Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[NewYorkExpress]

Hilary Franz is officially in.

[Rat]

Hilary Franz is officially in.

Definitely prefer her over Ferguson.

[Duke of York]

Hilary Franz is officially in.

does she have a chance to beat Ferguson in the primary? If I could vote in the election I'd cast my ballot for Franz over Ferguson.

[RI]

Hilary Franz is officially in.

does she have a chance to beat Ferguson in the primary? If I could vote in the election I'd cast my ballot for Franz over Ferguson.

Doubtful in the primary. Her best bet is a fractured GOP field producing a Ferguson v. Franz general.

[Rat]

Hilary Franz is officially in.

does she have a chance to beat Ferguson in the primary? If I could vote in the election I'd cast my ballot for Franz over Ferguson.

Doubtful in the primary. Her best bet is a fractured GOP field producing a Ferguson v. Franz general.

And I assume that she probably would have a decent shot in the general, since the Republicans in the state hate Ferguson so much, they'd certainly prefer her.

[NewYorkExpress]

Yakima Doctor Raul Garcia joins the Republican field for Governor.

Garcia joins Benton County Republican Party Chair Semi Bird in competing for GOP votes.

[NewYorkExpress]

https://twitter.com/electmullet/status/1664260685549772802

[Atlas Force]

https://twitter.com/Jim_Brunner/status/1671196986199113731

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1671207046534901780

[Duke of York]

what are the chances Brown wins?

[RI]

Lot of noise that Dave Reichert will run for Governor. Dammeier is already endorsing him.

[JMT]

Lot of noise that Dave Reichert will run for Governor. Dammeier is already endorsing him.

Perhaps he will! But I’ll believe it when I see it. Reichert seems to consider a run for Governor every four years but never actually goes for it.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Everyone's talking about the gubernatorial race, but the Seattle city council elections are likely to be far more interesting and impactful this year.

All 7 districts are up for grabs, the only 2 that are safe are Mosqueda and Nelson in their at-large seats.  There have been no polls thus far.

D1:  Lisa Herbold is not running again, she was part of the progressive bloc on the council but will likely be replaced by a moderate.  The three candidates who've raised the most money are:
Rob Saka, who has really ambiguous positions on everything and refuses to leave his "middle ground", may also secretly be Bruce Harrell's personal recruit in the race.
Preston Anderson, whom The Stranger absolutely hates in their classic super-immature fashion, so probably a moderate?
Stephen Brown, founder of Eltana Bagels, also fairly moderate.

D2:  Moron and definitely-not-a-member-of-Socialist-Alternative liar Tammy Morales is standing for re-election, presumably minus NTK's "Kill Joe Biden" campaign manager she was hanging out with at CHOP (only because she is an also-ran candidate herself, in D5).  Morales is getting outraised by Tanya Woo, and progressives are worried enough about Woo that they've all lined up to endorse Morales already, and The Stranger is already publishing hit pieces on Woo.  A big issue in this race will be the so-called "homeless megaplex" that the city wanted to build in the International District, which was scrapped after tons of protests.  The ID already suffers from a deluge of filth, crime, and drug use, and the stolen goods and fentanyl bazaar at 12th+Jackson was a big battleground for mayor Harrell's efforts to clear out criminal homeless junkies from the neighborhood.  Morales supported the megaplex and opposed Harrell's sweeps and police presence.  Woo feels differently.  That's the race right there.

D3:  After barely surviving recall by 310 votes, Kshama Sawant read the writing on the wall and decided to retire.  There are three main candidates running to replace her.  Joy Hollingsworth is probably the favorite, checking all the right identity boxes and saying all the right progressive bromides while steadfastly avoiding taking any strong stances on anything, just "re-evaluate, re-evaluate, re-evaluate".  Andrew Ashiofu also ticks all the right identity boxes, but unlike Hollingsworth, he's openly taking a position against encampment sweeps.  Alex Hudson is just a walking talking mouthpiece for The Urbanist and sounds like one of those annoying #BanCars Urbanism Twitter feeds.

D4:  Alex Pedersen was particularly upset and incensed about the protestors who attacked his house and threatened his family during the George Floyd protests in 2020, and he seemed shook ever since, so it's no surprise he's not running again.  Pedersen was one of the most moderate council members, and is likely to be replaced by another moderate, Ken Wilson, who made a good run of it against the invincible Teresa Mosqueda in 2021 and is now running on his engineering background.  Wilson's main opposition is Ron Davis, who is competing with Hudson to be the most annoying urbanist imaginable.  We had a hilarious clownshow candidate in UW student Matthew Mitnick who ran as a socialist, and like so many socialists, was a horrible and abusive asshole behind the scenes, except this is weirder because his campaign staff was a bunch of high schoolers.  He got a bunch of Green Party endorsements, and the DSA offered him its endorsement, but when he refused to pay any of his campaign staff, they unionized, and rejected the endorsement on his behalf.  Sadly, he has since withdrawn so the fun is over and it's on to what will surely be a boring race.

