Podcast appearances and mentions of Shaun Scott

Today Capitol Ideas welcomes yet another member of the 2025 Class of House Democrats. Rep. Shaun Scott was sent here by his neighbors in the 43rd district, the heart of Seattle. He's a creator, a polymath, and a leader, and we've got him now.

What’s Trending: The Manufacturer’s association warns that the Boeing strike will have a massive effect on the economy. Why is Mayor Bruce Harrell endorsing far-left candidate Shaun Scott for the State House? Striking Longshoreman are trying to guarantee that they won’t be replaced by automation, Steve Scalise says its not that simple and that the industry needs to modernize. // Big Local: Camas Council member allegedly threw a rock and flashed a gun at a local fisherman. Stubborn homeless encampments in Tacoma are continuing to impact the residents and businesses around them. Olympia small-business owners are worried that a minimum wage increase would put them in the red. // USA Today’s Christine Brennan is being criticized by WNBA players for her excessive questions about Caitlin Clark  

Seattle Nice was on our best behavior this week because had company—Scott Greenstone, a politics reporter at KUOW radio and host of the new KUOW podcast Sound Politics! We discussed the statewide election results (Scott reported that the vibe at Republican gubernatorial candidate Semi Bird's party was weirdly "optimistic") and the race to replace Frank Chopp as 43rd District state rep, where Chopp-endorsed Shaun Scott ended the night with more than twice as many votes as We Heart Seattle founder Andrea Suarez, whom even the Seattle Times didn't endorse.And, of course, we talked about Seattle's only local election—the race for City Council Position 8, where incumbent Tanya Woo was trailing challenger Alexis Mercedes Rinck by a wide margin on Election Night. (The gap has only widened since then). Woo, who was appointed to the citywide seat after losing last year's District 2 race to incumbent Tammy Morales, is on shaky ground going into the general election.Support the Show.Support us on Patreon!

For many people in the Emerald City, sports may be seen solely as entertainment. We watch the Kraken on the ice, climb the stands for the Seahawks and Sounders, and hold out hands out for a soaring Mariners ball. But what if something came along to challenge the idea of athletics as mere leisure? In his new book Heartbreak City: Seattle Sports and the Unmet Promise of Urban Progress, author Shaun Scott takes readers through 170 years of Seattle history, chronicling both well-known and long-forgotten events. Examples include the establishment of racially segregated golf courses in the 1920s or the 1987 Seahawks players' strike that galvanized organized labor. Scott explores how progressives in urban areas across the U.S. have used athletics to address persistent problems in city life: the fight for racial justice, workers' rights, equality for women and LGBTQ+ city dwellers, and environmental conservation. In Seattle specifically, sports initiatives have powered meaningful reforms, such as popular stadium projects that promoted investments in public housing and mass transit. At the same time, conservative forces also used sports to consolidate their power and mobilize against these initiatives. Heartbreak City seeks to uncover how sports have both united and divided Seattle, socially and politically. Deep archival research and analysis fill the pages, guiding us through this account of our city's quest to make a change, both on and off the field. Shaun Scott is a Seattle-based writer and organizer. He is the author of Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-present. Jesse Hagopian has been an educator for over twenty years and taught for over a decade at Seattle's Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test. Heartbreak City: Seattle Sports and the Unmet Promise of Urban Progress The Elliott Bay Book Company

For many, the spheres of sports and politics are totally separate arenas: one is a fun and low-stakes pastime, the other is a struggle for real-world power. But in his new book, “Heartbreak City: Seattle Sports and the Unmet Promise of Urban Progress,” author Shaun Scott makes the case that sports and politics have more in common than meets the eye. Going back to the city's early roots, "Heartbreak City" traces the stories of athletes and activists who made Seattle an athletic and political powerhouse.

