Week in Review: August 9, 2024 - with Rian Watt

Seasoned Litigator Sal Mungia Presents His Case for High Court Seat from Hacks & Wonks

Hacks & Wonks Post-Primary Roundtable YouTube Livestream | August 13th, 2024, 7:30pm

August 6, 2024 Primary Results | Washington Secretary of State

Washington for Equitable Representation

“Alexis Mercedes Rinck Had a Good Election Night” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Seattle’s Rushed Plan to Jail Low-Level Offenders Passes Its First Hurdle” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist

“Wild Day at City Hall as Council Blocks Social Housing from Ballot, Shuts Down Meeting, Retreats to Their Offices to Approve New Jail Contract” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Seattle Council Punts Social Housing Funding Vote to 2025” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

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[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. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksandWonks[.com] and in our episode notes.

If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Washington Supreme Court candidate Sal Mungia about his extensive legal experience and judicial philosophy as key qualifications for this year's open position. And a reminder that we will be having a Post-Primary Political Consultant Roundtable this coming Tuesday, August 13th at 7:30 p.m. that will feature a panel that includes Heather Weiner, Riall Johnson, Stephen Paolini, and me as your host. We'll be breaking down the primary election results from the perspective of the people working on campaigns. We'll be streaming live starting at 7:30 on our Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accounts - and I hope you'll all join us. 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: Senior Advisor at The Urbanist and Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, Rian Watt.

[00:01:48] Rian Watt: Great to be back and thanks for the introduction. As always, I just wanted to note that I'm here speaking for myself and not for any of the organizations that I work for.

[00:01:56] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. Well, we had a primary election this past Tuesday. We vote by mail here in Washington state, so we get daily drops - and the story has not been finalized for some races, but we do have a conclusive view of what the general election is going to look like in a number of these races. The results from the primary so far for governor - Bob Ferguson, the Democrat, and Dave Reichert, the Republican, will be advancing to the general election. Bob Ferguson with 45% at this time, Dave Reichert with 28% at this time. In the attorney general race, we have Pete Serrano, Republican, and Nick Brown advancing - with Pete having 42.3%, Nick Brown right now at 35.5%. Also in the primary, Democrat Manka Dhingra ended up with 22.2% and will not be advancing to the general election. For lands commissioner, this is a race that is still not completely decided. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican, is in first place with 22.6% at this time. After we record today, there will be another drop - here on Thursday, and then on Friday - those will probably provide a lot more direction. Sue Pederson, another Republican, is currently in second place with 20.8%. Dave Upthegrove is the leading Democrat in this race with 19.9% - there are just about 10,000 votes, at this point in time, separating the second and third place positions. Patrick DePoe, a Democrat, finished with 13.4% at this time. Allen Lebovitz with 10.6%, Kevin Van De Wege with 8%, and Jeralee Anderson with 4.8%. It's a very close race - we will continue to see how that plays out. So that's kind of a roundup of the big statewide races - starting off with just your thoughts on attorney general.

[00:04:02] Rian Watt: This was an interesting race that pitted two Democrats with a lot of institutional support and a lot of experience, who are well qualified for this role, against the Republican mayor of Pasco, who wants to roll back protections on so many issues across our state. I think that the long-term impact here is likely to be more on the Senate side where Manka Dhingra will return, now that she has not advanced in this primary, and is likely to be a contender for Senate Majority Leader in the next session should the Democrats maintain a majority in the Senate. Nick Brown ran a really, really strong campaign - managed to get endorsed by almost all of the major groups, even while facing a strong candidate like Senator Dhingra. He also is, I think, probably the first statewide elected official in Washington to have appeared not just in Candidate Survivor, but in actual Survivor - and I strongly encourage listeners to Google the photos of that time in Nick Brown's life. This was a good race.

[00:04:57] Crystal Fincher: This was a good race - I completely agree - two very qualified Democratic candidates. And Democrats kind of win in all of these scenarios because we do have Senator Manka Dhingra returning to our State Senate where she has been a very capable leader. And yeah, just from a campaign perspective, what an excellent race Nick Brown has run, continues to run. It's the exact kind of campaign that can win this race against a concerning Republican challenger and really get people engaged in why this is so important - so really excited about that. What's your take on this public lands commissioner race?

