“noisy sunday morning” — @maniftendst via Twitter
The battle over the effort to recall the area’s representative on the Seattle City Council took to the skies above Capitol Hill and the Central District Sunday as a small plane towed around a big sign with a short message: RECALL SAWANT
The noisy display on a bright summer day “was planned weeks ago to get the word out about the recall,” campaign manager Henry Bridger tells CHS, and wasn’t an effort to target a labor-focused rally in support of Kshama Sawant being held below at Cal Anderson Park.
“Yesterday, over 100 labor activists met in Cal Anderson park to rally for the Kshama Solidarity Campaign. Meanwhile, the anti-worker recall campaign launched their most outrageous stunt yet: hiring a plane to tow a ‘Recall Sawant’ banner around Capitol Hill for hours on end,” anti-recall spokesperson Bryan Koulouris said. “This shows the contrast between our grassroots campaign which depends on the support and donations of working-class people while the recall relies on over 500 Republican and rich donors. Contracting this banner plane likely cost the recall upwards of $5,000. Our supporters have been excited to donate to our Solidarity campaign in response to this flashy (and downright strange) tactic from the right-wing recall.”
Bridger says his $1,800 campaign spend was a big success in a political fight that has reached a total $1.15 million in contributions across the two sides.
“The flight path was to fly around the entire district, which was more cost effective than a billboard in one location, or mailing to 72,000+ voters leaving less of a carbon foot print than thousands of Sawant posters slapped all over the district on light poles where city workers and others have to drive around removing them and eventually ending up in a landfill for hundreds of years,” Bridger said. “This tactic actually worked and got many voters talking about it.”
CHS definitely heard a lot about the Cessna’s flight.
Most of it was complaints about the noise of the buzzing little plane with many comparing it to the irritation of the frequent Washington State Patrol surveillance flights over Capitol Hill last summer during CHOP.
Bridger shot down the criticism noting “the center of Capitol Hill is the flight approach path of hundreds of planes landing at Boeing Field and Sea Tac Airport” and adding that the plane “was not as obnoxiously loud as Sawant and the other Solidarity speakers yelling into a microphone with loud speakers during Sawant’s rally in the neighborhood on a Sunday morning.”
Meanwhile, both campaigns continue to collect signatures in an effort to put the recall vote on the November ballot, a surprise twist in one of the most hotly contested political tussles underway in the city and a fight for Seattle’s most veteran member of the city council to keep her seat.
Maybe a little too much, Recall Sawant pic.twitter.com/1ofRLRmGmC
— jseattle (@jseattle) July 19, 2021
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Nothing says very sincere down-to-earth grassroots concerned neighbor campaign like hiring a frickin airplane to annoy the neighborhood on a Sunday morning. Get bent.
Are you kidding? Lawn-mowers, new/rescue/hospital helicopters, ambulances, “houseless” individuals having fits of crisis, garbage trucks, construction, barking dogs, traffic in general, the flight path of commercial airplanes are all common noises you may hear in basically any town or city across the country–minus the homeless shrieking, that’s just prevalent in Sawant’s Seattle. But you’re bent out of shape by the drone of a prop plane? Get a grip.
Not to mention Solidarity Comrades shouting exaggerated blah blah blah in loudspeakers.
BLM did the same here last summer with the skywriting. That’s way more expensive than plane banners. I don’t recall Sawantists being upset with that, but maybe they were.
They probably got the idea from the people that hired the same plane to fly a Trump 2020 banner last summer
Probably the same right wing trolls that hired a plane to annoy the neighborhood last Summer with a Trump 2020 sign. Same mindset at least.
Yes the same obnoxious mindset. I won’t donate any more to the Recall campaign if they continue to pull this worthless noise polluting BS over my house. Win with ideas, not noise.
LOL what about all the money from OUTSIDE this community that poured in for Sawant’s campaign? This is how politics work, sweetie. Lord knows Seattle has earmarked millions to support the homeless, how’s that working out? How about criticizing the people sitting in the seat with the ability to affect change in a major way. This is private money being spent for a cause. Recalling Sawant, by spreading the word / bringing awareness, in by no means a shame.
The anti-recall relies on “donations of working-class people”…
The truth is, the SOLIDARITY campaign has only 38.9% from the City of Seattle which includes a whopping 18.70% only from District 3!!!
With a huge contrast, the RECALL campaign has 80.40% of it’s contributions from inside Seattle which includes the 40.90% within District 3.
Who does Kshama represent??
I’ll venture a guess you wouldn’t be willing to break down the District 3 and 7 recall contributions.
The pie chart above taken from the seattle.gov/elections site breaks it down by district.
So, from on high, you declare the Recall Sawant effort as “anti-worker”? Maybe you need a break jseattle….
Maybe you need an education on what quotation marks in a news article mean, Pablo
I never said that. I simply re-posted the quote. The Recall effort is far from anti-worker.
Uh, it’s a direct quote from the anti-recall effort. It’s not Jseattle writing that.
I’m old enough to remember when planes used to fly messages around Seattle every single day. I believe it was a cheap way to get flight hours for aspiring pilots. Anyone seen that old GEICO banner lately? Yet everyone is acting like this is some unheard of thing.
To hear Sawant and her supporters tell it, you’d think the Recall folks hired a coal roller to blast heavy metal music at 3 in the morning. A Cessna uses 6 gallons of gas an hour and makes about as much as a lawnmower. The Stranger tried to claim this effort was destroying the environment by burning “jet fuel” as though it was a 747 flying around the neighborhood. Give me a break.
Just more grasping at straws.
Forensic audits
The Sawant solidarity campaign minion calls this an “outrageous stunt.” I call it a very unique and effective measure on the part of the Recall campaign. Methinks the Sawant people are a little jealous.
HAHA – I saw the banner flying – it’s a little corny, but who cares? I’m more offended by characterizing this as a racist, right-wing recall.
I had the same opinion. I think it’s a dumb use of money (same as sending out a zillion fliers) but oh well.
Yeah I mean the plane flying geico banners has been a daily occurrence as long as i can remember, not to mention due to our wind patterns most of the time commercial jet traffic flies right over many of our houses in D3 every 30 sec or so…
I’m amused and concerned by the rhetoric about this being an effort by republicans, millionaires and billionaires to take Kshama down.. The data on donations shows its just normal ass people who live here and want someone to govern not constantly draw attention to herself while accomplishing very little.
Cant wait for her to be gone.
“Yesterday, over 100 labor activists met in Cal Anderson park to rally for the Kshama Solidarity Campaign”?
Uhhhh. I walked by the “rally” when Sawant was just leaving. I saw about 40 people standing around. More propaganda from the Queen of Spin.
Yes, reminds me of Trump’s false claim that his inauguration attracted many more people compared to Obama’s. Sawant’s tactics and lies make her the same on the left as Trump is on the right.