Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[GeneralMacArthur]

Orion was a lame candidate, literally a nobody who proudly called himself "Flash Mob King" and had no history of success.

Unfortunately, there were no real qualified challengers to Sawant in the primary.  Logan Bowers was a nobody.  Pat Murakami was an activist perennial candidate.  Ami Nguyen was clueless.  Zac DeWolf was a loathed school board member trying to fail up.

Orion's lameness carried over into the general election, where he had zero presence, zero personality and zero GOTV effort.  He held even in his public appearances but had no campaign strategy.  CASE, the Super PAC Amazon donated to, spent a bunch of money sending out flyers and pamphlets on his behalf.  But that did more harm than good as it allowed Sawant to aggressively spam "STOP AMAZON CORPORATE CASH" posters and t-shirts all over town.  This brought in new voters who had no idea who the candidates were but were eager to cast a "Screw Bezos" vote.

One of these days Sawant will get a real challenger.  Until then, Seattle gets four more years of dysfunctional government.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Unfortunately, The Stranger continues to have an absurd amount of sway in Seattle.  They probably have the most power-relative-to-quality ratio of any publication in the United States.

They have a firm grip on 95% of the 18-35 population here as well as all the aging socialists, potheads and creative types.  Your only alternative is the Seattle Times, which requires you to take life seriously, or a ragtag collection of right-leaning outlets that nobody really takes seriously except for the small Republican pockets in Magnolia and Madison.

And what they do with that grip is simply endorse the most extreme candidate in every race and let a bunch of stoners who never went to J-school write Buzzfeed-style endorsement blurbs.  It's incredibly immature but that's how politics is done in this city.

[GeneralMacArthur]

You also have to wonder whether the recent developments in Seattle have pushed the electorate to the right.  The left has truly created an abysmal political environment for themselves here.

There's nothing but bad news here, the city has truly gone off the deep end.  We've had CHAZ, defunding, rioting and looting, and the junkie/hoarder encampments crisis, all boosted and defended by the city.  We recently passed a major tax that is explicitly designed to destroy our tax base by forcing Amazon out of the city.  And there are other major economic mismanagement issues that don't get much attention, like two critical failing bridges (W Seattle and Magnolia) that the city refuses to take seriously.  The city is completely held hostage by activists, who generate unflattering news reports every day with their hostile tactics.

I am a hardcore Democrat and I would happily vote for any Republican at the municipal level right now.  I'm certainly not the only person feeling that way.  That doesn't mean I would vote for a Republican for governor or congress, but others may not make that distinction.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Uh, no. The only people who would cite CHOP as a factor in their vote are people with a hate boner for the left, 98% of whom are partisan Republicans.

Uh, no, the vast majority of people in this city are Democrats, and if you took a poll of this city I would bet the vast majority would also have a strongly negative opinion of CHAZ.  Of course you'd have to promise them anonymity, because everyone is also afraid to speak out against the movement for fear of having their home or business targeted with zero recourse or protection.

Does that factor into their vote?  For most, they're probably still voting Democratic.  But for those on the very rightward edge of that constituency, it's certainly plausible that they may defect to the Republicans after nearly two months of assault on their well-being by Democrats.  You are probably thinking of your social circle, but I am thinking of moderate Democrats in Madrona or Queen Anne.  Egan Orion voters.  People with enough money to own property and build a good life for their families in this city, who have liberal sensibilities and almost always vote Democrat, but don't like watching their city crumble around them.

Read this article and all the small business owners in Capitol Hill quoted in it, and tell me none of them would consider voting R this cycle even if they were traditional D voters.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/defund-police-seattle-protests.html

The city hasn’t “abandoned” all other projects, just because it’s also focused on police reform, which is a serious issue that needs attention.

Go do a poll of Magnolia and ask them if they feel abandoned by the city.  They've been begging the city to fix the crumbling Magnolia Bridge for years and the city's current position is "lol they don't need that bridge anyway."  Meanwhile the council last year handed activists a victory in their fight to turn a section of Discovery Park into a homeless shelter, not for any logical reason (it's a terrible location for a shelter) but just to stick it to the rich people who live there.

Even Democrats who didn’t support CHOP aren’t about to defect to the party of Trump because muh CHOP bad.

There's this thing called a "swing voter" who is somewhere in between the two parties and may shift from one to the other based on extraordinary events.  Seeing the left in this city STRONGLY support CHAZ and all the destruction and mayhem over the last two months is exactly the kind of extraordinary event that would cause swing voters to shift their votes.

And even if some would consider voting Republican at the local level, there’s no way people who were otherwise going to vote Democratic in their congressional race would vote for a rubber stamp on Trump.

I addressed this in my comment.

And it’s not like Schrier has been singing Sawant’s praises, either, so the number of people who would have otherwise voted for Schrier switching to a Republican is minuscule at best.

People don't pay attention, people don't care.  You'd probably find more hatred for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party at CHAZ than you would at a MAGA rally, yet the Democrats get blamed for it, because it's now trendy to call yourself a Democrat while simultaneously making your entire political identity all about hating the Democratic Party.

[GeneralMacArthur]

There's absolutely no way this will end well, and I see pretty much nobody on either side of the Democrat-leftist divide really caring about it except for the very local politicians with no power to actually enact anything.

It's all part of this grand scheme to try to get people to commute by bike, I'm sure. Of course, nobody realizes that Magnolia is surrounded by incredibly steep hills on every side and nobody is going to want their commute home to end with a strenuous workout.

FWIW, I live in Capitol Hill and I care about you guys.  I love walking around Magnolia and looking at all the beautiful houses and old trees and big flowery gardens.  Are y'all still dealing with a rat infestation or did you get that worked out?