[00:05:36] Rian Watt: Well, for your listeners, it's probably worth running through those numbers again. So in this race, we have one, two, three, four, five Democrats running. Between them, they have 56% of the vote, and what we are likely to end up with is two Republicans in the general election. I think this is the strongest possible case for ranked choice voting in Washington state that you can imagine. And I encourage everyone who is dissatisfied with these results to go to the website for Washington for Equitable Representation, which is a multiracial coalition of folks who are working on electoral systems reform in Washington, and sign up to find out how you can help bring ranked choice voting to Washington - because we should simply not be in a position where the majority of voters in the state vote for Democrats and we end up with two Republicans on a statewide ballot this November.

[00:06:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. I don't know if I'm ready to say this race is over yet and the two Republicans are likely to advance. Again, we're recording this on Thursday morning - definitely want to see what the numbers show for the total ballots remaining with today's drop, as well as what the split is in percentage. Big challenge here is that it is not unusual to see - on a statewide basis - if there is strong support, particularly in King, Pierce, Snohomish Counties, that significant deficits can be made up as the later votes are counted. This is a more challenging situation because there isn't just one acceptable Democrat in this race. There are a number of different people who are identifying as Democrats who have support from various organizations and bases - and any consolidation and rebound in these results may not be as strong because it could be split between several different candidates. Lots of conversations about - Well, the Party should do a better job consolidating and helping keep candidates out of the race. That's always much more easily said than done. People do have free will. And we did see a couple candidates say - Hey, we are willing to step aside to ensure that a Democrat gets through to the general election. And others say - Hey, I think I am qualified to be that Democrat who gets through to the election, and I believe I have a valuable perspective. It's hard to say, with a number of these, that they conclusively shouldn't have been in. I will also add, it's hard for me to say that some of the people - or at least one of the people - who got out, should have gotten out either. There's lots of shoulda, coulda, wouldas that you always could do with this.

I guess the lesson that I would take with this - certainly we would be better served by ranked choice voting - that is a given in so many different ways. I also think that it's easy, especially sitting here in King County, to overestimate how known people are in different parts of the state and how easy it is to get known in different parts of the state. Especially with our loss of local media - media consolidation, media closings down on the ground - where a lot of people were able to get information about candidates and primaries for free before, campaigns have to pay at this point in time to ensure that their message gets directly to voters. That's not optional when you aren't known in the majority of the state, and the three leading Democratic candidates were not known in a majority of the state. In that instance, it's imperative upon the campaign, allied organizations who participate in independent expenditures to have a plan - in the primary - to ensure that someone gets through, even with excellent endorsements, even with an excellent track record in getting out and campaigning, as these candidates certainly did. Still need to get that message directly in front of voters. I think it's really easy for us to overestimate how tuned in the average person is in politics. The average person figures out there's an election when they get their primary ballot. Then they're like - Who are these people? if they haven't heard of them before. Sometimes if there's a lot of people they haven't heard of, that creates some paralysis with the ballot - it can intimidate people instead of motivate them to vote. So really doing all we can as an entire ecosystem to ensure that we are appropriately, substantially backing qualified, legitimate candidates in these primaries to ensure they get through is an important thing. And I think there are discussions that can be had around that, certainly, as we move on. Are there any other notable statewide races or trends that you've seen?

[00:10:19] Rian Watt: I think it's fairly notable how comprehensive Bob Ferguson's victory in the governor's race was. To your point about a tremendous amount of candidates - I think there was something like 28 candidates on the ballot for governor, not including the three or four Bob Fergusons who were put up to run by the Republican Party in an effort that was quickly and hilariously squashed by the Ferguson campaign. At the moment, Bob Ferguson has 45% of the vote. As you've noted a couple of times, there'll be a ballot drop between now and when listeners hear this. Dave Reichert, who will be the Republican opponent as expected, is at only 28% - that number obviously will come up as we get some consolidation among the other Republican candidates. But 45% is a very solid position for Ferguson to be entering the November election with. And I think, although there had been some concern about the Mullet for Governor train, we look at the record and at the 5.87% of the vote that that campaign with all of its media attention got. And we see that Bob Ferguson doesn't have a lot to worry about.

[00:11:17] Crystal Fincher: I just have to note - wow, what an underperformance by Dave Reichert. This is supposed to be the biggest Republican standard bearer that they have in the state. This is the race that you put your strongest Republican into, and we've seen them be competitive not that long ago in statewide races. And my goodness, to wind up under 30%. As you said, it's not like Bob Ferguson didn't have tons of additional opponents on here. He did - and he consolidated the vote, made the case. But wow, Republicans appear to be certainly more fractured than Democrats when it comes to certainly this statewide race. And Reichert seems to be underperforming other Republicans in statewide races. And so it also makes you wonder - what is it about him in particular that's not connecting with voters? I think that there's a lot of introspection that's going to be happening in the next few weeks with that campaign, but that was one of the more surprising numbers to see Reichert winding up under 30% - still under 30% at this time - just pretty stunning.

