González, Oliver, Constantine, Thomas-Kennedy
It was a calm and orderly takeover Tuesday night as progressive candidates completed a mostly clean sweep of November election endorsements by the 43rd District Democrats. Meanwhile, the local Dems from neighborhoods across Capitol Hill to across Lake Union in Fremont and Green Lake hope to deploy new influence this election season as they launch a first for the community group — a political action committee to raise funds to support its slate of endorsed candidates.
“I’m a proud first-generation, a first-time mom. I started working in the fields of central Washington at the young age of eight years old. And my work has not ended,” mayoral candidate and Seattle City Council president Lorena González said in her videoconference statement prior to Tuesday’s endorsement vote held online due to ongoing COVID-19 concerns. “I am ready to be the next mayor to put my civil rights experience and my relationships with the council to work for the people of this city.”
González had an easy time of it, winning the group’s endorsement with 88 of the 115 votes cast in the session over challenger Bruce Harrell. With Harrell attending another campaign event, his niece, campaign manager Monisha Harrell, spoke on the candidate’s behalf.
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The manager emphasized specific votes from Harrell’s time on the city council in 2011, 2013, and another in 2011 that showed his early support for trans rights, criminal rehabilitation, and broadband internet access. The blast from the past was not convincing for Tuesday night’s 43rd participants as Harrell received only 22% of the vote.
While Tuesday’s endorsement of González was not a major surprise for the increasingly progressive leaning 43rd Dems, failing to win the endorsement against the political veteran Harrell could have been a troubling sign for her prospects in this core of the city. In the August primary, González finished second as she and Harrell qualified through to the general election. Precinct mapping showed González’s strong performance in areas like the dense, apartment-rich zones while Harrell was able to dominate in the area’s more affluent, suburban neighborhoods.
González’s victory was not the only expected but convincing progressive victory on the night.
In the race for one of the two citywide seats on the Seattle City Council, the 43rd District Democrats endorsed activist and lawyer Nikkita Oliver with around 75% approval for the Position 9 seat.
“We cannot continue to build our city on the backs of workers and those who have the least income when we have more billionaires per capita than almost any other city in the United States corporations. And the wealthy should be paying their fair share to see our city be a place that is inclusive and welcoming to all people,” Oliver said, broadcasting her video via phone from another campaign event on the busy night in a speech that touched on “upstream solutions” including hotelling, tiny house villages, and putting and end to sweeps, as well as the need to address the “climate catastrophe” by ending exclusionary zoning, and providing efficient transit to all parts of the city.
This summer during the primary, the 43rd already endorsed incumbent Teresa Mosqueda to retain her Position 8 seat.
Another progressive endorsement featured a Tuesday night race between police abolitionist candidate Nicole Thomas-Kennedy and “no endorsement.” Thomas-Kennedy’s opponent for City Attorney, Republican public safety advocate Ann Davison did not submit a questionnaire to be included in the endorsement meeting and did not participate Tuesday night.
In her statement, Thomas-Kennedy struck some of the abolitionist chords that have freaked out right wing commentators across the country with a pledge to take new approaches to dealing with those arrested and being prosecuted for crimes and new efforts including a victims compensation fund to help “repair people in small businesses, survivors of interpersonal violence, tell us what they need in order to be empowered.”
“The city attorney decides which misdemeanors to prosecute misdemeanors are by definition low-level crime. And we spend over 70 million per year punishing, primarily the poor BIPOC and the disabled for these misdemeanors,” Thomas-Kennedy said. “If we want to have safe and healthy communities, we have to stop giving into those who pander to fear.”
The City Attorney candidate also gave the right wing something else to worry about.
“On the civil side of the office, the city attorney directs all of Seattle, civil litigation, both defensive and proactive. I will protect Seattle by taking on those that have done the most harm to our community,” she said. “Those that challenge, progressive taxation, landlords that abuse tenants, companies that can make wage theft, and fossil fuel corporations that have knowingly created our climate crisis — I will make sure that those who have done large-scale harm to our city are held financially accountable for their actions.”
Thomas-Kennedy’s battle against “no endorsement” was no contest. She garnered 78% of the night’s votes and will be endorsed by the group.