[GeneralMacArthur]

There's absolutely no way this will end well, and I see pretty much nobody on either side of the Democrat-leftist divide really caring about it except for the very local politicians with no power to actually enact anything.

It's all part of this grand scheme to try to get people to commute by bike, I'm sure. Of course, nobody realizes that Magnolia is surrounded by incredibly steep hills on every side and nobody is going to want their commute home to end with a strenuous workout.

FWIW, I live in Capitol Hill and I care about you guys.  I love walking around Magnolia and looking at all the beautiful houses and old trees and big flowery gardens.  Are y'all still dealing with a rat infestation or did you get that worked out?

As far as I know, it's been fixed. We never really had that many rats in our area and I was kind of surprised to see those headlines at the time. The main pest on my block has always been ants. Also, I had no idea you lived in core Sawantist territory. Kind of explains some of your political views, I suppose.

My political views have been consistent for years.  I have a special vitriol for Sawant because she and her acolytes directly affect my life in so many ways.  Local politics is always much more impactful.  Trump isn't setting up junkie encampments in Miller Park.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The initiative to Recall Sawant is allowed to move forward.

4 of the 6 charges were allowed to stand.  The two related to her encouraging illegal activity through her rhetoric around CHAZ were removed, but those were the two weakest charges anyway.

The four charges are:

• Sawant relinquished her independence by allowing Socialist Alternative to make hiring/firing decisions in her office
• Sawant abused her position by using public resources for her personal political campaigns
• Sawant violated the governor's COVID statute and abused her office to unlock city hall and encourage protesters to occupy it
• Sawant committed a felony by revealing Mayor Durkan's home address, which was protected due to death threats she had received, and encouraging protesters to march to Durkan's home.

Some choice quotes from the judge's decision:

This document supplies facts that the Councilmember had to persuade the [Seattle Executive Committee of the Socialist Alternative party] to concur with her decision to fire an employee, not simply ask advice.  This is delegation of a decision to an outside body, even if the Councilmember is also a member of the outside body.  These facts show actual knowledge of facts indicating that the Councilmember intended to commit an unlawful act, a breach of ethics.

Also delicious: the documents also show that Sawant delegates her council votes to SocAlt.  The Sawant lawyers insist that she doesn't do this.  This is delicious because when I've confronted SocAlt members in real life on this issue, their talking point is, "yes she does delegate her votes to SocAlt, but that's just normal politics, it's no different from Democrats who delegate their votes to Nancy Pelosi."

The allegations are factually sufficient, and establish a prima facie case of misfeasance, malfeasance, and violation of the oath of office under the cited Seattle Municipal Code of Ethics.

These are actual resources being spent to promote an initiative, which is prohibited by law, and not a de minimis use incidental to the delivery of message.  These facts are from Councilmember's own words and from the City's documents.  These facts show actual knowledge of facts indicating that the Councilmember intended to commit an unlawful act and form a basis of knowledge of the allegations.

The Councilmember argues that under the law, a misuse of City resources can only occur after a ballot initiative is filed.  This Court disagrees for two reasons:  That is not what the statute says, and the Seattle Municipal Code even more broadly prohibits the conduct here.

City Hall was locked to the public precisely BECAUSE of the pandemic, and because of the public health Proclamations of the Governor.  Thus, her alleged act of unlocking the building closed due to the pandemic and letting in the protestors inferentially proves the intent needed to allow the charge/allegation to go forward.

The address confidentiality program is found in RCW 40,24,030 and those who criminally violate it are guilty of the class C felont of harassment.  These facts show actual knowledge of facts indicating that the COuncilmember intended to commit an unlawful act.

*chef's kiss*

it's worth noting that these allegations are far from the worst things Sawant has ever done.  They are simply the most illegal things she's done.  Like Trump, Sawant does hundreds of horrible things every year, and only sometimes stumbles into the realm of illegality because she's so used to suffering no consequences for her behavior.  It would be nice if she would suffer consequences for the other hundreds of horrible things she says and does, but unfortunately last year she was able to get away with all of them by just screaming "MY OPPONENT IS LITERALLY JEFF BEZOS" over and over and over.

[GeneralMacArthur]

As a reference point, I voted for Tarleton.  There are no good Republicans.  Anyone calling themselves a Republican deserve to be kicked out of office.  Burn their party to the ground and salt the Earth.  The entire party is built on an utterly depraved and corrupt apparatus and most of Wyman's support is coming from a base of Washington Republicans who are fed a non-stop firehose of misinformation and downright lies through a variety of channels that have been intentionally cultivated by Republicans to disguise their duplicitous, malicious, partisan intent.  That's what the Republican Party is and Wyman is OUT with the rest of her accursed party.

[GeneralMacArthur]

WA GOP is a big fat mess.  It's mostly been taken over by Breitbart-style grievance warriors who just want to hate on Seattle and own the libs all day.  All I see from WA GOP people on social media is snark and lib hate.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Praise the Lord, we finally have an adult in the race.

I admired Bruce Harrell when he was on the council, not for any particular political stance (although he was always one of the serious people) but because as council president he showed absolutely astounding patience dealing with the endless parade of bulls--t brought before the council every day.  Most of it at Sawant's behest.

The open mic periods they have, where they have to sit for hours and listen to people's comments, are basically activist poetry slams.  It's incredibly obnoxious and to me the worst part of it is always how proud they are of themselves like they think they're awesome for getting up in front of a mic and reading some pre-written hyperbole with bad "angry/outraged" acting.