D5:  Moderate and council stalwart Debora Juarez also resigned, and likely has her eye on higher office.  The top fundraiser are Nilu Jenks, Cathy Moore and Shane Macomber.  All the candidates say kinda the same things, but in a recent Seattle Times questionnaire, Jenks took leftie stances on everything, Cathy supported the mayor but wanted to keep drugs legal, and Macomber just refused to take any stance on anything.  Not a great crop of candidates.

D6:  Dan Strauss got lucky in 2019 by drawing the notoriously corrupt exiled former councilmember Heidi Wills as an opponent.  He isn't so lucky this time, as he gets local businessman Pete Hanning.  Now I know anecdotally that Hanning is an asshole, since he used to own The Red Door, which I frequented when I lived in Fremont.  But I would vote for him anyway if I still lived there, because Strauss is also a condescending, lying sack of s--t.  The big issue in this race is that Strauss supported CHOP and, after running on increasing police funding, decided he wanted to defund the police in 2020.  Now that defunding the police is the most politically toxic position in America, Strauss is trying to gaslight everyone that he never wanted to defund the police and always wanted to increase police funding.  It's an obvious lie, but voters are dumb.  After all they voted for Heidi Wills four years ago.  Strauss also promised to clean up Ballard, but it's still infested with crime, and he votes with progressives on the council on homelessness issues.  He's positioned well to hold his seat, but it will be an interesting race.

D7:  Andrew Lewis is one of the most pathetic councilmembers I've ever seen, flip-flopping all over the place and lying constantly.  Most recently he made a big show of supporting the measure to re-criminalize smoking fentanyl in public, but then a bunch of activists yelled at him, and he surprised everyone by casting the deciding vote against the measure.  Our local socialist activists have always known that they can easily bully him into doing whatever they want.  Annoyingly, though, he doesn't really have any serious competition yet.


My intuition is that the council ends up being:

1) Moderate (any of Saka/Anderson/Brown)
2) Far-left (Morales)
3) Progressive (Hollingsworth)
4) Moderate (Wilson)
5) Progressive (Jenks)
6) Moderate (Hanning)
7) Far-left (Lewis -- has no principles personally, but is bullied into being a puppet for far-left activists)
AL1) Mosqueda (progressive)
AL2) Nelson (moderate)

Woo has a real shot in D2 at flipping the seat to create a 5-4 moderate majority, which would be amazing and a huge boost for Bruce Harrell's ambitions to clean up this city.  Otherwise, most likely whoever wins in D5 would end up being the swing vote.  I don't think Strauss survives.

[RI]

Dave Reichert has filed with the PDC to run for governor.

[RI]

Garcia has dropped out of the Governor's race and endorsed Reichert. He will run against Cantwell.

It seems the Governor's race will likely be Ferguson vs Reichert. Reichert is about the best the GOP can do here. My initial guess is Ferguson wins 53-47.

[Oryxslayer]

Garcia has dropped out of the Governor's race and endorsed Reichert. He will run against Cantwell.

It seems the Governor's race will likely be Ferguson vs Reichert. Reichert is about the best the GOP can do here. My initial guess is Ferguson wins 53-47.

Only issue with this is if both JHB  and Reichart run, the field is divided enough for an eastern crazy type to have a clear shot towards losing the runoff in November.

[RI]

Garcia has dropped out of the Governor's race and endorsed Reichert. He will run against Cantwell.

It seems the Governor's race will likely be Ferguson vs Reichert. Reichert is about the best the GOP can do here. My initial guess is Ferguson wins 53-47.

Only issue with this is if both JHB  and Reichart run, the field is divided enough for an eastern crazy type to have a clear shot towards losing the runoff in November.

I doubt JHB runs at this point. I've heard nothing about the possibility in some time. There's also a very strong emphasis within the state party about unifying early to prevent a Culp situation.

[Benjamin Frank]

Since there are several articles posted on Dave Reichert along the lines of 'man who nabbed Green River killer...' Not that he's the only police officer who struggled to catch a serial killer, but Dave Reichert did a horrible job catching Gary Ridgway. Ridgway should have been caught years earlier and, as a senior police officer, Reichert's tunnel vision on another suspect impeded the investigation.

The reason I bring this up is because 'nabbing the Green River killer' is Reichert's sole claim to fame and he's been dishonestly playing it up for years.

[coloradocowboi]

General MacArthur sounds like his namesake when he talks about "socialism" lol

But how serious is Dave Reichert's candidacy? Surely the best anyone in the GOP could do here these days is what 55-45? Isn't he pro-life?

