(Image: Ry Armstrong 4 Seattle)

The 2023 battle for the District 3 seat is shaping up like your typical race for the Seattle City Council.

There is the business candidate — though backers of pot entrepreneur and third generation Central District resident Joy Hollingsworth will assure you she brings much more to the table.

There is the firebrand socialist incumbent who may or may not defend her seat.

And there is the Democracy Voucher candidate bringing enthusiasm and youth — if not experience — to the race.

“While I’m new to Seattle governance, I don’t think that my inexperience is a flaw that I’m concerned about,” Ry Armstrong tells CHS. “I’m trying to start as early as possible and also come from a place of empathy and listening to the community instead of coming in and saying what I want to do.”

Armed with a masters in international relations and sustainable development and powered by the hope built living amongst other queer and young apartment dwellers in Capitol Hill’s core, Armstrong is part of a wave of first-time City Hall candidates in Seattle enabled and empowered by the Democracy Voucher program that provides public funding for candidates.

While candidates like Hollingsworth will, like Armstrong, build her campaign with voucher funding, her candidacy will also launch with financial support from community organizations and businesses that back her.

And the incumbent? She has built a powerful, grassroots political machine that is also good at raising money.

Armstrong, on the other hand, is part of the small army of Seattle candidates that can make their marks on the city’s political scene thanks almost exclusively to voucher funding. Knocking them for a lack of experience pretty much misses the point.

Relatively newly returned to the Pacific Northwest, Armstrong works in customer support for a residential and commercial leasing firm while also building a music and theatrical production company. He grew up north of the city in the Kenmore-Bothell area and then attended Central Washington University in Ellensburg where he served as the student body president in 2015 before moving to New York.

You may have also seen his other work — Meet Genderqueer ‘Gilded Age’ Actor Ry Armstrong

Now Armstrong is back in Washington and got the itch to do something more than read about policy and governance. The candidate claims to bear no animosity toward incumbent Kshama Sawant and, in fact, finds some shared politics with the Socialist Alternative leader.

“I think she’s pretty fierce,” Armstrong says. “And I’m not that separated from her on policy.”

As for that policy, Democracy Voucher candidates like Armstrong can come to the races without a lot of baggage. Armstrong’s launch positions are pretty easily summed up with a pledge to make Seattle carbon neutral by the end of the decade, establishing Seattle as a right to shelter city “to give support to displaced persons who need resources to get back on their feet,” and improving public safety with a new “311” or “611” phone system to provide access to non-emergency municipal services.

It’s a simple platform that Armstrong says is just starting to be shaped with eight months of campaigning ahead until the August primary.

“I’m a democracy voucher candidate,” Armstrong said. “I mean, I want to take meetings with people in power to learn who they are and to be able to, like, have conversations, but I don’t want their money.”

As the race for District 3 takes shape, Armstrong as the Democracy Voucher candidate will fit right in.

Learn more at ry4seattle.com.

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