And of course he had to deal with Sawant herself on a daily basis, constantly delivering these obnoxiously long and off-topic speeches with dramatic over-acting and bringing in her SocAlt crew to cheer her on and chant over Bruce and the other council members.  It was a nightmare.

Watching Bruce endure all of this was really a lesson in stoicism.  He was like the parent of a child with severe behavioral disorders who can just achieve a sort of zen state to get through the daily tantrums and screaming and abuse.

I wasn't surprised at all when he retired.  He's some sort of martyr for wanting to come back and suffer through it all again.  But he can see as well as anyone that Seattle has gone WAY downhill since the 2019 elections (coincidentally one of my first threads on Atlas) and that he's probably one of the 2 or 3 people in Seattle who can stop Lorena Gonzalez from basically turning the mayor's office into a rubber-stamp for the Sawant/Morales/Oliver agenda.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Sawant Recall effort IS A GO!

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm surprised this wasn't posted earlier, but there was an ALG poll for Seattle mayor done May 10-16 (500 respondents).  The primary is August 3.

Harrell 23%
Gonzalez 11%
Echohawk 7%
Farrell 7%
Sixkiller 5%
Houston 3%

https://www.postalley.org/2021/05/28/an-early-poll-in-the-seattle-mayors-race-with-one-big-surprise/

I'm hoping this is a sign of some coalescence around Harrell as the sane candidate.  If the poll is to be believed, he'll easily make the top two.  He's definitely my pick and I plan to volunteer for his campaign in the general.

My thoughts on some of the other candidates:

Andrew Grant Houston -- literally a scam campaign.  His campaign has been soliciting donations by gong around and asking people to donate to "end homelessness" and his justification is that by electing him mayor we will end homelessness.  The only things I ever hear about him in the media are him complaining about how unfair the race is.  This guy is a Paperboy Prince tier candidate and I'm not sure why he gets taken seriously.

Sixkiller:  I don't know why this guy is running.  The city pretty much unanimously wants to move on from Durkan.  If you're on the left you probably call her "Gas Mask Jenny" and think she's the devil incarnate.  If you're in the center you probably think she's weak and ineffectual and a lousy politician who lets the city council trample all over her.  If you're on the right you don't live in Seattle.  Ironically Durkan has gotten significantly firmer on encampment removals ever since the city council got rid of the nav team last summer, which is to her credit.  But I don't see why anyone connected to the Durkan administration would think they have a shot in this race, especially a no-name like Sixkiller.

Farrell:  Farrell ran for mayor last time too, and I remember not liking her because she took some really lefty positions, but a lot of people in hindsight decided they loved her more than the actual final two candidates.  Apparently that was all malarkey given she's only at 7%.  My understanding is that she's really big with the biker/transit groups, which is irrelevant to me because I walk or run everywhere.

Echohawk:  I have no idea who this person is, but she's raised an enormous amount of money.  Early on I was under the impression that she was backed by Seattle's leading voice of sanity, ex-mayor Tim Burgess, but I was mistaken and she appears to be running as basically Lorena Gonzalez lite.

Gonzalez:  The quintessential PNW politician, in the worst way possible.  Gonzalez has been a pathetic leader of the Seattle City Council, one of the worst political bodies in America.  The SCC loves to waste its time passing all sorts of broad, sweeping, revolutionary legislation that's either completely empty rhetoric, or full of unconstitutional clauses making it guaranteed to get shot down by the courts.  Then they can all brag about all the great stuff they've done and point fingers at the courts for ruining their progressive utopia.  Meanwhile they've done all sorts of very real, tangible, incredibly damaging stuff, primarily to satisfy the activist groups that are their political base.  Reckless, immature, and incredibly frustrating, they're also incredibly unpopular.  Gonzalez thinks she can win by running on that record.  Just kidding!  She's running a campaign that's almost entirely based on identity politics, name recognition, and the sense that she's the "default" choice, which will only be enhanced when she inevitably gets the endorsements of a bunch of her fellow councilmembers.  She's been considered the prohibitive favorite ever since she jumped in but Harrell is a serious challenger.


At this point I will be shocked if the top two aren't Harrell and Gonzalez.  They were relatively collegial when they served on the council together, but I expect the campaign to involve lots of vicious, ugly, false attacks on Harrell from Gonzalez-aligned groups that she'll pretend she's never heard of, while she promotes herself as the squeaky-clean progressive minority woman you can feel good about voting for.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Some more interesting news from the home front.

For those who haven't been keeping up, we've got three main races:

• Sawant recall
• Seattle mayor
• City council position 9

There's actually two at large city council seats up for grabs, but Theresa Mosqueda doesn't have any serious competition for re-election to position 8.  Position 9, vacated by Lorena Gonzalez to run for mayor (and, if she loses, AG), is the one up for grabs.

So here's what we've got:

Sawant recall

Based on what I've seen, I was skeptical that they would be able to gather the 10,500 signatures needed in the time frame, but it looks like they will succeed, and Sawant recall will make it to the ballot.  There hasn't been any polling on this, sadly, but I honestly have no idea what to expect.

Sawant is trying some weird 11th-hour gambit where she's gathering signatures for the recall petition for some strange reason.  Sawant claims it's to force them to meet an earlier deadline, which would supposedly be to her advantage, but this doesn't make any sense because the recall campaign has complete control over when they turn in their petition.  The actual reason is a mystery.  Most people think she wants to "gather signatures" and then throw them away.  My personal opinion, after years of watching Sawant shenanigans, is that she wants to create the talking point of "the recall wouldn't even have made the ballot if not for me."  Anyway it's truly bizarre that Sawant is campaigning to get herself removed from office.