The makeup of Seattle City Council may be changing a lot next year, but the issues they'll face won't. Over the six weeks leading up to ballots being mailed out for the 2023 general election, Hacks & Wonks presented our series of interviews with most of the Seattle City Council candidates! On this topical show re-air, join Crystal and Shannon behind-the-scenes of Hacks & Wonks for a bonus (not-so) short episode where they discuss how questions got chosen and written, the why behind those kludgy SPOG contract questions, thoughts and observations after all the interviews, and their approach to editing. And also, a bit of venting. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle.   Resources Elections 2023 One-Stop Shop | Hacks & Wonks   “Rob Saka, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks   “Maren Costa, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 1 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks   “Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 2 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Joy Hollingsworth, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks   “Alex Hudson, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 3 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks   “Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 4 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 5” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 5 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Pete Hanning, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 6” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 6 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Andrew Lewis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 7” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 7 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   Transcript   [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, this is a little bonus short - I don't know, we'll wind up seeing how long this turns out to be. I am joined here with someone who you don't hear from on the mic often, but every time we do, it's wonderful. She is the person who does so much work for the podcast - this is a team effort. I'm here with Dr. Shannon Cheng. Hey, Shannon. [00:01:14] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal! [00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: So Dr. Shannon Cheng - who is incredible, who works with me, who is a subject matter expert on public safety, is the guru for knowledge about like the SPOG contract, SPMA contract, that kind of stuff. She really understands and has the ability to actually explain it and share it in really accessible ways. But I just want to back up and talk about what you do and how you became an expert. What do you do, Shannon? [00:01:44] Shannon Cheng: So I find myself involved in local policy and politics kind of by accident. I mean, you referenced that I'm a doctor - my doctorate is in Space Propulsion, I'm an aerospace engineer by training. And I guess if I try to think about the throughline of how I've operated in life is that I kind of don't want to end up doing things that aren't gonna let me go to sleep at night. So what happened with me with aerospace is - at one point - understanding that basically staying involved in that industry was contributing to weapons of destruction and war. And I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So through volunteering and activism, I guess that's how I met up with Crystal and got connected and have been doing a lot of things. I work on People Power Washington, which is focused on equitable public safety and policing across Washington state. We've worked on the Seattle, King County and State Legislature levels. We work on things ranging from budget advocacy to monitoring these difficult to understand police guild contracts and understanding how those get in the way of accountability, trying to work to pass charter amendments at the county level that would support better public safety and-- [00:02:59] Crystal Fincher: Shannon was instrumental in the passage of that 2020 County Charter Amendment to reform public safety. Instrumental. [00:03:07] Shannon Cheng: And yeah, then recently I was invited to join the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability. And so that's been really a wonderful experience to just engage with families who have been directly impacted by police violence and brutality, and trying to work to have that not happen to anybody else ever again. So that's kind of me. [00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: That is. Except you are the ultimate fun fact person. Like you have so many fun facts. A prior student of yours is currently on the Space Station right now. [00:03:42] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - he was up there for a six month stint. He may have come back down by now, but - I think the launch was in February - and when they were showing the pictures, I was like, Wait, I taught that guy Dynamics. [00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: You have a picture of you like in zero gravity working on a thing. You are an orienteering champion, which is a whole thing. [00:04:07] Shannon Cheng: Yes. It is a sport that is not super popular in this country - it's widely popular in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, those areas. But yes, you could say I am an orienteering champion of sorts-- [00:04:20] Crystal Fincher: You are literally an orienteering champion. [00:04:24] Shannon Cheng: --thanks to participation and attendance. [00:04:27] Crystal Fincher: And you being great. It's not like there were no competitors. Yeah, there are so many fun facts about Shannon - just awesome things that pop up here and there. But Shannon is talented at everything basically, and is just one of the best human beings I know. And an instrumental part of Hacks & Wonks. So that's why we're both here talking to you right now. So we wanted to have this conversation to talk about just what we were thinking when we were putting together questions for the Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And we meet and kind of do a whole thing - have an approach anytime we do series of candidate interviews - this is no exception. But especially with all of them and this conversation, there's been a lot of tangential conversation brought up - a lot on social media, a lot in the community. And some of these questions have become even more relevant in the past couple of weeks, particularly the ones revolving around policing in the city of Seattle and the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that is in the process of being negotiated. And so I guess starting out - when we start thinking about how we're going to do candidate interviews, what do we usually talk about? How do we usually approach that? [00:05:51] Shannon Cheng: I think we're - I know you are always wanting to kind of understand how would a candidate actually vote on issues that matter to people in this city? Because ultimately people can say things and have platitudes, but it really comes down to when there's a hard vote, which way are they gonna go? So I think, especially for the lightning round, a lot of our questions were centered around trying to ask these questions - and getting a Yes, No, or seeing if there was a waffle from these candidates - just to better understand how they think about these things and when push comes to shove, which way they would lean. [00:06:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that is my approach. And it is an approach that is the result of years of working in politics, years of seeing how candidates process information throughout a campaign, how they conduct themselves just in their general lives, and how that translates to policy, and whether they govern in a way that's consistent with how they campaigned. And certainly one thing that is a throughline is - especially when it comes to tough votes - everybody will say, I believe the children are the future. Everybody will say - yes, they wanna address root causes of stuff, right? But as we see, like we've seen recently in this city, when it comes to issues of public safety or homelessness, people have all these value statements - but it comes down to a vote. It comes down to - Are you going to fund something or are you not? Are you going to really put into place the necessary elements to successfully implement what you're going to say or not? Are you going to just fund what you said - Oh, we need to do more than that. - but if you're only like voting to fund that, that's a different thing. So we tend to ask more specific questions than sometimes we hear elsewhere - we're not the only people who ask specific questions, but I definitely try to do that. And we try to figure out what votes are likely to be coming up, where are the big fault lines, especially for the upcoming year, going to be? What does it look like different interests are pushing for and where do they stand on that? Because it's gonna be an issue. There's going to be pressure put on them to vote certain ways. And if they can't stand up strongly for what they believe and be conclusive about what they're gonna say, that doesn't have a good track record of resulting in the kind of policy that people expect in that direction - if they're soft on that. So that's part of what we do. And I've interviewed people from different philosophical orientations, political orientations. And sometimes there are people who I think or suspect I'm gonna agree with, who are soft on things I don't expect. People who I don't expect to agree with, who - I hear their answers on some things - I'm like, Okay, that was thoughtful and informed. And I certainly have my opinions - you know that - we talk about my opinions on the show. But I really do hope - my goal isn't to super interrogate and like make all the points - it's really to get what they think on the record, out in the open. And really help people to make an informed decision based on what the candidates are saying, kind of without the - with the exception of the lightning round - without the time limit on - Okay, you got to get your answer out in 30 seconds or 1 minute. There's some nuance - sometimes it's more than that - or an issue is complex and we need to talk about it. [00:09:01] Shannon Cheng: And I would just also add that we have a lot of first time candidates this year, especially with open seats. And so it's also understandable that maybe a candidate isn't well-versed in every single issue area that is going to come up. And so I think having this robust set of questions also can help educate - both them and the voters - what is coming up. And maybe if they feel a little weak, or they get a question and they don't understand what it's even about, that's a signal of - Hey, this is kind of important. Maybe you need to look into that, and understand what's going on, and figure out where you stand on it. [00:09:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I - we'll have candidates be like, Whoa, I hadn't thought about that before, I need to learn more about that. And I appreciate that - when someone - taking office, we can talk about all of these issues. But there will always be issues or events that happen, that pop up that you don't talk about while on the campaign. And so a candidate's always going to have to get up to speed on something new. Electeds have to get up to speed on new things all the time. And so how do they approach that not knowing - knowing that they don't know something - How do they approach that? Who are the people they turn to to help learn? What sources of information are they learning from? How do they process information? Those are all things that are useful to hear and to know. And so even if they encounter something that - okay, maybe they didn't think about, you have a perspective about how they process information. So I guess in how we approach writing questions, what is the process for that? Okay, Shannon right now is like, Okay, so Crystal is like - ties herself into knots and then tries to avoid writing the questions. And then it's - maybe we don't want to do interviews at all. And oh my gosh - they're too many, they're too few. It's a little bit of a tortured process sometimes, but you help bring some clarity and order to that whole process. [00:10:55] Shannon Cheng: I mean, you've done candidate forums - so we look at what you've done for candidate forums in the past. And then my issue area - that I work on in my spare time - is public safety and policing, and so I had the opportunity to put candidate questionnaire questions about that topic in as possible questions to ask. So - I don't know-- [both laughing] [00:11:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, with that. [00:11:20] Shannon Cheng: It's very last minute. [both laughing] [00:11:22] Crystal Fincher: It's so, yeah. [00:11:23] Shannon Cheng: But I don't know that people need to know that. [both laughing] We'll edit that part out. [00:11:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, it is - we do this in between our regular work. I'm a political consultant. Shannon works with me. We're busy doing that for most of the day on most days, and we squeeze this podcast in between them - with lots of coordination and research and preparation done by Shannon, which I sincerely appreciate. But it is a process and we're trying to figure out what makes sense to ask. We do still have time limits-ish - we stretch it sometimes. But I do - maybe we should start off talking about some of these questions about policing in the contract because some of these issues have come up lately. Shaun Scott, who is a great follow on Twitter - I don't know if he's elsewhere, but on Twitter, certainly - he was talking about, Hey, the city passed an ordinance. And he's absolutely right - City passed an ordinance giving the city council and OPA? - I think, one of the entities - the city council subpoena power over SPD and other entities, but like including SPD. And they did pass an ordinance that did that. Unfortunately, the SPOG contract of 2018 superseded that. Basically, it had clauses that contradicted and said, No, we're not gonna do that. And then another clause that says, And if City law says that we need to do that, that doesn't matter, this contract is going to replace or supersede City law in that. So subpoena power was essentially taken away. A number of accountability measures were taken away. So the questions that we asked were more specific than we usually ask. It wasn't like - oh, everybody deals with this and talks about it all the time. It was more - these are some areas in the SPOG contract that might be opaque or obscure that haven't been widely publicly discussed, but that are very important in dealing with issues like we're seeing now in the news. How did you put together those questions, and why are those specific ones important? [00:13:30] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so I think it's important to first understand that officer discipline is considered a working condition under state labor law, and that's why these union contracts are kind of the last stop for determining how things happen. So as you said, the City has passed, I think, multiple ordinances to try to give subpoena power to our accountability bodies - the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General. But the thing is that because we're governing under state law, unless that officer discipline-related provision gets negotiated into a contract that is accepted by the police unions, then it's not gonna be in effect. And so it's confusing, right? We see this all the time that there's these announcements made - Hey, like huge step forward in accountability. We managed to pass a law that says we have subpoena power. - but then what's left out is the asterisk that is, Well, once it gets negotiated with the union. And so I think that's the thing that gets lost a lot. And so I see that a lot. And so when we came up with our questions - literally it's from observing what the process has been, and then going actually through the contract line-by-line and trying to understand - okay, where are these provisions that kind of weaken the glorious accountability system that everybody likes to point to and pretend that we have. So knowing that going through labor contracts is not everybody's favorite thing, that's why we try to boil it down into - Okay, here's a few especially egregious things that seem like baseline we should try to get in the next contract - which is why talking to electeds about it is important because they are the ones who are gonna hold the power in terms of getting what we want in the next contract. So that's the process that we came up with our questions. [00:15:23] Crystal Fincher: So, the question that we asked candidates in the lightning round was - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, known as OPA, and the Office of the Inspector General, known as OIG, subpoena power? Why is subpoena power important and what difference could it make? [00:15:41] Shannon Cheng: Subpoena power is important if you're trying to do an investigation and the information you think is necessary to understand what's happening for your investigation isn't available, or if people involved aren't cooperating and giving you that information. So at that point, a subpoena allows you to basically demand that that information is shared with you. In the 2017 Accountability Ordinance that was passed, it was explicitly laid out that the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General would have subpoena power. However, in the 2018 SPOG contract - I'll just read directly from the contract - they list those two sections and then they have an addendum that says, "The City agrees that these sections of the Ordinance will not be implemented at this time with regard to bargaining unit employees and their family members, and third party subpoenas seeking personal records of such employees and their family members." So basically, the contract said - there's no subpoena power for these two entities. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: And yeah, I mean, we've heard and seen in several stories - the Seattle Police Department did not cooperate with the investigation. They can just say, currently - No, we're not gonna give that to you. No, we're not gonna share that. We decline to do that. And in issues - right now, there's an international conversation about both the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula and its aftermath with an officer mocking her killing. And the record of the police officer who was doing that, the records of officers overall. And we still don't know everything that happened with the East Precinct and it's leaving, we don't know what happened with CHOP - like those kinds of things - we still don't have answers because we can't demand them. We can't compel them. And this does. Not that that's gonna solve everything, but it is a tool of accountability. And at minimum, if you can't even get information about what happened, how are you gonna attach any kind of accountability to that? So it really is a very primary - we have to at least understand what happened, we have to be able to get that information. So that is what went behind that question. Another question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? What is this sworn versus civilian issue about, and why is it important? [00:17:57] Shannon Cheng: So the Office of Police Accountability has investigators - they're actually embedded in the Seattle Police Department - and a lot of their investigators are actually sworn officers. And so some people might think, Well, doesn't that seem kind of problematic? Because you would end up in this scenario where you have cops investigating other cops. Also, the cops that come into the OPA as these sworn investigators - my understanding is they kind of rotate in and out - so a cop going in could expect to then be back out at some point. And that would lead one to think, Well, maybe they wouldn't want to be as thorough in their investigations. So what the civilian aspect was - was that I think people would trust more to have a civilian who is not a sworn officer doing these investigations. And in that original 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance, there was provision made that there could be civilian investigators on this team within the OPA. However, again, that 2018 SPOG contract specifically said - and here, I'll again read from the contract - "The parties agree as follows: Unless otherwise agreed, at any time after the date of signing, the City may replace up to two (2) sworn investigator positions with up to two (2) civilian investigators." So they've basically limited the OPA to only have at any time two civilian investigators, and then that contract goes on to say, "Any case that reasonably could lead to termination will have a sworn investigator assigned to the case." So not only have they limited the number of civilian investigators, they also say those civilian investigators can't work on any cases that would lead to any kind of discipline that is on the harsher side of things. So that's why we asked that question. [00:19:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these, it is important to understand - different jurisdictions have different things that they can do, right? They all have their own levers that they can push and pull. Some things you can only do at the county level, some things you can only do at the city level - in a variety of ways. And so we do try and focus in our questions also on what can they do in their capacity as a city councilmember. And because they do have the power to approve or reject this contract, putting - understanding what their conditions for doing so would be, getting them on the record about that is important 'cause this impacts how the police operate within the city and with residents. The next question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Why was this a question? [00:20:34] Shannon Cheng: This is a question because - as we all know, the City has been trying for a very long time to stand up a alternative crisis response that may or may not involve the police. I think a big hurdle to that being stood up is this concern that I've heard - that if the City was to stand something up that didn't involve the police or the police didn't agree with, that they could file an Unfair Labor Practice with the state and basically say - this is some violation of their contract, that kind of work that had been under the purview of the police department was now being taken away from them and given to somebody else. So it's - I don't know that there's wording explicitly in the contract that says that, but it would be the union invoking the contract to say that the City was taking work away from them, basically, that they wanted to keep. [00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a big major issue. And right now we're kind of at an impasse - alternative responses and funding non-police public safety responses and interventions is one of the most popular things supported by Seattle residents right now. They vote for candidates who say they're gonna support that. Polling shows that north of 70% across the board, it's been over 80% in some polls. When asked explicitly - hey, if your tax dollars are gonna be spent, what do you most want it to be spent on? Highest thing is standing up alternatives to policing to address things like behavioral health crises. We all see that this is so desperately needed and that - it used to be five years ago, kind of pre-2016, pre-George Floyd, when police used to have no problem. They said all the time - we aren't social workers, we don't have the tools to handle this other stuff, we wanna do our core jobs and not handle all these other things that we don't really have the tools for. And it seems like because of fear of losing funding, losing headcount, whatever, that stopped and they started clinging to everything that they could have. So like we ask a question - Do you think parking should be housed within SPD? Lots of cities are having conversations, especially since police are saying that they're short-staffed to say - Okay, how can we more effectively deploy police officers and take things off of their plate that shouldn't be on there in the first place, that are not core to what a sworn officer - a sworn armed officer - is needed for. But the challenge is that that is coming up against, as you described, those feelings that - Well, that's something that we, you know, that was in our sphere of responsibility, funding is attached to it, headcount is attached to it. And if we lose that, maybe that's gonna be a slippery slope to losing other things. So like in the City of Seattle, the city council has actually funded alternative police responses. They have decided they wanna move forward with that, they've allocated money for that. And once that happens, it's basically up to the executive - currently Bruce Harrell, before with Jenny Durkan - to use that funding and implement the thing. Well, it's kind of stuck there. The money isn't being used. And for a while, especially with Monisha Harrell, when she was with the city, they talked about, Okay, well, we wanna do all that, we're just gonna do it with an internal department of public safety that will also house civilian responses. And I think part of standing that up as an internal department was to address the concern of the issue of headcount. And if the headcount decreases, even if it's just parking officials who do not need a gun to enforce parking, that - hey, let's not call that like a regular response, let's not use sworn headcount to do that, we can deploy that more effectively. But that is a problem that is stalled. And so the question really is - will they ensure that in the contract that is currently being negotiated, the contract that the council will be voting on, can they eliminate that as an issue? And obviously this has to be negotiated by both sides, but is there something they can come to that enables the City to move forward with what the residents are demanding and what leaders have committed to do? We've gotta find a way to have the contract not impede the progress that the city is repeatedly begging to make and promising to make. So that's what went into that question. Another question we asked - Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? Why is this an issue? [00:24:53] Shannon Cheng: So the current contract that we're under explicitly gives SPD officers the right to work off-duty. And this is in-uniform, so one factor in this is that this is basically allowing them to use public resources, meaning their uniform - and they retain their police powers while they're working for not us, not the public that's paying them, but for private clients who they work for. So, a lot of these things are things like security or traffic direction, and they get paid a lot of money for these jobs - sometimes I think even more than they make as an officer. And so one of our concerns is that, especially in a time when it's short-staffed, then allowing in-uniform off-duty work - it creates confusion with the public, for one thing, when you see a police officer not working in their official capacity as a police officer, but dressed as one and maintaining all the same powers that they do - it just doesn't have clear boundaries between their professional work and then their side job. And then with the short staffing, these added hours that they're doing on top of, in theory, their full workload at SPD, plus potential overtime that they're gonna have to do - this is just gonna lead even more to officer fatigue. And we can see how that could lead to more of the poor decision-making or judgment calls, and has detrimental consequences for all of us in the public. And often - with their history of biased policing - would affect certain populations more than others. So that was why we asked this question. [00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these questions overall, some people are like - Well, why are these all like accountability questions? Are there any other things? Like, do you just hate cops? And to me, hating cops is not the issue, right? This is about public safety for everyone in the city and in the region. And every candidate who's run - I collect and keep political mail, advertising, blah, blah, blah - and what is really astounding is kind of the revisionist history of members of the council who are known for being moderate or conservative. Everybody's like - Well, you know, they elected me to be moderate and conservative. Or like people covering them - They elected someone. But when you look at what they said when they were running, when you look at their mail and what they communicated to voters - to a person - they talked about the importance of police accountability and reform. And, you know, some people wanna go further than others, but they all promised that. And so, if that wasn't just BS - anyone who's serious about that, and even if you're working towards community-centered, different things - anyone who is serious about what we're currently doing, and this contract is currently being negotiated, we really do have to contend with these things. And if we aren't, then we're not really serious about doing anything about accountability, let alone re-imagining what public safety can actually be. So no matter what someone's ideological position is on the council, they should be engaging with this. This is in their sphere of responsibility. They're gonna have to vote on this contract. And so we need to know - we should know, and we should be talking about - what these parameters are. It's very important and consequential, and can determine whether we wind up in similar situations to now - where we have an officer where basically the globe has said, That's disgusting and should be unacceptable. Why is this officer still there? And we have City electeds basically going - Oh, there's nothing we can really do about it. The contract, you know, like, can't really fire them. There's no precedent. - and like, those are all legal issues because of the contract. But they approved this contract - Bruce Harrell approved the contract that we currently have. He's not the only one - I think Debora Juarez was on the council at that point in time. Lorena González used to be, and said she regretted the vote. Like, this was consequential. We talked about this at the time - not many people were listening in the wider community. But like, this is not a surprise that we're seeing problems because of the overriding of accountability measures passed by the City and supported by people in the city. So that's why we asked those public safety questions. We asked a bunch of questions in the lightning round about how people vote. Why do you think these were good questions to include? [00:29:06] Shannon Cheng: I think they're good because this is an instance where they had to sit down with their pen in hand and make a choice - bubble choice A or bubble choice B. And so in this process of trying to figure out how these candidates think and where they stand on things, asking them about times where they actually did have to make a decision and knowing what decision they made, I think that's why we asked those. [00:29:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And it's fair to ask. And it gives you insight into how they process information when it does come time to make a choice on one or the other, even if they think - maybe they don't think either choice is perfect, but they do need to make a choice and what they made is informative. In these, you know, also informing on different issues, where they stand there. We asked also issues about housing. We asked them if they rent or own - and that's an important question to ask, it's an important thing to know. And it's wild that we don't talk about that more because that is one of the biggest dividing lines in Seattle politics. It's one of the biggest dividing lines in voters. When you look at any results map of an election, you basically see the results of homeowners versus renters, higher income, higher net worth people versus lower income, lower net worth people. That is a fault line in Seattle politics. And looking at how votes happen, we see people voting aligned with their housing status a lot. It's something that matters, that is predictive pretty regularly. And so we wanted to ask that. We wanted to understand if they rented, if they own, and if they're a landlord. Some candidates were, some candidates were not. And then we face questions - the council actually passed an ordinance that was vetoed by Mayor Harrell, just about some more accountability for landlords and more sharing of information to try and better poise the City to address the housing affordability crisis. And so that's why we asked those. We asked the question about allowing police in schools because that has been talked about in some meetings. It looks like there are some influential interests that want to make that happen and encourage that. I don't think that's wide-ranging, but there were a couple of powerful and well-placed people who - that was coming from their camps - and so we thought it was important to get people on record about that. We asked about trans and non-binary students - making sure they could play on sports teams that fit with their gender identities and using public bathrooms and public facilities - and got a range of answers on this one. Why did you feel this was so important to ask? [00:31:37] Shannon Cheng: I think this is a community that's been under attack just nationwide, at all levels. And so it's important to know - I think Seattle touts itself as a progressive, inclusive, welcoming city - and we want to make sure the people who are leading us actually are. [00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And respecting people's humanity without condition, without making them less than. And unfortunately, the sports issue is propaganda. It's propaganda. I understand why the propaganda campaign caught on - it's using very cynical tactics - but we do have to stand up and say, That's propaganda. We can't be like - Okay, yeah, trans people, we accept everybody - live, love, and light - all that kind of stuff. And then say, Yeah, but if your kid wants to play on a sports team - which is a very important formative part of growing up for many people, if they choose to do that, and also not just sports, just any kind of activities attached to school, which is something that so many people partake in - and say, Yeah, but not that. Like that is an issue of just fundamental humanity and inclusion - and so we should be explicit about where people stand, and we should talk about that, and we should force people to be accountable for where they stand on that. And make sure people know - before they vote - whether people plan on including every member of this community in our community. We asked about the economy, the JumpStart Tax - which there's been lots of talk from different interests about, from some Chamber interests saying, Maybe we need to divert some of that to help restart, relaunch downtown's economy. There are other people saying, Hey, this might be something that we need to increase to help with the upcoming budget deficit. And some people who just disagree with it overall, and think that we - that that's placing a burden on business, and that's gonna be bad for residents - and usually coming from the same people who say the sky is falling every time that there is a minimum wage increase, and then more people move here and are happier than they are in other places, so it seems like we would stop listening to people who continue to predict that and are wrong, but we don't do that. But wanted to get people on record for where they stand on that, because - in Seattle politics, interests are tied to taxes - that that's where a lot of corporate interests are really concerned about. And they will use other issues as wedge issues in messaging, but their primary concerns are about taxation and the maintenance of their capital. That's really what's driving a lot of this. And so the JumpStart is going to be at the heart of that interest and conversation. [00:34:09] Shannon Cheng: We hear businesses - obviously they don't wanna pay more taxes, but at the same time, we also hear businesses complaining that they're not getting the services that they expect the City to deliver to them. And so I think it's pretty telling that - you don't wanna pay for it, but you wanna get it. [00:34:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we also asked about how candidates can better support small business. I do think there's a conflation of gigantic multi-trillion dollar mega-corp interests and - in the business community - and a small mom-pop shop, local business who is - hired a couple of people from the neighborhood and is trying to make it. Both businesses, both part of the business community - but usually very different interests and needs. And we have a lot of small businesses who are struggling. Small business - business is important to the economy across the board, right? But we need it not to be extractive. We need not to say, Oh, it's so important. So like Boeing, we're gonna give you more money than we've ever given anyone before with no accountability. We did this because Boeing is gonna create jobs and we need lots of jobs. But then we don't get a refund when Boeing lays people off and leaves town, right - that's a problem. And we have trillion dollar corporations in the city of Seattle who frankly use small business owners to say - Oh, please, we're suffering and we need help, and we shouldn't pay any taxes. When most residents, according to polling and election results, feel that businesses like - mega corporations are not paying their fair share. There is a conversation to be had - some kind of income inequality and differences in access and challenges that small businesses are facing compared to large businesses. It's kind of similar to what lower income people are facing in comparison to larger income people. Small businesses are having problems affording rent - that's a really, really, really big issue - they are suffering from predatory rent increases. Also, that's putting people out of business. But there's a lot to be discussed. And if you talk to business owners - we've done shows with different business interests - and their needs are broad and varied and they should be listened to, they are part of the community. But we do need to talk about them as part of the community and not as this super entity or something like that. So that's what those questions were looking to get at. And then just some perspective stuff - asking if they're happy with Seattle's waterfront, asking about return to work mandates - just helping to further get inside their minds, how they think, what their perspective is, where they're coming from, and who and what they may be sympathetic to as interests and as bills - when that comes up. Transportation and transit related questions - we have absolutely seen a difference in engagement and thoughtfulness, willingness to fund and include provisions that are helpful for pedestrians and people on transit, people riding bikes from leaders who actually use them. And we suffer when leaders are responsible for transit policy who don't use and ride transit - all sorts of distorted and weird policy and perspectives come out when we have people governing systems that they don't themselves engage with. And so we asked those questions to try and see - are you actually using the system? Because we hear different things from people who do take them versus things that don't. And just, that's a useful thing to know. Similarly, Pike Place car traffic is something that we talk about - just another one of those perspective things in there. We obviously asked about the upcoming revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle for $224 million. Everyone is going to have to contend with that. Every candidate on the campaign trail, every candidate that we interviewed has talked about wanting to implement new things that are going to require additional revenue, that are going to require resources. And we're moving into - Okay, we're going to have fewer resources and either we're gonna need to raise revenue or make cuts. And so it's just not a serious position to be in to say we should be doing all of these other things - these new things that require revenue - when there's going to be less of it. And everyone is kind of dodgy usually when it comes to cutting things, but they're going to need - odds are it's gonna be a combination of cuts and attempting to pursue new revenue. If someone is saying they aren't gonna pursue that, then we need to view their other plans that do require revenue differently. If someone is saying, I'm gonna go after revenue hard - that's great, but we should also know if there are any cuts that they think they may need to do. Revenue may take a while to come in. We will probably need to do some trimming in the meantime - just because the City's mandated to have a balanced budget. And so that's something real that they're gonna have to contend with. And those are really hard decisions. And you can see how hard they are by how unwilling or unable candidates are to answer how they're gonna prioritize cutting, where they think they should come from. If revenue doesn't pass or come through, what does that mean? How are you gonna approach that? And we do need to press on those tough decisions 'cause those are gonna be really consequential things. And I think sometimes candidates - we've talked about this on this show before - think that just like the hard part is running, and then you get elected, and then you can exhale. Running for office is the easy part - it only gets harder - and the spotlight on you gets hotter and brighter when you actually do have to make a decision that's consequential for the people in the city. And so we should poke and prod about that and try to get as specific as we can. We don't always do perfectly with that - I'm reflecting on the answers that we got. There were so many vague answers - and try and poke and prod - and some people just don't wanna answer specifically, or just are unable to answer specifically. But hopefully, as you said before, that is an indication that they should think about that seriously. And they're gonna need a game plan 'cause it's coming and they're going to have to deal with that. And it's going to be bad if they just start engaging with that after they take office and have to really make those decisions and move forward with it. [00:40:16] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - I feel like in response to that question in particular, we heard a lot of answers to the effect of - Well, we need to look at the existing budget and look at where there are inefficiencies and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I am curious how many of those candidates - we have an entire City Budget staff, right? - who works on that kind of stuff and auditing. It's not like there aren't people looking at that. I just wonder how much have those candidates engaged with what is already out there? Have they found things that have been already identified? Would that even be in their process of trying to figure out how to reallocate resources, if that's the way they're going to go? [00:40:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And with these - I think it's important - obviously I have my own perspective, and I think it's important to ask questions and to frame them appropriately for the moment and for what's happening. And when I ask a question, I do - with these - try to give people a fair shot to respond, to give whatever their response is, right? I'm not going to cut them off in their response. I want voters to be able to hear what they think - even if I disagree with what they think, they get to hear what they think. But one observation I do have certainly, and formed definitely from working with candidates over the years, is that - we do hear, we heard a lot, we heard more than I was comfortable with, like, Oh, we do need to take a look at that. We need to start to understand where this stuff is. We need to ask tough questions. Like, you decided to run for office. This information has been out there, it's publicly available. There's a ton of information and resources just on the City website itself to walk you through the budget - each budget process - and hearings and a ton of Information. That's not usually where the issue is. The issue is when it's time to make a decision about what to cut, people are hesitant to do that. They're afraid of making people mad. And so we have these situations where candidates either don't feel like they need to come with a game plan, but we are in multiple crises. We need people who are saying - Okay, I have talked to community, I have done homework on what's happening, and this is my plan for what I think will fix it. We need people coming with solutions. We need people coming for proposals. That's the job. The job isn't to ponder and examine and to have endless meetings, right? That's part of the problem in Seattle and many places is that they want to task force something to death and workgroup it and blah, blah, blah. And then we end up in the same place that we were. I do hope that they get some more concrete solutions and process because that is going to enable them to hit the ground running. And it really does make a difference. If you don't understand the budget - the basics of the budget - just the, you know, like not every line item, that's a really hard thing to do. But have you even bothered to go on the City website and look at the budget documents they do have? Have you bothered to read and recall where some of the major issues of funding and major decisions were before? If you haven't, maybe you should. Maybe that would help inform you as to what's possible. You know, even if you think there's waste, fraud, and abuse - as they talk about with all that stuff - well, where specifically? 'Cause that general nebulous thing of we've been - it's not like this is the first rodeo with the City with a budget shortcut, it's not like all of that. And I'm not saying that there's nothing that can be reallocated - that should be looked at - but that information is out there and available. You can find that out. And I'm continually surprised - not necessarily surprised - I'm continuously dismayed by the number of candidates who say - Oh, I don't know that. You know, how can we know that? Or I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. Well, look into it. You decided to run for office - get it together, figure out what you wanna do, and share that. But it's a risky proposition to have someone go - You know, I need to figure out what's going on, we need to look into that, I'm not sure what it's gonna be. And meanwhile, trust me to make this decision. Based on what? That's my personal opinion - that was a little venty, but I do feel strongly about that. And as a political consultant who works with candidates and gotten people up to speed on this kind of stuff - people can do better. People can do better. People need to be better. The city needs the people to be better, to deal with stuff like this. Anywho. We also asked about climate change and specifically 2030 climate goals. This is happening amidst a backdrop where it seems like every major body - 5, 10 years ago, people were like, Yay, we're totally gonna make these 2030 goals. We take climate change super seriously, and we've set forth these ambitious targets that we're gonna achieve. Everybody loved announcing those goals and that those goals reflected their commitment and blah, blah, blah - which is part of my problem sometimes, celebrating the press release instead of delivering the result. But when it came time to make the tough decisions in order to get there, they punted, punted, punted, punted until we've gotten a rash of announcements over the past couple of years that - Yeah, so those 2030 goals, we're not gonna hit them, but we're totally gonna hit our 2050 goals, right? And so if we can't hit this milestone, this benchmark, we're not gonna be on track for that. And the issue really is people just don't wanna make the decisions that are necessary to get there, right? Like, incrementalism isn't gonna get us there. And we are experiencing the impacts of climate change and it's not pretty, and it's not gonna get any better, right? Like this is the best it's going to be for a long, long time - and it's worrisome. So this is important. And specifically, it is 2023 - 2030 is right around the corner. There's a lot that can be done. And there's a lot of money being raised by the carbon credit auctions from the Climate Commitment Act. There's a lot of investment available throughout the state. Do they have plans to pursue and get some of the - what are the plans here? But we need to get on track and be serious about 2030, get back on track for 2030. 'Cause if we can't hit that, we can't hit anything. And we're in for a world of hurt. It's a serious thing. [00:46:22] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean, I think it's trying to understand - does this candidate have or feel a sense of urgency around this? Are we actually gonna put a honest effort into trying to meet these goals? And what are their ideas about how to do that? Because as you said, we needed to be doing this stuff yesterday, but the next best time to do it is starting now. And so what is the plan? [00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there were some candidates - a couple that I'm thinking of - that had some good concrete ideas for this. There were others who very much did not. But also with this - candidates also learn from each other during the campaign trail. And one thing that I do think that we need to do is to encourage that more. The more candidates can learn - like actually engage with solutions - is a good thing. Sometimes - obviously if someone's biting a speech word-for-word, which happens sometimes in politics with candidates - that is irritating, especially for the people in campaigns sometimes. But if there's a good idea and someone else is - You know what, that makes sense. - that's a good thing. We should encourage that. And so I do hope - with a number of these responses, and definitely this one too - that people pay attention to what other candidates, even if they aren't in their same district, say because there are some good workable, achievable plans and ideas on the table that could definitely help. And if a candidate hasn't really engaged with that or thought about it before, there are other candidates who are great resources for them. [00:47:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I think so. I think my experience, having gone through all these candidate interviews, is just every candidate is unique and is coming from a different place to run for office. And they do come with different expertise and experience. And so I think it is kind of a helpful resource to look at for other candidates, whoever ends up getting elected, people who are just concerned about our community as a whole. What are these candidates talking about as being the issue? Why are they stepping up to do something that - to me, sounds like an awful thing to have to do - put yourself out there, and get scrutinized, and knock on doors every free moment of your life. I don't know - I mean - but they wanna do it. [00:48:35] Crystal Fincher: Shannon is a notorious introvert, yes. [00:48:38] Shannon Cheng: They wanna do it. And there's a reason why. And maybe listening and trying to understand - what is that reason and what can we do about it? What are they saying would be helpful to them to address the thing that got them to do this incredibly hard thing? [00:48:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. Another question we asked was just - was about childcare, which is a really, really big deal. We talk about - housing is on everyone's mind, it's on everyone's agenda because it's such a major expense and it keeps rising wildly. It is unsustainable, right, in this situation. The number two expense for most families, which sometimes creeps into number one with multiple children, is childcare. We talk about groceries, we talk about gas and people definitely feel those, but people are feeling childcare in a way that is wild. It's more expensive than college and college is wildly unaffordable, right? This is so expensive and it directly impacts whether people can work - period - whether people can participate in this economy. It is cost prohibitive to get childcare for a lot of people. It's cheaper just not to work, right? And that impacts people's upward mobility, likelihood to be in poverty, to be able to get out of poverty if you are in, whether they're going to need government assistance, right? This impacts so many different things. And the way kids develop depends on the quality of care that they receive from early childhood on. And so this is directly impacting many families, indirectly impacting everyone in the community - from businesses, the regional economy, other parents, community members. And so we don't talk about it enough still. There are a lot of people who are and that's awesome and great, but I think it needs to be elevated even more. And for anyone who's talking about issues of affordability, who's talking about inflation, who's talking about just families having a hard time dealing with expenses - you cannot have that conversation in any credible way without talking about the cost and accessibility of childcare. So that's why we talked about that. And then, just general - Why are you running? What are the differences between you and your opponent? I will tell you - just from my perspective as a political - this is a question that I would ask candidates before deciding to work with them. And I'm looking, in that question, to hear specific and tangible things that they wanna do for their community. It is a big red flag when that answer doesn't include how they want to help people. If the answer is just about them - Well, you know, this was the time for me and lots of people came to me and like, blah, blah, blah. People know - different jurisdictions are different. They suit different leadership types, personality types - depending on what you wanna do. So is this someone who's running for every open position available under the sun? Or do they have something specific that they wanna do in the role that they're seeking? Do you have something tangible you wanna accomplish? People should have tangible things they want to accomplish, and not just running for vanity or because power is attractive, or it's something to put on the resume or whatever - run to accomplish something to help people. I am drawn to people who are rooted in that and have answers with that. I will say just in my experience overall - that determines how someone, absolutely determines how someone governs, how consistent they are to governing - and the way that they ran absolutely has an impact on that. And even beyond, even for candidates who lose, right? Usually candidates who are like - You know, I'm running because I see this as a problem impacting lots of people, and I think that I can be part of the solution in fixing it. - is that if, even if they lose, right, they still stay engaged in the community and working on that. You can see the motivation is not power for me - to them. It is actually doing something to help the community. And so, I look at a variety of different people who've run over the years, and it's interesting to see the people who are still active in community versus those who just disappear. And it was like a phase - them wanting to be involved. Now that's - obviously there's nuance to this conversation - people don't owe their lives to serving and all that kind of stuff. But if you are saying this is an important part of who you are, it seems like that would continue beyond a campaign and that you would see consistency there. So that for me, as a person who is either deciding who I'm gonna vote for, or who I'm gonna work with or in support of - that answer matters a lot to me. That motivation matters a lot to me. How do you see it? [00:53:17] Shannon Cheng: I agree with a lot of what you just said. What I really liked about the interviews we did was that opportunity you gave them to just talk without time limits that forums often impose. And it was refreshing to kind of hear people kind of being more their authentic self. And I think that's just - I don't know that I can describe it, right? But I think just you have to listen and hear how they talk about things. And that was - there were many candidates who came on who, just based on reading, doing all the research ahead of time for their interview and reading about them - and then when they came on, they were not what I expected. I mean, some were. But there were some surprises as well. And I mean, that was, it was really great to - ultimately, these candidates are all people. And I think on the campaign trail and it can get heated - sometimes it can get kind of boiled down to a caricature almost, or just what their campaign website makes them out to look like. And I don't know that that really is the most informative in terms of understanding who these people actually are. And for me, that just feels like - I wanna know that the people who are making these hard decisions for myself, and people I care about, and neighbors who I care about - even if I don't know them directly - I just want them to be good people. [00:54:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I want them to care. I want them to see the people and the humanity. I want them to not see statistics. I want them to understand that it's people. I want them to not celebrate the fact that they - it's fine and good - Hey, we passed something. But that then has to be implemented in a way that is felt by the people who it's intended to help. And if that doesn't happen, it all doesn't matter. And I feel like we don't pay enough attention to that part of it a lot. And so I personally, as a voter, am looking for people who understand that and who at least value writing legislation that has a reasonable shot at being implemented well and can deliver on the result. And who track that and who are willing to course correct there and not just paper over things that may not be great and act as if they are - 'cause the goal is to help people. I do wanna talk about - so we took a little bit of a different approach to editing. Candidate interviews - I know how things can get in campaigns and being a candidate is not easy, it's nerve-wracking and being in these interviews - and editing can make people sound better, sound worse. Sometimes people take a pause to consider, or - and that is a, Shoot, I don't know, or like, will say different things, right? And so the approach that we took to candidate interviews - particularly when we had both candidates in the race - we wanted to present them as straightforwardly as we could, to basically not edit their answers. Because there was a lot - we would lose things on a variety of sides, right? And my goal is to not interject our presentation of the candidate. It's to give you the candidate. And I think people can hear throughout these interviews that you can hear someone thinking, you can hear someone processing, you can hear someone being - dodging, or like really contending with someone - like that whole thing mattered. And it seemed like we didn't - editing that, that was just gonna be a no-win situation for - Are we making someone look better? Are we making someone look worse? Are we interjecting what we think into there? So we actually decided just to - sometimes I would flub up a question, right? And like that's edited out, but we let candidates just answer and let their answers be their answers. And you can hear them. And they are people, right? And this isn't easy. And people can be super nervous in an interview, right? Like this is - I get nervous sometimes before I do things - that's totally fair. So I - if someone - I'm not looking for someone to sound perfect or perfectly polished, right? There are some times you can sound too polished. But just to give people an accurate impression of who they are, and how they're engaging with the answer, and can make their own call on whatever that is. But basically it was like - we don't record live, but you got the answer as though it was. So that's the approach that we took there. 'Cause we did get a couple of questions on - Are these edited? Or like, How, like, are you going to do that? Or like, Did you, you know, take - No, that's, that's exactly how it happened. [00:57:50] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, we cut out things like coughing fits or the ever-present train siren behind Crystal. [00:57:57] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes. [00:57:58] Shannon Cheng: Otherwise - tried to keep it real. I mean, you know, our goal with this project is to educate people about who they are going to make choices between and hopefully inform them in that decision that's coming up. November 7th! [00:58:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You can register to vote online. Even if you have been convicted of a felony and have been incarcerated, the moment you are released, you are eligible to re-register and vote again. Just be involved in making this decision. Voting locally is really important. It's more consequential than all the federal stuff that's going on. Although we hear wall-to-wall coverage and every news program every night is talking about Congress and the president - and not that that's not important. But like, look at how different states are. Look at how different Washington and Alabama are. Look at how different Forks and Seattle and Cle Elum and Spokane and Ellensburg - that is how much control cities have over who they are and how they operate. It can be as different as all of these different cities. They can be night and day difference. And that is all the impact of these local officials that we're electing in the elections that we're having this November. So that's why I do this show. It's really, really important to talk about this stuff and not enough people do regularly. And I'm not saying that it's easy - we make it hard for people to understand and participate in these issues. So just trying to make that more accessible to more people and to help understand where it may be helpful to focus and consider and engage. But this matters, and it matters to try and elect people who will actually deliver on the policy that you think they should be delivering and implementing. So that's why we did this and appreciate you listening to our little explainer about our approach. [00:59:47] Shannon Cheng: Thank you everyone! [00:59:48] Crystal Fincher: Thank you! Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Over the last six weeks, Hacks & Wonks presented our series of interviews with most of the Seattle City Council candidates! (We did have one cancel, one decline, and one not respond to our invitation…) Now, join Crystal and Shannon behind-the-scenes of Hacks & Wonks for a bonus (not-so) short episode where they discuss how questions got chosen and written, the why behind those kludgy SPOG contract questions, thoughts and observations after all the interviews, and their approach to editing. And also, a bit of venting. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle.   Resources “Rob Saka, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks   “Maren Costa, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 1 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks   “Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 2 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Joy Hollingsworth, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks   “Alex Hudson, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 3 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks   “Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 4 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 5” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 5 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Pete Hanning, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 6” from Hacks & Wonks   “Seattle City Council District 6 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   “Andrew Lewis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 7” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 7 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, this is a little bonus short - I don't know, we'll wind up seeing how long this turns out to be. I am joined here with someone who you don't hear from on the mic often, but every time we do, it's wonderful. She is the person who does so much work for the podcast - this is a team effort. I'm here with Dr. Shannon Cheng. Hey, Shannon. [00:01:14] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal! [00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: So Dr. Shannon Cheng - who is incredible, who works with me, who is a subject matter expert on public safety, is the guru for knowledge about like the SPOG contract, SPMA contract, that kind of stuff. She really understands and has the ability to actually explain it and share it in really accessible ways. But I just want to back up and talk about what you do and how you became an expert. What do you do, Shannon? [00:01:44] Shannon Cheng: So I find myself involved in local policy and politics kind of by accident. I mean, you referenced that I'm a doctor - my doctorate is in Space Propulsion, I'm an aerospace engineer by training. And I guess if I try to think about the throughline of how I've operated in life is that I kind of don't want to end up doing things that aren't gonna let me go to sleep at night. So what happened with me with aerospace is - at one point - understanding that basically staying involved in that industry was contributing to weapons of destruction and war. And I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So through volunteering and activism, I guess that's how I met up with Crystal and got connected and have been doing a lot of things. I work on People Power Washington, which is focused on equitable public safety and policing across Washington state. We've worked on the Seattle, King County and State Legislature levels. We work on things ranging from budget advocacy to monitoring these difficult to understand police guild contracts and understanding how those get in the way of accountability, trying to work to pass charter amendments at the county level that would support better public safety and-- [00:02:59] Crystal Fincher: Shannon was instrumental in the passage of that 2020 County Charter Amendment to reform public safety. Instrumental. [00:03:07] Shannon Cheng: And yeah, then recently I was invited to join the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability. And so that's been really a wonderful experience to just engage with families who have been directly impacted by police violence and brutality, and trying to work to have that not happen to anybody else ever again. So that's kind of me. [00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: That is. Except you are the ultimate fun fact person. Like you have so many fun facts. A prior student of yours is currently on the Space Station right now. [00:03:42] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - he was up there for a six month stint. He may have come back down by now, but - I think the launch was in February - and when they were showing the pictures, I was like, Wait, I taught that guy Dynamics. [00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: You have a picture of you like in zero gravity working on a thing. You are an orienteering champion, which is a whole thing. [00:04:07] Shannon Cheng: Yes. It is a sport that is not super popular in this country - it's widely popular in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, those areas. But yes, you could say I am an orienteering champion of sorts-- [00:04:20] Crystal Fincher: You are literally an orienteering champion. [00:04:24] Shannon Cheng: --thanks to participation and attendance. [00:04:27] Crystal Fincher: And you being great. It's not like there were no competitors. Yeah, there are so many fun facts about Shannon - just awesome things that pop up here and there. But Shannon is talented at everything basically, and is just one of the best human beings I know. And an instrumental part of Hacks & Wonks. So that's why we're both here talking to you right now. So we wanted to have this conversation to talk about just what we were thinking when we were putting together questions for the Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And we meet and kind of do a whole thing - have an approach anytime we do series of candidate interviews - this is no exception. But especially with all of them and this conversation, there's been a lot of tangential conversation brought up - a lot on social media, a lot in the community. And some of these questions have become even more relevant in the past couple of weeks, particularly the ones revolving around policing in the city of Seattle and the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that is in the process of being negotiated. And so I guess starting out - when we start thinking about how we're going to do candidate interviews, what do we usually talk about? How do we usually approach that? [00:05:51] Shannon Cheng: I think we're - I know you are always wanting to kind of understand how would a candidate actually vote on issues that matter to people in this city? Because ultimately people can say things and have platitudes, but it really comes down to when there's a hard vote, which way are they gonna go? So I think, especially for the lightning round, a lot of our questions were centered around trying to ask these questions - and getting a Yes, No, or seeing if there was a waffle from these candidates - just to better understand how they think about these things and when push comes to shove, which way they would lean. [00:06:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that is my approach. And it is an approach that is the result of years of working in politics, years of seeing how candidates process information throughout a campaign, how they conduct themselves just in their general lives, and how that translates to policy, and whether they govern in a way that's consistent with how they campaigned. And certainly one thing that is a throughline is - especially when it comes to tough votes - everybody will say, I believe the children are the future. Everybody will say - yes, they wanna address root causes of stuff, right? But as we see, like we've seen recently in this city, when it comes to issues of public safety or homelessness, people have all these value statements - but it comes down to a vote. It comes down to - Are you going to fund something or are you not? Are you going to really put into place the necessary elements to successfully implement what you're going to say or not? Are you going to just fund what you said - Oh, we need to do more than that. - but if you're only like voting to fund that, that's a different thing. So we tend to ask more specific questions than sometimes we hear elsewhere - we're not the only people who ask specific questions, but I definitely try to do that. And we try to figure out what votes are likely to be coming up, where are the big fault lines, especially for the upcoming year, going to be? What does it look like different interests are pushing for and where do they stand on that? Because it's gonna be an issue. There's going to be pressure put on them to vote certain ways. And if they can't stand up strongly for what they believe and be conclusive about what they're gonna say, that doesn't have a good track record of resulting in the kind of policy that people expect in that direction - if they're soft on that. So that's part of what we do. And I've interviewed people from different philosophical orientations, political orientations. And sometimes there are people who I think or suspect I'm gonna agree with, who are soft on things I don't expect. People who I don't expect to agree with, who - I hear their answers on some things - I'm like, Okay, that was thoughtful and informed. And I certainly have my opinions - you know that - we talk about my opinions on the show. But I really do hope - my goal isn't to super interrogate and like make all the points - it's really to get what they think on the record, out in the open. And really help people to make an informed decision based on what the candidates are saying, kind of without the - with the exception of the lightning round - without the time limit on - Okay, you got to get your answer out in 30 seconds or 1 minute. There's some nuance - sometimes it's more than that - or an issue is complex and we need to talk about it. [00:09:01] Shannon Cheng: And I would just also add that we have a lot of first time candidates this year, especially with open seats. And so it's also understandable that maybe a candidate isn't well-versed in every single issue area that is going to come up. And so I think having this robust set of questions also can help educate - both them and the voters - what is coming up. And maybe if they feel a little weak, or they get a question and they don't understand what it's even about, that's a signal of - Hey, this is kind of important. Maybe you need to look into that, and understand what's going on, and figure out where you stand on it. [00:09:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I - we'll have candidates be like, Whoa, I hadn't thought about that before, I need to learn more about that. And I appreciate that - when someone - taking office, we can talk about all of these issues. But there will always be issues or events that happen, that pop up that you don't talk about while on the campaign. And so a candidate's always going to have to get up to speed on something new. Electeds have to get up to speed on new things all the time. And so how do they approach that not knowing - knowing that they don't know something - How do they approach that? Who are the people they turn to to help learn? What sources of information are they learning from? How do they process information? Those are all things that are useful to hear and to know. And so even if they encounter something that - okay, maybe they didn't think about, you have a perspective about how they process information. So I guess in how we approach writing questions, what is the process for that? Okay, Shannon right now is like, Okay, so Crystal is like - ties herself into knots and then tries to avoid writing the questions. And then it's - maybe we don't want to do interviews at all. And oh my gosh - they're too many, they're too few. It's a little bit of a tortured process sometimes, but you help bring some clarity and order to that whole process. [00:10:55] Shannon Cheng: I mean, you've done candidate forums - so we look at what you've done for candidate forums in the past. And then my issue area - that I work on in my spare time - is public safety and policing, and so I had the opportunity to put candidate questionnaire questions about that topic in as possible questions to ask. So - I don't know-- [both laughing] [00:11:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, with that. [00:11:20] Shannon Cheng: It's very last minute. [both laughing] [00:11:22] Crystal Fincher: It's so, yeah. [00:11:23] Shannon Cheng: But I don't know that people need to know that. [both laughing] We'll edit that part out. [00:11:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, it is - we do this in between our regular work. I'm a political consultant. Shannon works with me. We're busy doing that for most of the day on most days, and we squeeze this podcast in between them - with lots of coordination and research and preparation done by Shannon, which I sincerely appreciate. But it is a process and we're trying to figure out what makes sense to ask. We do still have time limits-ish - we stretch it sometimes. But I do - maybe we should start off talking about some of these questions about policing in the contract because some of these issues have come up lately. Shaun Scott, who is a great follow on Twitter - I don't know if he's elsewhere, but on Twitter, certainly - he was talking about, Hey, the city passed an ordinance. And he's absolutely right - City passed an ordinance giving the city council and OPA? - I think, one of the entities - the city council subpoena power over SPD and other entities, but like including SPD. And they did pass an ordinance that did that. Unfortunately, the SPOG contract of 2018 superseded that. Basically, it had clauses that contradicted and said, No, we're not gonna do that. And then another clause that says, And if City law says that we need to do that, that doesn't matter, this contract is going to replace or supersede City law in that. So subpoena power was essentially taken away. A number of accountability measures were taken away. So the questions that we asked were more specific than we usually ask. It wasn't like - oh, everybody deals with this and talks about it all the time. It was more - these are some areas in the SPOG contract that might be opaque or obscure that haven't been widely publicly discussed, but that are very important in dealing with issues like we're seeing now in the news. How did you put together those questions, and why are those specific ones important? [00:13:30] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so I think it's important to first understand that officer discipline is considered a working condition under state labor law, and that's why these union contracts are kind of the last stop for determining how things happen. So as you said, the City has passed, I think, multiple ordinances to try to give subpoena power to our accountability bodies - the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General. But the thing is that because we're governing under state law, unless that officer discipline-related provision gets negotiated into a contract that is accepted by the police unions, then it's not gonna be in effect. And so it's confusing, right? We see this all the time that there's these announcements made - Hey, like huge step forward in accountability. We managed to pass a law that says we have subpoena power. - but then what's left out is the asterisk that is, Well, once it gets negotiated with the union. And so I think that's the thing that gets lost a lot. And so I see that a lot. And so when we came up with our questions - literally it's from observing what the process has been, and then going actually through the contract line-by-line and trying to understand - okay, where are these provisions that kind of weaken the glorious accountability system that everybody likes to point to and pretend that we have. So knowing that going through labor contracts is not everybody's favorite thing, that's why we try to boil it down into - Okay, here's a few especially egregious things that seem like baseline we should try to get in the next contract - which is why talking to electeds about it is important because they are the ones who are gonna hold the power in terms of getting what we want in the next contract. So that's the process that we came up with our questions. [00:15:23] Crystal Fincher: So, the question that we asked candidates in the lightning round was - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, known as OPA, and the Office of the Inspector General, known as OIG, subpoena power? Why is subpoena power important and what difference could it make? [00:15:41] Shannon Cheng: Subpoena power is important if you're trying to do an investigation and the information you think is necessary to understand what's happening for your investigation isn't available, or if people involved aren't cooperating and giving you that information. So at that point, a subpoena allows you to basically demand that that information is shared with you. In the 2017 Accountability Ordinance that was passed, it was explicitly laid out that the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General would have subpoena power. However, in the 2018 SPOG contract - I'll just read directly from the contract - they list those two sections and then they have an addendum that says, "The City agrees that these sections of the Ordinance will not be implemented at this time with regard to bargaining unit employees and their family members, and third party subpoenas seeking personal records of such employees and their family members." So basically, the contract said - there's no subpoena power for these two entities. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: And yeah, I mean, we've heard and seen in several stories - the Seattle Police Department did not cooperate with the investigation. They can just say, currently - No, we're not gonna give that to you. No, we're not gonna share that. We decline to do that. And in issues - right now, there's an international conversation about both the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula and its aftermath with an officer mocking her killing. And the record of the police officer who was doing that, the records of officers overall. And we still don't know everything that happened with the East Precinct and it's leaving, we don't know what happened with CHOP - like those kinds of things - we still don't have answers because we can't demand them. We can't compel them. And this does. Not that that's gonna solve everything, but it is a tool of accountability. And at minimum, if you can't even get information about what happened, how are you gonna attach any kind of accountability to that? So it really is a very primary - we have to at least understand what happened, we have to be able to get that information. So that is what went behind that question. Another question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? What is this sworn versus civilian issue about, and why is it important? [00:17:57] Shannon Cheng: So the Office of Police Accountability has investigators - they're actually embedded in the Seattle Police Department - and a lot of their investigators are actually sworn officers. And so some people might think, Well, doesn't that seem kind of problematic? Because you would end up in this scenario where you have cops investigating other cops. Also, the cops that come into the OPA as these sworn investigators - my understanding is they kind of rotate in and out - so a cop going in could expect to then be back out at some point. And that would lead one to think, Well, maybe they wouldn't want to be as thorough in their investigations. So what the civilian aspect was - was that I think people would trust more to have a civilian who is not a sworn officer doing these investigations. And in that original 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance, there was provision made that there could be civilian investigators on this team within the OPA. However, again, that 2018 SPOG contract specifically said - and here, I'll again read from the contract - "The parties agree as follows: Unless otherwise agreed, at any time after the date of signing, the City may replace up to two (2) sworn investigator positions with up to two (2) civilian investigators." So they've basically limited the OPA to only have at any time two civilian investigators, and then that contract goes on to say, "Any case that reasonably could lead to termination will have a sworn investigator assigned to the case." So not only have they limited the number of civilian investigators, they also say those civilian investigators can't work on any cases that would lead to any kind of discipline that is on the harsher side of things. So that's why we asked that question. [00:19:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these, it is important to understand - different jurisdictions have different things that they can do, right? They all have their own levers that they can push and pull. Some things you can only do at the county level, some things you can only do at the city level - in a variety of ways. And so we do try and focus in our questions also on what can they do in their capacity as a city councilmember. And because they do have the power to approve or reject this contract, putting - understanding what their conditions for doing so would be, getting them on the record about that is important 'cause this impacts how the police operate within the city and with residents. The next question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Why was this a question? [00:20:34] Shannon Cheng: This is a question because - as we all know, the City has been trying for a very long time to stand up a alternative crisis response that may or may not involve the police. I think a big hurdle to that being stood up is this concern that I've heard - that if the City was to stand something up that didn't involve the police or the police didn't agree with, that they could file an Unfair Labor Practice with the state and basically say - this is some violation of their contract, that kind of work that had been under the purview of the police department was now being taken away from them and given to somebody else. So it's - I don't know that there's wording explicitly in the contract that says that, but it would be the union invoking the contract to say that the City was taking work away from them, basically, that they wanted to keep. [00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a big major issue. And right now we're kind of at an impasse - alternative responses and funding non-police public safety responses and interventions is one of the most popular things supported by Seattle residents right now. They vote for candidates who say they're gonna support that. Polling shows that north of 70% across the board, it's been over 80% in some polls. When asked explicitly - hey, if your tax dollars are gonna be spent, what do you most want it to be spent on? Highest thing is standing up alternatives to policing to address things like behavioral health crises. We all see that this is so desperately needed and that - it used to be five years ago, kind of pre-2016, pre-George Floyd, when police used to have no problem. They said all the time - we aren't social workers, we don't have the tools to handle this other stuff, we wanna do our core jobs and not handle all these other things that we don't really have the tools for. And it seems like because of fear of losing funding, losing headcount, whatever, that stopped and they started clinging to everything that they could have. So like we ask a question - Do you think parking should be housed within SPD? Lots of cities are having conversations, especially since police are saying that they're short-staffed to say - Okay, how can we more effectively deploy police officers and take things off of their plate that shouldn't be on there in the first place, that are not core to what a sworn officer - a sworn armed officer - is needed for. But the challenge is that that is coming up against, as you described, those feelings that - Well, that's something that we, you know, that was in our sphere of responsibility, funding is attached to it, headcount is attached to it. And if we lose that, maybe that's gonna be a slippery slope to losing other things. So like in the City of Seattle, the city council has actually funded alternative police responses. They have decided they wanna move forward with that, they've allocated money for that. And once that happens, it's basically up to the executive - currently Bruce Harrell, before with Jenny Durkan - to use that funding and implement the thing. Well, it's kind of stuck there. The money isn't being used. And for a while, especially with Monisha Harrell, when she was with the city, they talked about, Okay, well, we wanna do all that, we're just gonna do it with an internal department of public safety that will also house civilian responses. And I think part of standing that up as an internal department was to address the concern of the issue of headcount. And if the headcount decreases, even if it's just parking officials who do not need a gun to enforce parking, that - hey, let's not call that like a regular response, let's not use sworn headcount to do that, we can deploy that more effectively. But that is a problem that is stalled. And so the question really is - will they ensure that in the contract that is currently being negotiated, the contract that the council will be voting on, can they eliminate that as an issue? And obviously this has to be negotiated by both sides, but is there something they can come to that enables the City to move forward with what the residents are demanding and what leaders have committed to do? We've gotta find a way to have the contract not impede the progress that the city is repeatedly begging to make and promising to make. So that's what went into that question. Another question we asked - Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? Why is this an issue? [00:24:53] Shannon Cheng: So the current contract that we're under explicitly gives SPD officers the right to work off-duty. And this is in-uniform, so one factor in this is that this is basically allowing them to use public resources, meaning their uniform - and they retain their police powers while they're working for not us, not the public that's paying them, but for private clients who they work for. So, a lot of these things are things like security or traffic direction, and they get paid a lot of money for these jobs - sometimes I think even more than they make as an officer. And so one of our concerns is that, especially in a time when it's short-staffed, then allowing in-uniform off-duty work - it creates confusion with the public, for one thing, when you see a police officer not working in their official capacity as a police officer, but dressed as one and maintaining all the same powers that they do - it just doesn't have clear boundaries between their professional work and then their side job. And then with the short staffing, these added hours that they're doing on top of, in theory, their full workload at SPD, plus potential overtime that they're gonna have to do - this is just gonna lead even more to officer fatigue. And we can see how that could lead to more of the poor decision-making or judgment calls, and has detrimental consequences for all of us in the public. And often - with their history of biased policing - would affect certain populations more than others. So that was why we asked this question. [00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these questions overall, some people are like - Well, why are these all like accountability questions? Are there any other things? Like, do you just hate cops? And to me, hating cops is not the issue, right? This is about public safety for everyone in the city and in the region. And every candidate who's run - I collect and keep political mail, advertising, blah, blah, blah - and what is really astounding is kind of the revisionist history of members of the council who are known for being moderate or conservative. Everybody's like - Well, you know, they elected me to be moderate and conservative. Or like people covering them - They elected someone. But when you look at what they said when they were running, when you look at their mail and what they communicated to voters - to a person - they talked about the importance of police accountability and reform. And, you know, some people wanna go further than others, but they all promised that. And so, if that wasn't just BS - anyone who's serious about that, and even if you're working towards community-centered, different things - anyone who is serious about what we're currently doing, and this contract is currently being negotiated, we really do have to contend with these things. And if we aren't, then we're not really serious about doing anything about accountability, let alone re-imagining what public safety can actually be. So no matter what someone's ideological position is on the council, they should be engaging with this. This is in their sphere of responsibility. They're gonna have to vote on this contract. And so we need to know - we should know, and we should be talking about - what these parameters are. It's very important and consequential, and can determine whether we wind up in similar situations to now - where we have an officer where basically the globe has said, That's disgusting and should be unacceptable. Why is this officer still there? And we have City electeds basically going - Oh, there's nothing we can really do about it. The contract, you know, like, can't really fire them. There's no precedent. - and like, those are all legal issues because of the contract. But they approved this contract - Bruce Harrell approved the contract that we currently have. He's not the only one - I think Debora Juarez was on the council at that point in time. Lorena González used to be, and said she regretted the vote. Like, this was consequential. We talked about this at the time - not many people were listening in the wider community. But like, this is not a surprise that we're seeing problems because of the overriding of accountability measures passed by the City and supported by people in the city. So that's why we asked those public safety questions. We asked a bunch of questions in the lightning round about how people vote. Why do you think these were good questions to include? [00:29:06] Shannon Cheng: I think they're good because this is an instance where they had to sit down with their pen in hand and make a choice - bubble choice A or bubble choice B. And so in this process of trying to figure out how these candidates think and where they stand on things, asking them about times where they actually did have to make a decision and knowing what decision they made, I think that's why we asked those. [00:29:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And it's fair to ask. And it gives you insight into how they process information when it does come time to make a choice on one or the other, even if they think - maybe they don't think either choice is perfect, but they do need to make a choice and what they made is informative. In these, you know, also informing on different issues, where they stand there. We asked also issues about housing. We asked them if they rent or own - and that's an important question to ask, it's an important thing to know. And it's wild that we don't talk about that more because that is one of the biggest dividing lines in Seattle politics. It's one of the biggest dividing lines in voters. When you look at any results map of an election, you basically see the results of homeowners versus renters, higher income, higher net worth people versus lower income, lower net worth people. That is a fault line in Seattle politics. And looking at how votes happen, we see people voting aligned with their housing status a lot. It's something that matters, that is predictive pretty regularly. And so we wanted to ask that. We wanted to understand if they rented, if they own, and if they're a landlord. Some candidates were, some candidates were not. And then we face questions - the council actually passed an ordinance that was vetoed by Mayor Harrell, just about some more accountability for landlords and more sharing of information to try and better poise the City to address the housing affordability crisis. And so that's why we asked those. We asked the question about allowing police in schools because that has been talked about in some meetings. It looks like there are some influential interests that want to make that happen and encourage that. I don't think that's wide-ranging, but there were a couple of powerful and well-placed people who - that was coming from their camps - and so we thought it was important to get people on record about that. We asked about trans and non-binary students - making sure they could play on sports teams that fit with their gender identities and using public bathrooms and public facilities - and got a range of answers on this one. Why did you feel this was so important to ask? [00:31:37] Shannon Cheng: I think this is a community that's been under attack just nationwide, at all levels. And so it's important to know - I think Seattle touts itself as a progressive, inclusive, welcoming city - and we want to make sure the people who are leading us actually are. [00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And respecting people's humanity without condition, without making them less than. And unfortunately, the sports issue is propaganda. It's propaganda. I understand why the propaganda campaign caught on - it's using very cynical tactics - but we do have to stand up and say, That's propaganda. We can't be like - Okay, yeah, trans people, we accept everybody - live, love, and light - all that kind of stuff. And then say, Yeah, but if your kid wants to play on a sports team - which is a very important formative part of growing up for many people, if they choose to do that, and also not just sports, just any kind of activities attached to school, which is something that so many people partake in - and say, Yeah, but not that. Like that is an issue of just fundamental humanity and inclusion - and so we should be explicit about where people stand, and we should talk about that, and we should force people to be accountable for where they stand on that. And make sure people know - before they vote - whether people plan on including every member of this community in our community. We asked about the economy, the JumpStart Tax - which there's been lots of talk from different interests about, from some Chamber interests saying, Maybe we need to divert some of that to help restart, relaunch downtown's economy. There are other people saying, Hey, this might be something that we need to increase to help with the upcoming budget deficit. And some people who just disagree with it overall, and think that we - that that's placing a burden on business, and that's gonna be bad for residents - and usually coming from the same people who say the sky is falling every time that there is a minimum wage increase, and then more people move here and are happier than they are in other places, so it seems like we would stop listening to people who continue to predict that and are wrong, but we don't do that. But wanted to get people on record for where they stand on that, because - in Seattle politics, interests are tied to taxes - that that's where a lot of corporate interests are really concerned about. And they will use other issues as wedge issues in messaging, but their primary concerns are about taxation and the maintenance of their capital. That's really what's driving a lot of this. And so the JumpStart is going to be at the heart of that interest and conversation. [00:34:09] Shannon Cheng: We hear businesses - obviously they don't wanna pay more taxes, but at the same time, we also hear businesses complaining that they're not getting the services that they expect the City to deliver to them. And so I think it's pretty telling that - you don't wanna pay for it, but you wanna get it. [00:34:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we also asked about how candidates can better support small business. I do think there's a conflation of gigantic multi-trillion dollar mega-corp interests and - in the business community - and a small mom-pop shop, local business who is - hired a couple of people from the neighborhood and is trying to make it. Both businesses, both part of the business community - but usually very different interests and needs. And we have a lot of small businesses who are struggling. Small business - business is important to the economy across the board, right? But we need it not to be extractive. We need not to say, Oh, it's so important. So like Boeing, we're gonna give you more money than we've ever given anyone before with no accountability. We did this because Boeing is gonna create jobs and we need lots of jobs. But then we don't get a refund when Boeing lays people off and leaves town, right - that's a problem. And we have trillion dollar corporations in the city of Seattle who frankly use small business owners to say - Oh, please, we're suffering and we need help, and we shouldn't pay any taxes. When most residents, according to polling and election results, feel that businesses like - mega corporations are not paying their fair share. There is a conversation to be had - some kind of income inequality and differences in access and challenges that small businesses are facing compared to large businesses. It's kind of similar to what lower income people are facing in comparison to larger income people. Small businesses are having problems affording rent - that's a really, really, really big issue - they are suffering from predatory rent increases. Also, that's putting people out of business. But there's a lot to be discussed. And if you talk to business owners - we've done shows with different business interests - and their needs are broad and varied and they should be listened to, they are part of the community. But we do need to talk about them as part of the community and not as this super entity or something like that. So that's what those questions were looking to get at. And then just some perspective stuff - asking if they're happy with Seattle's waterfront, asking about return to work mandates - just helping to further get inside their minds, how they think, what their perspective is, where they're coming from, and who and what they may be sympathetic to as interests and as bills - when that comes up. Transportation and transit related questions - we have absolutely seen a difference in engagement and thoughtfulness, willingness to fund and include provisions that are helpful for pedestrians and people on transit, people riding bikes from leaders who actually use them. And we suffer when leaders are responsible for transit policy who don't use and ride transit - all sorts of distorted and weird policy and perspectives come out when we have people governing systems that they don't themselves engage with. And so we asked those questions to try and see - are you actually using the system? Because we hear different things from people who do take them versus things that don't. And just, that's a useful thing to know. Similarly, Pike Place car traffic is something that we talk about - just another one of those perspective things in there. We obviously asked about the upcoming revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle for $224 million. Everyone is going to have to contend with that. Every candidate on the campaign trail, every candidate that we interviewed has talked about wanting to implement new things that are going to require additional revenue, that are going to require resources. And we're moving into - Okay, we're going to have fewer resources and either we're gonna need to raise revenue or make cuts. And so it's just not a serious position to be in to say we should be doing all of these other things - these new things that require revenue - when there's going to be less of it. And everyone is kind of dodgy usually when it comes to cutting things, but they're going to need - odds are it's gonna be a combination of cuts and attempting to pursue new revenue. If someone is saying they aren't gonna pursue that, then we need to view their other plans that do require revenue differently. If someone is saying, I'm gonna go after revenue hard - that's great, but we should also know if there are any cuts that they think they may need to do. Revenue may take a while to come in. We will probably need to do some trimming in the meantime - just because the City's mandated to have a balanced budget. And so that's something real that they're gonna have to contend with. And those are really hard decisions. And you can see how hard they are by how unwilling or unable candidates are to answer how they're gonna prioritize cutting, where they think they should come from. If revenue doesn't pass or come through, what does that mean? How are you gonna approach that? And we do need to press on those tough decisions 'cause those are gonna be really consequential things. And I think sometimes candidates - we've talked about this on this show before - think that just like the hard part is running, and then you get elected, and then you can exhale. Running for office is the easy part - it only gets harder - and the spotlight on you gets hotter and brighter when you actually do have to make a decision that's consequential for the people in the city. And so we should poke and prod about that and try to get as specific as we can. We don't always do perfectly with that - I'm reflecting on the answers that we got. There were so many vague answers - and try and poke and prod - and some people just don't wanna answer specifically, or just are unable to answer specifically. But hopefully, as you said before, that is an indication that they should think about that seriously. And they're gonna need a game plan 'cause it's coming and they're going to have to deal with that. And it's going to be bad if they just start engaging with that after they take office and have to really make those decisions and move forward with it. [00:40:16] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - I feel like in response to that question in particular, we heard a lot of answers to the effect of - Well, we need to look at the existing budget and look at where there are inefficiencies and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I am curious how many of those candidates - we have an entire City Budget staff, right? - who works on that kind of stuff and auditing. It's not like there aren't people looking at that. I just wonder how much have those candidates engaged with what is already out there? Have they found things that have been already identified? Would that even be in their process of trying to figure out how to reallocate resources, if that's the way they're going to go? [00:40:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And with these - I think it's important - obviously I have my own perspective, and I think it's important to ask questions and to frame them appropriately for the moment and for what's happening. And when I ask a question, I do - with these - try to give people a fair shot to respond, to give whatever their response is, right? I'm not going to cut them off in their response. I want voters to be able to hear what they think - even if I disagree with what they think, they get to hear what they think. But one observation I do have certainly, and formed definitely from working with candidates over the years, is that - we do hear, we heard a lot, we heard more than I was comfortable with, like, Oh, we do need to take a look at that. We need to start to understand where this stuff is. We need to ask tough questions. Like, you decided to run for office. This information has been out there, it's publicly available. There's a ton of information and resources just on the City website itself to walk you through the budget - each budget process - and hearings and a ton of Information. That's not usually where the issue is. The issue is when it's time to make a decision about what to cut, people are hesitant to do that. They're afraid of making people mad. And so we have these situations where candidates either don't feel like they need to come with a game plan, but we are in multiple crises. We need people who are saying - Okay, I have talked to community, I have done homework on what's happening, and this is my plan for what I think will fix it. We need people coming with solutions. We need people coming for proposals. That's the job. The job isn't to ponder and examine and to have endless meetings, right? That's part of the problem in Seattle and many places is that they want to task force something to death and workgroup it and blah, blah, blah. And then we end up in the same place that we were. I do hope that they get some more concrete solutions and process because that is going to enable them to hit the ground running. And it really does make a difference. If you don't understand the budget - the basics of the budget - just the, you know, like not every line item, that's a really hard thing to do. But have you even bothered to go on the City website and look at the budget documents they do have? Have you bothered to read and recall where some of the major issues of funding and major decisions were before? If you haven't, maybe you should. Maybe that would help inform you as to what's possible. You know, even if you think there's waste, fraud, and abuse - as they talk about with all that stuff - well, where specifically? 'Cause that general nebulous thing of we've been - it's not like this is the first rodeo with the City with a budget shortcut, it's not like all of that. And I'm not saying that there's nothing that can be reallocated - that should be looked at - but that information is out there and available. You can find that out. And I'm continually surprised - not necessarily surprised - I'm continuously dismayed by the number of candidates who say - Oh, I don't know that. You know, how can we know that? Or I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. Well, look into it. You decided to run for office - get it together, figure out what you wanna do, and share that. But it's a risky proposition to have someone go - You know, I need to figure out what's going on, we need to look into that, I'm not sure what it's gonna be. And meanwhile, trust me to make this decision. Based on what? That's my personal opinion - that was a little venty, but I do feel strongly about that. And as a political consultant who works with candidates and gotten people up to speed on this kind of stuff - people can do better. People can do better. People need to be better. The city needs the people to be better, to deal with stuff like this. Anywho. We also asked about climate change and specifically 2030 climate goals. This is happening amidst a backdrop where it seems like every major body - 5, 10 years ago, people were like, Yay, we're totally gonna make these 2030 goals. We take climate change super seriously, and we've set forth these ambitious targets that we're gonna achieve. Everybody loved announcing those goals and that those goals reflected their commitment and blah, blah, blah - which is part of my problem sometimes, celebrating the press release instead of delivering the result. But when it came time to make the tough decisions in order to get there, they punted, punted, punted, punted until we've gotten a rash of announcements over the past couple of years that - Yeah, so those 2030 goals, we're not gonna hit them, but we're totally gonna hit our 2050 goals, right? And so if we can't hit this milestone, this benchmark, we're not gonna be on track for that. And the issue really is people just don't wanna make the decisions that are necessary to get there, right? Like, incrementalism isn't gonna get us there. And we are experiencing the impacts of climate change and it's not pretty, and it's not gonna get any better, right? Like this is the best it's going to be for a long, long time - and it's worrisome. So this is important. And specifically, it is 2023 - 2030 is right around the corner. There's a lot that can be done. And there's a lot of money being raised by the carbon credit auctions from the Climate Commitment Act. There's a lot of investment available throughout the state. Do they have plans to pursue and get some of the - what are the plans here? But we need to get on track and be serious about 2030, get back on track for 2030. 'Cause if we can't hit that, we can't hit anything. And we're in for a world of hurt. It's a serious thing. [00:46:22] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean, I think it's trying to understand - does this candidate have or feel a sense of urgency around this? Are we actually gonna put a honest effort into trying to meet these goals? And what are their ideas about how to do that? Because as you said, we needed to be doing this stuff yesterday, but the next best time to do it is starting now. And so what is the plan? [00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there were some candidates - a couple that I'm thinking of - that had some good concrete ideas for this. There were others who very much did not. But also with this - candidates also learn from each other during the campaign trail. And one thing that I do think that we need to do is to encourage that more. The more candidates can learn - like actually engage with solutions - is a good thing. Sometimes - obviously if someone's biting a speech word-for-word, which happens sometimes in politics with candidates - that is irritating, especially for the people in campaigns sometimes. But if there's a good idea and someone else is - You know what, that makes sense. - that's a good thing. We should encourage that. And so I do hope - with a number of these responses, and definitely this one too - that people pay attention to what other candidates, even if they aren't in their same district, say because there are some good workable, achievable plans and ideas on the table that could definitely help. And if a candidate hasn't really engaged with that or thought about it before, there are other candidates who are great resources for them. [00:47:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I think so. I think my experience, having gone through all these candidate interviews, is just every candidate is unique and is coming from a different place to run for office. And they do come with different expertise and experience. And so I think it is kind of a helpful resource to look at for other candidates, whoever ends up getting elected, people who are just concerned about our community as a whole. What are these candidates talking about as being the issue? Why are they stepping up to do something that - to me, sounds like an awful thing to have to do - put yourself out there, and get scrutinized, and knock on doors every free moment of your life. I don't know - I mean - but they wanna do it. [00:48:35] Crystal Fincher: Shannon is a notorious introvert, yes. [00:48:38] Shannon Cheng: They wanna do it. And there's a reason why. And maybe listening and trying to understand - what is that reason and what can we do about it? What are they saying would be helpful to them to address the thing that got them to do this incredibly hard thing? [00:48:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. Another question we asked was just - was about childcare, which is a really, really big deal. We talk about - housing is on everyone's mind, it's on everyone's agenda because it's such a major expense and it keeps rising wildly. It is unsustainable, right, in this situation. The number two expense for most families, which sometimes creeps into number one with multiple children, is childcare. We talk about groceries, we talk about gas and people definitely feel those, but people are feeling childcare in a way that is wild. It's more expensive than college and college is wildly unaffordable, right? This is so expensive and it directly impacts whether people can work - period - whether people can participate in this economy. It is cost prohibitive to get childcare for a lot of people. It's cheaper just not to work, right? And that impacts people's upward mobility, likelihood to be in poverty, to be able to get out of poverty if you are in, whether they're going to need government assistance, right? This impacts so many different things. And the way kids develop depends on the quality of care that they receive from early childhood on. And so this is directly impacting many families, indirectly impacting everyone in the community - from businesses, the regional economy, other parents, community members. And so we don't talk about it enough still. There are a lot of people who are and that's awesome and great, but I think it needs to be elevated even more. And for anyone who's talking about issues of affordability, who's talking about inflation, who's talking about just families having a hard time dealing with expenses - you cannot have that conversation in any credible way without talking about the cost and accessibility of childcare. So that's why we talked about that. And then, just general - Why are you running? What are the differences between you and your opponent? I will tell you - just from my perspective as a political - this is a question that I would ask candidates before deciding to work with them. And I'm looking, in that question, to hear specific and tangible things that they wanna do for their community. It is a big red flag when that answer doesn't include how they want to help people. If the answer is just about them - Well, you know, this was the time for me and lots of people came to me and like, blah, blah, blah. People know - different jurisdictions are different. They suit different leadership types, personality types - depending on what you wanna do. So is this someone who's running for every open position available under the sun? Or do they have something specific that they wanna do in the role that they're seeking? Do you have something tangible you wanna accomplish? People should have tangible things they want to accomplish, and not just running for vanity or because power is attractive, or it's something to put on the resume or whatever - run to accomplish something to help people. I am drawn to people who are rooted in that and have answers with that. I will say just in my experience overall - that determines how someone, absolutely determines how someone governs, how consistent they are to governing - and the way that they ran absolutely has an impact on that. And even beyond, even for candidates who lose, right? Usually candidates who are like - You know, I'm running because I see this as a problem impacting lots of people, and I think that I can be part of the solution in fixing it. - is that if, even if they lose, right, they still stay engaged in the community and working on that. You can see the motivation is not power for me - to them. It is actually doing something to help the community. And so, I look at a variety of different people who've run over the years, and it's interesting to see the people who are still active in community versus those who just disappear. And it was like a phase - them wanting to be involved. Now that's - obviously there's nuance to this conversation - people don't owe their lives to serving and all that kind of stuff. But if you are saying this is an important part of who you are, it seems like that would continue beyond a campaign and that you would see consistency there. So that for me, as a person who is either deciding who I'm gonna vote for, or who I'm gonna work with or in support of - that answer matters a lot to me. That motivation matters a lot to me. How do you see it? [00:53:17] Shannon Cheng: I agree with a lot of what you just said. What I really liked about the interviews we did was that opportunity you gave them to just talk without time limits that forums often impose. And it was refreshing to kind of hear people kind of being more their authentic self. And I think that's just - I don't know that I can describe it, right? But I think just you have to listen and hear how they talk about things. And that was - there were many candidates who came on who, just based on reading, doing all the research ahead of time for their interview and reading about them - and then when they came on, they were not what I expected. I mean, some were. But there were some surprises as well. And I mean, that was, it was really great to - ultimately, these candidates are all people. And I think on the campaign trail and it can get heated - sometimes it can get kind of boiled down to a caricature almost, or just what their campaign website makes them out to look like. And I don't know that that really is the most informative in terms of understanding who these people actually are. And for me, that just feels like - I wanna know that the people who are making these hard decisions for myself, and people I care about, and neighbors who I care about - even if I don't know them directly - I just want them to be good people. [00:54:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I want them to care. I want them to see the people and the humanity. I want them to not see statistics. I want them to understand that it's people. I want them to not celebrate the fact that they - it's fine and good - Hey, we passed something. But that then has to be implemented in a way that is felt by the people who it's intended to help. And if that doesn't happen, it all doesn't matter. And I feel like we don't pay enough attention to that part of it a lot. And so I personally, as a voter, am looking for people who understand that and who at least value writing legislation that has a reasonable shot at being implemented well and can deliver on the result. And who track that and who are willing to course correct there and not just paper over things that may not be great and act as if they are - 'cause the goal is to help people. I do wanna talk about - so we took a little bit of a different approach to editing. Candidate interviews - I know how things can get in campaigns and being a candidate is not easy, it's nerve-wracking and being in these interviews - and editing can make people sound better, sound worse. Sometimes people take a pause to consider, or - and that is a, Shoot, I don't know, or like, will say different things, right? And so the approach that we took to candidate interviews - particularly when we had both candidates in the race - we wanted to present them as straightforwardly as we could, to basically not edit their answers. Because there was a lot - we would lose things on a variety of sides, right? And my goal is to not interject our presentation of the candidate. It's to give you the candidate. And I think people can hear throughout these interviews that you can hear someone thinking, you can hear someone processing, you can hear someone being - dodging, or like really contending with someone - like that whole thing mattered. And it seemed like we didn't - editing that, that was just gonna be a no-win situation for - Are we making someone look better? Are we making someone look worse? Are we interjecting what we think into there? So we actually decided just to - sometimes I would flub up a question, right? And like that's edited out, but we let candidates just answer and let their answers be their answers. And you can hear them. And they are people, right? And this isn't easy. And people can be super nervous in an interview, right? Like this is - I get nervous sometimes before I do things - that's totally fair. So I - if someone - I'm not looking for someone to sound perfect or perfectly polished, right? There are some times you can sound too polished. But just to give people an accurate impression of who they are, and how they're engaging with the answer, and can make their own call on whatever that is. But basically it was like - we don't record live, but you got the answer as though it was. So that's the approach that we took there. 'Cause we did get a couple of questions on - Are these edited? Or like, How, like, are you going to do that? Or like, Did you, you know, take - No, that's, that's exactly how it happened. [00:57:50] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, we cut out things like coughing fits or the ever-present train siren behind Crystal. [00:57:57] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes. [00:57:58] Shannon Cheng: Otherwise - tried to keep it real. I mean, you know, our goal with this project is to educate people about who they are going to make choices between and hopefully inform them in that decision that's coming up. November 7th! [00:58:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You can register to vote online. Even if you have been convicted of a felony and have been incarcerated, the moment you are released, you are eligible to re-register and vote again. Just be involved in making this decision. Voting locally is really important. It's more consequential than all the federal stuff that's going on. Although we hear wall-to-wall coverage and every news program every night is talking about Congress and the president - and not that that's not important. But like, look at how different states are. Look at how different Washington and Alabama are. Look at how different Forks and Seattle and Cle Elum and Spokane and Ellensburg - that is how much control cities have over who they are and how they operate. It can be as different as all of these different cities. They can be night and day difference. And that is all the impact of these local officials that we're electing in the elections that we're having this November. So that's why I do this show. It's really, really important to talk about this stuff and not enough people do regularly. And I'm not saying that it's easy - we make it hard for people to understand and participate in these issues. So just trying to make that more accessible to more people and to help understand where it may be helpful to focus and consider and engage. But this matters, and it matters to try and elect people who will actually deliver on the policy that you think they should be delivering and implementing. So that's why we did this and appreciate you listening to our little explainer about our approach. [00:59:47] Shannon Cheng: Thank you everyone! [00:59:48] Crystal Fincher: Thank you! Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