[00:12:23] Rian Watt: That's right.

[00:12:24] Crystal Fincher: Now, we had some really interesting results in the city of Seattle - one in a citywide race, the Position 8 race - a vacancy that was created when Teresa Mosqueda was elected to the King County Council. Tanya Woo, who had just lost a race to Tammy Morales, was then appointed to serve in that seat and so needs to stand for election this year. This is the primary to narrow down the field to two. So it included Tanya Woo, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Saunatina Sanchez, and Tariq Yusuf in this race. And wow, Alexis is winning this race with quite an impressive margin. What was your takeaway from this?

[00:13:08] Rian Watt: Well, I think this is a reflection of two things - Alexis's strength and Tanya Woo's complete inability to win elections in the city. For those who are counting, this is now the second straight election that Tanya Woo has lost - she first lost the race against Tammy Morales in what was, granted, a fairly close race. And now she's finished five points behind a first-time candidate and challenger in Alexis Rinck in a race where she's the incumbent. And where she's had - although she has not taken it - the opportunity to demonstrate to city voters what she would do if she was in office because she was installed in office by her conservative colleagues on the City Council. The last time I was on, you and I spoke about how this Council was elected on the backs of an electorate that clearly wanted something different in terms of homelessness, something different in terms of public safety. They have not taken on those issues in any meaningful way. They have instead spent their time trying to gut worker protections across the city and demonstrating an unwillingness to focus on data-led and evidence-led programs in the way that they talked about with their electorate - and I think people are seeing that. So on the one hand, you had an incumbent who was not elected by the public to represent them on City Council. And on the other hand, you had a challenger in Alexis Rinck, who ran an extraordinarily strong campaign for a first-time candidate and was able to consolidate a huge range of the Seattle left - from the progressive left to elements of the center left in the city. She ran a high-energy campaign - she was able to point to her experience building regional consensus in a number of different ways and you see it in the results. She is well on track to take this seat in November. I think we shouldn't count on that result because the groups that were invested in having Tanya Woo stay on Council are still going to be invested, and they're going to spend an awful lot of money to define this race in a way that will be unfavorable to Alexis. But I think the proof of the strength of Alexis's message and the weaknesses of the City Council's governance are in the results that we just saw.

[00:15:05] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree - I think you're spot on. And I think it's really helpful to understand - in conversations about this with different people, I've heard people go - What happened to the backlash? And is this a backlash to the backlash? And I think you nailed it in that - one, people certainly want to see progress and were not satisfied with the progress that they expected to be made when it comes to feeling safer in their neighborhoods and seeing homelessness get worse - and continue to get worse. I think people see - sometimes it can be easy to get lost, but Sara Nelson has been on the Council for three years now, Bruce Harrell has been mayor for three years. We've heard these promises and the types of things that Tanya Woo has been saying are going to fix the problem - we've been hearing that for three years now while watching the problem get worse. They own that at this point in time, and they seem to be just doubling down, tripling down on the same kinds of policies and decisions that have not been shown to fix this, that are not based on any kind of evidence, and in fact have been shown to make the problem worse. We're seeing it get worse. People are impatient with that.