Seattle mayor

Reminder that we're currently in a jungle primary where the top two advance.  The Seattle Times did a poll with Change Research, and just like last month's ALG poll, Bruce Harrell has a strong lead, while Lorena Gonzalez looks like his mostly likely opponent:

Harrell 20%
Gonzalez 12%
Echohawk 10%
Farrell 6%
Houston 6%
Sixkiller 5%

Very embarrassing for Jenny that her deputy mayor Casey Sixkiller is running behind meme-tier candidate Houston.  It's also embarrassing that Lorena Gonzalez, who was supposed to be the prohibitive favorite, is now in danger of falling behind political amateur Colleen Echohawk.

City council position 9

Nikkita Oliver (they/them) ran for mayor five years ago as basically Sawant's protege, and made a complete fool of themself before losing badly, so I thought at the time that we'd never hear from them again.  Oh was I wrong.  Oliver made a big name for themself as the queen of CHAZ, and somehow managed to be the only person to come away from that fiasco unscathed.

Oliver's competition for the seat is Brianna Thomas, basically Gonzalez's second-in-command and her designated replacement, and Sara Nelson, local small business owner and a regular face in Seattle politics.  The Change Research poll is as follows:

Oliver 26%
Nelson 11%
Thomas 6%

On the one hand, this looks like a runaway victory for Oliver.  On the other, Oliver is a known quantity in Seattle politics, so it's hard to imagine they'll pull many undecideds.  So I don't have a clear read on this race.  Nelson isn't a very good politician and was visibly tipsy during one of the candidate forums, so if she makes it to the general she'll probably accidentally use she/her pronouns to refer to Oliver and get crucified.

Other races

There are two other races that could get interesting.

I said Theresa Mosqueda didn't have any serious competition for her 8th position seat, but the Seattle Times poll only has her at 26%, with 55% undecided.  Mosqueda should be very well-known so that means there's a lot of people who know her, but don't want to vote for her again.  Put that alongside the low numbers for Gonzalez and this could be a warning sign for some serious anti-council sentiment, maybe a good sign for whichever nobody ends up as Mosqueda's opponent.

Pete Holmes may actually be the worst elected official in America, but for most of this year it looked like he would cruise to re-election unopposed.  Now, he has two challengers.  The first is Republican Ann Davison-Sattler, and the second is Nicole Thomas-Kennedy.  Thomas-Kennedy is an interesting candidate because she's (somehow) managing to run to Pete Holmes' left.  This is pretty unbelievable because Holmes literally doesn't do his job of prosecuting crimes at all.  But Thomas-Kennedy's platform is, why does "crime" exist at all?

The Seattle Times poll shows a tight race:

Holmes 16%
Thomas-Kennedy 14%
Davison-Sattler 14%

To be clear, I expect Holmes to easily win re-election.  But it is interesting that once again the incumbent has a terrible showing in the early primary polls.  I'd like to think this is a sign of some serious buyer's remorse after the extremist slate dominated in the 2019 elections, and maybe we can get rid of some of these morons.  I made my first ever political donation to a Republican in this race.  I'd rather eat my own hands than vote for Holmes, but that's what I'd have to do if Thomas-Kennedy is his opponent.

[GeneralMacArthur]

It looks like we now know why Sawant wanted to gather signatures for the Recall: she put together enough signatures to allegedly put them over the top, and now she can spend all her time claiming they have the signatures but are refusing to submit them for (insert shady reason here).

Of course the actual reason they haven't submitted her "signatures" is that a lot of them are most likely invalid or spoiled in some way.  Recall campaign is still recruiting signature-gatherers, they called me up just yesterday.

Either way it looks like this is going to get on the ballot, with the main question being one of timing.  Sawant is doing a good job muddying the waters with conspiracy talk to mute what would otherwise be a huge political victory moment for the Recall campaign.

https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2021/07/sawant-recall-campaigns-continue-to-duke-it-out-as-deadline-for-november-ballot-approaches/

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yeah I've been waiting to update because the extremists always wait until the last minute to vote so normies like me always get excited on election night and then let down when the results swing by 10% or more following the mail-in returns.

It looks like the general election will be as follows:

City Attorney
The unexpected headliner of the election will feature an absolutely insane Twitter lunatic vs. a Republican.  Nicole Thomas-Kennedy is a 2000-follower Twitter nobody running on a platform of abolishing the police, abolishing prison, and refusing to prosecute any misdemeanors.  Since the entire point of the city attorney office is to prosecute misdemeanors, this is effectively a platform of terminating the office of city attorney and legalizing crime in Seattle.  She is also a complete Marxist lunatic with a solid track record of celebrating property destruction and saying utterly idiotic things.  My guess is she will win in a landslide since her opponent, Ann Davison-Sattler, is a completely sane and normal person who left the Democratic Party so she could run for Lieutenant Governor.  So all NTK has to do is say "eeeeeek! Republican!" even though Davison is only a "Republican" in Seattle.

The reason this race is so interesting is because the incumbent, the loathsome Pete Holmes, lost.  If you had asked me before this election what one outcome I would long for the most, it would be the defeat of Pete Holmes, the worst elected official in America.  But that was a hell of a rabbit's paw moment, because while Holmes' career is almost certainly over, he's likely to be replaced by the new worst elected official in America, a lunatic who literally wants to legalize all crime.

This race is utterly terrifying to me as NTK winning would be a disaster for our city.  But I'm pretty sure she will win because reeeeeee Republican

Mayor
As expected, Bruce Harrell and Lorena Gonzalez cleared the field.  This race is going to be a complete f---ing mess and I am really not looking forward to it.

