An August primary can be a quiet affair but the loudest political battle on Capitol Hill ballots this summer appears to be in the race for the open 43rd District seat in the Washington House of Representatives.

Still, not many have heard the voices of the candidates in the race and the loudest statement so far might be the flood of Andrea Suarez yard signs that suddenly are lining certain Capitol Hill and Central District arteries.

Suarez’s challenger Shaun Scott doesn’t have a yard sign army but he does have the highest profile endorsements in the race and the support of Frank Chopp, the Washington political legend and housing champion whose retirement opened the seat.

“While we’re talking about wide support, we’re happy to be endorsed in this race by almost every labor organization that’s endorsed in this race,” Scott says. “We’re proud to be endorsed in this race by every sitting Washington state lawmaker who is going to be in Olympia in 2025 after this election.”

“It’s easy to put a yard sign… even if they didn’t consent to it being put up in the area around where they live. It’s much harder to build a winning coalition.”

The Race for Legislative District 43, State Representative Pos. 2 — August Primary

• Stephanie LLoyd-Agnew (Prefers Democrat Party) withdrawn
• Shaun Scott (Prefers Democratic Party)
• Daniel Carusello (Prefers Democratic Party)
• Andrea Suarez (Prefers Democratic Party)

Scott, a lobbyist with the Statewide Poverty Action Network who narrowly lost a 2019 race to represent the University District on the Seattle City Council, and Suarez are the top-funded candidates in this summer’s 43rd race and seem likeliest to emerge from the August primary for the push to November’s general election.

Scott has raised just over $70,000 in the race and spent around half of it on canvassing and outreach. Suarez has raised more than $78,000 and spent nearly $45,000 on outreach and mailers. Another $18,000 has been spent on her behalf by the Jackson Legacy Fund, a political action fund formed “to elect and retain pragmatic Democrats who appeal to the state’s political center.”

Third in the fundraising race is Daniel Carusello, a tech account manager and former intern for the Washington Republican Party now running as a Democrat in the 43rd. The Seattle Times, befuddled by the choices of Scott on the party’s left and Suarez on its right, is backing Carusello with a tepid “much needed common sense” endorsement. Carusello has now raised more than $50,000 in the race.

The Stranger, by the way, is throwing its weight behind Scott. Suarez says Stephanie Lloyd-Agnew has dropped out and is helping with her campaign.

Suarez, who has gained notoriety through the We Heart Seattle organization she started as a neighborhood clean-up and homelessness volunteer group and has grown into her full-time job as “a bleeding heart bean counter” shining a light on what she says is bloated government spending and waste, is so far into the state’s “political center” that her campaign felt the most important message to display on all of those yard signs was, simply, “ANDREA SUAREZ — DEMOCRAT.”

“Well, I am a Democrat,” Suarez says. “I’ve only donated to Democrats, including the Win for Women Pac and am an elected PCO officer in the 43rd and have the certificate to prove it. But right out of the gate, my opposition came after me because I talk or affiliate with the Republican party, and it’s another one of these, if you’re not ride or die on the far left progressive agenda on every issue, you’re somehow a right winger. And that’s kind of the Seattle kind of temperament here in the 43rd.”

How Suarez will fare on ballots here remains to be seen. In March, CHS looked at the area’s most conservative voting enclaves and, frankly, there isn’t much to work with. But Suarez believes her approach to government will resonate.

“I think we probably spend money inefficiently. I think we probably do. I think on purpose. In fact, government does that and for a good reason,” Suarez says. “We don’t want to make careless, flippant quick spending decisions. There’s a rhyme and reason for government to be slow and bureaucratic, but then you make just really bad decisions.”

A small government approach means Suarez’s platform is pretty limited. She wants more cops, supports specific technology spends like Truleo to provide more oversight over police through voicy analytics technology, says she believes there should be more support for affordable housing programs like the Multifamily Tax Exemption and more protection from litigation for condominium developers.

As for the homelessness crisis We Heart Seattle has plunged into the middle of to show what it says is a grassroots, volunteer-driven, one on one, anti-drug, anti-crime approach, Suarez says her mission is to help dissolve wasteful solutions and programs like the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and break the habits of organizations she says profit off the ineffective cycle.