CHS reported here on the strength in the primary from both Oliver and Thomas-Kennedy as both candidates made major gains with later voters in the August election.
During Tuesday night’s 43rd District Democrats endorsements and its small wave of progressive approvals, there was also a victory, of sorts, for a more traditional, “big D” Democrat in one key race. Incumbent Dow Constantine, broadcasting from a campaign appearance on Vashon Island, defended his progressive bonafides and rolled out help from Capitol Hill state Rep. Nicole Macri to win support over his challenger, West Seattle state Sen. Joe Nguyen. CHS reported on the race here.
“Listen, Dow is the real deal, Macri said. “He has taken decisive action on so many issues that are grounded on in our progressive values on climate justice, on housing affordability in responding to homelessness, snatching up nine hotels, close to 900 new units of housing that I’m actively involved in opening up, welcoming refugees, basically creating a single payer behavioral health system for our low income residents. So many things that many residents of this district know and don’t know.”
“Our campaign has already pushed the conversation forward just by being in this race,” Nguyen said. “Imagine what we can do when we are in charge. Imagine a county leadership where you didn’t have to fight to be heard.”
The 43rd wasn’t fully convinced. Constantine received only 45% of the night’s 116 votes in the race. But his challenger also fell short of the 60% needed for endorsement with a 56% showing.
With its endorsement slate set, the 43rd District group can now set out on organizing its “get out the vote” efforts and deploying the resources from its new PAC fundraising.
“Support from our founding members will allow us to print endorsement sheets for our PCOs and run a robust get out the vote campaign to help elect our endorsed candidates,” the group’s pitch for donations reads.
While the new firepower is an exciting upgrade for the group, the enthusiasm was somewhat tempered Tuesday night. The big strategy for the first-time ever PAC spend? Likely mailers with a modest budget from first-time donors.
But enthusiasm for the progressive slate is running high.
“I believe that we can build a coalition of progressives across our city from Democrats to third-party (voters) who share the values of building a city that is truly accessible for everyone, serves the basic needs, sees housing as a human right,” City Council candidate Oliver said during her Tuesday speech.
Video of the full endorsements meeting is available here via the 43rd District Democrats Facebook page.
The 2021 General Election is Tuesday, November 2nd. Ballots are scheduled to begin being mailed out the week of October 11th with King County drop boxes opening on October 14th.
You can find all of CHS’s Election 2021 coverage at capitolhillseattle.com/tag/elections.
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Know what you’re voting for Seattle. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy has a very radical, almost “tankie” recent past.
Well that’s unsettling.
Oh it actually gets much, much worse.
How far left is too far? There seems to be no limit. I would be on board if the Seattle left was solving problems, but to the contrary, it is painfully obvious that our “progressive” leaders have failed. Ideology has trumped good governance. It is disappointing to see the Seattle Democrats go down the same extremist rabbit hole as the Republicans. I am a lifelong Democrat, but I will not be voting for any of these candidates because I want to live in a great city not a sh**hole.
What problems are moderates solving? I only see them kicking the can down the road or pushing homeless around the city from one place to another with no real solution. Yes, they put forward progressive policies while they’re campaigning but it seems like they never have any intention to actually take action on these issues. Moderate democrats who never fulfill their promises are the ones who have pushed progressives to vote for more “extremist” candidates. Maybe you should encourage the party to fix itself instead of lambasting well-meaning Seattleites.
You must be kidding….. I won’t even call them progressives. What we have here are not progressives, they are extreme leftists have been incrementally turning what started out as a problem here into a full blown emergency…… This didn’t happen overnight. It’s taken several decades of more and more benign neglect and being over permissible with public behavior.
Until the extreme left accepts and admits that the people we have here that are chronically homeless and sleeping on our streets and in our parks are not just poor economic refugees, but rather are the fringes of even the homeless, people that suffer from extremely high rates of severe mental illness and/or drug addiction who need *treatment*, whether or not it’s voluntary, we’ll continue on the downward path that we are experiencing.
Conditions in the city will get worse and more and more people who are otherwise liberal will be pushed to their limit – they will either leave or start voting for candidates that they may feel are more conservative than they find absolutely palatable, but at least represent something preferable to the path that we are on.
