Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[NewYorkExpress]

Nick Brown, who resigned as U.S Attorney for Western Washington back in June has entered the race for Attorney General.

The field for Attorney General is now as follows:

Former U.S Attorney for Western Washington Nick Brown (D)
State Senator Manka Dhingra (D)

[RI]

Presented without comment.

[ottermax]

Presented without comment.

Congrats!

[Progressive Pessimist]

I picked an interesting time to watch Survivor: The Australian outback for the first time considering that Nick Brown was a contestant and I never even heard of him prior or knew he was appointed a US Attorney within the last few years. And I thought Elisabeth Fularski/Hasselbeck was the one who went on to do the biggest things.

[RI]

I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped, but I made it through the primary.

[Roll Roons]

I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped, but I made it through the primary.

Congrats! Best of luck in the general.

[Duke of York]

I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped, but I made it through the primary.

what are you running for?

[RI]

I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped, but I made it through the primary.

what are you running for?

An open school board seat for my city.

[RI]

Map of the three-way Snohomish County Auditor primary from Tuesday. Technically nonpartisan, but effectively D vs R vs I, where the Independent is the incumbent and the Republican is a hardcore election denier who was primaried by a moderate R last year. The D and I advanced:

Image Link

[RI]

Spokane mayor primary map:



Tim Archer ran to the right of Woodward, so you'd expect his vote to mostly flow to her.

[RI]

A certain aforementioned primary:

[GeneralMacArthur]

We have election results for Seattle city council.  I'll quote my old post for context on each race and provide the results.

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.

Rob Saka made it through with 24% but the primary winner was Maren Costa, who got 33%.  Maren is a pretty generic progressive urbanist.  Phil Tavel, a more conservative candidate who was Herbold's opponent in 2019, got 20%, so the big question is where his supporters will go.  If Saka skews more moderate he probably picks them up and gets to 44%.  I'd say that's more likely than Costa getting them, so I'd label Saka the favorite despite his lower numbers.

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.

Tammy Morales got 52%, and Green Party idiot Margaret Elisabeth got an additional 5%.  Tammy Woo got 43% but she has a big hill to climb.  Morales probably gets re-elected.

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.

Hollingsworth and Hudson both got 37%.  Pretty generic race without much in the way of stakes.  Both will be idealistic progressives who vote to raise taxes every year and let homeless junkies ruin our city.  Neither will be anywhere close to as bad as Kshama Sawant.

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.

I thought Ken Wilson was going to make it through, but he only got 21%.  Instead, Maritza Rivera, who is very pro-Harrell, got 32%.  Ron Davis got 45% but you have to think almost all the Wilson voters will move to Rivera's camp, getting her to 53%.

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.

Cathy Moore got 30% and The Stranger's candidate ChrisTiana ObeySumner got 24%.  Jenks only got 18%.  Feel pretty good about Moore's chances here.  ObeySumner is a generic activist who says we can't stop homeless people from committing crimes or killing themselves with fentanyl until we address the root causes of whatever.

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.

Strauss got 52% and Hanning only got 30%, this race is over.

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.

Lewis only got 43%.  His opponent is Bob Kettle, whom I've never heard of.  But Lewis seems weak.


So the potential council would be:
D1) 55% Saka, 45% Costa
D2) 90% Morales, 10% Woo
D3) 50% Hollingsworth, 50% Hudson
D4) 65% Rivera, 35% Davis
D5) 65% Moore, 35% ObeySumner
D6) 95% Strauss, 5% Hanning
D7) 60% Kettle, 40% Lewis

Overall pretty bad results IMO.  Morales and Strauss are both going to make it through to re-election, and along with the D3 rep and Teresa Mosqueda that's a 4-person voting bloc in favor of turning this city into Portland.  We'd need to run the table with Saka/Rivera/Moore/Kettle winning, and get lucky that all 4 stick with the mayor, to avoid another two years of gridlock.

The only other chance we have is the special election for Teresa Mosqueda's seat after she moves up to King County Council.