But I also think it's easy to, again, look at this from an insider's perspective and lose sight of what people in the city are really seeing, hearing, and wanting. Again, most people are not tuning in to the day-to-day events of what's happening. Most people are actually not tuning in to each City Council meeting and seeing what's happening. They may catch a headline here or there, but really what they're seeing is - again, they get their ballot in the mail and they're going - Oh, it is time to make a decision about this. Who are the people on the ballot? Okay, I've seen a little bit and heard a little bit about what Tanya Woo has done. I'm seeing the mail and it's not quite matching what I'm seeing in real life on the ground. In what Tanya Woo and Sara Nelson and these other candidates have communicated - if you look at their commercials, if you look at all their ads, at the mail - they've actually been parroting progressive talking points. They're a strong progressive. Sometimes they may put the word "pragmatic" in front of it, but progressive is always there. They talk about wanting to house people and work on affordable housing. They talk about all of the things that progressives have been trying to make material gains on. From an insider perspective, you're like - Okay, they just have to say that to get elected. The public doesn't know that - they don't see the wink and the nod. But what the consultants know and the people designing these ads know is that that message resonates with the public. It resonates with the public because that's what they feel. The progressive message isn't a fluke. It's because that's where people are at. They don't want to just jail people without any opportunity to help or house them. They don't want to just sweep people without a place for them to sleep at night. They don't want to just give corporations a walk in the park while saying - Well, everyone else is going to have to pay to make up for the gap that they cause. The people in the city have been pretty consistent with how they have voted and the preferences that they have. How these candidates communicate to them indicates a different agenda than what they actually are working on. And people notice that difference. We see who their donors are. We see what they talk about on the dais and we see what they talk about in community meetings - and we know that they're certainly more corporately aligned. We know that they've admitted to letting those corporations write some of their legislation for them. But the general public doesn't see that. They see them saying - I'm a progressive choice, I'm going to bring the change that you want to see. And then saying something completely different and the public's going - Wait, what are you talking about? You're trying to repeal minimum wage legislation. You didn't talk about that at all. We don't want that at all. There's this disjointedness. And I think people swept to the side polling that showed Sara Nelson's and Tanya Woo's approval ratings tanking. These citywide election results seem to be the most conclusive poll we've had out of all of them, showing that the public is not aligned with where the majority on this Council is.

[00:19:20] Rian Watt: I think that analysis is exactly right. I think that this group of conservative councilmembers has demonstrated that they can run a campaign that appeals to a lot of voters in this city. The problem is their governance doesn't match what they ran on. And because I know the show has a lot of progressive listeners, I do want to emphasize one point that I don't think is being talked about a lot, which is that I do not think that it would be wise for progressives to interpret this result as a backlash moment against the Council that means that the kind of progressive messaging that candidates ran on in 2019 or 2020 or 2021 will necessarily be successful. And what I mean by that is - just as you say that moderates have been successful by co-opting progressive messaging, there is no reason progressives can't do that with moderate language as well. There is a certain brand of progressive candidate in this city that insists on running on the most unpopular parts of a progressive platform and a progressive message - and that kind of candidate loses consistently in this city. But when candidates run - and I'm not suggesting this is necessarily exactly what Alexis or another candidate who was very successful this week, Shaun Scott, have done - when candidates who are progressive run by emphasizing the most popular parts of their platform, by emphasizing the places where they're in common value with the vast majority of Seattle voters, they are extraordinarily successful. And where they run on the parts of the progressive agenda in Seattle that are less popular with the median voter in Seattle, they are typically less successful. And so I think the lesson we are seeing here is that voters are fed up with the way that this Council is acting. Voters are ready to vote for a change to deliver on the things that they are seeing in front of them, exactly as you said. And smart progressives are running in a way that they are meeting that need.

[00:21:07] Crystal Fincher: Completely agree. And also want to talk to a race you just alluded to - the 43rd Legislative District primary race - where Shaun Scott has a commanding lead over Andrea Suarez and Daniel Carusello, who is currently in third place by quite a distance. This is one of the strongest performances we've seen in the 43rd Legislative District - wow, just what an example of a message resonating with the majority of the district. And as you said, with other candidates, bringing together a broad base of people across the spectrum who are just connecting on issues that almost everyone agrees are problems, that need to be priorities - and that Shaun Scott has a plan to address that people believe in. What did you take away from this race?

[00:21:54] Rian Watt: Well, if Alexis was an example of an extraordinarily strong first-time candidate, Shaun is definitely an example of an extraordinarily strong second-time candidate. As many listeners will recall, Shaun ran in 2019 against Alex Pedersen, who won an extremely close race that shouldn't have been nearly that close, except that Shaun worked extraordinarily hard to get out his message and bring his particular brand of wonkiness and hard work and progressive vision to the voters of that district. This time, Shaun - my impression is - did an extraordinarily good job of consolidating establishment support behind him early on. This seat was held by Representative and former Speaker Frank Chopp for many, many, many years. Shaun entered the race with Chopp's endorsement and already had consolidated a fair amount of progressive support behind him, thanks to his 2019 runs and his work on statewide poverty issues for many, many years. And I think we saw that that sort of consolidation of the left and center in the results - similarly, to the citywide city council race, this was also a race where the opponent simply wasn't up to the challenge. Andrea Suarez is a person so objectionable in her approach to politics that even The Seattle Times declined to endorse her, and endorsed a candidate who I'm not sure they even believed in - but they couldn't bring themselves to endorse Shaun Scott and they couldn't bring themselves to endorse Andrea Suarez. And so at base, I guess you could say that one takeaway from this election is that the number of 43rd District voters who will vote for The Seattle Times candidate no matter what is just about 17%.