City Council 9
In another race I'm really not looking forward to, Kshama Sawant's protege Nikkita Oliver and local brewery owner Sara Nelson are running neck-and-neck.  Oliver is basically running on the same platform as NTK -- abolish everything, legalize crime, destroy all businesses, eat the rich anyone who owns property.  Oliver getting on the council is less dangerous because they would be only one of 9 votes.  But along with Sawant and Morales, the lunatic bloc grows larger every year.  They're only 2 votes and a friendly mayor away from being able to pass legislation making it legal to steal from anyone who has a job.  If you think I'm exaggerating, you don't live in Seattle.

Nelson is a reasonable person, but a very poor politician, whereas Oliver pretends to be a professor/attorney but is actually just a career activist with plenty of experience whipping up crowds and delivering well-honed applause lines.  If I were Nelson I would find some excuse to just skip all the debates and make the race a referendum on Nikkita Oliver.

Sawant Recall
This is likely to be on the general election ballot (exactly which ballot it's on has been artificially turned into a controversial topic by the increasingly desperate Sawant campaign) and should be very interesting to watch. 

[GeneralMacArthur]

LOL the new DA(City Attorney) of Seattle maybe someone who tweeted this

It's funny if you don't live in Seattle but as someone who does live here and has to deal with crime run amok, the idea of us putting someone who wants to "abolish misdemeanors" in charge of our city's criminal prosecution system is a direct threat to my day-to-day life.

That would essentially be legalizing all the quality-of-life crimes that are rampant in this city.  Assault is a misdemeanor as long as it's not life-threatening.  Property destruction (which she celebrates) is a misdemeanor.  Smashing windows is a misdemeanor.  "Unintentional" arson is a misdemeanor.  Breaking into someone's car is a misdemeanor.  Burglary is a misdemeanor.  Package theft is a misdemeanor.  Harassment is a misdemeanor.  Domestic violence is usually a misdemeanor.  Indecent exposure is a misdemeanor.  And even the more severe versions of these crimes, which by rights ought to be felonies, regularly get downgraded to misdemeanors.

Yet if you look at her Twitter, she tweets out stuff like "picking blackberries is a misdemeanor, I think we should stop punishing misdemeanors" as though we're locking up people for picking blackberries.

F---ing DUIs are a misdemeanor in this state.  So it's no exaggeration to say that we have a city attorney candidate running on a platform of legalizing DUI.  Like what the f--- is wrong with this city.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Cinyc has election night precinct maps of the Seattle mayoral and city attorney primaries up here. The map is making me feel a bit better about Davison's prospects in the general. It looks like Holmes won a bunch of precincts in Seattle's more diverse southeast, a big patch just north of Capitol Hill where Davison came in second, the south end of West Seattle, and a few other scattering spots. I feel all of those areas could potentially split more toward Davison than NTK, maybe?

Yeah that's an interesting map.  It looks like there are a lot of Harrell/Holmes voters.  Maybe a lot of people just weren't familiar with the rather obscure job of city attorney and simply voted for the incumbent with a whole bunch of endorsements?  I really can't see the good people of Madrona, Laurelhurst, Leschi and Lakewood voting for someone who not only wants to legalize all property crime, but openly celebrates it.

I'm also hopeful thinking of the Wheeler-Iannarone race.  Sara Iannarone is my comp for NTK, and she lost to a man with a 26% approval rating.  A bonafide lunatic who worships communist mass-murderers was a bridge too far for Portland voters.

I'm sure the 43rd Dems, Union PACs and local alt media will be all-in on trying to portray Ann Davison as literally Trump because of the (R) next to her name.  She needs to get a lot of money fast so she can turn this race into a referendum on NTK, otherwise it will become a referendum on voting for a Republican.

[GeneralMacArthur]

It’s kind of funny. Back when I was in middle/high school, Seattle was largely unknown to a large portion of the population, or people would immediately bring up the movie “Sleepless in Seattle.” Then, from 2010 to 2015, everyone was raving about how Seattle was the best place ever and wanted to move there. Since 2015, though, people have been pretty much constantly s****ing on it, about how it’s the most intolerant, depressing, fake, and antisocial place ever (and, of course, many complain about its politics.) I wonder if there’s anyone who has a relatively neutral or mixed view of the area, lol.

I moved here in 2013, and people constantly ask me what I think of Seattle.  And of course my family always asks me when I'm going to move back east.  My opinion of Seattle is pretty mixed.

Pros:

• No income tax!
• Weather is amazing
• No mosquitos means you can actually enjoy sunny weather!
• Easily walkable
• The food is so f---ing good
• Excellent bars, nightclubs, events, wish the art scene was less edgy but it's nice to have one
• As a major west-coast cultural hub, there's pretty much always something happening, and every musician includes Seattle in their tour schedule
• Easy access to beaches, islands, mountains, forests, lake resorts, hiking, skiing, beauty
• Beautiful parks and bodies of water, especially on sunny summer days!
• Utilities are low-key really good, excellent water quality, no dead zones for cell phones, and you're not stuck with TWC or Comcast for internet/cable like in most southeastern cities
• Almost all interests are indulged here, so whatever you're into, there's probably a scene for it

Cons:

• It's really far away from everything and everyone, you may as well be on an island
• City is successful in spite of local politicians doing their utmost to ruin the city
• Absolutely disastrous drug + mental illness crisis
• Crime openly tolerated and not prosecuted, you just have to hope you don't draw the short straw
• Incredibly antisocial climate, it's always culture shock going back to the south and having people be super-friendly and want to talk to me, you just get used to keeping to yourself and socializing through your phone all day
• Young people in search of an identity care way too much about eye-rolling performative left-wing politics
• Housing is outrageously expensive relative to the quality of house you get.  Even for $600/sqft you're looking at a Sears Catalog house from 1914 that requires constant maintenance
• A lot of the city infrastructure is really old and nonsensical and the city has no plan to replace it (you find this out when you own property).
• Traffic/commute is utterly miserable -- try to get a job you can walk/bike to
• Extreme overproliferation of a certain type of tech guy -- not "tech bro" (those are all in SV), but more like, bland, boring, socially-awkward skinny white guys who don't know how to have a conversation that isn't about beer, weed, bitcoin or Tesla, but will still make small talk with you in the elevator once and then spend the next year smiling and waving at you in the hall like that makes you best friends.
• Extreme overproliferation of white girls who don't know have a personality outside of wine, Netflix, their dog, and pretending to like the outdoors.