You all keep saying that leftists caused the homelessness issue to get worse without saying how, or what moderates have tried doing to solve it besides pushing them around to other parts of the city – that’s not a solution. People like you seem to think that sweeps solve the issue because you can’t see them (temporarily), but just admit that you don’t actually care to solve the issue – you just don’t want to see the “icky” homeless on the streets (sarcasm.)
“Until the extreme left accepts and admits that the people we have here that are chronically homeless and sleeping on our streets and in our parks are not just poor economic refugees, but rather are the fringes of even the homeless, people that suffer from extremely high rates of severe mental illness and/or drug addiction who need *treatment*, whether or not it’s voluntary, we’ll continue on the downward path that we are experiencing.”
What are you going on about? Every “leftist” I know knows that this is exactly the issue and wants City Council to focus on providing this support to the homeless, again, instead of sweeping them to other parts of the city where they can’t get services.
Every leftist I’ve seen acts more like a libertarian and recoils violently from the idea that some people will have to get medical treatment, voluntarily or not, like you just asked them to grab a handful of nice, fresh, warm poo…..
They usually conflate the overall homeless population (including those who are in transitional housing, temporarily homeless, couch surfing) with the people who are of the most societal concern – those who are chronically homeless. They are generally in complete denial that the bulk of the people who are occupying our streets and parks are not just down and out, but are there because they have serious problems with addiction and/or mental health (up to around 90% of them) that it is the reason are homeless, not because of it.
Over the last 20 years this city has done almost *nothing* to create treatment programs and instead thrown away millions of dollars on programs that have merely enabled people to survive in miserable conditions on the streets and slowly eroded any ability that we’ve had to control undesirable public behaviors, through decriminalizing them or simply not enforcing the laws that we have…. The best we’ve been able to do is ask repeat offenders to please, please stay in treatment and then do nothing when they don’t, what do we do? We plead with them again to please, please stay in treatment and put them back out on the streets.
You want to do things the moderate way – spend more money – lots more if we need to BUT not on anything that just supports further street life.
Yeah moderates solve tons of problems. Give me a freakin’ break. Moderates and republicans cause MORE problems.
The term Democrat has become meaningless in seattle
It is so sad but predictable that the 43rd group would take these positions. After all, this is the group of Democrats that endorsed Sawant in her most recent election. Sawant is not a Democrat. She is a Socialist.
By now, the incredible Tweets of NTK are making the rounds. She is endorsing arson (which can and does kill people, not just property), praising the torching of the youth justice center under construction, and the bombing of the East Precinct. She even wants to help with a “guillotine club”, which is clearly about beheading people. I am sure she will claim this is hyperbole or free speech, but this shows who she is – a woman who cheers violence and destruction, who by the way is a sworn member of the Washington State Bar, whose code of ethics prohibit its members from advocating of breaking of the law.
So we may see, and I certainly hope this is the case, many thinking voters of Seattle who see themselves as progressives and proud Democrats, filling in the bubble for Ann Davison.
I would not like to see NTK being elected to city council, but it would be a variation on the current theme. But as City Attorney! No F-ing way.
As it is, many misdemeanors are not prosecuted, and when they are, it is with nuance and consideration of the facts and the person. By her own admission, she will not use the wisdom of the courts and the people who comprise juries, and just ignore the majority of these crimes, including things like assault, domestic violence and others. This is beyond scary and irresponsible.
I would point out that “in her most recent election” Kshama was endorsed only in the 2019 General election… not in the Primary where there were arguably better (less combative) progressives running. In the General election, it was the Kshama vs the Chamber of Commerce candidate…. So yeah. We endorsed the progressive. And here is a shocker: CD3 is a progressive district, and the 43rd endorsement very closely mirrored the general election vote. That is what we want from a political party, isn’t it? For it to be a reflection of people in the district?
Kshama might lose in the recall. The recall campaign was very savvy to avoid facing the larger electorate that would have turned out for the 2021 general election. But if she *is* recalled, I trust that the city council will do the right thing, and appoint a similar progressive to represent us… Because that would be an honest reflection of the 3rd council district.
You can actually choose to simply not endorse any of the candidates….. Have you lost your minds… Thomas-Kennedy & Nikkita Oliver?….. As far as I am concerned they are all just as crazy and extreme as anyone on the far right and wouldn’t vote for them any more than I’d vote for Trump.