[00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: That is an appropriate takeaway from this. A couple of things I would say. One, especially in Seattle, there's been a longstanding conversation that I think is getting louder about how people identify and how accepted people are. Everyone calls themselves Democrat. Republicans aren't really viable in city of Seattle politics. I think that is largely held to be true, there are very few exceptions to that. But what that has created is Republicans just labeling themselves Democrats in these races. Andrea Suarez is one of these. And she can self-label as a Democrat, but I do think it is useful to look and see - if one person has literally all of the Democratic endorsements and another has none, that could be a clue that that person is not who Democrats consider to be a Democrat. Anyone has the freedom to call themselves what they want to call themselves, but she's not it. And in fact, Andrea Suarez in particular - because of how harmful some of her efforts and the efforts of her allies have been in working towards really getting people housed and getting people off the street, which I think everyone does want. But they've seen the toxicity in the way that she and her group have gone about that. That's been notable. And when that's also off-putting to The Seattle Times, that should be a clue.

[00:24:48] Rian Watt: Well, I am just cracking up because you're absolutely right that anyone can call themselves a Democrat, not everyone is a Democrat. I'm reminded of the moment in The Office where Michael Scott does not understand how bankruptcy law works and so believes that the path to declaring bankruptcy is to stand in the middle of the office and scream - I declare bankruptcy. Similar vibe to Andrea Suarez. I do want to, on a more serious note, underscore what you were getting at there, which is Andrea Suarez, as toxic as I personally believe her politics to be, does speak to something really important. Which is that a lot of people look at Andrea Suarez, who has made her name through a group called We Heart Seattle - which I guess a neutral word is engages with people experiencing homelessness on a day-to-day basis - and see someone who sees a problem and is trying to help directly. They haven't thought very long and hard about what the actual causes of homelessness are, or what people experiencing homelessness might need in order to get on their feet. And they see in her someone who is trying to do something about a problem that they think is the biggest issue facing the city. And I don't think they're wrong in their assessment of how important it is for us to solve our homelessness and housing crisis. I think, though, that we need to be very careful in opposing candidates like Andrea Suarez - in the sense that we need to make clear that we also view this as an immediate and urgent crisis that needs immediate and urgent action to solve. Because for that average voter that you've spoken about before on this podcast - who isn't tuned in to the issues, doesn't think about these things all the time - they see someone like that and they see someone who's rolling up their sleeves to help

[00:26:26] Crystal Fincher: I think you're exactly right. Adding on to that, I think that we need to show progress - as the bottom line. And I think that it's very important - because there is so much co-opting of language - that we be very clear about what is moving the needle and what is not, and holding elected officials accountable because we can all see this is a problem. I do think, to your point, it's very important to continue to communicate that the current situation is unacceptable. I don't know of anyone who this is not unacceptable to. I don't know of anyone who looks at an encampment and says - That's just fine. I think we need to do a better job of communicating at looking at the encampment and saying - What has shown to help this situation? What does reliably get people off the street? What have we tried? Has it worked? Has it not? We've tried sweeping them. Everyone is noticing that you can clear an encampment, but if there is nowhere for people to go, they're going to be right back. And we also know that there are tens of thousands fewer shelter spaces than there are people. So we actually cannot, when people say - Oh, people just refuse housing, people refuse shelter. There's not enough shelter to go around. There's not unused shelter space because people are refusing it. There's too many people for what we have. So we have to be clear about what the problems are that need to be solved, get serious about solving them, hold people accountable to solving them. But that really does start with engaging people in those conversations with voters and continuing to hold elected officials accountable for ensuring that we're implementing these programs effectively and that help is getting to the people who need it the most.

But this is definitely a race that I think is going to be exciting to watch through the general election. And Shaun Scott with - at this time - 54.7% in a contested primary is a very impressive number. Almost assuredly is going to win in the general election - I'm sure he's going to continue to run a very engaging race that continues to excite people, but that is a bright spot, certainly. Any other takeaways just when it comes to elections and what people should be thinking about as they look forward?