Basically, it's a beautiful paradise with wonderful amenities, but I wish I didn't have to share it with a bunch of nitwits.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Sawant doesn't actually accomplish anything since she is just one vote, she is just a really terrible person.  Her main impact on the council is to piss everybody off by constantly reciting speeches that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and waste enormous amounts of time on publicity stunts.  She's also ruined all the public comment segments by packing the hall with her paid supporters.  I am represented by her and can confirm that her office does absolutely nothing for the district and couldn't care less if you're dumb enough to call them and ask them to help with some D3-related matter.

Tammy Morales is Sawant's protege.  She was campaigning with SocAlt and SocAlt was promoting her and Sawant as the SocAlt duo.  Then her focus groups told her that D2 isn't D3 and doesn't want a Trotskyite communist as their representative.  So she got rid of all that stuff, ran as a Democrat, and accused anyone who brought it up of lying.  It worked, she got elected, and now she votes with Sawant nearly 100% of the time.

There are a lot of local politicians who would rather be on Sawant's good side, or are similarly extreme and just not dumb enough to characterize their extremism as Marxism.  Lorena Gonzalez and Teresa Mosqueda both endorsed her against Egan Orion, for instance.  It's very much not surprising that a loathsome dips--t like Mike O'Brien is backing her.  I expect Mike McGinn, Cary Moon, Dan Strauss and Andrew Lewis will back her as well if they haven't already.

Being a part of the Recall campaign feels very similar to Biden 2020 where the other side is just constantly abusing every vector possible to try to cheat, lies without shame, breaks all sorts of laws, and just always seems to get away with it.  It's very frustrating.  And adds weight to the effort because it feels like this election is a mandate on lying and cheating -- if you can do it to such an extreme degree and be rewarded by the voters, that's just going to be every election from this point forward.  Very similar to how weighty it felt battling Trump in 2020.

The fact remains that she broke the law and deserves to be recalled for it, just like Trump or any other lawbreaking politician.  That would be true even if she weren't an outrageously awful human being.

[GeneralMacArthur]

lmao Gmac, just lmao how you could be so delusional.

But for real, it’s amazing how a party with only one elected member that has basically relegated themselves to be a regional branch of the DSA could cause people to delude themselves. Granted Sawant has a lot of street cred for her excellent service to her community.

I encourage everyone to dispel the lies made against Sawant through excellent reporting by The Stranger. They have an excellent series dispelling the mythical reality Gmac lives in, divorced from the reality his city is in.

I don't even know what part of my post you're replying to.  I said Sawant doesn't actually get anything done, but your point about her being one party member of a regional branch seems like you're replying to someone who said she does have power.

It's more akin to those poor Democrats in Georgia who have Marjorie Taylor Greene as their representative.  Yes, she's powerless, so she's not really capable of actively harming them.  But it still really sucks to have such an awful person as your representative in Congress, and it would be nice to replace her with someone who actually cares about the district and is effective enough to advocate for its interests.  There are legitimate parochial issues in D3 that Sawant doesn't have a clue about, and probably sound trivial to talk about on here, but matter quite a lot to those of us who actually live here and walk these streets every single day.

Also hilarious that you posted an article by Nathalie Graham (who just got fired from The Stranger -- but you have no idea who this person even is) of The Stranger (which has a reputation as an extreme radical left publication, and loves Sawant to death -- but you have no idea what this magazine even is) that was written a year ago, as though that's somehow credible.  Want to post Charles Mudede's thoughts on the Recall as well?  Or Rich Smith?  All very credible and non-biased voices in the Seattle ecosystem!  But you don't have any idea who any of these people are.

You live 2000 miles away so I don't know why you're trying to lecture me about the city council representative for the seven square miles that I happen to have lived in for most of the last decade, lol.



Also, you're wrong about SocAlt and CHAZ.  When CHAZ first started, Sawant went down there and tried to pull some "our movements are one and the same" malarkey, and had her paid cronies all out there gathering phone numbers and pushing a petition, basically her usual shtick to try and adopt the CHAZ movement as her own movement and put herself on top so she could take credit for what other people were doing.  The CHAZ crowd wasn't having it and she got booed.  Want to know how I know this?  Because I live here and saw it in person, lol

[GeneralMacArthur]

OK long post about how Seattle got to where it is today incoming:

Seattle has changed and the people within it want this new direction, and honestly so far as the fastest growing major city in the country (with over 100k new residents arriving between 2010-2020) as well as being the new mecca for the tech industry. I just fail to see how the new change in direction is disastrous. Having myself been homeless in the seattle metro region in the early 2010s the homelessness crisis isn't new, hell there's an almost live skit from the 90s regarding having to jump over panhandlers on your way to work.

