going to solve their problems. And moderate centrists don't do that. Because what an actual moderate centrist does is try to keep big business happy, and that usually comes at the expense of solving a voter's problem. You can see in Washington state, your mainstream Democrat, who's liberal, a little progressive - depending on the issue - does really well. Whether it's Bob Ferguson, Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray. Kamala Harris is going to do very, very well here this fall. Dow Constantine routinely wins by a large margin in King County. You can look at up and down the ballot and see that there's a type of Democrat who thrives. And Bob Ferguson has found that lane, Jay Inslee found that lane, and they do well. Mark Mullet coming in thinking that voters don't like that - that voters wanted someone further to the right - was simply wrong. And you could see that even here in Seattle, where Andrea Suarez, the very right wing - really genuinely a Republican, she speaks at Republican events - running as a Democrat against Shaun Scott in the open seat in the 43rd Legislative District. Shaun Scott did very, very well. He's in the mid 50% range, almost 60% in the primary. And Suarez was endorsed by almost all of the new city councilmembers who share her right-wing approach. And Suarez is mired in the 30% range. You can look again at the City Council itself - we've talked about Tanya Woo and Alexis Mercedes Rinck. Alexis Mercedes Rinck has done a very good job running as a normie progressive Democrat - the type that Seattle loves and routinely elects. Teresa Mosqueda kept winning her election by 20%, even in 2021 when Lorena González went down. So there is a type that the city likes, a type that the state likes - and Mullet and his friends are just simply wrong about what the electorate wanted. Now, you would have thought that Mark Mullet would have understood - there was a flashing red warning sign when he only beat his progressive challenger, Ingrid Anderson, by 60 votes in the 2020 election out in his Senate district in Issaquah. He didn't heed that warning, but learned the hard way what voters actually want.

[00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think we've heard, with Democratic majorities in the legislature and a Democratic governor, there have been people confused because we frequently hear - Well, Republicans aren't going to go for that. We need to negotiate with Republicans. They're going to filibuster, get in the way. So there's kind of this pre-negotiation that happens before there's any real pushback on something, saying we got to make this legislation more moderate. We've got to make it more palatable to Republicans. A lot of people are going - Why? They're protesting against government and supporting extreme people. We're not having the same type of conversation. And I think that residents have grown wary of that. I think school funding is part of that equation. I think just not seeing the type of progress that we're seeing in other states - like Minnesota, like Michigan - is making people look around and going, How are they doing that in swing states where they have many more Republicans and we're struggling to do some of the same things here in Washington? And so we're seeing some of those races and some of those challengers emerge.

I think another notable result was in the 9th Congressional District, where we advanced two Democrats - not a Democrat and Republican there. I think for a lot of South King County legislators thinking - You know, we're more suburban, there's more right-wing people around here. And there are some. But there are actually more - and they're more organized - on the left, saying we have some serious structural issues that we need to address. We need to make some real progress. And just settling for incrementalism or blaming Republicans for not being willing to even take on the fight is not what people are looking for right now. And so it's going to be really interesting to see how these races carry on in the general election. And just FYI, if someone can let me know what is going on in the 25th Legislative District - I'm not even sure. Even over the past couple cycles, it just doesn't seem to make sense what is happening with vote totals and spending and comparing different candidates and where they seem to be positioned and the results don't seem to be - what's happening with that? I don't know the answer and I haven't been following that closely, but we will continue to follow all these races in the general election.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 16th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter at @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.