[00:28:41] Rian Watt: My takeaway from this election, in which some of the voting happened after the change at the top of the presidential ticket - some but not all people had their ballots before the switch from Biden to Harris - is that the country as a whole and the city as a whole are in a very back-to-basics, return-to-normalcy mood, is my impression. That's what we see normie Democrats being successful at almost every level of our politics at the moment. People want folks who are working on the right issues, who are working from the evidence on what works on those issues, and are going to get stuff done for them. They don't want ideologues. They don't want people who they view as extreme. They want people who are running to solve problems in a practical, pragmatic way. And I think that's a theme we're seeing at all levels.

[00:29:28] Crystal Fincher: I agree. I think that's a theme that we're seeing. I think another theme is just - we've all gotten another reminder, and we've talked about this on this show before, about how effective it is to recognize bad faith messaging and engage that appropriately. Certainly in a lot of these races that are statewide are coming down to Democrats and Republicans, we're hearing from some of these candidates - not all, but some - some worryingly extreme rhetoric. Some rhetoric that is only appealing to a sliver of one part of someone's base, that does not connect to what the general public cares about and thinks. And sounds weird to people. And instead of engaging that seriously - when people are just saying things that are ridiculous - instead of going through a line-by-line fact check, instead of saying, Well, let's break this down and talk about it. There's lots of serious issues to talk about, real problems that we have to deal with. But if we're just insulting people, going along with these culture war issues, operating from a place of fear and thinking that we have to cower and explain why we believe people should just have basic rights, why we believe people should be able to make decisions regarding their own bodies. Most people understand and agree with that - we don't need to litigate every piece of that. We can point out how toxic that is. And people resonate with that. And to not discount that is actually harmful to people. And we shouldn't take people seriously who say that - Listen to how weird they sound. Why do you care who is going into what restroom? What products are available in what restroom? What people make a decision to do in their own home? What appliances people want in their own home? All of that is just weird - to act like it is normal to dictate that on behalf of someone else. And I think that we can make that case strongly from a point of strength and speak optimistically with a positive and forward-looking vision. We don't have to be defensive about these kinds of things. I feel like there's been a number of decisions that have been made out of fear and - Oh no, what if we lose? Like, stand up for something. We can see that if we speak in unison, strongly in favor of something, that people come with us. Let's trust that and do more of that here in Washington state.

[00:31:56] Rian Watt: That's absolutely right. The question so often is - what if we lose? But I think the question that all those of us who work in this space should be asking is - what if we win? What if we achieve the things that we set out to achieve? I think if we start asking ourselves that question, we both activate our own agency because it moves us from a politics of despair to a politics of hope. But we also put ourselves in a position to take really seriously what it is we are proposing because we believe it, and we believe that we are actually going to achieve it in the world. And so I couldn't agree more. I think it's really important to operate from a place of hope, from a place of agency, from a place of excitement about the world we can build together. And I think the last couple of weeks have proven that things can move from despair to hope very, very quickly. And I'm hoping that that trend will continue all the way through November.

[00:32:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, I do want to talk about a couple of items not election-related that we saw in the city of Seattle. The first being a decision to move forward with a jail contract to push forward a plan to jail low-level misdemeanor offenders. What happened here?

[00:33:07] Rian Watt: Well, the procedural stuff is kind of complicated, but I think the bottom line here is that this Council has decided that their approach to issues of public safety is going to be punitive and carceral. And so they are working to create as many punitive tools and carceral options as quickly as they can. So what you saw in Council this week was a very rushed decision - done literally from the safety of their own offices, because they did not find public comment on this to be something that they wanted to participate in - to move forward with spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money a year on a facility where multiple folks have died already this year, within a systemic framework that the evidence has shown for decades does not do anything to address the real issues of public safety that we face. And I think this stands in stark contrast to what we're seeing happening at the County Council at the moment, where we have leaders like Girmay Zahilay and Teresa Mosqueda and Jorge Barón and Claudia Balducci and many others who are working to stand up real mental health solutions, who are working to stand up investments in housing, who are working to stand up investments in the systems that we know actually prevent crime and create public conditions of public safety. This Council at the city level likes to talk about being evidence-based, likes to talk about looking at the numbers. And they seem to be very interested in looking at numbers whenever the question is investing in social systems, and much more interested in fast-moving ideological processes when it comes to locking people up. And I think that's what we saw again this week.