For this Tuesday show, we present Part 1 of the Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable which was live-streamed on August 8, 2023 with special guests - journalists Daniel Beekman, Guy Oron, and Melissa Santos. In Part 1, the panel breaks down primary election results for the crowded Seattle City Council races in Districts 1 through 5 - looking at how vote shares, campaign finances, redistricting, candidate quality, endorsements, and more played a part in who came out as the top two. Stay tuned for Part 2 of the roundtable releasing this Friday for more election analysis! As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's special guests, Daniel Beekman at @DBeekman, Guy Oron at @GuyOron, and Melissa Santos at @MelissaSantos1.    Resources Hacks & Wonks 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable Livestream | August 8th, 2023   Transcript [00:00:00] Shannon Cheng: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Shannon Cheng, Producer for the show. You're listening to Part 1 of our 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable that was originally aired live on Tuesday, August 8th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure you stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. Thank you for tuning in! [00:00:37] Crystal Fincher: Hello everyone - good evening. Welcome to the Hacks & Wonks Post-Primary Roundtable. I'm Crystal Fincher, I'm a political consultant and host of the Hacks & Wonks podcast and radio show. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by three of my favorite hacks and wonks - local reporters - to break down what happened in last week's primary election. We're excited to be able to livestream this roundtable on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, we are recording this roundtable for broadcast on KODX and KVRU radio, podcast, and it will be available with a full text transcript on officialhacksandwonks.com. Our esteemed panelists for the evening are: Politics and Communities reporter for The Seattle Times, Daniel Beekman. Staff Reporter for Real Change, covering local news, labor, policing, the environment, criminal legal issues and politics, Guy Oron. And Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos. Welcome everyone. So I think we will get started talking about Seattle and all of these races for Seattle City Council. This is a year where we had some redistricted council districts in Seattle - we had a number of incumbents decide not to seek reelection, and a few who did - and some really interesting results. So I think we'll start in District 1, which is in the West Seattle area, where we see a result of Maren Costa with the lead - currently at 33.16% - and the second person getting through the primary, Rob Saka, with 24% here. So I guess just starting out - how are these candidates positioned, and what do you think this primary says about the state of the district and the state of this race going into the general? Starting with Daniel - what are your thoughts here? [00:02:47] Daniel Beekman: Oh, yeah, good questions - I'm interested to hear what the other folks have to say. I guess the one thing that strikes me about the race is that, like in - I think - every other race of the seven districts, we're going into the general election with a candidate who was endorsed by The Stranger's editorial board and one endorsed by The Seattle Times editorial board - which operates separately from our newsroom. And that's pretty typical for Seattle City Council elections. And maybe even without those endorsements, this race and others would have ended up the way they did - but I think that's something to note in this race and others. The other thing that struck me about this race is two pretty interesting candidates, background-wise - especially to some extent in Seattle politics with Costa. Doesn't really fit the - if there's a typical sort of Seattle candidate, especially in the left lane - the progressive, more progressive lane. I don't know if she fits quite into that. She doesn't come from a - she hasn't worked at the City Council, she doesn't come from the County or State Labor Council, she hasn't been steeped in local Democratic legislative district politics or anything like that, I don't think. She's from the tech world and was an activist in that world. So I don't know - I found that interesting, I don't know if that's a major takeaway - but it's something in that race that I think will be interesting to watch going forward. [00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: Go ahead, Melissa. What did you think? [00:04:42] Melissa Santos: I will be curious. It's really hard in a race where there's - what, we have eight candidates here again, or was it actually nine, eight in this one as well - to predict how the votes that the candidates didn't get will shake out. I'm really curious to see where Phil Tavel's votes go because - he ran last time too - and again, more one of the more business-friendly candidates in this race. And I'm just not sure that there'll be a one-for-one accounting for those votes, necessarily, when you come into November. Theoretically, those votes would go to the more central lane candidate, who is Rob Saka. But I don't know that that math is a direct line when there's a lot of time between here and November. And also, they're just - sometimes people are really attracted to someone's personal story in these races, right? We're focused as reporters and commentators sometimes on - who's the moderate, who's the lefty, or whatever. And sometimes I don't know that voters always are. Maybe there's one particular idea they had, that they talked about at the door, that people were into or a percentage were into. And there's also progressive candidates here that had some votes that are not making it to the primary, so I just don't know - I have zero idea how the votes for the non-winning candidates will shake out. [00:06:06] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Guy? [00:06:08] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think to start - with all these Seattle races, I think the biggest message is that most people didn't vote. 64% of folks didn't vote in these elections. And it'll be interesting to see where those people land in the general. It did seem like a very competitive race - all these City Council races - but especially the open ones. And I think Maren was able to really use her credentials as an activist to get a lot of support among progressives, and while the more right-of-center lane was a little more split between Phil and Rob Saka. And it'll be interesting to see how it measures up. I think right-leaning candidates won just about 50%, compared to progressive ones that won about 45%. I was doing some rough arithmetic earlier - it is pretty narrow margin. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. [00:07:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is a race where it looks like this is going to be a competitive race in the general election. We did see an interesting role that donors played in this race where there were some substantial fundraising numbers from a number of candidates, even several who didn't make it through. I think there were a few who eclipsed $50,000 who did not make it through the general election. And then you have the two that did make it through raising a considerable amount of money, in addition to an independent expenditure on behalf of Rob Saka that made some news - for a Trump-supporting donor included in there and certainly more business-aligned candidate there. How do you see the role of donors and money and the way that the primary election shaped up, and what do you think that says about the general election? - starting with you, Guy. [00:08:15] Guy Oron: It'll be interesting to see. I think with Democracy Vouchers, it really changes the game and allows people who don't rely on corporate donations to run. And I think that gives Costa an edge there to fight at least an even battle. It'll be interesting to see if this election is more like 2019, where corporate donations sparked a big backlash, or more like 2021 when they got folks like Davison over the line. [00:08:49] Melissa Santos: The independent expenditures, I think, will be interesting to watch because theoretically the Democracy Vouchers do even the playing field. But once you get all that independent expenditure money in there, it's not limited in the same way. So I do think we'll see this huge flood of outside money going forward. And I am watching how - whether that kind of undermines the intent of the Democracy Voucher program. We've had a few years now where we've watched how this plays out. But particularly this year, I'm looking at that because I just think there will be a lot of outside money. And there already has been in this race in particular - maybe not a lot yet, but more than in other races, of city council races - and that can tip the scales. But like Guy said, there has been backlash before. We certainly saw that with the $1 million Amazon donation to the Chamber's PAC that kind of seemed to have that kind of resurgence of the progressive candidates in protest a few years ago. [00:09:53] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think it would be right to expect big outside spending in this race and some of the other races that look like they could be very competitive - that seems very likely. And one of the sort of quirks of this race in terms of spending in the primary was that there were some candidates - as you mentioned Crystal - like Stephen Brown got under 10%, spent money or raised quite a bit of money. But a fair chunk of that, I think - just looking, $34,000 or something like that was from himself, I believe. So that kind of tips the scales sometimes, or it can be confusing looking at the overall totals. But yeah, this is one of those races where I would be surprised if there wasn't a lot of independent spending in the general election. [00:10:52] Melissa Santos: You're saying bagels can't buy a City Council seat, Dan? Is that what you're saying? [00:10:57] Daniel Beekman: I'm just saying that this City - what was it? The mailer - This City deserves better bagels? [00:11:05] Melissa Santos: Bagels. Yeah, maybe that wasn't effective - maybe a different audience, maybe next cycle. [00:11:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see. And another race where sometimes people just have a ton of money and they think - I have a ton of money, I can loan myself money, donate to the campaign. But more often than not, we see those predominantly self-funders not necessarily finishing all that well. It actually does take the support of people in the community and those donations are basically a measure of support from people. And that seems to be important in overall results. I do want to talk about District 2 now, which includes the Rainier Valley, southeast Seattle. And that is where incumbent Tammy Morales is facing Tanya Woo, who will be proceeding through to the primary. And this is one of those races where in Seattle we see numbers shift from Election Night to others - this certainly was no exception, a race that shifted. And as we stand now, Tammy Morales - over 52% of the vote here, 52.26%. Tanya Woo with 42.58%, so about a 10-point spread. This is one of the races where people were wondering if there was going to be a backlash to the council that showed up. Lots of talk going in about - Oh, the council may not be popular or have high approval ratings. I've noted several times, similar to Congressional approval numbers, those don't really have much bearing to individual Congressional results. Here to individual city council results, this is seemingly a strong finish for Tammy Morales as an incumbent here. How did you see this race, Guy? [00:12:52] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think initially on Election Night - oftentimes media covers it as a definitive - especially not local media, but national media. It did seem close, but the fact that Tammy Morales won by 10% - got over 50% - that's huge for her. And I think it will be very, very hard for Tanya Woo to unseat her at this point. And it shows that Morales has a lot of support from a lot of the district. And so, especially considering the fact that Harrell went really hard supporting Woo and it looks like that didn't work out too well for him. [00:13:36] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree, Daniel? [00:13:38] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think to an extent. Definitely the race swung a lot - I think more than any other from Election Night to now - although other races did also have a leftward swing with the later ballots. It looks like to stand any kind of a chance, Tanya Woo will have to - she's a first-time candidate and raise her game, her candidate game, in the next couple months. And also it will be interesting to see - what I was looking for on Election Night - will that race be close enough for the people who fund those independent expenditures to decide that they want to get in? I don't know, but maybe they weren't necessarily expecting her to - Woo to come out on top, but maybe they're looking at - Well, is it close enough to make it worth our while to spend? And if I was her, I wouldn't want to hear the race described like that. But I think it's just reality as people are looking in from the outside and they're making decisions about where their money is best, would best be spent. So it'll be interesting to see if - what calculation those folks make - whether people think it was close enough to be worth pouring money in or not. [00:15:13] Melissa Santos: Because remember - this was one of the least crowded races. It was just Tanya Woo, Tammy Morales, and then Margaret Elisabeth who got less than 5% of the vote. So it's not one of those sort of mystery, how did the vote split situations as much. This one is more likely to be pretty predictive of the general election. And yeah, there's only so much money to spend - even though we talk about tons of money in politics, people don't want to just throw it at nothing. And I don't think it's a lost cause - I think Tanya Woo has a chance - it doesn't look as good as it did on the night of the election for her. [00:15:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This - to your point, Melissa - more than the others, I think - one, could be viewed through the lens of, Is this a referendum on Tammy Morales and/or the council? And also, this is one where it does pretty much reflect what the race is going to be in the general election. I don't think we've seen a situation before, barring a massive scandal, where an incumbent has finished with over 52% of the vote and lost. To your point, those trying to figure out - there are a number of open seats, there are certainly seats that some people want to pick up - Is it worth spending in those and this one? - is going to be part of the calculation that people make. But this is a harder one - it's hard to see incumbents losing in this kind of a position. How do you see the general election shaping up here, Daniel? [00:16:49] Daniel Beekman: I think we know what kind of a race Tammy Morales is likely to run because she's - I think she's run similar races to some extent, when she won her seat and then the race before that when she nearly unseated Bruce Harrell. So I think we know what that's going to look like. I think the question is more how Tanya Woo is going to try to make up the vote she didn't get or gain in the general - what that looks like, whether that means leaning into her, more into her sort of community work in the CID [Chinatown International District] , or if it means hammering on a particular issue like public safety or something like that. So I think that's - I don't know - but that's what I would be looking for is where this sort of question lies. But, yeah, I think it's - incumbents don't get knocked off very often. I was trying to think - I probably should have just looked it up, but I was trying to think before this about when's the last time the Seattle City Council incumbent was unseated and I was thinking about Jean Godden losing in the 2015 primary in a crowded race. But I think I could be totally spacing on a more recent one. But that seems like, in my mind, the most recent one and that's eight years ago now. [00:18:21] Crystal Fincher: Go ahead, Melissa. [00:18:22] Melissa Santos: I have a barking dog, so I'm trying to spare everyone from that. But yeah - now that I think about it - I was thinking - time is flat to me at this point, but Richard Conlin was a couple years before that. So what you're saying may be very well the most recent. We haven't seen a lot of incumbents go down and have those dramatic flips recently. It has happened, but not super recently. I will say - for Morales, since Sawant is leaving the council, she is, I think, the most - in this traditional lens of going back to who's left and who's center, right? Morales is the sort of furthest left member I think we have up for election this year. So the fact that she did get pretty good results in the primary, it suggests to me that there might not be this huge, huge upswell of being fed up with far-left City Council politics. There's certainly things people are unhappy with - we've seen polling that says people want more action on stuff - housing, homelessness. People want action. They want things to change, but they don't - necessarily voting out the most liberal candidates at this point. [00:19:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think, I've talked about it before in other places, but sometimes we hear about polling a lot and it's - Well, people are unhappy. And that's a reflection on people being unhappy with City councilmembers and approval ratings are low. And I think there are a lot of people who are unhappy with the state of things today, but I think sometimes we make assumptions about why that is and assume that that automatically means that they're unhappy with their councilmember. And that's not necessarily the case. I think that this is yet another example of that, where we need to go further and ask - Okay, so you're not happy with the state of things. Is it because - when it comes to public safety, do you want a more punitive and carceral approach, or do you want more intervention and community violence intervention and more addressing root causes? And I think if you look at the people on the ground in Seattle, they do want to do more to address some of the systemic issues that we have, to address some of the root causes, get more to prevention instead of trying to respond to so much after the fact. And I think that these results - almost in this race more than others - where there was a direct contrast between the two and a direct policy difference between the two. And we saw voters basically affirm that the direction Tammy Morales is heading is one that they're, that most are happy with. And especially in a lower turnout primary election, in an off-year, this is where you would expect unhappiness to really materialize if there was a desire to - kick all the bums out, that saying for people who are elected, but that didn't seem to materialize with two of the three incumbents finishing over 50%. And the third with the plurality of the vote there. How do you think this moves forward with that, Guy? [00:21:37] Guy Oron: Yeah, I do think it's a vindication for some of the people who were in the Solidarity Budget coalition, who are supporting decriminalization and defund, that maybe they see that one of the councilmembers that stood by their side got over 50%. I think they'll be reassured by that. I do think Tanya Woo got a lot of support in the CID and was able to really voice to that neighborhood that has been ignored a lot in the media by policymakers - or used as tokens, but not actually given proper seat at the table. So I think even if Morales wins the general election, that'll be something on the top of her priorities - is to better address the CID. And I think that was something that Woo was able to bring, even if she doesn't win in the general. [00:22:36] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Go ahead, Daniel. [00:22:39] Daniel Beekman: Oh, I was just going to say - and there's also sort of the differences district-to-district and candidate-to-candidate where - definitely Tammy Morales had a, looks like a strong result. On the other hand, you saw Dan Strauss trying to distance himself from some of his pro-defund advocacy from back in 2020 - I think I saw a mailer. And so whether he's right or not, he's obviously a little bit concerned about some of that coming back to bite him with voters in his district, so there's some differences district to district as well. [00:23:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree with that. Another district - District 3, where Councilmember Kshama Sawant will not be seeking reelection, so this is for the person who will succeed Councilmember Sawant. And so in this race, we have the two making it through - Joy Hollingsworth with 36.89% right now and Alex Hudson being the second, making it through with 36.52%. Another very crowded race - this is a very close result, maybe the closest result. And two very different candidates than the current incumbent. What do you think this says about the district, and what do you think this says about the race? - starting with Melissa. [00:24:12] Melissa Santos: It is really close - you're less than a percentage point between these candidates now that we've seen the results shake out. And it is another situation where you have Joy Hollingsworth being the Seattle Times Editorial Board-endorsed candidate - not the newsroom, but the editorial board - and Alex Hudson being the Stranger-endorsed candidate up against one another. However, it's interesting to me because Alex Hudson is then - would be in the camp of being this more progressive candidate, right? - which in certain ways, she is. She's a long-time transit advocate and is - I remember, one time, her doing a video of confronting Tim Eyman, the anti-tax initiative pusher. And so she's done those sorts of things, but she's also someone who's worked a little bit more within the establishment than - certainly than Sawant, for instance - lobbying, building coalitions. So we're not seeing, and this has been said a lot about this race and I'm not the only one to say it, but we're not seeing anyone who wants to burn the barn down here in this race in the same way. We're not seeing a Socialist candidate in the same way even, and I'm actually - I haven't talked to these candidates as much as Dan and Guy probably have, but I actually think they're closer together on some issues than maybe it appears from those divergent endorsements. And I think some of that is likely to come to light during the general election, and it's possible that their positions don't as neatly line up necessarily with this sort of pro-business and labor/left activism, although in some ways they do. [00:25:45] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree, Guy? [00:25:48] Guy Oron: I definitely agree that it's a huge change from Kshama Sawant and either one of the candidates won't be Socialists. And so I think that'll be something for Seattle left to think about - how do you build momentum for a more broad base, long-term institutional victory - to get five council seats at least instead of just one. And that's - they have to go to the drawing board and think about that long-term. But in terms of Hudson and Hollingsworth, I think Hudson started off a little slow, but managed to snag some important endorsements - and that's credit to her and her long-time presence in the policy world in Seattle. And I think Hollingsworth also is a very compelling candidate - I've seen her at so many different events in the community. She really shows up - for example, when Nurturing Roots was closing back in March, not even in her district, but she was the only candidate to show up and show support. So I think that's credit to her and really cultivating her base in the CD [Central District] . And I definitely think it will be a tight race. Progressives did - all the progressive candidates together did win about 4 or 5% more than the more moderate candidates, so it'll be interesting to see if Hollingsworth can manage to build a coalition of moderate liberals and especially in the CD, turn out folks who aren't voting just to get over the line. [00:27:30] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree, Daniel? [00:27:32] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I guess this is a race where Bruce Harrell has endorsed Joy Hollingsworth, right? So it'll be interesting to see what kind of impact that has, if any, that can be discerned - Mayor Bruce Harrell. Alex Hudson has a varied background, but coming out of the Transportation Choices Coalition - which is transit advocacy but labor-aligned - and in the world of the big players in Seattle politics and been a policy and politician factory. Rob Johnson, a councilmember, was the Executive Director there. And Jessyn Farrell, former state lawmaker, and other people - so it's been churning out folks into government, so that's interesting. But I think Melissa and Guy covered a lot of this, so I don't have a whole lot to add. I had noticed just on social media a little bit - and I should say that I'm not, I should shout out my coworker Sarah Grace Taylor, who's been doing a lot of the coverage of the City Council races this year for us rather than myself, so I'm not the expert - but just on observing on social media, I feel like I've seen a little bit of different emphases in how the two candidates are positioning themselves. Joy Hollingsworth trying to emphasize her community ties. And Alex Hudson - I just saw on the way over to do this - talking up transit as an issue. Obviously because she's - that's some of her background. But also she must think it will play well with voters saying - in that district that's pretty transit reliant. [00:29:32] Melissa Santos: In theory, Joy Hollingsworth would be the candidate who's newer to politics - in theory - if you look at them. However, Joy is coming from a family of sort of political legacies in a way as well. Her grandmother Dorothy was the first African American woman elected to the Seattle School Board - and I think that's part of her community story a little bit that Joy is playing up - being from the Central District, being part of the legacy of people making change and pushing forward, which is interesting since she's the more establishment candidate endorsed by the mayor. But that's why the dynamics of this race are a little interesting to me. Because the narrative is not as clean as what we've looked at - races in the past where it's, again, lefty versus more business friendly Democrat kind of races in Seattle. [00:30:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's spot on. And this is a district where there's a Socialist as an incumbent. This is arguably the most left district in the city that doesn't quite have a candidate that speaks to that far left end that Kshama Sawant does. And I do agree that there are potentially a number of overlaps or places where the policy differences may not be as clear from the very beginning. So I think this is going to be a race where it's going to be important to examine where the candidates stand. It's going to be important to understand where the differences are and to really understand what they're bringing in terms of - not just votes, but where they're willing to lead and push, perhaps, the council. What are going to be their signature issues? And what are going to be the issues where they may just be an additional vote? I think that there's a lot that people still don't know, and this is going to be one of the most interesting districts for trying to ferret out what those differences and contrasts are. Also notice that fundraising in this race - again, a lot of money raised throughout the district. This is a race - we saw the result being very close - also the amount raised, both raising about $94,000 there. And so this is another race where both seem to have a lot of fundraising capacity. Is this going to be a race where outside entities get involved? And I also think those outside entities are going to be listening for cues from each of those candidates. Who do funders see as their ally on the council? Who does labor see as a stronger ally on the council? I think that there's still more that they're figuring out here. And those donations, those types of donors and those endorsements, are also going to do a lot of speaking for these candidates about where they stand and how they're likely to govern. [00:32:26] Melissa Santos: I was surprised that - based on just fundraising - that Alex Cooley didn't do a little bit better because they raised $95,000 as well. I don't know if any of you can explain what happened there, because I expected a better showing for that amount of money - I thought, I don't know - just looking from the outside at it. [00:32:42] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I didn't follow it close enough to know - was it mostly Democracy Vouchers? [00:32:46] Melissa Santos: Yes, must be. Yeah, it's a mystery to me. [00:32:50] Guy Oron: He was the only candidate to run on a platform of only taking Democracy Vouchers and he didn't accept private donations, which I think is an interesting platform and could prove compelling if you think about - I'm not beholden to any interests, only the people. But I think his ground game was strong, but he didn't have a lot of institutional support from people like The Stranger, and so that's why he fell short. [00:33:22] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, and to pick up on something that you mentioned when you introduced the race, Crystal - it's interesting to think about - Sawant won her seat in 2013, so 10 years ago. And to think about how much District 3 - those neighborhoods, like Capitol Hill and the CD, have changed in the last 10 years. And think about is that why we didn't get someone with Kshama Sawant's politics in this race? Or is it because people are tired of her personally and that's soured them? But they narrowly voted down a recall just recently, so they're not that sick of it. I don't know, I find that interesting to ponder on whether the fact that there are two very unlike-Sawant candidates and two non-Socialist candidates going into the general election has anything to do with her or not, has anything to do with changes in the electorate or not. I don't have the answer, but I'm intrigued by that question. [00:34:37] Crystal Fincher: I don't have the answer to that one either, but I do think this is a race where endorsements mattered a lot because it was hard, just on the face, to see some of the automatic differences between the candidates in a way that you can in some of the other districts perhaps. And so this is another one where we talk about the importance of The Times and The Stranger endorsements and that certainly carried through here, in people looking at The Stranger as a cue to see who is considered to be the most progressive. Lots of times people are doing the same thing with The Times on the other side, if they want a more moderate presence on the council. And so I think those endorsements really mattered - in this race in particular - but in several of them overall. Also want to talk about the District 4 election. Now this is a district where - we talk about change over the last 10 years - this is certainly a district where I think recent results that we're seeing there reflect an evolution of the district and a change in this district. And so both with redistricting here and in this race, probably one of the cleanest lines between what is considered traditionally someone in the progressive lane and those traditionally in a moderate to conservative lane. How did you see this race shaping up, Guy? [00:35:59] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think it echoes the last 2019 elections, but now Ron P. Davis is number one instead of Alex Pedersen, so that's a good sign for him. And he is the strongest non-incumbent candidate in Seattle, winning 45% of the vote. It does seem like, with more development and just growing density, there are changing demographics. So it could be an opportunity for a pretty dramatic swing towards the left in this district. But still, the more moderate conservative candidates won about 55% of the vote together - Wilson and Maritza Rivera. So it'll be very competitive, and I think it all relies on if Ron can turn out all the students to vote for him who tend to lean more progressive. [00:37:04] Crystal Fincher: How do you see this race, Melissa? [00:37:07] Melissa Santos: Theoretically, it would make sense to add together those sort of more centrist candidates and say - Oh, they got 55% - and I don't disagree with doing that, Guy. The thing that was weird to me is - and I wish I had in front of me at the moment - but there was a mailer that went out and Crystal, you saw this and I just think Dan, you also probably saw this - but where it didn't, it seemed like Wilson was going after Rivera, who was closer to him politically, than he was going after Davis. And there were checkmarks and it's like Davis got more checks being aligned with Wilson than Maritza Rivera did on this particular advertisement and mailer. And I don't know if that kind of communication is going to then make some people think that Davis is more aligned - people who voted for Wilson - if they're going to think, go forward thinking Davis is more their guy than Rivera. Or there's a lot of election communication still yet to happen, so I guess all of that can be reset. But it seemed like that was one of the primary communication that's happening in that district. And it may have disrupted the dynamic in a way of the sort of candidates and saying - Oh yeah, this is now my candidate since mine got knocked out since they're the most similar. And so I'm not sure how that will carry out forward going with this election into the general. [00:38:23] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, that's interesting - whether that mailer will stick in anyone's mind and sour them on Rivera when they might not otherwise be. I think probably what Ken Wilson was going for there was just looking and assuming that - Well, Ron Davis is getting through, it's between me and Maritza Rivera about who's getting through on the other lane, and so let's see if I can make that happen without - like we were talking about - one of these newspaper endorsements. And it didn't work as much as he needed to, at least. Yeah, District 4 is interesting. Shaun Scott ran - I think running as a Democratic Socialist to some extent in 2019 - ran Alex Pedersen really close in District 4 in that year. And I guess my sort of what I'll be watching for in this one is how Ron Davis moves forward - whether he tries to draw really sharp contrast between himself and Maritza Rivera and he thinks that's the key, or if he tries to tack to the center a bit to try to win over some of those maybe slightly more moderate voters or Ken Wilson voters in some way. And I'll just tell a sort of funny story. I went out on Election Day to do some just person-on-the-street voter reporting. And it was funny because I was in District 4 and District 5 for a while talking to voters. And I had two voters - one was this sort of like older boomer, typical Seattle boomer voter, and to some extent - whatever that is. And I said - What are you thinking about? And most of the people I talked to didn't have some sort of mega-narrative about the Seattle election cycle, like we're going to throw out the lefties or we're going to do this. It was more - they're kind of grasping at straws a bit in my little unscientific sample size. But this somewhat older voter said - Well, I care about trees and I went to this tree protest in Wedgwood for Luma the cedar tree. And Ken Wilson was there and he seemed to care, so I'm voting for him - that's a big reason. And then I talked to a voter - more lefty-seeming voter in her 20s, I think - elsewhere, I think in the U district. And they said - Well, I care about climate change and I went to this protest for the cedar tree. And Ron Davis was there, so I'm voting for him. So I don't know if that means anything, but it just goes to show - yeah, so it will be interesting to see, does Ron Davis lean into the tree protest? Or does he lean into let's densify and tax big business? [00:41:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is going to be interesting. And those anecdotes are always so interesting, and I think underscores just from the inside-a-campaign candidate perspective - three quarters of the job, three quarters of the work is in showing up, whether it's on someone's doorstep, whether it's at an event. People want to see that you're actively engaged in the community and in the issues that they care about. So I would just encourage all of the candidates to do that. And the more you can talk to regular voters, the better. But this is an interesting race here. This is another race where we also saw an independent expenditure on behalf of, or in favor of, Maritza Rivera here. And it is an interesting race where - I don't know that this race, these votes consolidate cleanly pre-mailer in the way that they would expect. On top of that, this is a district that, a similar district, just last year elected Darya Farivar. And you think that the general election electorate is going to look more similar to what we saw in an even-year election then - that certainly is more progressive than that district and that area has been for a while. So are we seeing a shift in the preferences of a district? Are we seeing a shift in the issues that are concerning people? Certainly housing affordability is a major issue throughout all of Seattle, but also playing out in this district where I think the previous calculus and assumption was that this is a district full of NIMBYs and they seem to be voting in the opposite direction now. So this is going to be a really interesting race to pay attention to and one that may attract a lot of outside money because there are clearer lanes with a moderate in the race seemingly and a progressive - and looking to really pick up the seat for one or the other. Also want to talk about the District 5 race, which is another interesting, exciting race and was a pretty close race. So we have Cathy Moore here - close overall, especially for the second and third place finisher here - so Cathy Moore finishing with 32.26% of the vote, ChrisTiana ObeySumner - they're finishing with 21.38% of the vote here. How did you see this vote shaping up in the primary? Nilu Jenks is finishing currently in third place, just outside of making it through the primary. Guy, how did you see this developing? [00:44:19] Guy Oron: Yeah, I think the District 5 race was by far the most fractured and we had, I think, tied for the most amount of candidates. And so people - I think a lot of people voted for their first choice and I think ChrisTiana was able to be a sort of dark horse and come out on top. I think a lot of people were expecting Nilu Jenks to win, and so now those voters will have to decide whether they prefer Moore or ChrisTiana - and I think that will decide which way the district goes. But I think North Seattle is not usually thought of as a progressive stronghold, but I think it is surprisingly pretty progressive in terms of where people are voting. And I think people have all sorts of politics, like chaotic politics, where they support trees and density - and how do you reconcile those two, and I think that's up to the candidates to show that they're more well-spoken and have a stronger vision about integrating these various contradictions. [00:45:32] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Melissa? [00:45:34] Melissa Santos: I was just reviewing some of the candidates' sort of statements and where they're coming from - it does encapsulate to me a little bit - you have Cathy Moore talking about public safety. All the candidates are talking about safety and should be talking about public safety probably, but she's coming at - literally in her voter guide statement says - I'm the pragmatic solution - very much very focused on capturing that center lane, people who might want to see a little bit more timely police response is a huge part of her platform. And again, everyone wants the cops to probably, I think, to respond to emergencies probably. I don't think there's too many people saying - well, okay, I retract my statement. It's a very complicated issue, actually. But I mean emphasizing that - as opposed to emphasizing housing and upstream solutions to homelessness, which is where ChrisTiana was doing with her statements. I just think we have a lot of contrast between people talking about housing, to be honest - housing, housing, housing on one side and then people talk about public safety sometimes when you get - in the more traditional races where you get those center lane candidates. And housing is a message that's resonating with people. People, I think, want housing to be a thing. And again, for instance, we had this Social Housing measure pass earlier this year and I think that kind of - Tammy Morales, again, who is leading in her race and getting good, has really been supportive of that social housing measure and finding money to actually implement it. And as far as District - back to District 5 - I think ChrisTiana ObeySumner is also talking about those sorts of things more so than cops and hiring more police, and I think that there's people who want to hear them talk about that. And there certainly were other candidates in this race talking about different solutions to some of the sort of agreed upon crisis we see - maybe homelessness and housing - but I think those sort of holistic solutions, people are listening to that in an interesting way in some of these races. And this is an example of that to me. [00:47:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is a race where I think there was a broader range of viewpoints represented in this race across the spectrum that we see in Seattle. There was Tye Reed also in this race, who was very involved in the Social Housing initiative and that passing, and taking up a left mantle. But a number of progressive candidates - I think, yet again, this was another race where people were trying to figure out who was most aligned with their beliefs and that may have been not as easy as some people would have thought at first glance. And so another race where I think the endorsements from The Times and The Stranger were once again consequential. But I also think this is one where - a lot of times, I think we underestimate sometimes just individual candidate attributes, individual candidate performance, how people are connecting. And especially with how close this race was, particularly between the second and third place finishers - ChrisTiana ObeySumner and Nilu Jenks - I think ChrisTiana did a more effective job at clearly articulating where they stood on issues. And that was more of a challenge for Nilu Jenks, where some people left with some impressions based on what they said and they said things that gave other impressions to people. And so voters trying to reconcile who these candidates are and what kind of votes to expect, endorsing organizations trying to ferret out what kind of votes should they expect from these - I think that this is an example of being clear about where you stand is helpful in getting through to establishment people, getting through to voters, and making the kinds of connections that get you through to the general election. What do you think, Daniel? [00:49:50] Daniel Beekman: I was going to say - yeah, I don't have a lot to add, I don't think, about these particular two candidates. But I spent some time on Election Day - again, my very unscientific sample size, by the Lake City Library and a lot of people were talking about homelessness and people were talking about public drug use. And it will be interesting to see how these candidates navigate some issues like that. I do think that the questions about prosecuting people for using drugs in public - that has been in the headlines recently at City Hall, so that will likely in this race and others be something that is talked about. But Guy mentioned Darya Farivar's - or maybe you did, Crystal, or both of you - that election that she ran and won last year. And I would think that candidates in both District 4 and District 5 might want to be looking at that - and some of it is just about a candidate and their personality and what they have going for them. But if you're a smart candidate in those districts, you're looking at that race and - what did she do? And also just reminded me that - in terms of sort of some changes politically - is that on issues like criminal justice or the legal system, on issues around housing - both zoning, which is traditionally very much a city issue, but also on funding affordable housing - it seems like there are more of those conversations and more action happening in Olympia than there was some years ago. And I don't know if that sort of makes some of these City races feel a little bit less urgent for folks, but it's something that's occurred to me where - some years ago when there was just nothing happening in the State Legislature, when people are looking for help or for change, it made City elections that much more high stakes, but maybe that's been changing a little bit. [00:51:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I also think this is an interesting race just because of the expanded representation that could potentially be coming to the Council - non-binary person, disabled BIPOC person - and that kind of representation being really important. We're seeing so many other members of the community deal with challenges and access issues related to that, that some lived experience could be very enlightening and helpful in crafting solutions that meet the needs of everyone in the City. So I'll be interested to see that explored throughout the general election. And just figuring out, once again, where these candidates stand on issues. There's going to be a lot that the City Council is going to be dealing with over the next several years. And so I hope that there really is an attempt to figure out where the candidates stand and what solutions they feel - not just that they're willing to vote for, but that they're really willing to lean on and try and craft solutions with their colleagues on this for. [00:53:06] Shannon Cheng: You just listened to Part 1 of our 2023 Post-Primary Roundtable that was originally aired live on Tuesday, August 8th. Audio for Part 2 will be running this Friday, so make sure to stay tuned. Full video from the event and a full text transcript of the show can be found on our website officialhacksandwonks.com. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow Crystal @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thank you for tuning in!

