Scott with campaign workers at Sunday’s farmers market

Suarez and her recovered signs

This election season’s battle for the open seat to represent the 43rd District in the Washington House of Representatives has many of the markings of modern political warfare — extreme polarization over social issues and public safety, slick attack ads with the fingerprints of political think tanks all over them, and back and forth accusations tying the opposition to larger, overarching threats to the country and Democracy as we know it.

But as the campaign draws closer to November 5th’s Election Day, the fight was playing out over the weekend with simpler battles over stolen campaign signs and the neighborhood farmers market.

Sunday, Shaun Scott and opponent Andrea Suarez told CHS that both campaigns were confident that they’d come out on top.

Scott has regularly canvassed at the Capitol Hill Farmers Market since the start of his campaign, which has amounted to about 24 visits, he said. Attending the market has allowed the candidate to talk with many voters who are more challenging to reach through traditional campaigning methods like door-knocking. When speaking with neighborhood residents, the primary concern Scott says he hears is the need to pass the rent stabilization bill, House Bill 2114, which will be re-introduced next session and would, in part, limit rent and fee increases.

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“Renters are one of the most disenfranchised groups that we have in our state, because we have a state legislature that is dominated by property holders, homeowners, landlords, and as a result, the interests of renters and working people are not reflected in our state government and it’s decisions,” Scott told CHS.

While acknowledging the skyrocketing of rental prices, Suarez holds different views on the efficacy of rental caps.

“Capping rent at three percent chases landlords right out of the state, turning what should be affordable rental units into expensive AirBnBs. This logic doesn’t work—it didn’t work in San Francisco, in New York—it doesn’t work,” Suarez tells CHS.

Suarez said her appearance at the market Sunday was delayed by a search for piles of her campaign signs she said were taken down and stashed near dumpsters. It is a regular occurence. Her campaign has been busy distributing the signs across the 43rd District which stretches across parts of First Hill, Capitol Hill, South Lake Union, Washington Park, Madison Park, Eastlake, Montlake, Portage Bay, Wallingford, Fremont, the University District including the University of Washington campus, Green Lake, and areas of Phinney Ridge and Ravenna.

The sign removal — or stealing, depending on who you ask — is the latest controversy Suarez has courted on social media where the candidate has made her efforts to recover signs a center of her latest updates. Other recent posts include conversations with Capitol Hill business owners including longtime Broadway fixture Carl Medeiros owner of The New York Xchange and several area retail ventures over the years.

Another Suarez video has caused a bigger stir. The Suarez campaign is featuring an attack ad criticizing Scott’s past efforts with the Defund SPD movement produced by Discovery Institute-backed Seattle journalist Jonathan Choe. Suarez reported the expenditure as a $1,200 donation from Choe who has renewed his career pursuing anti-Seattle stories for the religious conservative think tank.

Suarez, calling Choe a friend she has known for four years, says she sees no issues with having a Discovery Institute journalist produce an advertisement for her campaign.

“I have 500 + donors- people are allowed to be involved in the political process as an individual despite their career,” she tells CHS. “It’s their constitutional right.”

Unlike Scott, Suarez says the primary issue she has been hearing while canvassing is public safety.

Despite seeking state office, Suarez is passionate about funding the Seattle Police Department, and said that being down hundreds of officers is harming the most vulnerable Seattle residents.

“My vision is a culture where we all respect our first responders—our officers, our social workers, our CARE team, our firefighters—to create a culture of kindness, create a culture of accountability,” Suarez said. “I’d say, primarily, a culture shift: that not all cops are, in fact, bastards. I’m sickened as I walk around Capitol Hill where two Black men’s lives were lost in CHOP/CHAZ, but Shaun Scott wants permanent CHOP/CHAZ. He wants to decriminalize drugs, he wants to let everybody out of jail—he is a bonafide member of the Socialist Democratic Party.”

That last part? It’s true. Kind of. Scott is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

In her canvassing efforts, Suarez said she’s spoken to all business owners on Broadway, 15th and 19th and that store windows have been broken while thousands of dollars of merchandise have been stolen only later to be sold on the black market.

“When you don’t have enough police officers, we are a no-rules playground,” Suarez said. “This is the culture that we’re creating under past leadership—Shaun is a continuation of that faction. It’s over—it’s new times.”

While not necessarily staying above the fray of Suarez’s increasing attacks, Scott at the market Sunday, focused mostly on policy and change.

If elected, Scott said he would work towards having the state implement a real estate excise tax (REET), which would tax massive real-estate transactions and almost double Washington’s investment in affordable housing.

“We want to begin the long work of revamping our state school funding model, but in the short-term, we want to give localities the resources that they need to raise the funds that they need to prevent school closures,” Scott said.

Scott also sees differences in how he would help lead the 43rd as the repercussions of the pandemic continue.

“I would like to make sure that we’re getting ready to enter into another flu season, another COVID season, so I want us to give health clinics the resources that they need to take long-COVID seriously,” Scott said.

CHS reported here on the race for the 43rd in July as the candidates battled it out headed into the August primary. The race’s fundamentals remain the same. Scott has the support of the support of Frank Chopp, the Washington political legend and housing champion whose retirement opened the seat. A lobbyist with the Statewide Poverty Action Network who narrowly lost a 2019 race to represent the University District on the Seattle City Council, has focused his campaign 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.

The 43rd’s other representative Nicole Macri has also endorsed Scott as has The Stranger.

Suarez gained notoriety through the We Heart Seattle organization she started as a neighborhood clean-up and homelessness volunteer group, growing the role into her full-time job as “a bleeding heart bean counter” shining a light on what she says is bloated government spending and waste. She has touted her connections to Republicans and conservative organizations while also maintaining that she is a big “D” candidate. The political message can be challenging. The Suarez campaign felt the most important message to display on its yard signs was, simply, “ANDREA SUAREZ — DEMOCRAT.”

Her campaign is now endorsed by the Seattle Times — and the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

For Scott, the final weeks as voters are already sending in their ballots is about making sure any remaining undecideds get a view of his broad progressive legislative agenda, which he said speaks to the fact that the legislature has not been as responsive as it should have been in recent years, and which is a part of the reason why he’s running.

But the candidate is concerned that Suarez’s mud-slinging might make voters look away from the race entirely. As someone who worked as a lobbyist in Olympia for the past four years for Solid Ground, Scott expressed concerns about professionalism in this race, and said the attacks also need to be addressed so policy can come out on top.

“My proponent has spent the last two years getting banned from a youth services homeless center—the YouthCare alliance center. They have a long track record of speeding in school zones, writing to judges to get parking infractions excused,” Scott says. “She’s a candidate who compared herself to Jesus Christ when people asked if she had the required licenses to do legitimate case manager work, and so I think that the voters of our district need to have somebody that’s prepared to lead, and somebody who has actually demonstrated the conduct required of a state lawmaker in Olympia, where you’re going to be making life or death decisions.”

Suarez says her track record should speak for itself. Accountability is love, she said, including arresting people for negative behavior and then getting them involved with recovery.

“I would be the heart — and the shift in leadership as a legislator,” Suarez said.

Find all CHS Election 2024 coverage here

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