[00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with that. I think that there is a fundamental misread here - again, on behalf of the Council - to where the city is at. People may think - Well, you talked about public safety. Isn't this something public safety - they're delivering on what they're saying. It certainly does have to do with public safety. But one thing that we do know that we can say conclusively is that the residents of Seattle overwhelmingly - over 70 to 80% consistently in polling - don't believe that police are the only answer, don't believe that jail is the only answer to public safety. The residents of Seattle understand that a comprehensive approach is needed, that focusing on prevention is as important as focusing on the response. And so, particularly at a time where there is a humongous budget deficit that needs to be faced, to see all of the available attention, all of the available money be directed into this narrow slice of punishment and enforcement - that doesn't show a corresponding benefit and actual safety to people on the street - is concerning to a lot of people. And then looking at the processes that they use to implement this - with very little public input, rushed processes through hearings, being willing to shut public comment down - is concerning to a lot of people. And I think we're seeing that reflected in the polling that we saw showing the approval ratings dropping, in this last election result. I think it's a misread to say - We're just going to go down this narrow slice. People want to feel safer. People want to not be victimized in the first place. And to hear people say - We're not doing anything to reduce the amount of people who are being victimized, but we're going to try and catch someone who stole something from the store and jail them at great expense. But then they're going to get out. What is the larger plan? Where is the comprehensive approach? What are we doing in terms of prevention? What are we doing in terms of services to support people? What are we doing - if your plan is jails - to adequately staff the jail? They aren't even going about the plans that they have in a serious way. They're setting themselves up for lawsuits, for increased expenses. What they're putting in place has a lot of challenges - if you just go with what they say, they're not implementing their own plan very well. And that plan in and of itself is actually inadequate to accomplish the things that Seattle residents seem most concerned about. So it just seems like - man, I wish we could have a more comprehensive approach. There are lots of people who are on board with saying - Keep hiring police officers, that's fine. But if we hire someone today, they can't be on the street for at least a year. What's the plan in the meantime? What are we doing to prevent this? Where are we giving kids to go? What are we giving for them to do? I would like to hear and see a more comprehensive plan because people are desperate to feel safer in their neighborhoods.

[00:37:41] Rian Watt: One of the big missed opportunities that this Council genuinely has had is to use their position as being people who have been vocally pro-law enforcement and pro-valorizing our law enforcement to actually have the tough conversations with our actually existing current law enforcement about how they're using their time and whether that use of time is consistent with public safety. Now, what I mean by that is that I agree that we have a staffing shortage at SPD, but we also have an SPD that is often using its time in things that don't feel like the highest and best use of trained, sworn law enforcement officers. When someone is murdered in the city, I want people to diligently investigate that crime and try to solve it. When something major is stolen in the city, I want someone to investigate it. It's a pain in the butt to have your car stolen or broken into, and I want that investigated. When there's a shooting - even if it doesn't result in death - that should be investigated by people who are working diligently and smartly to try to figure out who did it and then bring them in. But what we have instead is officers directing traffic after Sounders and Seahawks game when we have perfectly functional traffic lights at all of those intersections around Lumen Field that can do the job just as well. I think that this Council could have put itself in a position where it said - We were elected here to provide public safety. We want to have a conversation with you, law enforcement, about what public safety looks like and the role that you are going to play in it. They have not had that conversation. Instead, they have invested again and again in the systems that are failing to deliver public safety for people in our city. And this is a results-oriented place. And I think it's worth asking - Why, despite increasing our spending on the police over and over and over again, we continue to see deteriorating public safety?

[00:39:25] Crystal Fincher: I absolutely agree. I do think that there's lots of conversations to be had about how we are deploying our officers. Most of them moved out of investigative positions, detective positions - moved on to patrol. I don't know that that has shown to be effective in any way, shape, or form. And is redundant to a lot of services and existing infrastructure that already exists. It does seem like it would serve everyone better to revisit how we are deploying these officers, what they are spending their time on. Does it align with what people are most concerned about? Or are they mostly focused on low-level misdemeanor offenses, clearing out encampments, spending a majority of their time on non-criminal offenses, as has been determined by previous evaluations by the Seattle Police Department. There's a lot to unpeel when it comes to that conversation, and I just wish we could do that instead of these very limited tunnel-vision solutions that we've seen from this current Council.

Also want to talk about another unfortunate development - in the Council declining to take a vote to add social housing to the ballot. What happened here?