Journalist Kathleen McLaughlin knew she'd found a treatment that worked on her rare autoimmune disorder. She had no idea it had been drawn from the veins of America's most vulnerable.  Blood Money shares McLaughlin's decade-long mission to learn the full story of where her medicine comes from. She travels the United States in search of the truth about human blood plasma and learns that twenty million Americans each year sell their plasma for profit — a human-derived commodity extracted inside our borders to be processed and packaged for retail across the globe. McLaughlin investigates the thin evidence that pharmaceutical companies have used to push plasma as a wonder drug for everything from COVID-19 to wrinkled skin. In the process, she unearths an American economic crisis hidden in plain sight: single mothers, college students, laid-off Rust Belt auto workers, and a booming blood market at America's southern border, where collection agencies target Mexican citizens willing to cross over and sell their plasma for substandard pay. McLaughlin's findings push her to ask difficult questions about her own complicity in this wheel of exploitation, as both a patient in need and a customer who stands to benefit from the suffering of others. Blood Money weaves together McLaughlin's personal battle to overcome illness as a working American, with revealing portrait of what happens when big business is allowed to feed, unchecked, on those least empowered to fight back. Kathleen McLaughlin is an award-winning journalist who reports and writes about the consequences of economic inequality around the world. A frequent contributor to The Washington Post and The Guardian, McLaughlin's reporting has also appeared in The New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, The Economist, NPR, and more. She is a former Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and has won multiple awards for her reporting on labor in China. Blood Money is her first book. Shaun Scott is a Seattle-based writer and historian. A former Pramila Jayapal staffer and Bernie Sanders 2020 Washington State Field Director, he is currently the Policy Lead at the Statewide Poverty Action Network. His essays about popular culture and late capitalism have appeared in Sports Illustrated, The Guardian, and Jacobin Magazine. He is the author of the paperback Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the US from 1982-Present, and the forthcoming hardcover from UW Press Heartbreak City: Sports and the Progressive Movement in Urban America. Blood Money The Elliott Bay Book Company