Yep, and there was the SPD "Under the Viaduct" skit from the early 90s as well.  When I moved here I had heard for years about the notorious Jungle on the side of Beacon Hill.  The thing was, yes the Jungle was a national embarrassment and a hotbed of crime, but it didn't really affect the rest of the city.  It sucked big time for Beacon Hill, and nobody wanted to live there because the crime was so bad, but nobody was walking from the Jungle up to Capitol Hill to steal a bike.

My understanding is that Greg Nickels periodically swept the Jungle to clean it up and arrest the obvious big-time criminals, so people would disperse to other areas of the city and set up cities, but the law enforcement was very vigilant about those, so those people would move back to the Jungle as soon as they could.  And there was a constant struggle between law enforcement and homelessness activists who wanted to protect these ex-Jungle folks and let them keep living in Green Lake or wherever.  Most of those big activist names from back then are today running "homelessness services" or organizations like SHARE and WHEEL, and receiving millions of dollars a year from the city council to try things their way.

Then Mike McGinn took office, he didn't care about the Jungle, and everyone was able to live there without fear of law enforcement.  I arrived in Seattle at the tail end of the McGinn administration so this was all mostly before my time.  When I first got to Seattle, there were isolated tents under bridges downtown and in SODO, and Pioneer Square was considered really dangerous because addicts would hang out there all day waiting for the shelters to open, but it was absolutely nothing like what we see today.



From my perspective, what made things really bad was a combination of local and national factors.

Nationally, the opioid crisis exploded in 2013, with opioid overdose deaths tripling nationwide between 2013-2016.  Methamphetamines also exploded around the same time, with overdoses doubling from 2013-2017.

Locally, this meant the drug problem was getting worse, and so the number of homeless addicts was increasing.  Ed Murray and the city council didn't know how to handle this, so they started letting those activists and their organizations handle things, pouring millions of dollars into the creation of tiny house villages and other such pop-up shelters.  They also turned a blind eye to the inevitable crime and damage that would result from building these tiny house villages in neighborhoods.  Of course if you build a tiny house village in Licton Springs, then you have drug addicts wandering around Licton Springs day and night, not only making the neighborhood unsafe but also stealing anything that isn't nailed down so they can sell it for drugs.  The city council and their allied activists didn't want to acknowledge that this was a problem, so they started using a lot of far-left language about the crimes actually being a good thing, or a necessary evil, and we have to accommodate everyone's lifestyle, and so on.  So every year law enforcement would be restricted more and more, and the city administration was totally uninterested in actually prosecuting any of these people.  I don't know how this permissive culture developed, but it did seem like every six months we'd hear about the city council making things more permissive.

In 2015 a crazed junkie on a city bus tried to assault me.  The city arrested him but didn't prosecute and he was released back out onto the street with no consequences.  Since then I haven't used public transit.  From what I hear, it's gotten a lot worse.  That was when I became very interested in this issue.  I learned that this was a regular thing, that police can't arrest anyone for open-air drug use, harassment, or otherwise being an obvious danger to themselves and those around them.  They have to wait for them to actually do a crime, and even then only from a very specific short-list of crimes that they're allowed to arrest for.  And even if they do arrest people, they just get released.



The permissive culture acted as a magnet, drawing in junkies and transients from all around the country.  Nice weather, easy access to drugs, no laws, and you can live where you like with no trouble, what's not to like?  So we started getting more and more homeless.  The perception that we had "better services" also meant that other cities, who were also struggling with the opioid/meth crisis, would buy their addicts bus or plane tickets to Seattle.  Every time some crazed junkie made the news, they would never be from Seattle.

But the city council and mayor didn't want to acknowledge this failure, so instead they said that all these new homeless were folks who'd been priced out of apartments by rising rents thanks to Amazon.  That political message became the new norm, and between 2014-2020, every election here became "the homeless are Amazon's fault and we have to attack Amazon to fix the problem."  People love to hate Amazon so the politicians kept getting elected.  This even though it was extremely obvious that most of the new homeless were lifestyle transients who were pros at what they were doing and part of a thriving drug scene.  Meanwhile the council was trying to fix the problem by making the culture more permissive.  Lisa Herbold wanted to open up safe injection sites in residential neighborhoods close to the new encampments.  Sally Bagshaw thought we should just hand out free drugs.  Mike O'Brien introduced legislation to legalize camping in public parks.



So those are the factors that led to the situation continuing to deteriorate every single year.  But I think the problem really came to a head in 2016 when there were a series of shootings at The Jungle and Ed Murray swept the entire thing and shut it down.  This was basically the equivalent to releasing everyone from prison, because all those former Jungle folks, the most hardened Seattle criminals and drug addicts, dispersed throughout the city.  Many of them settled in the existing tent encampments or villages.  Some of them took their former social circles from the Jungle and just created a new encampment with that same group, so that a chunk of The Jungle was suddenly in your neighborhood p-patch.

From my perspective, 2016 is when the problem really got out of control and we just had complete chaos.  At least before 2016, your neighborhood could get screwed over by SHARE deciding to turn a parking lot into a drug bazaar and the city telling you to suck it up, but there was some order and control to it.  The transients who couldn't get into the villages mostly stuck to SODO and Georgetown which were always a wasteland.  After 2016, we just had the worst of the Jungle setting up wherever they pleased -- Green Lake, Ballard, Capitol Hill, any green space in random residential neighborhoods -- and nobody could do anything about it.



Prior to 2017, the SR 99 tunnel had been the main source of political polarization in Seattle.  But by 2017 the project was nearing completion and nobody had strong opinions about it anymore.  Homelessness replaced SR 99 as the new source of political polarization in the city.

One the one side, you have this ideology that says "all of this is the fault of Amazon and the tech bros for making property unaffordable, and these people are just victims.  Enforcing laws is just punishing them for being homeless.  We have to let them do whatever they want until we can build enough affordable housing to shelter them."