“All of that was government. And when all of that fell flat, I went to Home Depot and said, well, frankly, it’s a fucking garbage bag and some pinchers,” Suarez says with pride about her first steps with We Heart Seattle and, now, politics.

It’s a challenging position. Suarez says she recently began drawing a salary for her work on We Heart Seattle — “a paycheck as a consultant, but under six figures” — and the organization is also in the process of joining the ranks of the service organizations she has so vehemently criticized with plans to bid on an open $300,000 government contract to provide homelessness services.

Scott says Suarez doesn’t know what she is talking about.

“Well, this is a race for the state legislature. I wanted to point that out just because many days, I’m not certain that Andrea Suarez is aware of that this is a race that is going to have to do with a good many issues that the city actually has no purview over and that Andrea Suarez has no professional history of addressing,” Scott said.

Scott’s campaign for Chopp’s seat has focused on the candidate’s connections to the political veteran and their work together on Bill 1474, “a groundbreaking law that addressed racial segregation with housing assistance to families redlined from exclusive neighborhoods.”

Scott’s campaign has also focused on continuing to respond to the issues that drove the Black Lives Matters protests and the responses to the COVID-19 crisis that forged progressive policies including the creation of a public social housing developer in Seattle.

Scott says his progressive Democratic message is resonating with voters around the Central District and Capitol Hill in the 43rd.

“We’ve talked about fully funding our public schools, taxing the ultra wealthy to build the housing that we need and to fund the services that we all use. We’ve talked about making Washington state that is actually a true climate leader in working with the organized labor to build up a green jobs program and fund trade programs and a public renewables program,” Scott said. “We’ve talked about Washington being a much more accessible state, and that’s a set of issues that speaks to a winning majority and a winning coalition in this district.”

Voters are particularly interested in hearing real solutions for the state’s public schools and not allowing the movements around charter schools and strength of private education to further erode Washington’s system.

“Schools need to see more leadership around whether or not these school closures are actually going to save the money that they’re projected to save,” Scott says. “Most experts and people who have looked at this issue closely say that the school closures don’t even address the very premise of the school closures, which is saving a certain amount of money.”

“We’re seeing an enrollment crisis in Seattle schools, which is the heart of the declining budget, and what you have is a situation where as a result of declining investment over the last seven or eight years, people are pulling their kids from schools and it starts a very unvirtuous cycle of public disinvestment, public divestment.”

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Suarez is less protective of the system. She says she believes in the philosophy of the Rotary Club — she’s a proud member — when it comes to making decisions. “”Number one, is it true? Number two, is it fair for all involved? Number three, is it good for the common good?,” she says. “And then the fourth is, does it benefit all? Benefit all.”

Public school systems don’t necessarily pass that test. Neither, it turns out in her view of things, do protections around issues like reproductive health and trans rights.

“I mean, first off, I vehemently oppose anybody getting in the way of my body, my body, my rights. I’m a woman, okay? I’m sorry, Shaun. Really, I’m a woman,” she says, addressing her opponent and anybody who questions her dedication to Democratic positions around abortion.

But Suarez backs off talk about specific legislated protections including issues around kids and transitioning.

“I don’t sit here and claim I can read every opinion piece, every study around the world and have a position on it,” Suarez says. “And what I say is that conversation is with the child, the parent, the doctor. They do them. It’s almost like, is it my business?”

Scott, meanwhile, believes these issues are, indeed, the state’s business and he has been busy telling as many voters about it face to face.

“In Capitol Hill, I think people have gotten pretty used to seeing me around at the farmer’s market. We’ve been posted up there practically every Sunday for about the last month,” he says. “We really get to hear from a great cross section of people who live in our district. It’s part of the reason why I think that this race is going to defy some of the easy categorizations that I think we’ve become accustomed to in our city politics because we’re hearing from renters and students in Capitol Hill the same way that we’re hearing from a lot of those homeowners in North Capitol Hill and in the surrounding area, and a lot of them are saying the same things, voicing the same concerns.”

“We’ve gotten hundreds of signatures around the proposition of taxing the ultra rich to build more affordable housing and to keep our schools open,” Scott says.

For 43rd voters, the August primary could be an interesting test of the questions around these opposing approaches to government with a true final exam looking likely in November.

Learn more about Scott at betterwashington.org and Suarez at electandrea.com. You can find out more about Daniel Carusello at danielcarusello.com.

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