And you are here parroting the Sawant campaign’s rhetoric about the recall…. That simply makes me suspicious that the 43rd Democrats are no longer Democrats at all…
You mean like they did when Tim Burgess resigned to take the mayor position? Council appointed Kirsten Tally Harris, a left progressive to replace Burgess, a moderate, and she promptly co-sponsored the first version of the head tax (amazon tax). Why didn’t Council appoint a moderate out of respect for voters who elected Burgess to his Council position? Because they seized the opportunity to push Council further to the left, voter preferences be damned. So don’t talk to me about Council doing the right thing in these situations.
Kristen Tally-Harris was appointed for the remaining 51 days of Tim Burgess’ term, and she was appointed because she had no interest in doing anything except filling the seat until the next election. The position 8 electorate is the entire city, and Theresa Mosqueda now holds the seat… If I remember correctly, Tim Burgess clones weren’t exactly busting down the doors of City Hall clamoring to serve a month and a half term.
Seattle is one of the most Democratic cities in America, with something like an 80% performance in state and national elections… And that performance is driven from the 36th, 43rd and 46th Democratic party membership. It makes me chuckle whenever anyone says that the Democratic party here doesn’t represent the actual voters, because voting records say otherwise. Do the endorsements always match the election results? No… but they do a pretty good job, especially when turn-out is high.
Are the Local Party memberships more progressive / left-wing than the state or national Democratic party? Yes. Without a doubt. But that is why we have the grass-roots party structure. The Washington Democratic chair Tina Podlodowski is not thrilled that we endorsed non-party member Nikita Oliver, but has had nothing to say about endorsing Democrat Nicole Thomas-Kennedy over Republican Ann Davison.
I want to make clear that I AM NOT A FAN OF KSHAMA SAWANT. I wish she were gone, but not at the cost of losing a progressive seat. I *will* be voting against the recall, because it *is* a BS recall driven by all the monied interests that failed to defeat her during the normal election cycle (where she has won THREE TIMES now). And deliberately delaying the vote to a (more expensive) special election, so that fewer voters show up tells you all you need to know of their motivations. I was also against the recall of Jenny Durkan, for all the same reasons.
But to claim that the local party organizations don’t represent the values or the people of the city of Seattle are pure ignorance of both the process and the facts. If you don’t like who the party is endorsing, then plop down your $20 or whatever it is, and join the party and cast votes in the endorsement meetings. They are open to everyone.
That is complete BS – we *vote by mail here* – all voters have to do to “show up” is fill in a bubble, sign their name, lick an envelope and stick it back in their mailbox – and they generally have a few weeks to find the 30 seconds it would take to do it….. (you don’t even need to vote for every issue or candidate if you don’t want to…. this really could take 30 freaking seconds).
There are ZERO reasons to not vote, no matter which election that it is and the election is NOT an unscheduled ballot – recalls are not even legally allowed to be put on a ballot called only for them here…. they have to be on a previously scheduled one and, while we may think only of August primaries and November general elections as being the ‘ones’, there are actually 4 regularly scheduled elections here in Washington. February and April are *always* on the calendar, so no this isn’t costing us a ton of extra money either.
The recall has been driven by voter dissatisfaction… If Sawant loses, the only fault is her own for not being responsive (at all) to her own constituents.
Saying “there is zero reason not to vote” is not the same as saying “turn out for special elections is as high as general elections”. Anyone interested in the truth knows this.
So I call BS on your “that’s BS” comment.
And if you were honest, you would say rather: “The recall was driven by dissatisfaction of people who didn’t vote for her in the first place.”
Because that neatly includes CD3 voters who voted against her, and the people behind the funding of the recall who might not be from CD3. (and before you blow a gasket, yes I am aware that Kshama’s campaign takes in money from outside CD3 as well).
Affluent primarily white people who make up a minority of CD3 always seem to miss that fact that Kshama is popular among renters, people of color, people near or below the poverty line. But we will see. The recall drive collected fewer signatures than Egan Orion got in his loss to Kshama in 2019… Even though the recall campaign had 180 days and sent everyone in the district a legal signature gathering petition form… something they could sign and return in “30 freaking seconds”.