And on the other side, you had people like me who said "the laws should apply to everyone, having tents in parks is not an acceptable replacement for public housing, and these people are victims of the opioid crisis, not of rising rents."

And that's where we are today.  My side won the 2017 mayoral election, and the other side won the 2019 city council elections.  So far things aren't looking good for the 2021 elections.



One last story.  In 2019, there was a vacant lot a few blocks from my house that some local women's group decided, with the city's permission, to turn into a park.  They worked all throughout the spring to plant seeds and plants, added a few structures, and so forth.  I thought this was a wonderful project and came out to help them on a few weekends.  This was two blocks away from a school, and after the park was finished, teachers would take their kids to run around and play there.  It was really nice and emblematic of the sort of community culture and creativity that makes people want to live in Capitol Hill.

But you can probably imagine what happened next.  After a few months, one tent moved into the park.  Then that guy was quickly joined by his friends, so you had more tents.  I never saw the children out there playing ever again.  One of the women who had been building the park was a neighbor of mine and she was extremely upset about it but said she'd called SPD and they said they couldn't do anything.  I couldn't believe this and was very upset as well so I called SPD and got the same story -- unless you have evidence they committed a crime, we can't do anything, it's perfectly legal for them to camp in your little park.

Today you would have no idea that place used to be a park.  It's just an empty lot with a dozen different tents and garbage everywhere.  And there's been a corresponding uptick in crime.  During the day we see shady characters wandering the street.  One time a women walked down the street, totally naked, just screaming AAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA.  You take a walk down this garden-lined street, where children play, and you're guaranteed to find a couple little orange syringe caps.  At night my cameras catch car prowlers all the time and it's always one of 3 different people, one of them I know for a fact lives there.  I used to have people come try my back door late at night to see if I'd left it unlocked, but I installed some motion-sensor floodlights and they stopped.  My car was smashed into once, not because there was anything to steal, but they just wanted to rummage through my glove compartment and see if I was hiding any valuables in there.  I told the police and showed them I had footage of the entire thing, but they had no interest in checking out the encampment to see if the culprit lived there.  I also used to lose packages regularly until I started adding delivery instructions telling the mail carrier to hide them inside my bushes.

And that's just, you know, day to day life in this city.  That's the real life consequences of all this high-minded rhetoric about our "houseless neighbors" and "crimes of need" and "lack of affordable housing." 

[GeneralMacArthur]

The very fact that Seattle is crazy is why people vote for SAlt, they’re entire advertising schtick is providing stability and peace in the city. They do want to solve homelessness and stop the junkies by giving them a place to stay and have professionals treat them to get on their feet.

Of course given you are blind to reality and are dismissive of run of the mill Seattle residents and their viewpoints on how to solve the cities problems, I see the problem may be you being such a giant square.

You say these things and then you don't respond to anything in my posts.

You don't even live here.  Have you ever even visited Seattle?  Like seriously go find another thread do post in.  Don't sit there 2000 miles away and tell me that I'm blind to things I can literally look out my window and observe.  Don't degrade me for writing long posts explaining the situation here, and then claim I'm the one who doesn't know what's going on in my own city.

It's hilarious that you can say something like "SocAlt's entire advertising shtick is providing stability and peace" with a straight face, and then turn around and say I'm the delusional one.  You don't know this since you don't live here, but SocAlt goes out every week and plasters every lamppost in Capitol Hill with their big red posters.  Not once have those posters ever said anything about "peace and stability" it's always radical change, us-vs-them, fight fight fight, overthrow capitalism, down with the landlords, everyone who opposes us is a right-wing billionaire Trump supporter.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Only about three weeks to go before election day, I'd label the races as follows:

Harrell vs. Gonzalez:  Lean Harrell
Davison vs. NTK:  Toss-up
Nelson vs. Oliver:  Lean Oliver
Wilson vs. Mosqueda:  Safe Mosqueda

We also have the Recall Sawant election a month later in December.  I would rank that as Lean Recall.  But it may be heavily dependent on the results of the November election.  If Gonzalez/NTK/Oliver sweep, I doubt Sawant gets recalled.  The normal, sane folks will just be too demoralized.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Sawant only cares about herself.  She doesn't care about your union and she doesn't care about you.

She'll give lip service to your union if it secures the support of your union leadership, and she'll show up to your rallies and strikes if there's an opportunity to take credit for the outcome.  Other than that she couldn't care less.  She's not your friend on the council, she's not going to write any bills to help you or do any of the thankless dirty work or nitty-gritty stuff that would actually achieve positive legislative outcomes.

I've talked to a lot of folks about politics over the last few weeks and it seems like my hypothesis of the recall, that Sawant is in for a rough time if she doesn't have an opponent to demonize, is coming to fruition.  Sawant can't defend herself or her illegal activities, and the few positives she can point to are just things she believes but never does anything about, so it's easy to tell people "we can get someone who believes the same things, but is actually effective instead of a lawbreaking grandstander." Ordinarily she'd be able to counter this with a relentless, ruthless, expensive smear campaign to make sure people thought her opponent didn't believe those things.  But she has no opponent.  So she's lost her main strategy and she's floundering.

[GeneralMacArthur]

That’s untrue given SAlt’s push for higher wages and affordable housing that Seattle acted as a spark to advance the movement, but ok, whatever you say GMac.

Oh Jesus, my sweet lord and savior, will I be glad to hear the last of this phony baloney claim that Sawant had literally anything to do with Fight For 15 beyond swooping in at the last second to grandstand and take all the credit.