I'm joined by Edgar Hernandez (____) to give his early thoughts on the 2023 Hedonites of Slaanesh battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Support The Channel

On today's Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by political consultant and principal partner at Prism West, Riall Johnson! Crystal and Riall discuss a controversy in Burien following a homeless encampment clearing, because another encampment (predictably) reappeared a block away because the people without housing still lacked housing, and homelessness is caused by a lack of accessible or affordable housing. The King County Council approved a $3.5M contract to rent 50 beds from the SCORE facility in Des Moines, WA, despite Executive staff saying that it won't make much of a difference. They also discuss the seemingly lackluster results from the new bonuses designed to attract more SPD officers. They end with a discussion of the over 30 Seattle City Council candidates and how the upcoming election might unfold.  As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Riall Johnson, at @RiallJohnson.   Riall Johnson Riall began working in political campaigns in 2012 after he retired from a 9 year career as a professional football player. His first campaign was as a field organizer in Cincinnati, Ohio for President Obama's re-election campaign, which was also where he started his professional football career when he was drafted to the Bengals in the 6th round in 2001. Riall's focus in politics has always been on the field side of grassroots campaigns. He has knocked thousands doors for campaigns in six different states, organized the collection of over 900,000 signatures, and created grassroots volunteer groups that are still self-sustaining today.   For the past few years, Riall has been focusing his work in his home state of Washington, where he has led impactful campaigns focused on gun violence prevention, police accountability, and criminal justice reform.  After directing ballot initiative I-940, Riall founded Prism West (formerly Prism Washington) in 2018 to focus on getting progressive candidates of color in office to increase representation in government and bring real transformative policy to fruition. Many of his clients have broken many barriers by becoming the first of their demographic to be elected to their offices. He is currently working on bringing rent control back to the State of California.   Resources The Case for the Crisis Care Centers Levy with King County Executive Dow Constantine from Hacks & Wonks   “After Removing Encampment, Burien Considers the Options: Provide Shelter, Ban Camping, or Both?” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   “Burien faces hard choices around homeless encampment” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times   “King County Commits Millions to Make Jail Slightly Less Crowded” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger   “Slog AM: Trump Indictment Drops Today, Harrell Drags on Police Alternatives, Election Day in Other Places” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger “Slog AM: SPD Hiring Lags Despite Big Bonuses, WA Stocks Up on Abortion Pills, More Cringe from Elon” by Vivian McCall from The Stranger   Transcript   [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday midweek show, Executive Dow Constantine filled me in on why King County voters should support the Crisis Care Centers Levy by voting Yes on Proposition 1 this April. The proposed levy would raise funds to address our urgent behavioral health crisis by building five new crisis care centers across the county, stabilize and restore residential treatment beds, and cultivate the behavioral health workforce pipeline. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, and today's cohost: Principal Partner at Prism West, Riall Johnson. Hey. [00:01:28] Riall Johnson: What's up? [00:01:29] Crystal Fincher: You have been jet setting all over the place. You're an - certainly an interstate, maybe an international man of mystery at this point in time - just working all over. What have you been up to? [00:01:42] Riall Johnson: I'm Canadian, so I guess I'm international - or half-Canadian - and currently I'm in California, Southern California, working on bringing back rent control to the state of California. That's been, that's my most - my recent project. But also, I'm still involved vaguely in Washington politics - I'm still keeping a little track. And I plan on returning - probably next year for some more - help with some of my clients getting reelected as well, and trying to push things further, finish the mission that we set out to when we started Prism. [00:02:17] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. There's a lot of news that has happened this week. We cover local government. There's a lot of national federal news that broke out this week, whether it's the arrest and arraignment of former President Trump, to a litany of anti-trans legislation, to the unjust expulsion of two Black members of the Tennessee legislature, to Biden backtracking and issuing a betrayal of sorts and saying that, and not being equivocal about trans people being able to participate in sports and saying that maybe there are some situations where they shouldn't be allowed to, or may not be allowed to - which was a completely unnecessary action to take. I do not know why that happened - it's pretty disappointing. But in the midst of all that, we have a lot happening locally. There's been conversation in the City of Burien - and we have talked to councilmembers from the City of Burien - really interesting city to follow. And right now, they recently cleared an encampment at a site. And as predicted, as we have seen after encampment clearings in Seattle and many, many other cities - because we're not actually providing any meaningful housing, people just relocate to another location. In Burien, they relocated to another location just like a block away to another city-owned property, which caused consternation from a number of people there. Some residents concerned that - Hey, we still haven't done enough to provide these people with housing options that make sense for them and that can help them out of their situation. And other people predictably - seemingly being more worried about the visible part of the homelessness, not necessarily what people who are unhoused are going through - but mad that they have to see that and feeling that it's somehow them being spurned by people who have no place to stay moving to somewhere else where they're allowed to exist. How do you read this? [00:04:27] Riall Johnson: It's just - it's typical city behavior. You see this nationwide - they think that if you bully these folks, you push them out of their immediate space, they're gonna just be gone forever. They're gonna disappear. And we have this constant attempt of disappearing the homeless - of trying to - and not realizing they're actually people and they have to live somewhere. They're going to live somewhere, so they can't just drive across the state or somewhere so you don't see them again. And if they're still homeless, they're gonna be homeless somewhere else. So all we're doing is taking turns pushing them back around, like a pinball machine. And it's sad to watch 'cause people need to realize - if you don't wanna see them - if you gave them homes, you wouldn't see them. Or you wouldn't know they're homeless 'cause we still have to live - when you have a home, you have to leave your home and go work and do things, even though - people don't realize about 47% of homeless people have jobs. So the whole get-a-job narrative is stupid 'cause they get a job and they're still homeless 'cause we simply can't afford homes. And that's the main problem - is that housing is just not affordable. Even when they call it affordable housing, it's not affordable 'cause the AMI is skewed all wrong. So we need to build public housing. We need to go back to how we had - before Reagan cut the housing authority in the '80s - where we actually had federal funding for these houses, for housing for people. And we could actually treat it as a regional solution, which - I hate that term, but actually - 'cause we could provide housing throughout the country in spaces, not just in the City of Seattle. 'Cause you see this - in Burien, or any other city outside of Seattle, has no right to complain about homelessness because you look at the numbers from the regional housing authority - Seattle and I think one other city are the only ones that contribute to the fund. And Seattle contributes 95% or 98% of the funds to the regional solution. So the only ones that even put any money up, the only ones who even put any services up - so of course people are going to gravitate there 'cause there's services, but they put in the fund and then the other cities don't kick in anything. And they just push everything to Seattle and then point at Seattle like they're the problem - Look at all the homelessness. Well, you push all your people there constantly. So it's just typical. And you see this - I see this in LA, I see this in Long Beach. You see this in bigger cities and you see it in San Francisco. You see it in New York and Denver, Miami - the bigger cities carry the load of it and then everyone wants to crap on the big cities - Look at these Democrat run cities 'cause they're, look at all the homeless people. They're the only ones that actually treat them like humans in any sense - remotely, 'cause you don't see, when you get up close, it's like they're not even treated well here - but it's the lesser of many evils that they have to face. And they're just going to where they're going to be bullied the least. [00:07:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And I think it is just a continual reinforcement that - as you said, this is a problem that is caused by a lack of housing. There are lots of people who try to suggest that homelessness is really an addiction problem. It's really a crime problem. And if we just treat these people like they're addicts or we treat these people like they're criminals, that that will clean everything up. We have been trying that and that approach has been failing - truly for decades now, for years and years and years. And the question really is - when are we going to stop doing the thing that has been failing and start doing the things that have been shown to be much more effective? This is a problem with the affordability and the accessibility of housing. If homelessness was primarily a crime problem, places with the highest crime rates would have the most homelessness - that's not the case. If homelessness was primarily an addiction problem, places with the highest addiction rates would have the highest rates of homelessness - that's not the case. What is the case is that areas with the highest level of housing that is unaffordable to the local populations have the highest rates of homelessness. It's because people cannot afford to live where they're at. It really is that. And so we have to provide housing to people to get them off of the street. We have to help people transition back into permanent housing. And money that we spend on criminalizing this solution, on locking people up, on putting up fencing, on making areas unavailable, on paying for security and park staff and police officers to kind of police these encampment sweeps and move people all around - it's just a recipe for failure. We know that. Why do we keep trying that? Let's provide housing and follow the evidence for what other people are doing that is working, what other cities are doing that's working. We can and need to do better. And so I did not find it surprising at all that if you sweep one location without providing people with any path to permanent shelter - yeah, you're just moving the problem around. And it sounds like the people are unhappy - a lot of people who testified were just unhappy that they didn't move the problem far enough away. But we can't keep punting to other jurisdictions, to other cities, to other counties, to other regions to help solve this problem. Every city needs to kick in and do things to meaningfully allow and provide more housing, and to keep more people in their homes, and to keep people from being evicted. [00:10:11] Riall Johnson: Yeah, I think the other - and on top of that, this is an American problem where we just need to get over - of not accepting poor people having nice things. And then we just - 'cause we have the money for it. We always have the money. It's the richest country in the world. Always have the money. Seattle's one of the richest cities in the world - has the money. Bellevue and all these other cities around - are richest suburbs and suburban towns in the world - they have the money. The thing is, and it's funny how even when you explain to people who want these sweeps or are pro-sweep - which is mind-boggling - if you ever talk to someone who really just wants them swept and kicked out, you tell them how much more it costs to sweep them, and to jail them, and to do the cleanup, and all that stuff - and it's gonna cost us more. Because essentially - hopefully we can organize all the homeless folks that are being swept all the time to sue the cities for all the possessions that they've lost and been stolen - 'cause we're really robbing these people of their stuff. 'Cause you give them no notice, you show up, you clear them out, and they don't get to get all their things, or they literally take it from them half the time and throw the stuff out. And I think there was another city - I forget which one - that actually successfully sued the city for millions of dollars as a class action lawsuit, which I hope Seattle does at some point. And I would definitely help organize that. The thing is - we spend so much more doing this cruel stuff, and people have said this before - that the cruelty really is the point. People relish in treating these people so badly, knowing that they would save more money if we just provided homes for them. But they don't wanna spend money on that - even being told and shown straight data that it costs more doing what we're already doing - to sweep them, and jail them, and assault them, and clean up the stuff. It costs us more money. Just give them homes and we save money. And bonus, you don't have to see them anymore. At least - and that's the problem - you'll see them. You just won't know they're homeless, so you won't be able to label them as such. And that's - we just have to get over just giving poor people nice things, which is a home. But we don't want - we just don't want to. We can do it, we just don't want to. [00:12:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Speaking of another situation where it seems like there may be other better options of what we can do, but we don't want to - is this week, the King County Council voted to extend a contract or to enact a contract with the SCORE Correctional Facility in Des Moines, Washington, to offload some of the King County jail population to that Des Moines Center - in the wake of studies, calls from employees who work there, the Public Defenders Association and many others saying that the jail is overcrowded, understaffed, a hazard to the health of the people that are living there, and there just is not enough staff support to keep anyone safe, and it's a mess. And so you had an unusual alliance of corrections facilities employees - the jail guards - in addition to public defenders saying, This is untenable and unsustainable. We need to lower the jail population. You also have a prior promise from King County Executive Dow Constantine to close the jail. Yet, it seems like policy is moving in the opposite direction, and they're spending millions of dollars to offload - what was it - 50 people to that facility. And really saying - Okay, is this meaningfully addressing this problem? Or are we just once again kicking the can down the road here to figure this out? - to spend $3.5 million to rent 50 beds in Des Moines. It was a 7-2 vote with King County Councilmembers Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Girmay Zahilay voting against the measure to transfer the inmates, really saying that they don't have enough information to really determine that this is the best alternative and that there are functionally deeper problems than this is going to solve, and we're spending money on this kind of stopgap solution that could be really, really helpful to spend in areas that may be more likely to keep people more safe. How do you read this situation? [00:14:49] Riall Johnson: It's funny. I think - it's not funny. It's ironic that it was just Girmay and Jeanne Kohl-Welles. And I would expect Girmay Zahilay to vote No on this 'cause - knowing him. I didn't expect Jeanne Kohl-Welles to vote for this, but it's amazing how principled some elected folks get when they're not running for reelection and they're not looking for - or higher office. And the funny thing is - this is what I've said in politics overall - is you don't have to trust people in politics, you trust their ambitions. And I had a very interesting conversation while - up in Snohomish with a prosecutor - and it opened my eyes because, and we're talking about bail reform - just letting them out. Why are we even putting these people in jail for minor stuff? Why are we even putting - they don't even have to be there. And that's the thing - why is this conversation, are we having in the "most progressive county" - I'm quoting, you can't see me - that we have a full jail? And it's because we have to just redefine what crime actually is. These people that they're bringing in for "crimes" aren't crimes in most other parts of the world. So they shouldn't even have to be there. It's minor offenses that they're in there, that they could just either pay a fine or not be a crime in the first place. And so we should - if we just redefined that, we wouldn't do that. But we're already stuck in this narrative that we're not tough on crime at all. We're the toughest country on crime in the world. And this is what this prosecutor told me was, and it shows - 'cause he's gonna, obviously he was gonna run for reelection at the time - when he said, I want to let these people out, but all it takes is one. All it takes is one of them to recommit and do something egregious and do something really bad. And the whole thing is gone. And it made me realize that - Yeah, he's not right. He's right about himself - his world is turned up now. His reelection chances are gone. His job, it's - his future is in jeopardy if that happens, not everyone else's. Because the thing is, no matter - the longer you hold people in jail, they're gonna - and you can't put people in jail for life. You're gonna get out at some point. They're worse off - they're gonna be - and more likely going to commit something more serious because they're in a worse situation than before. They're more damaged than before. So the effect is that we're even - why we're even putting these people in the jail, or most of these people in jail, in the first place is trivial. So we shouldn't even have to vote to relocate them or borrow beds from other states, other counties - because they shouldn't be in jail in the first place. And they're not realizing that solution. But every one of those people - all seven that voted for it - are all still planning on running for something in the future. And that's what they're scared of. They're scared of that one person that gets out of jail, commits something bad, worse, and they get blamed for it. They don't - and this happened to Chesa Boudin - 'cause he let a lot of people out of jail. And one person assaulted someone in the - actually, I think in the Asian community - and they used that as a cudgel, and just - [00:18:23] Crystal Fincher: And that was in San Francisco, right? [00:18:24] Riall Johnson: Over and over and over - yeah, in San Francisco. And that's what - they're all scared of that - you can see. And that's my theory, 'cause you talk to them one-on-one - they all wanna vote No, they all wanna do this, the right thing - but they know they can't because they're scared of the reelection chances, or further election chances, including Dow Constantine. [00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: It's something that we commonly see, and unfortunately they're afraid of - they're afraid of following the data for fear of weaponization of the anecdote. Because yes, there are certainly people who are invested in the status quo in our current system, who are salivating to use anything to help bolster their position or discredit others. Because they know that they have to rely on the anecdotes, because the data is not on their side. But there's a lot of money to be made from the existing system and what they're doing. There's a ton of money to be made in a variety of facets, but really the impact of that - and what we need to not pepper over - is that you're selling out the rest of the community, you're harming the rest of the community. Because the data is what it is. We know that overall, fewer people are going to be harmed and victimized if we change the approach that we take, if we stop focusing on these punitive, punishment-based approaches - based on us not feeling like people are worthy of humanity, or we need to personally feel like we punish them. Does that feeling justify the increased likelihood and increased events of harm that are really happening to real people? It's a challenge and it's a shame. You said Jeanne Kohl-Welles - also not running again and seeming to be a little freer in her comments and considerations - she did call on Dow to follow through on his promise to close the downtown jail. And she also expressed, as did Girmay and some other council members, expressed concern that because this appears to be such a stopgap measure that doesn't seem to be robust enough to solve the actual problem, that they're concerned about getting another request for funding, and a request for an extension, and a request for expansion of this - because this doesn't actually solve the problem, even though we're forking over millions of dollars to make that happen. So they took some votes to ensure that an automatic extension or an automatic expansion couldn't happen, that their approval is gonna be required for that. But also if you're approving this - even if that does happen, what is the logic of voting No if you voted for this? Again, I'm not quite sure what that is, but it'll be interesting to follow. We will continue to follow this, and it's a conversation that we continue to have. Also this week, we got news that bonuses so far have not shown to recruit many new officers. And for the amount of money that's invested - not just in salaries and benefits for police, but also these signing bonuses - certainly I think most people were hoping, who viewed this as a solution, to get much more bang for their buck as they did. It's interesting in that we have heard the Harrell administration talk about data and dashboards and all that information. And the data that we have received on this doesn't seem to be too promising, yet that doesn't seem to be deterring many people. They said it's too soon to figure out that this is a failure, or to conclude that this is a failure. We did see an uptick in some of our hiring and have a bit of a larger class, so maybe there's some benefit that we're getting from this. Although we have heard from officers themselves who've said - These signing bonuses don't make a difference. If someone is leery to come, and especially given the salary, throwing an extra $10,000 at them isn't really going to be big enough to make the difference here. Now it could with a lot of other positions that have shortages in the City, but we seem to be focused on police right now. And so it is just going to be interesting to see if it's just - well, the data didn't look like we wanted it to, but we're just going to keep pushing forward and not adjust - while expressing the importance of better performance and getting data and metrics from other public safety initiatives or things that are running behind, like alternative response. And really this is money that could be invested in other areas. How do you see this? [00:23:48] Riall Johnson: It's just another - I feel like I'm repeating myself - it's typical. It's typical American exceptionalism - thinking that the country with the most police than any other military force, with more police than any other military force, is going to solve this. There's never been a correlation of more police and less crime - never. If anything it's gone the opposite - less police, you get less crime. We're so invested as a country - that more police is going to solve our stuff. And we have more police than ever, always. And it's just never affected crime. And if anything, it just affects more arrests - and it's just arrests for bull crap - told you I wasn't going to cuss. So I think it's - sarcastically speaking - if we were just nicer to cops in Seattle, more of them would come 'cause that's what - don't take this out of context 'cause like someone's clips this, 'cause it's - that's the narrative you see in the newspaper. Cops don't want to be here 'cause they're not nice to us here. There's too much protest, and too liberal, and it's too progressive. You hear this narrative outside - that's what's deterring - if that's deterring cops, it's too bad. Your job's tough, I'm sorry. You completely say - We're proud, we support the blue, and it's the toughest job - f*cking do it. They don't want to do it. They want an easy job where they can bully people and get away with it more often. So they're not afraid of being - and it's not so much being treated bad - they're afraid of accountability 'cause they feel like Seattle might hold them more accountable. I think it just doesn't matter 'cause - and I'm happy actually that less and less people want to be cops because probably - you see this generation's growing up - seeing more and more of what cops are doing, less of them want to be that. And I hope that's gonna be a nationwide trend overall. Gen Z and Gen A, I think are growing up - they're seeing more and more police violence. We didn't get to grow up seeing those constant videos. All we saw was a Rodney King video - we didn't have the cameras. I'm turning 45 this month. I didn't see constant police violence growing up. I grew up - I was 16 when Hillary and Joe Biden and Bill Clinton brought us the crime bill. I was a super predator in their eyes. And we were sold on that - me and my generation and everyone else - was sold on that stuff that more police is gonna solve this. And all it did was just lock more people up - for the same stuff I saw at Stanford University, tons of kids do. And boy, they weren't kicking down those doors. So it's never - more police has never solved crime - is not going to. So I'm actually happy that it's failing because it's going to show - and you see the stats of crime is still staying the same or going down, even with less cops. If we invest more in the communities and provide more housing and more services, we'll have less crime - 'cause we'll have less poverty and we'll have less need - because most of them is just crimes of poverty. So I think this is something I want to see nationwide - is just less cops, people wanting to be cops, because we're opening people's eyes to the culture of it. And a lot of younger generation growing up don't want to be part of that culture. And I hope that - so I say, keep filming people, keep filming them all the time, put them on blast, hold them accountable as best you can. And hopefully this is a trend that we see nationwide. [00:27:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And it will be interesting to see where these trends follow. It'll also be interesting just to see the electoral trends. We also saw this week, the City of Chicago opted to elect a progressive mayor who the police union was vehemently opposed to. They said that they would walk off the job if this person were elected and they're just going to do that. And well - the city's voters called their bluff. [00:28:02] Riall Johnson: Please leave. Please don't go - oh no. We'll see if they do - they won't, they won't. [00:28:11] Crystal Fincher: Maybe a couple might, but once again, I think this is an area where residents continue to be out ahead of elected officials in this area. Residents don't seem to have the hang up over conversations about comprehensive public safety, and public safety being much bigger than policing and having to be much bigger than policing. We have to have conversations about meeting people's basic needs. We have to have conversations about poverty and homelessness and all of that. And really addressing the roots of those problems - making sure people's basic needs are met - that impacts our public safety, that impacts how many people are victimized, it reduces the amount of people who are victimized in a variety of ways. And that really is the bottom line - we become safer when we do that. Think voters are there - there's certainly a large percentage of them - winning percentages of voters are there. And we just need actions by our elected officials that reflect that. [00:29:15] Riall Johnson: It's funny - unless you've been in a situation where you can't afford food, can't afford rent, can't afford a place to stay, you can't judge people if they're taking from major corporations. Meanwhile, corporations are committing exponentially more wage theft than you could ever steal from the cosmetic aisle. And it's very hard to combat the narrative as a consultant or in politics when they only have to show one or three videos - one to three videos - of the same shoplifting over and over and over, and then say it's a crime spree. They have the illustration advantage to do that. It's very hard. It was very hard to combat that in 2021 and to this day. So apparently, if you listen to the right narrative - the narrative on the right - crime has been skyrocketing for so long. But the stats show it's lower or the same - it's apparently gone through the graph and come back up to the bottom to go right back where it was. But every year, crime's skyrocketing. So where is it skyrocketing to? Apparently, everyone's a criminal at this point if you say - what is skyrocketing and what is actually crime. I used to do crime all the time when I was in college. I was at Stanford University, one of the richest schools in the country, and I shoplifted all I got, all I could 'cause I was broke. I couldn't work. I wasn't allowed to work. This is before the NIL [name, image, likeness] stuff. I stole groceries constantly. I'm admitting to the crime. I testified on this during the whole, and when we were trying to legalize college athletes getting paid. 'Cause when I can afford food, I don't have to steal it. But I have to eat somehow. And I had to eat at a level of a college athlete, of a college football player. So I stole groceries from Safeway constantly, every chance I got. And thank God I was good at it - but also, I had to. What else was I going to do? My parents couldn't send me money, and I couldn't even get a job 'cause it was illegal for me to get a job while I was in college. I was fortunate to not grow up in poverty, and my parents were middle class, but they weren't obviously able to just send me money every week while I was in college - sitting there broke. So I stole - I just stole food. And if they even had it, I was scared to ask them for it. I felt more dignified stealing food than asking for money from my parents - even if it was like 20 bucks, so I can go grocery shopping, which that could actually get some groceries back then, 1998. So we have to understand - it's not about who's doing the crime or what's happening - it's like why? Why is this happening? And they think it's just 'cause people are criminals and we need to lock up more people. Even though as a country, we lock up more people than anywhere else in the world - at four times the rate. And we think doing that more is going to solve the problem. [00:32:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, to me - it's just telling - okay, if that's what we have been doing for 30 years, and we feel that things now are worse than they've ever been - maybe that's a signal that it's not the best solution. Maybe that's a signal that that approach has failed and we should try something else. That is not how people invested in keeping things the way they are feel about it, by and large, unfortunately. But I guess the other news is that there - wow, is a whole lot more people who are less and less invested and actually invested in changing the way that things are. And those are becoming majorities in many cities and areas and states. And we're seeing that play out in a lot of these elections. So we will continue to follow that conversation and what happens. Also just wanted to cover - since you're here, since we do elections and politics - so at my latest count, I believe there are 36 declared candidates for Seattle City Council across all of the districts. That is a big number - and there are a lot of people at this point in time. A lot fewer people have qualified for Democracy Vouchers. I think we're gonna get an update on Monday perhaps to see who else may have qualified. But out of everyone, it looks like in District 1, Preston Anderson and Rob Saka have completed the Democracy Voucher qualifying process. In District 2, Tammy Morales has qualified for Democracy Vouchers. In District 3, Joy Hollingsworth and Alex Hudson have completed the qualifying process. In District 4, Ron Davis as well as Kenneth Wilson have completed the qualifying process. In District 5, no one has at this point in time via the publicly available information on the Democracy Voucher website. In District 6, Dan Strauss, the incumbent, has completed the qualifying process - as has incumbent Andrew Lewis in District 7. Those are all of the people who have been reported as successfully qualifying for Democracy Vouchers - obviously a big gate and necessary accomplishment for a campaign. But there are a lot who are in a lot of different positions. There is a sea of candidates. So I guess I'll just open it up to you on your thoughts - about anyone in particular, or this crop of candidates overall, and what this means for the City of Seattle. [00:34:53] Riall Johnson: I think it was - did you say 36? I think 49 ran last - four years ago. I think there was more open seats. I think there was only one incumbent. Debora Juarez was the only incumbent running. So now we only have two - no, three incumbents this time with Tammy, Dan, and Lewis. I used to work with Dan by the way - we were coworkers long time ago. [00:35:23] Crystal Fincher: Really? [00:35:23] Riall Johnson: Yeah, for the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. I'm a fan of Dan Strauss - personally. I disagree with him a lot, but a fan of Dan. But either way, this year is gonna be weird 'cause 2019 - going off 2019 - it was a big rally for progressive and it was a big progressive wave there, especially when Amazon dropped that million dollar bomb at the end, on top of the million dollars they already spent through the Chamber. I think this is gonna be interesting. I'm a big fan of Tammy, obviously - she's a client, or former client - I'm not doing any elections this year. So I don't think - she doesn't even need help. She was one of the best campaigners I've ever seen, so I think she's going to - she'll win on her own. She's gonna win. I think she's got - working with somebody, she's in good hands - but I don't see anyone beating Tammy. And in terms of the other races, it's just gonna be weird to see - they're not gonna have this narrative about fighting Amazon and stuff 'cause Amazon actually learned, the Chamber learned to step out of it and then distribute their money through other channels. They're still gonna put the same amount of money - they're just gonna put it so it's harder to track. So I encourage people to just look - you can still find it - look where the money's going. Look where it's going - they're gonna go through another entity. They're gonna distribute through other different donors. They're still gonna be backing the people. So just look where all the rich people, the same donors you see every year putting behind their own corporate police candidates. And you're gonna see that. And then that's gonna tell you all you really need to know - who's in what. 'Cause the thing is this is what - it always irks me about Seattle and a lot of cities nationwide, but especially Seattle - a lot of these races actually in the end are irrelevant unless you get a really super majority. The whole narrative of Seattle being this progressive place is false. Seattle has no income tax. It's a libertarian utopia, in my opinion. But they blame all their problems on a Brown woman named Kshama because she's the only socialist in there. If you're outside of Seattle or the narrative, thinks like Kshama runs the City. No, there's no way any city council member can run the City. The mayor runs the city. And we've had a corporate mayor for the last 46 out of 50 years, I think. The only mayor that actually did anything progressive was Mike McGinn. And it's funny - you look at the stats, you look at the homelessness rate after 2013 - it's gone up pretty - a whole lot since 2013. [00:38:11] Crystal Fincher: As has the crime rate. [00:38:12] Riall Johnson: Exactly. [00:38:14] Crystal Fincher: I think it was lower - McGinn enjoyed the lowest crime rates in the last 40 years, which - he would be the first person to tell you - were not only because of his policies, he did benefit from policies from Greg Nickels also. But numbers don't lie. [00:38:34] Riall Johnson: Yeah, and we stopped investing in housing overall. And the City - and even if the City Council gives and puts money in housing, it's not like - they just give you the money or approve it, the mayor's got to execute it. And Jenny - I remember seeing Jenny Durkan literally just declined to use the money in any sort of way. She promised a 1,000 or 10,000 tiny homes or whatever - she built a hundred. It's - we got the corporate mayor we've asked for - the Chamber's got their candidate for the last two decades, or the last decade. They got Murray, they got Jenny, they got Tim what's-his-name? The guy who was council for - [00:39:10] Crystal Fincher: Briefly, Tim Burgess. [00:39:11] Riall Johnson: Tim Burgess. Bruce Harrell twice now. And it's gonna go the same way every time. As long as you get a mayor that can't do anything unless they get approval from their corporate overlords - we all call it - we're gonna have this problem all the time, no matter who we elect to City Council. So Tammy's gonna win. Everyone else that I see on the table is just gonna be - is some semi-progressive right now that's just gonna go with the status quo. And she's probably gonna be a lone voice, lonely voice on that council. And then she's now gonna start getting the blame because they can't - they're not gonna have Kshama to blame anymore. And so it's gonna be sad to see all problems - even though it's like you got the mayor you wanted, you got the city council candidates you wanted - you're not gonna have Kshama, you're not gonna have Teresa, all you're gonna have is Tammy. And somehow Tammy's gonna be - they're gonna try and blame Tammy for the - all the problems they have when they've caused it. So it's just, it's gonna be funny to watch this after the election, but in terms of who I see - I just don't, I'm sorry - I'm not paying attention enough, but I don't see anyone outside of Tammy Morales that kind of fits my - what I wanna see in a councilmember. That's my biased opinion, so - as much as I love, I like Dan Strauss as a person, and I think he's better than the person that's challenged him obviously. Me and Dan would have disagreements face-to-face if we met, if we saw, if I saw him again. I just don't see it. I see - either you have to get a major majority of veto-proof votes constantly that's going to actually defund the police, that's actually going to provide housing, that's actually going to fund transit. We're gonna be in this cycle over and over and over as long as we have a mayor that refuses to actually do the things and is beholden to the large corporations we have here in Seattle. So I don't see - I see these elections as inconsequential, somewhat irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. They're important, obviously - you want the support, but the one city councilmember in your district is one-ninth of about 15% of power in the City. That's how much the city council pretty much has - 15-20% of the power. The rest of the 80-90% is the mayor's office. And that's - but the overall narrative - it's hard to get that across 'cause you watch local news, you watch Fox News or cable news, you think this radical socialist Brown woman is running Seattle because that's who they put on the face of it. Never smiling, always with her mouth open yelling - when you, if you meet Kshama, she's the nicest person possible, she's always smiling. But they always want to get it - it's just funny how that narrative is painted on these things. And same with Tammy - they're going to put Tammy on there with - it's typical misogynistic stuff you see with - they always put her with - as she's speaking and then they get her at the worst moment possible with her mouth open. And they're going to do this over and over and over to put the blame on them so they can avoid accountability. [00:42:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is - that trope basically is well-worn. And they do like to pick a favorite progressive person to pick on - that's a lot of P's, but anyway - for me, I need to get more familiar with a lot of candidates, certainly. But I think I'm with you just on the - I'm, I can't say across the board, 'cause there have been a couple that I have heard some conclusive opinions on - taking away almost whether or not I agree with people on issues, it is just hard in this crop to find people really saying where they stand on it. And again, certainly there have been a few who have, but it seems like the majority is afraid to say anything. And to your point that the candidates who have been favored by the Chamber and corporate interests, those candidates for mayor have won for the past decade. And there is no one who has any more power in the City than the mayor. The City Council, to your point, can fund things and can direct policy. But it provides the funding - it actually can't spend that money itself. That is up to the executive. The executive has to spend the money. They manage and implement all of the things in the City. Every department answers to the mayor, including the police department - and what happens there is completely the mayor's responsibility. That is the executive, that is the person with the most power. And it feels like that goes by the wayside because there has been a person on the council that they've been able to demonize from the progressive side that - it reminds me just of conversations about racism or sexism or anti-trans messaging where it's like - simultaneously, the people who you're railing against are somehow deficient in their eyes, but also so smart and powerful and numerous that they can do everything and every bad thing is their fault. And there's this big magical conspiracy that is happening that people are, I guess, communicating telepathically to coordinate all of the horrible things that as conservatives would say, liberals want. But it's just - yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not quite inspired by the crop of candidates, but I think it's just - you're gonna have to decide to do something. And we're at the point where we've had now 10 years worth of really mayors painting themselves as the adult in the room, the people who can bring together people who disagree, and bring everyone together and figure out where people agree and can make progress. And that's just messaging to excuse people not taking action. That has not materialized. What that equates to in practice is just gridlock and nothing happening. And I think we're seeing the result of nothing happening for so long. This is why so many - homelessness has skyrocketed, income inequality is skyrocketing - continuing to do so - so many of the things that we have labeled crises have only gotten worse because the people who said that they were gonna bring everyone together and stop making people mad, like those divisive progressives - it turns out you do have to make a decision at some point. And if you don't, the bad thing continues to happen and that happens. And I think lots of people are at the point with Bruce Harrell - you've made lots of promises that sound great. It seems like you forgot about some of those promises and other of those promises are running like late, way behind schedule. Maybe you changed your mind. Maybe that was just rhetoric. But you said things and we want to see you deliver, and we're waiting. [00:46:45] Riall Johnson: Yes. We'll see what Backroom Bruce does in the next two years, which - we'll see. I've met Bruce - actually he's a nice guy, charismatic guy - he wins people over pretty easily. And actually I turned him down. I couldn't do it. 'Cause it's just - you can't, I just can't give in to corporate interests like that. This is the thing - I don't know how much time more we've got 'cause this is - I'm going back to 2019 and my experience. And this is a problem that needs to be said in Seattle about the progressive left - the power players in the progressive left - they don't want change either. They just want power. And if anyone's listening, they can see - I think I have it on my pinned tweet back in 2019 - the problem I saw and I identified it. And I burned a lot of bridges saying this out public. And I'll say it again though, 'cause it needs to be called out. There was a big movement behind progressive candidates. "Progressive candidates." They put about a million dollars behind six candidates for the open seats. There was three white candidates and three candidates of color. They put over $900,000 behind the white candidates and about $23,000 total behind the candidates of color - 18 of that 23,000 went to Tammy. The other 2,000 each went to Kshama and Shaun Scott - it was a literal direct correlation of skin color by who got more money. And they spent more money against Mark Solomon - Tammy's candidate, who was also Black, a Black man - than spending more money for Shaun. That's how anti-Black the Seattle left is. Seattle is 6% black. 20 years ago, it was 13% Black. So somehow this pro-Black, equitable, progressive city has been systematically kicking Black people out of this city for the last 20 years. And I'm one of them. So it's just - it's a false narrative, I think, to think that there's people who claim to be for this. And you'll literally see in Seattle where someone will have a sign saying, "In this house, Black Lives Matter, love is love," blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And then right next to it, literally it'll say, "Don't rezone this property, make it so historic." Like it's all platitudes I see. And I see it not just with voters, but I see it with the people in power - the people in the "progressive" movements that actually have the money, and they don't put their money where the mouth is. There's never a movement supported by this. They don't put the money behind actual progressive candidates, or abolitionists, or whatever. They just talk the talk. They put all this money behind Dan Strauss, Andrew Lewis, and Lisa Herbold - and they all waffled on all their votes. They didn't do anything. They just did middle of the road stuff. But meanwhile, the candidates that actually were pushing for real progressive transformative policies, like Shaun Scott, Kshama Sawant, and Tammy Morales - they didn't support that way. And the reason - I burned bridges - I'll burn them again, I'll burn the ships. 'Cause it needs to be said. And it needs to be - look where the money's going, and you'll see where people stand. And the funny thing is we just - and this is why you see a lot of these candidates, even this year, waffling on stuff. They're coming out middle of the road. They say they're progressive. They come from progressive organizations that are well-funded, and they're not taking proper stands because they're scared to - because the organizations that support them are scared to as well. So I think this needs to be said and needs to be called out - until we have some real progressive candidates that can stand on their own and stand against even their own backers, like the unions and the progressive organizations that - I'm not gonna name names, I've already done that. But they know who I'm talking about and they know I'm talking about them, and I don't care. But the thing is we need candidates that will do that, and we need more communities to stand up against that, and fight on their own. And it's very hard to do that because - ultimately, you're turning away resources - because these are well-resourced organizations as well and progressive organizations. And it's hard to do that without resources. And once - when you do that, you gotta realize you're gonna be on your own and you're gonna have to do this on just pure human power - with a little bit of money. And just - and I guess, hopefully vouchers - on a minimal budget, that you could, that hopefully you can win by. [00:51:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for all of your insight today, Riall Burn the Ships Johnson. Appreciate your insight and reflections and perspective. And with that, I thank everyone for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 7th - it's April 7th already - 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today is Principal Partner at Prism West, Riall Johnson. You can find Riall on Twitter @RiallJohnson, that's R-I-A-L-L Johnson. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. And you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your feed. If you like us, leave a review. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Join  @RerollingOnes  Jack & AoS Coach Anthony on The Finest Hour. In this episode we focus on how we start a new army with our processes, inspirations and what's important to us... plus a little ChatGPT Introduction. Subscribe to  @RerollingOnes  for great battle reports and AoS content. Support The Channel