[smoltchanov]

General MacArthur sounds like his namesake when he talks about "socialism" lol

But how serious is Dave Reichert's candidacy? Surely the best anyone in the GOP could do here these days is what 55-45? Isn't he pro-life?

Well, someone in the mold of Kim Wyman or her republican predecessor (Sam Reed) could even win - narrowly. It's another matter how many such politicians remain in Republican party...

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

General MacArthur sounds like his namesake when he talks about "socialism" lol

But how serious is Dave Reichert's candidacy? Surely the best anyone in the GOP could do here these days is what 55-45? Isn't he pro-life?

Well, someone in the mold of Kim Wyman or her republican predecessor (Sam Reed) could even win - narrowly. It's another matter how many such politicians remain in Republican party...

The issue is that, nowadays, there may be politicians like this in the Republican Party, but if enough of them exist to overcome a more Trumpy candidate in the blanket primary.

[RI]

General MacArthur sounds like his namesake when he talks about "socialism" lol

But how serious is Dave Reichert's candidacy? Surely the best anyone in the GOP could do here these days is what 55-45? Isn't he pro-life?

Well, someone in the mold of Kim Wyman or her republican predecessor (Sam Reed) could even win - narrowly. It's another matter how many such politicians remain in Republican party...

The issue is that, nowadays, there may be politicians like this in the Republican Party, but if enough of them exist to overcome a more Trumpy candidate in the blanket primary.

They actually can and do make the general, but they don't win regardless. I know of at least four anti-Trump, pro-choice R legislative candidates who made the general election last year, and all lost with maybe a four-point bump above Smiley.

[smoltchanov]

General MacArthur sounds like his namesake when he talks about "socialism" lol

But how serious is Dave Reichert's candidacy? Surely the best anyone in the GOP could do here these days is what 55-45? Isn't he pro-life?

Well, someone in the mold of Kim Wyman or her republican predecessor (Sam Reed) could even win - narrowly. It's another matter how many such politicians remain in Republican party...

The issue is that, nowadays, there may be politicians like this in the Republican Party, but if enough of them exist to overcome a more Trumpy candidate in the blanket primary.

They actually can and do make the general, but they don't win regardless. I know of at least four anti-Trump, pro-choice R legislative candidates who made the general election last year, and all lost with maybe a four-point bump above Smiley.

Wyman won in 2020 nevertheless.... And rather convincingly (7+% margin). Despite state going heavily for Biden and most other Democratic candidates. If Massachusetts could go for Baker, Maryland - for Hogan and with Vermont - still easily going for Scott, Washington state can as well....

[RI]

General MacArthur sounds like his namesake when he talks about "socialism" lol

But how serious is Dave Reichert's candidacy? Surely the best anyone in the GOP could do here these days is what 55-45? Isn't he pro-life?

Well, someone in the mold of Kim Wyman or her republican predecessor (Sam Reed) could even win - narrowly. It's another matter how many such politicians remain in Republican party...

The issue is that, nowadays, there may be politicians like this in the Republican Party, but if enough of them exist to overcome a more Trumpy candidate in the blanket primary.

They actually can and do make the general, but they don't win regardless. I know of at least four anti-Trump, pro-choice R legislative candidates who made the general election last year, and all lost with maybe a four-point bump above Smiley.

Wyman won in 2020 nevertheless.... And rather convincingly (7+% margin). Despite state going eavily for Biden and most other Democratic candidates. If Massachusetts could go for Baker, Maryland - for Hogan and with Vermont - still easily going for Scott, Washington state can as well....

It only worked for Wyman because she was an incumbent running for what many view as an anti-partisan or at least non-partisan office in practice. Her opponent left a lot of be desired, as well. Tarleton's voters guide statement isn't too far off from what MAGA-types would be claiming today.

[Xing]

I’d say that Reichert will probably end up between 45 and 47% if he makes the top two. There’s still some goodwill left for him, but there’s also a clear limit to how many voters are really persuadable, and it takes a lot for Republicans to get close. If he tried to basically run as a moderate, he’d risk not making the top two due to not having enough of a base of support.

[smoltchanov]

I’d say that Reichert will probably end up between 45 and 47% if he makes the top two. There’s still some goodwill left for him, but there’s also a clear limit to how many voters are really persuadable, and it takes a lot for Republicans to get close. If he tried to basically run as a moderate, he’d risk not making the top two due to not having enough of a base of support.

I generally agree, though i always was (and IS) adamantedly opposed to "one-party system" in any part of any country (i am a "democrat", but -  not "Democrat"), so i deplore both situations in, say, Wyoming AND on Manhattan or in Bay area. The same applies here...