Ah, so another thing you are wrong about:
This *will* in fact be a single question ballot, and the city *will* have to pay about $300,000 for it.
A ‘holiday recall ballot’ is headed for your D3 mailbox — UPDATE | CHS Capitol Hill Seattle
If there was any doubt that the 43rd District “Dems” have lost all credibility this should confirm it for most people. When you are actively endorsing members of other parties (People’s party / Socialist Alternative) and undermining your “own” candidates it kind of defeats the point of being a political party. I’d encourage the actual Dems in the district to remove those who aren’t supportive of the party position and let them form their own groups. Until then anything coming out of the 43rd district should be treated with skepticism.
The only “Non-Democrat” endorsed by the 43rd on Tuesday was Nikita Oliver. And her progressive bona fides are more rigorous and “on record” than her opponent, business woman Sara Nelson… Someone better known for advocating as little taxation for business as possible, than anything particularly progressive. Sara has made claims of progressiveness (like saying that her business didn’t lay people off during pandemic) that just don’t hold up.
When a Progressive runs against Pro-Big Business person (at least in Seattle) then yes. You can expect us to endorse the progressive.
Folks, please do not vote for Lorena Gonzalez. I work at a restaurant she frequents. People sometimes show their true selves when dining out, and dealing with servers. For someone whose platform is based on helping those without a voice, she can be very rude and demeaning to staff at times.
I feel that the person Lorena really wants to help is herself.
Bruce Harrell defended Ed Murray after his multiple sexual assault allegations. Which is worse?
I believe Bruce Harrell was defending that someone is innocent until proven guilty. That’s a cornerstone of our justice system.
From Crosscut in 2017: “[Harrell] added that Seattle residents, ‘did not ask us to judge anyone for something that happened 33 years ago or maybe didn’t happen. We just don’t know. And I would ask that I don’t want to be judged for anything 33 years ago…. And I would challenge each of you to think about where you were 33 years ago. The question is are you doing your job today right now?'”
It implies that even if he was guilty, no one should be judged for something that happened 30 years ago… wtf?
The Ed Murray scandal was so 2017, I think Seattle has managed to get itself into more serious problems such as rampant homelessness, a silent but real “white flight” of people and jobs to Eastside, the city’s contentious relationship with big corporations, a crime wave + an abortionist candidate… I do think these issues above deserve much more discussions than Ed Murray (who wasn’t convicted of anything).
If you’re okay with Bruce Harrell saying that, then just say so. No need to try to sweep it under the rug.
Also, what are you trying to say by “white flight”? As if making the city more hospitable to rich white people should be our number one priority? That’s so gross.
TheStranger/Urbanist/etc endorsed someone who boarded a bus and told a bunch of kids she was going to blow it up.
There isn’t any standards anymore.
What does that have to do with Harrell in this situation?
At least in local elections everyone just ignores anything someone did previously. Threaten to blow up some kids, cool. Praise arsonists for trying to burn down a city building, that’s fine.
I don’t like that Harrell publicly defended Murray, but I’m not going to surround my apartment with tents to make a point.
Bottom line is Gonzales won’t clean up the city.
Who’s saying that praising arsonists who threaten to blow up kids is fine? And surrounding apartments with tents because people don’t like that Harrell defended Murray? None of these have any correlation. You’re conflating multiple unrelated issues.
Great – you can say that Gonzales won’t clean up the city (I don’t think Harrell will do any better than Gonzales.) All I said was the way that Gonzales allegedly treated wait staff is not worse than Harrell minimizing accusations of sexual assault.
I am pretty confident that two out of the four faces here will likely lose in general election.
Voters of Seattle should decide whether the City continues to move further Left (joining the ranks of San Francisco and Portland), or we move back to the center a bit.
Yuk. These politicians are awful. Especially Thomas-Kennedy. I watched Lorena Gonzalez on the news last night at her press conference, and she is essentially saying that she will not do anything to clean up parks, sidewalks, and other public spaces. Her fix is the same old “more taxes on companies” to supposedly deal with the encampments, & RV’s. So frustrating to listen/watch people like her be complicit in the problem. Help us all if Harrell is not elected. If Gonzalez, Oliver, and Thomas-Kennedy are elected, sadly this City is done for a long long time.