I'm joined by Gareth Thomas (Top ITC Blades of Khorne '22 & '23 + Top TSN Khorne '22) to give his early thoughts on the 2023 Blades of Khorne battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Old Town Throwdown: https://www.oldtownthrowdown.com/home   Support The Channel

I'm joined by Jeremy Veysseire (2022 Captain of AoS Team America, 2023 AoS World Commissioner & Bad Ass Sky Captain) to give his early thoughts on the 2023 Kharadron Overlords battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Subscribe to Jeremy Veysseire YT Channel:  @TheBarakDur    Support The Channel

In this video I'm going pay the blood tithe and summon your allegiance abilities and there has been some significant changes, enhancements, key warscroll changes and the points. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video. Support The Channel

In this video I'm going offer you the temptations of Slaanesh including the allegiance abilities and there has been some significant changes, enhancements, key warscroll changes and the points. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video. Support The Channel

In this video I preview the new Kharadron Overlords battletome and will focus on allegiance abilities, enhancements, grand strategies, battle tactics, core battalions, warscroll changes and points. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.   Support The Channel

I'm joined by Stuart IronGitzman McCowan (4-1 at CanCon '23) to give his early thoughts on the 2023 Gloomspite Gitz battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Support The Channel

Join  @RerollingOnes  Jack & AoS Coach Anthony on The Finest Hour. In our debut podcast you will get to know a little about us in a more casual setting, and our episode topic will focus on first experienes with Season 2 of Generals Handbook 2022-23. Support The Channel

I'm joined by 'The Noog' Matt Nguyen to recap the Las Vegas Open AoS tournament that we attended. Support The Channel

In this video I preview the new Beasts of Chaos battletome and will focus on allegiance abilities, enhancements, greatfray sub-allegiance, spells, grand strategies, battle tactics, point changes, and key warscroll changes. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.  

In this video I preview the new Gloomspite Gitz battletome and will focus on Da Bad Moon, allegiance abilities, enhancements, Gittish Hordes sub-allegiance, spells lores, grand strategies, battle tactics, point changes, core battalions and key warscroll changes. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.  