[00:40:50] Rian Watt: Well, we touched on this a little bit last time you and I spoke. But when, as is the case here, citizens bring an initiative to the ballot, the Council has the option to add a competing initiative to the ballot or to just send the citizen-backed initiative directly to the ballot. And what's happening here basically is that the Council is claiming it doesn't have time to think about this before the November election, and so it's going to postpone sending I-137 - which is the... proposal to fund Seattle's Social Housing Developer - to the ballot until likely the February special election. It is sort of unclear what alternative proposal the Council might attach to it, should they choose to attach one, but the most likely suggestion is to propose an additional property tax increase to pay for an expanded Housing Levy. Now, to be clear, the Housing Levy is an incredibly important part of our civic infrastructure here. I supported a bigger Housing Levy. I think it's a good idea to spend more money investing in housing. And, it is curious to me that this Council would choose to present voters with a choice between taxing the very highest income earners in our city - those making a million dollars or more in income a year - on their million and one-th dollar, which is what is being proposed by the backers of I-137. And again, I want to emphasize this point. Your first million dollars - tax-free under this proposal. You're good. The million and one dollar is going to be taxed to invest in deeply affordable social housing for our city. Council is potentially going to propose a property tax on almost everyone in this city - because we know landlords pass on property tax increases to their renters - instead. I think the voters are going to have a pretty clear choice there. I think that the folks who are behind the I-137 campaign, a coalition called House Our Neighbors, have proven that they can get out the vote, whether it be November or February. So I think this isn't going to matter. I think that 137 is going to pass, regardless of when it ends up on the ballot, which now looks very likely to be February. But it's another example of Council making choices that seem really out of step with what the average Seattle voter is looking for, and doing so in a way that feels fairly disingenuous to the good government message that they ran on.

[00:43:00] Crystal Fincher: Does feel very disingenuous. And to be clear, it actually may violate the charter of the City of Seattle. As Councilmember Tammy Morales pointed out during that meeting, the charter pretty clearly says if a petition is qualified, they are supposed to take action within that set period of time - before they take action on several other things - to vote to advance that to the ballot. They declined to do that. They voted to remove it from discussion and not take that vote at all, which is troubling. And again, it's a misread on what the residents want. You don't have to guess what the residents want. One, they passed the social housing initiative last year. And the initiative backers were clear that because of the one-subject rule, we're putting this on first. And if the residents determine this is what they want, then we'll follow up with a funding measure. No one is surprised by this. Everyone knew this was coming. Residents of Seattle, on a February ballot at the time, said - Yes, we want this. So now we come to this. Again, the initiative backers, House Our Neighbors, got signatures from tens of thousands of people across the city. Don't have to guess who wants it, Lots of people signed their name on a petition to say - Yes, I want this. And for the Council to so easily disregard that, to just toss that aside, to not even discuss that, to limit public comment on that is shameful. Number one, whether or not it violates the city charter, it's shameful. And number two, it just is ignoring the people who you're supposed to be listening to and serving, who you ran saying you would be listening to and serving. And so this is being punted to February - fine, backers will run this to win a February election. But it is troubling to see the Council so easily disregard such wide swaths of the residents they're supposed to be serving.

[00:44:55] Rian Watt: Yeah, I want to expand on your comment on public comment a little bit, because there's a trend here that's, I think, deeply undemocratic and deeply frustrating - which is that when this current Council hears testimony that is supportive of their position, it represents everyday Seattle. And when this Council hears testimony that is opposed to what they're doing, it is special interests. This is not new to this Council - this is political posturing that has gone on for a while. And it is intensely frustrating to see the concerns of renters as a class, or people struggling with housing costs as a class - which is almost all of us - dismissed as special interests, dismissed as niche issues when we know these are the things that people are concerned with on a day-to-day level. I think that this Council has proven that they are not particularly interested in hearing from people who disagree with them. And whether or not you're one of those people who disagree with them, I think you should be concerned about a Council that fundamentally does not view itself as responsive to the vast majority of the city. They view themselves as accountable to a particular ideological project and to a particular pursuit of power that really has not proven itself to actually be able to deliver the results that they were elected to deliver. And that's really frustrating.

[00:46:15] Crystal Fincher: It is. And we will continue to follow how that progresses - I think the Council is heading to recess and is going to enjoy some of their vacation time while the residents of Seattle try to figure out how to deal with the issues that they have declined to take up so far. But we will continue to follow it.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 9th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Senior Advisor at The Urbanist and Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, Rian Watt - always appreciate his insight. You can find Rian at @rianwatt, R-I-A-N-W-A-T-T, on all platforms. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. And on most major platforms, you can find me at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe 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, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full text 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 - we'll talk to you next time.