[PSOL]

Overall pretty mixed results, but at least there is some hope for Seattle to not fall into being controlled by people appealing to GMac. I’m especially happy that it seems like Margaret Elizabeth did so well as a cash-strapped, ad hoc type of campaign. Hopefully the runoff has much stronger turnout.

[Xing]

I actually now live in a jurisdiction in which I can vote in RI’s election. I moved too recently for my address change to be reflected in the primary, but it should apply to the November election.

[RI]

The WA GOP foolishly endorsed Joe Kent yesterday. Congrats to MGP.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

The WA GOP foolishly endorsed Joe Kent yesterday. Congrats to MGP.

We love to see it

[RI]

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.

Rob Saka made it through with 24% but the primary winner was Maren Costa, who got 33%.  Maren is a pretty generic progressive urbanist.  Phil Tavel, a more conservative candidate who was Herbold's opponent in 2019, got 20%, so the big question is where his supporters will go.  If Saka skews more moderate he probably picks them up and gets to 44%.  I'd say that's more likely than Costa getting them, so I'd label Saka the favorite despite his lower numbers.

All of Costa and Saka's primary opponents issued a joint endorsement of Costa.

[Canis]

I actually now live in a jurisdiction in which I can vote in RI’s election. I moved too recently for my address change to be reflected in the primary, but it should apply to the November election.

Are you gonna vote for him?

[RI]

[Xing]

I actually now live in a jurisdiction in which I can vote in RI’s election. I moved too recently for my address change to be reflected in the primary, but it should apply to the November election.

Are you gonna vote for him?

I’ll keep that to myself for now, at some point I’ll reveal how I vote.

[RI]

Bad news for MacArthur:

Still, when asked whether they were more likely to support a progressive or centrist candidate, 49% of all respondents said they want a progressive versus 37% who want to vote for a centrist and 14% who had no opinion.

[NewYorkExpress]

Bob Ferguson has recieved the endorsement of Jay Inslee.

The Washington gubernatorial race officially has another candidate in the mix. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson made his campaign official on Saturday, several months after announcing an "exploratory" campaign.

“My goal is to work hard for the people, we have a hardworking state, they deserve hardworking governor that focuses on them and their concerns," Ferguson said. "That’s what I’ve done as attorney general, that’s what I’m going to do as governor.”


He held three events across the state on Sept. 9 to announce his run for governor with stops in Spokane and Pasco, ending the night in Seattle.

Gov. Jay Inslee endorsed Ferguson on Saturday evening at the campaign announcement party, held at Washington Hall.

[Rat]

Bob Ferguson has recieved the endorsement of Jay Inslee.

The Washington gubernatorial race officially has another candidate in the mix. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson made his campaign official on Saturday, several months after announcing an "exploratory" campaign.

“My goal is to work hard for the people, we have a hardworking state, they deserve hardworking governor that focuses on them and their concerns," Ferguson said. "That’s what I’ve done as attorney general, that’s what I’m going to do as governor.”


He held three events across the state on Sept. 9 to announce his run for governor with stops in Spokane and Pasco, ending the night in Seattle.

Gov. Jay Inslee endorsed Ferguson on Saturday evening at the campaign announcement party, held at Washington Hall.

Very disappointing, I was hoping he'd endorse Franz. She's obviously a much more environmentally focused candidate and seems like a better fit as a successor to Inslee in that regard.

[prag_prog]

I spent sometime in Washington recently and oh my god, the Uber/Lyft prices are freaking insane. Like absolutely insane...I have spent time in lot of states across US but I never saw Uber/Lyft prices this high in any other state. It felt like they were almost double the prices I pay in NY/NJ. My ride from airport to friend's place (35-40 minute drive with no traffic) cost me $75 before any tips. Then I also had to take couple of other small 10-15 min trips and each of them cost me like $30-35. I never saw prices like this in NY,NJ,MN (states where I usually spend lot of time).

[RI]

JHB is running for Commissioner of Public Lands. Crowded field so far: 5 D's and 2 R's now.