On this midweek show, Misha Werschkul of the Washington State Budget & Policy Center talks with Crystal about the opportunity this legislative session to align the laws and budget of the state with our values and provide bright futures for all Washingtonians. As legislators prepare to set the State Budget for the next two years, Crystal and Misha discuss how important issues like housing and homelessness are receiving a lot of attention in contrast with less fanfare around education, before diving into impactful cash assistance programs targeted at addressing the wealth gap such as Guaranteed Basic Income and baby bonds. They then turn to the subject of ending Legal Financial Obligations, as it is a practice of wealth taking from the least-resourced to fund our court system, and have a philosophical discussion on unpacking the question of - what does real public safety look like? Finally, they cover progress on much-needed reform of the tax code - the long-awaited launch of the Working Families Tax Credit, movement towards implementation of the capital gains tax, and the anticipated introduction of a wealth tax proposal. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find our guest Misha Werschkul at @mishaanne and the Washington State Budget & Policy Center @budget_policy.   Misha Werschkul Misha (she/her) is a leading voice shaping the debate in Washington state on budget priorities and economic policies. She's a policy wonk at heart and a relentless believer in the importance of people joining together to make change. She has more than two decades of policy and legislative experience and is eager to build on this experience with an openness to new ideas and approaches, especially about how to bring racial equity into policymaking and organizational processes. You're most likely to find Misha working with partners to craft policy proposals and build coalitions around statewide progressive revenue, economic, and racial justice issues. She also serves on the board of directors of Balance Our Tax Code and the SEIU Benefits Group. In her spare time, Misha tries to be outside as much as possible. Some of her favorite activities are gardening in her taxpayer-supported neighborhood community garden, backpacking with friends in the publicly funded Olympic National Park, and paddleboarding in Lake Washington.   Resources Washington State Budget & Policy Center   2023 State of the State Address: Bold actions for building a stronger Washington | Washington Governor Jay Inslee   “Washington Should Tax the Rich to Save Our Public Schools” by Robert Cruickshank for The Stranger    “The U.S. Could Help Solve Its Poverty Problem with a Universal Basic Income” by Michael W. Howard for Scientific American   “How Tacoma's yearlong guaranteed income experiment fared” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times   HB 1045 - Creating the evergreen basic income pilot program   “To address wealth gap, WA to consider $4,000 ‘baby bonds'” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times   “Budget funds key first step in State Treasurer's wealth gap initiative” by Adam Johnson for Office of the State Treasurer   SB 5125 | HB 1094 - Creating the Washington future fund program   “A tragic Seattle story explains the decline of American welfare” by Shaun Scott for Crosscut    “Getting rid of legal financial obligations can protect the economic security of thousands of Washingtonians” by Evan Walker for Washington State Budget & Policy Center   “It's Time to Reform Washington's Harmful System of Fines and Fees” by Evan Walker & Andy Nicholas for Washington State Budget & Policy Center   “Beyond Policing: Investing in Offices of Neighborhood Safety" by Betsy Pearl for The Center for American Progress   “The Working Families Tax Credit will reduce hardship across Washington” by Margaret Babayan for Washington State Budget & Policy Center   Working Families Tax Credit Coalition   “In Washington State, the Left Won a Major Victory for Taxing the Rich” by Galen Herz for Jacobin   “Share the Wealth, Washington!” by Carolyn Brotherton for Economic Opportunity Institute   WA Possible - podcast about what is possible for economic justice in Washington state by Washington State Budget & Policy Center   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today I am excited to be welcoming Misha Werschkul, who's the Executive Director of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center - welcome. [00:01:01] Misha Werschkul: So glad to be with you, Crystal. Thanks for having me. [00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for joining us. I just want to start off by talking about - a lot of people are familiar with the Washington Budget and Policy Center, but for those who aren't, what is it? What do you do? And what brought you to this work? [00:01:14] Misha Werschkul: Thanks so much for starting with that. The first thing that I just want to share is - at the Washington State Budget and Policy Center - we're a nonprofit advocacy organization, so we're not part of State government. We actually work doing research and analysis, work in coalition with other organizations. And really, our goal is to make sure that the laws and the budget of Washington State are in alignment with the values of our state and really setting up a bright future for all Washingtonians. So we primarily work on state policy, although we do a little bit of work on local issues from time to time and federal issues. And all of our work is, as I mentioned, in coalition partnership - so we work with other organizations that do grassroots organizing and power building, communications, more political work - and really work together to try to make sure that when the Legislature comes together, as they are right now, that they're doing the things that match the values in our community. So it's really actually super fun work that allows us to bring those skills of research and analysis in what we hope to be service for social justice. A little bit about me is just - I came to this work really through a path of advocacy work. So prior to being with the Budget and Policy Center, I worked with a labor union in our state that represents home care and nursing home workers, and had a chance to be a frontline lobbyist down in Olympia trying to advance the interests of the long-term care workforce. And I saw through that work the incredible impact of the Budget and Policy Center, the power of the team here, and the importance of working on structural issues like the state budget, tax policy, economic justice - and now get the chance to work still in collaboration and partnership with organizations like the labor union that I worked with. [00:03:12] Crystal Fincher: You talk about the structural impact that can be made - and so much of that is impacted at the state level. What are you looking to have accomplished in this legislative session that just started? [00:03:24] Misha Werschkul: We always talk about the most important piece of legislation that the Legislature tackles each year is the state budget. And that is hundreds of pages of decisions - embedded in the state budget - around what are we going to spend money on, and how are we going to collect the revenue that pays for those things. And so our state has been really in a good situation with being able to receive federal dollars through all of the COVID relief that has happened over the past few years. And we've been able to do a lot - our legislators have - to be able to invest in our communities and help, really, us weather a really horrific pandemic. And this year, the Legislature is going to be putting together the budget for the next two years, so the end of 2023 through 2025. And I would say, always, that the most important thing that they can do is put together a budget that really meets the needs of communities, reflects community input, and ideally collects the revenue to pay for those investments in an equitable way. So there's millions of things within the state budget that matter to folks all across our state, and that's something that we'll be watching super carefully this legislative session - and frankly, every legislative session. [00:04:44] Crystal Fincher: What are the most important things you believe are going to be the components of the budget that will make a positive impact for the state? [00:04:52] Misha Werschkul: Some of the things that are getting a lot of attention and are going to be really important are really what is the level of investment in housing and homelessness. That's something that - I live in Seattle - that is something we're talking about a lot in Seattle, but is also really an issue all across the state - folks in rural communities, other urban areas, suburban areas - dealing with the homelessness crisis and the lack of access to affordable housing. And so this year, the governor has proposed a really big investment in housing and homelessness services - much bigger than has been talked about in previous years - and really, I think, embraced the need for a statewide solution that really matches the scale of what the crisis is that folks are experiencing. And so we're going to be watching that really carefully to see what can be done in that area. The governor is also talking about behavioral health as an important area for investment, climate change. One area we'll be paying attention to at the Budget and Policy Center is education - that is actually the biggest part of the state budget - is funding for public schools. And we know that schools all across our communities - kids need to be invested in, right? And that that is something that is going to be important this year - special education, how are we supporting teachers, what are we really doing to make sure that kids' mental health are taken care of. There's a lot more to do in that area and a lot of conversation to be had in the next 100-ish days of the legislative session. [00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: Certainly a lot of conversation to be had. And while we have heard a lot of talk, fortunately, about taking action on housing and homelessness, we haven't heard as much about education after, surprisingly, seeing so many teachers and educators bringing to the fore the crisis, basically, that we're facing in terms of funding, special education resources, and the ability to really give kids the education that will equip them for their future and that we're constitutionally obligated to give them. What are the prospects for action and what do you think is possible this legislative session? [00:07:06] Misha Werschkul: I think the Legislature is going to step up and do something for our kids. So there hasn't been as much talk about it - there are a number of different challenges that the Legislature is grappling with, a number of different things the Legislature is dealing with. But ultimately, education is the most important thing when it comes to the state budget and the paramount duty of Washington State. And so last year there was investment in counselors and other types of support professionals in the schools - that's going to be rolling out and making a difference for kids this year, but more has to be done. And I think that that is an area where we're hearing folks - really from both political parties - talk about the need to invest in education. And so I'm actually pretty hopeful about what's going to be done in that area for kids all across the state because the need is really present. And as you mentioned, the calls that teachers made at the start of the school year, folks' experience of the first few months of the school year, kids back to school in January - the needs there are very visible. And I think legislators will listen to that. [00:08:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You have also, and the Budget and Policy Center has done a lot of work and highlighted a lot of research about the importance of cash assistance policies in addressing poverty and strengthening communities. Starting with Guaranteed Basic Income, that we've heard a lot from Representative Liz Berry on - what is that? What kind of record does it have? And why is it important? [00:08:48] Misha Werschkul: I love that you're asking about this because I think this is actually one of the most important things the Legislature can and should act on this year. So the idea of Guaranteed Basic Income is really a concept that's really been brought forward by - historically by Black leaders, Black women, also by tribal governments - as a way to really recognize the inherent dignity of people and the fact that people can make the best choices with resources that can meet the needs of themselves individually, their families, and their communities. And it's really a rejection of the paternalistic approach of a lot of policy approaches where - too often - you have government agencies really making decisions on behalf of people and taking away that ability for people to make their own decisions. And so this concept of Guaranteed Basic Income has been around for a long time. There has been a dramatic emergence of local pilots of Guaranteed Basic Income programs all across the country in recent years - and huge successes of those programs. The Magnolia Mother's Trust is one of the first, the Stockton SEED [Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration] program - also those two pilot programs really sparked action in every part of our country, including right in Tacoma where there's been a pilot that Mayor Woodards led with United Way of Pierce County. And so we're seeing a lot of success historically and even in the last few years of really the approach of getting cash to people in a way that's not restrictive and that lets people make choices that meet their own needs and the needs of their families and communities. The opportunity this year - and what Representative Berry is talking about - is the opportunity to really move that from local pilots to state policy. And she's proposing a statewide pilot that is limited in certain ways in scope, but would be the first state in the country to really have a statewide program for Guaranteed Basic Income. And it's an opportunity to take all of the things that we know from all of the local pilots and the past work on Guaranteed Basic Income and really try it out in a new context of a state program. That bill has gotten a lot of excitement and energy, and hopefully we'll see it get all the way to the finish line this year because it really is, I think, a transformative way to think about the role of state government and a move away from what really are pretty failed paternalistic policies that we've had in the past towards - one, policies that recognize the inherent dignity and the ability of people to make choices for themselves. [00:11:52] Crystal Fincher: Another program that is really interesting and that you have talked about is the Baby Bonds savings program. What is that? [00:12:01] Misha Werschkul: Okay, so the Baby Bonds program is something that I think is complementary to Guaranteed Basic Income, and also complementary to other approaches like the Working Families Tax Credit and existing public benefits, like TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] and the Housing and Essential Needs program. So it's important to think about it as a complementary, not a replacement for any of these other programs. But the idea of Baby Bonds is really a concept that was developed by an economist, Darrick Hamilton, to think about how do we really address the issue of wealth disparities - primarily by race - that exists. And we know that little bits of money, changing people's income doesn't actually get to that core issue of how people build wealth over time and how people build wealth intergenerationally. So white folks like me, in a lot of cases, have been able to build wealth in our families that we passed down through generations. And I, for example, was able to go to college because my parents were able to help me pay for the cost of going to college. The idea of Baby Bonds is how could we really give every Washingtonian the opportunity to have that little additional seed investment to be able to invest in themselves and their future. And so the State Treasurer, Mike Pellicciotti, has championed this approach for our state. Other states are already moving forward on this, but the idea would be to create an account for every kid who's eligible - to be able to have a little bit of resources that grow over time that they could then use to invest in college, to invest in starting a business, or to invest in buying a home. And really start to move the needle on those intergenerational inequities around wealth. In and of itself, Baby Bonds isn't going to fix everything - it is a piece of the puzzle but is an important one. And it's been exciting to see bipartisan support for that proposal and a lot of energy from local communities to really think about really a proposal that isn't going to have a huge impact in 2024 or 2025, but is setting kids up for success over the long-term and giving people the access to opportunity. [00:14:31] Crystal Fincher: So this is an interesting area. So we talked about Guaranteed Basic Income, which is something that definitely has an immediate impact, Baby Bonds savings, which is a long-term impact - both of which are direct cash assistance. And we are so used to, in our society, and hearing pushback on - Well, just giving people cash, are they going to just waste it? How do we know that they're not going to spend it on different things? People are in poverty - as some people say - because they're bad at managing their money, so we can't just hand it over. We need to really prescribe how it can and can't be used. How do you battle that mindset and address those kinds of worries? [00:15:15] Misha Werschkul: I think for us at the Budget and Policy Center, it comes back to - what does the research say? And those narratives that exist are just not supported by anything that we see in the research. And so what we've seen is that programs that are out there that give people direct cash - that folks use it in ways that really do meet the needs of themselves and their communities. And I can't remember the number right now, but I feel like there's something like more than 100 local pilots that have operated around Guaranteed Basic Income in the last several years. And so we're not talking about just one example - we are talking about example after example after example. I also think it is actually really important to tackle those narratives a little bit head-on and talk about - where do those narratives come from, and why are they so compelling for some folks? And these ideas of - for example, with regards to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and welfare and the dialogues over the years around that program - the kind of myth of the welfare queen - that is a created story that serves a particular purpose. It's not rooted in any sort of reality and we have to actually talk about, we have to actually name those myths that are out there, name those narratives, and call them out for what they are. Because so often it's deeply rooted in racism, deeply rooted in classism and sexism. And to be able to - our hope at the Budget and Policy Center, and other folks play different roles in this, is that by really looking at actually what does the research say and what are the facts on the ground, that that will help to begin to dismantle these narratives that have been built over time. So that's our hope at the Budget and Policy Center - is showing the success of the local pilots, showing what works, and really building some different narratives out there that actually are more rooted in reality. [00:17:42] Crystal Fincher: So another thing that you've talked about that is really important is the impact of Legal Financial Obligations on poverty and people's ability to get out of poverty. What are Legal Financial Obligations and what can the Legislature do about it? [00:17:57] Misha Werschkul: This is such an important area that hasn't been actually talked about as much when it comes to the upcoming legislative session, so I'm really glad you're asking about it, Crystal. So Legal Financial Obligations are essentially fines and fees that are put on folks based on their interactions with the criminal legal system. And it is one of the primary ways that we actually currently fund our court system. It is probably obvious, as I'm saying this, how inequitable this system is and how ineffective it is, but I'll just elaborate just a little bit. So basically what happens is that folks who are interacting with the criminal legal system - through those interactions - are building up debt over time that oftentimes folks don't have the ability to pay, so that - and there's an expectation that folks will pay those debts in the future. Most of the time, as I said, folks don't have the ability to pay - the money can't be collected. And so really what you have is a situation where folks are shouldering this debt that carries with them after their interaction with the criminal legal system. And the courts don't get the resources that they need to actually fund their operations. So it's a super ineffective way to fund operations - based on trying to collect money from people who, for the most part, really don't have any money to pay those fines and fees. Our goal at the Budget and Policy Center, and in coalition with a lot of other organizations, is to really end the practice of Legal Financial Obligations. There are infinite number of better ways to fund our court systems than through the collection of fines and fees. So the goal - the big goal - is to actually end the practice of Legal Financial Obligations as a whole. Not surprisingly, that's not something that's likely to happen in one legislative session. We do have legislative champions who are working towards incremental changes to Legal Financial Obligations, a greater recognition of ability to pay in terms of how fees are assessed and collected - and there we hope to see some progress this legislative session. But in the work around trying to end poverty, people talk about not just the importance of giving people money to be able to afford their basic needs, but actually stopping the practice of wealth taking, which is basically what Legal Financial Obligations are - is another way that any resources that people have are taken from them and that folks are in a system of indebtedness based on an interaction that is already deeply racialized with the criminal legal system. So Representative Tarra Simmons is really leading a lot of that work in the Legislature, groups like Civil Survival and Living with Conviction - want to lift up their work. And I also will just, as I'm answering this question, take this opportunity to say I am so appreciative to be able to be here and share this information with you, and I'm also doing that work on behalf of an amazing team of folks at the Budget and Policy Center - so Evan Walker is the person on our team who leads the work on Legal Financial Obligations, Emily Vyhnanek and Tracy Yeung lead the work on direct cash assistance, and other folks are leading other pieces of the work. So I just want to take the opportunity to celebrate their deeper work in each of these areas and how they engage with our coalition partners, even though I'm the one here sharing it with you. [00:21:49] Crystal Fincher: And I really appreciate that, and appreciate the work of your entire team - and the work over years that you've been doing - this is not work that you or the Budget and Policy Center is new to. It's really been just a long-term labor, and so really appreciate that. And also just appreciate the importance in you working on issues like Guaranteed Basic Income, Legal Financial Obligations - because we're so used to hearing sometimes in common discourse - things like, If you do the crime, then you do the time. If you don't want something, you should follow the law. Now you got to pay up. And viewing it as we need to hold people accountable and really focusing on a lot of the punitive and punishment aspects of these things, when really we're all losing as a result of those - trying to implement these punitive policies are creating worse outcomes for everyone in every way. When you look at the percentage of our budgets going towards supporting the court systems and jails, clearly fines are not cutting it. And also we say that we want a safe community. We say that we want people to be able to make a mistake, to do their time, fulfill their obligation, and then become a productive member of society - we commonly hear. But we do things that really impair their ability to do that and trap them in cycles of criminalization and poverty - and it just is counterproductive and we wind up paying for it as a community. How do you address people who focus on the punitive aspects - and really wanting to hold people accountable or punish people - and not realizing the other impacts that come from that? [00:23:40] Misha Werschkul: I think that's such a big question and I don't know if I have the full answer to it. I will say I was listening to the governor's State of the State address, and he said some things that I really agreed with and then some things that I didn't agree with as much. But one thing he said that I thought was interesting was - he talked about public safety, which we know is a term that means certain things to, and maybe different things, to different people. And he talked about how we actually need to unpack what public safety is and recognize that there's a lot of different aspects of that. And then he actually talked about the work around gun responsibility as an aspect of public safety. And it got me thinking about - just these terms and how they're code, in a lot of ways, for certain things - like public safety is code for policing. And how can we actually really talk about public safety for all of us? And what does it actually look like for all of us to be safe in our communities? And policing - heavy policing - is clearly not providing safety for all of us. In fact, I don't think it's really providing safety for any of us. And if we can think about - what is that aspiration around safety and what does that value for us in our lives and for our families and communities? How do we actually build that together? And a lot of times that does mean a lot of different things - it actually means people having the resources to be able to afford their basic needs so that they can put food on the table, it means that people have shelter - that people are not homeless. It means talking about gun responsibility. And I think a lot of times we fall into, again, these sort of narrative traps of - Oh, yeah, like crime - punish - yeah, if you do the crime, you have to do the time. And sort of believe in a way that that is going to make us safer. And actually I don't know that - it doesn't. And so I think just - I don't know, I think we just have to have those conversations in a real way - because, as a white person, a white woman, doing this work, I did believe for a long time that having a police presence was a way that my safety was - was about my safety. But actually, as I unpack that - it's not true, even for me as the model person that the police are here, supposed to protect. And I think we have to just actually talk about that a little bit more and actually have a higher aspiration for safety for all of us, because sometimes it's like walking around certain parts of maybe cities with a heavy police presence might make someone feel - it might make someone feel a little bit safe in the immediate term, but I actually hope for something a lot more. I hope that we can get to a place where - I don't know - safety, just - it's not actually true safety. And so I'm just trying to get at - what is that higher aspiration of safety that we could be striving towards and building towards, and not feeling like our only definition of safety is having armed police officers walking around - to what - shoot someone if something happens? That actually doesn't make me feel super safe - to think about people wielding guns on the streets shooting people to protect me. And so I think that's just something we need to be talking about and grappling with. But I do think - I really appreciated Governor Inslee starting to peel open that conversation a little bit. Now, he then did go on - I want to acknowledge - to talk about the importance, I think he did go on to talk about the importance of investing in policing as well. So he still has that as part of his solution. But I think at least he was starting to unpack - what does public safety look like and maybe open up a different conversation. [00:28:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate your thoughts on that. And unpacking what public safety looks like, unpacking what accountability looks like, and really trying to reduce harm all the way around. We don't want people to be victimized. We don't want people to be trapped in cycles that create and produce harm. What does accountability look like if it's not our court system and jails, which are not doing an effective job. What does public safety look like if it's not only police officers who, I think everyone agrees, can't do the job alone. If not, other models being more successful and effective. The final thing I want to talk about and cover today is what our tax code looks like. It is so foundational to everything in society. It is underneath, it impacts the revenue that we collect that enables every public service to be possible, which public services are possible, and to what degree. There's been lots of talk about how regressive our system has been, how much needs reform. Where do we stand on that? What needs to happen? And what's possible this legislative session? [00:29:56] Misha Werschkul: My favorite topic, Crystal - at the Budget and Policy Center, we love talking about taxes. And the reason is because it is super important how we collect revenue as a state and local government. And there are a lot of policy choices embedded in - a lot of values embedded in how we collect revenue. So I think probably most of your listeners know that Washington State has the most inequitable tax code in the country, meaning those with the lowest incomes pay the highest percentage of their income in state and local taxes. And in fact, we're way out of sync with most other states on this. So low income people in Washington State are paying basically double someone with a similar income in Oregon, simply because of the structure of our tax code. This is obviously a pretty bad deal for most Washingtonians. It's a super good deal for the wealthiest Washingtonians who are paying a minute share of their income in state and local taxes. And this is a big problem. This is not something that there's a quick and easy fix for, but there is some really exciting stuff happening. So in 2021, the Legislature took two big actions to start to make progress to reform our state tax code. One is they passed a capital gains tax to fund early learning investments in education. The other is they passed a Working Families Tax Credit set up to benefit 420,000 households in Washington State with direct cash sales tax refunds. Both of these policies are happening. So the Working Families Tax Credit launches February 1st. I'm so nerdy excited about this - it's not even funny. But starting very soon, people - 420,000 households - will be able to apply to be able to get a refund check of up to $1,200 in our state. We have been talking about this for so long, it feels like - and the day is finally almost here where this is happening. It is a step in the right direction of balancing our tax code in and of itself. It's not enough. It needs to be expanded. We'll be working this legislative session to try to expand eligibility to younger adults, so folks who are 18-24 and actually older adults as well - 65+ - who aren't currently eligible for the Working Families Tax Credit - to basically bring them in and allow them to be eligible. There's a great website called wataxcredit.org, I think - I hope it's org now - that has a ton of information about this. And I want to just share that out so folks know to spread the word because folks do need to actually proactively apply. One way to think about it is - really anybody who's eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit is going to be eligible for the Washington Working Families Tax Credit too. Plus anyone who files their taxes with an ITIN number who is being excluded right now from the EITC will be eligible for the Working Families Tax Credit. So I'm super excited. It's happening soon. There's going to be action in the Legislature on this, but more importantly, the policy is happening. Folks can get the money if they take the step to apply with Department of Revenue. Capital gains tax is being challenged, not surprisingly, by wealthy individuals who would pay the tax. They're trying to get the court to basically intervene and rule that the tax is unconstitutional. The State Supreme Court is hearing that case on January 26th and this is a wonky legal issue that needs to get sorted out before the tax can be fully implemented. And I could go on and on about the legal part of it, but I will stop because you actually asked about also what's happening this legislative session. And I will just pitch the efforts that some of our partners, especially Economic Opportunity Institute and Balance Our Tax Code, are leading with regards to a wealth tax and really thinking about big solutions that make a real difference in making our tax code more equitable. We have to get to the root of it, which is wealth. And so it's exciting to see this proposal coming forward this session that Representative Noel Frame has been a huge leader in. [00:35:01] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely and appreciate that. We will include the wataxcredit.org link in our episode notes to make it convenient for people to visit. And also thanks for mentioning your partners - we did have a conversation with Summer Stinson of the Economic Opportunity Institute, and she did talk a lot about that court case and how important it is to have a capital gains tax, what it really means, how few people it actually impacts - it is the wealthiest portion of the wealthy - and we'll see how this court case turns out. I really do appreciate you joining us today. If people want to learn more about the organization, where can they visit? [00:35:51] Misha Werschkul: Our website is www.budgetandpolicy.org so you can check us out on the website. We're also on social media - I'll share those links with you for the show notes hopefully. And I also will share - April Dickinson on our team has led the effort just to launch a new podcast called WA Possible that we hope is a great complement to Hacks & Wonks and a bit of a deeper dive into some of what could be possible when it comes to economic justice in Washington state. There's a great episode there talking about the Black Women Best framework that some national partners launched and some of the policies we talked about today, so just would share that as well. [00:36:37] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, and April Dickinson is awesome. Thank you for all the work. Thank you for joining us today and we'll talk to you all next time. [00:36:44] Misha Werschkul: Thank you so much Crystal - appreciate you. [00:36:46] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

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I'm joined by Dean Bilz, winner of GW Open Best General '22 to talk about Seraphon and how he's making the most of the army as well as journey to tournament glory.

I'm joined by Peachy aka Chris Peach (@_Peachy_Tips_) to chat about bringing your army concept to life on the tabletop. You may been inspired by a piece of lore or a Black Library book, or developed a custom background story, or just wanted to make your Stormcast historically accurate Roman Legion. In this video we will discuss how we go about converting, painting, and developing stories on the tabletop... even in matched play. You might know Peachy formerly of Warhammer TV who can now be found at The Painting Phase.

We're joined by friend of the show Shaun Scott to discuss the legacy of Mike Davis and urban history of Los Angeles. If you haven't ever read the work of Mike Davis, there is no better time to start than now and City of Quartz is a good place to start.

I'm joined by Jacob Mathias (No#1 ITC Ogor Mawtribes '22) to give his early thoughts on the updated battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

I'm joined by Kuba Kostrubiec (No#1 TSN for Lumineth Realm-Lords GHB21 & Team Poland at AoS Worlds '22) to give his early thoughts on the updated Lumineth Realm-Lords battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

I'm joined by Robbie 'Bear' Steinbring (#1 ITC for Sons of Behemat) to give his early thoughts on the updated Sons of Behemat battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

In this video I preview the new Ogor Mawtribes battletome and will focus on allegiance abilities, enhancements, sub-allegiance, spells & prayer lore, grand strategies, battle tactics, point changes, core battalions and key warscroll changes. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.

In this video I preview the new Slaves to Darkness battletome and will focus on allegiance abilities, enhancements, sub-allegiance, spells, ensorcelled banners, grand strategies, battle tactics, point changes, core battalions and key warscroll changes. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.

I'm joined by Kaleb Walters (#1 ITC for Disciples of Tzeentch & Top 8 finalist at NOVA Open ‘22) to give his early thoughts on the updated Disciples of Tzeentch battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/DorkDomGaming

I'm joined by Matt Trown of  @Age Of Something  to recap the Bathurst GT 2022 Age of Sigmar tournament that we attended. Age of Something YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AgeOfSomething

I'm joined by Jacob Brandon (Top 8 at NOVA Open ‘22 with Skaven) to talk about the 2022 Skaven battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

I'm joined by Chris Johnson who recently went 4-1 at the NOVA Open '22 to talk about Soulblight Gravelords in 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

I'm joined by Nicholas "Scooter" Walters who recently went 5-0 at the NOVA Open '22 to talk about Ironjawz / Orruk Warclans in 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

In this video I preview the new Lumineth Realm-Lords 2022 battletome and will focus on allegiance abilities, enhancements, sub-allegiance tribes grand strategies, battle tactics, point changes, core battalions and key warscroll changes. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.

In this video I preview the new Sons of Behemat 2022 battletome and will focus on allegiance abilities, enhancements, sub-allegiance tribes grand strategies, battle tactics, point changes, core battalions and key warscroll changes. This battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.

Enhance your ability to trust and believe in your relationship with some advice from none other than Shaun and his husband, Scott, on their 10-year wedding anniversary. They discuss how their relationship has grown over the years, bringing kids into the world together, and present some tools we can all use to help strengthen our own relationships and lives. Don't miss Shauntervention Arizona! https://shauntacademy.com/shauntliveWine night after dark begins 10/14/22 - https://www.shauntacademy.com/winenightFollow along @trustandbelievepod on Instagram for all of the latest updates! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm joined by NashCon Tournament Organisers David Griffin (@NashofSigmar) & Anthony Pulcastro (@crazyhorse1321) to talk about running a memorable tournament. NashCon has a great reputation in the community so I want to learn what makes it great and how we can improve our event experiences.

I'm joined by Nick Rau who recently went 4-1 at the NOVA Open '22 to talk about Cities of Sigmar in 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Lots has happened in the Cities of Sigmar between changes to Living City, the addition of a Witch Hunter warband and a shifting meta... so how does Nick build a list with Sigmars finest?

Preview Part 2: Disciples of Tzeentch warscroll changes and matched play points. In this video I'm going to focus on the changes on the Disciples of Tzeentch warscroll changes as well as the matched play points. The Disciples of Tzeentch battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.

I'm joined by Aaron Newbom (5-0 at Old Town Throwdown '22) about the Big Waaagh! combo soup of Ironjawz, Kruleboyz & Bonesplitterz in 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Aaron is calling down the WAAAGGGHHH, lifting his wurgog prophet mask, and sharing faction insights. @aaron_newbom on Twitter

Preview Part 1: Disciples of Tzeentch allegiance and enhancements. In this video I'm going to focus on the Tzeentch allegiance abilities, spells, artefacts, sub-factions, grand strategies, battle tactics battalion. The Disciples of Tzeentch battletome was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.

I'm joined by Laurie Huggett-Wilde to talk about the 2022 Sylvaneth battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. LHW has walked the spirit paths through the wyldwoods to share his forest wisdom. @lhwaos on Twitter If you watch this video in the future, know that this has been recorded pre-FAQ and some things discussed may have been clarified or updated.

I'm joined by Peter Qrkowski (@PeterQrkowski) of AoS Worlds Team Poland '22 to talk about the 2022 Daughters of Khaine battletome for 3rd edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Peter has taken a slip of witchbrew and will share how he is getting the most out of the new tome. @PeterQrkowski on Twitter If you watch this video in the future, know that this has been recorded pre-FAQ and some things discussed may have been clarified or updated.

With questions chosen by you, our listeners, on today's show Shaun is running through these questions to help you learn and know more about Scott, the two of them and their relationship together!Questions such as:How long have you been together?What do you admire about your partner the most?Does Scott have any tattoos?How awesome is it to be married to Shaun?What to do it someone doesn't agree with your mate choicesWhat are some traits of Shaun's you hope your children get?What was the first feeling you felt when you met one another? Some things that you would tell your younger selfWhat do you do for a moment of peace when things get crazy?Follow along @trustandbelievepod on Instagram for all of the latest updatesPlease take a moment to Review The Trust and Believe Podcast here! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.