Podcast appearances and mentions of tiffany smiley

On today's episode of The Ultimate Assist, John Stockton welcomes political outsider and veteran advocate Tiffany Smiley—a former nurse who stepped into battle with the VA, the media, and the Washington establishment after her husband was blinded in Iraq. Smiley shares how that life-altering moment launched her into public service, her controversial stance on Covid lockdowns and mandates, and the dark truths she uncovered while running for U.S. Senate. From government overreach to insider corruption and the broken media landscape, Tiffany pulls no punches. This is a fearless look at how real change starts far from Capitol Hill—with ordinary Americans who refuse to comply.

A staggering amount of Washington babies are testing positive for drugs. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today on a case that has potentially significant implications for religious liberty. Elizabeth Warren had a very awkward exchange when a podcaster confronted her about past comments she made about Joe Biden’s mental state. // LongForm: GUEST: Former Washington Senate Candidate Tiffany Smiley on the State Supreme Court ruling in Spokane, trans athletes in girls sports, and Washington’s budget crisis. // Quick Hit: A Texas man who allegedly threatened Kristi Noem and ICE Agents will remain in jail. CNN’s Scott Jennings embarrassed Tiffany Cross.

A staggering amount of Washington babies are testing positive for drugs. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today on a case that has potentially significant implications for religious liberty. Elizabeth Warren had a very awkward exchange when a podcaster confronted her about past comments she made about Joe Biden’s mental state. // LongForm: GUEST: Former Washington Senate Candidate Tiffany Smiley on the State Supreme Court ruling in Spokane, trans athletes in girls sports, and Washington’s budget crisis. // Quick Hit: A left-wing prosecutor in Minnesota let an alleged Tesla vandal off the hook.  

President Trump touted his accomplishments during his first six weeks in office during his address on Tuesday to Congress, in a speech that also highlighted the glaring political divide among Americans. Tiffany Smiley, a former U.S. Senate candidate in Washington state, and Jamelle Bouie, a columnist for The New York Times, join Amna Nawaz for some perspective. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Tiffany Smiley, former candidate for Congress for Washington State, joins us with her insights on the ‘resistance' in Washington State, including the parental rights amendments and the head of public schools saying boys in girls' sports is a civil rights issue, while Gov. Tony Evers is erasing women. A lively conversation!

Washington Libs Go For The Kids with Tiffany Smiley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Washington Libs Go For The Kids with Tiffany Smiley.

Pete Hegseth faces confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, Special Counsel Weiss blasts Biden in final Hunter prosecution report, Senator Markwayne Mullin, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Lunam, former Navy Seal Bill Brown and Tiffany Smiley will join the show. JOIN The Benny Brigade: https://www.bennyjohnson.com/brigade Check Out Our Partners: American Financing: Save with https://www.americanfinancing.net/benny NMLS: 182334, http://www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org Patriot Mobile: Go to https://www.PatriotMobile.com/Benny and get A FREE MONTH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On CNN's State of the Union, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sits down with Kasie Hunt to talk about the recent Syrian rebel offensive and the newly brokered cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah. Then, Republican Congressman Mike Lawler joins Kasie to discuss Trump's FBI director pick, Kash Patel, and House Republican's slim majority. Next, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin talks with Kasie about the implications of having Patel lead the FBI, as well as the end of the federal January 6 criminal case against Donald Trump. Finally, CNN Political Commentators Brad Todd, Ashley Allison, Kate Bedingfield, and Republican strategist Tiffany Smiley join Kasie to talk about Patel's nomination and Elon Musk's role in Trump's future administration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join me for a one-on-one discussion with pollster, Brett Loyd, of the Independent Center.

What’s Trending: Kamala Harris is now copying Donald Trump’s policy proposals and claiming them for her own. A beloved Asian elephant at Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo was euthanized after almost 30 years.  Jerrod Sessler breaks down his primary win and whether or not Tiffany Smiley supporters will break for him. // Big Local: In Tacoma, an Army Ranger saved a man from a burning car. The authorities in Pierce County have arrested a 15-year-old in connection with a murder in Parkland. The owner of a Parkland coffee stand was robbed at gunpoint. // A new study finds that attractive people live longer than ugly people.

Are you facing unforeseen and overwhelming obstacles in your life? Scotty and Tiffany Smiley offer encouragement and hope on how to discover purpose in adversity. (J2541)

Today Monica offers a unique take on the absolute panic on the Left as it dawns on them that they may have to pay for their crimes. She also discusses the radicalism of Attorney General Merrick Garland in historical context, as well as the imminent terror threat caused by Biden’s no border policy. Monica also talks with Washington state Congressional candidate Tiffany Smiley about running on America First in a deep blue state - and how to win. Birch Gold: Text MONICA to 989898 and get your free infokit on gold    

Today Monica offers a unique take on the absolute panic on the Left as it dawns on them that they may have to pay for their crimes. She also discusses the radicalism of Attorney General Merrick Garland in historical context, as well as the imminent terror threat caused by Biden’s no border policy. Monica also talks with Washington state Congressional candidate Tiffany Smiley about running on America First in a deep blue state - and how to win. Birch Gold: Text MONICA to 989898 and get your free infokit on gold    

Country singer John Rich, radio host Joe Piscopo, and Washington GOP congressional candidate Tiffany Smiley join John Solomon to discuss the state of patriotism today, from fraternity brothers at UNC to the “old days” in New York to advocating for veterans.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rich talks about this week's Trump rally in the Bronx, as well as President Biden's efforts to lower gas prices by releasing more oil from strategic reserves, with Dennis Kneale, former managing editor at Forbes and host of the "What's Bugging Me" podcast. Next, we meet Tiffany Smiley, a candidate for Congress in the state of Washington who became an advocate for military veterans after her husband was blinded in a bomb attack nearly 20 years ago. Then, a conversation with Dr. Jared Frederick, co-author of "Into The Cold Blue: My World War II Journeys with the Mighty Eighth Air Force." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What’s Trending: Dave Reichert gave an interview with KING 5 last night in which he said he was “disappointed” in the stunt to put two more Bob Fergusons on the ballot this November. // LongForm: GUEST: Rep. Dan Newhouse responds to Tiffany Smiley jumping into the race.  // The Quick Hit: The King County Recorder is embroiled in a major scandal after it was revealed they misused millions of dollars in funds.

What’s Trending: An amendment that would have made women’s flag football a state-sanctioned high school sport, was rejected by the WIAA. Seattle is considering closing dozens of public schools. A new bill would ban AI being used on political campaings. // LongForm: GUEST: Rep. Dan Newhouse responds to Tiffany Smiley jumping into the race.  // The Quick Hit: The King County Recorder is embroiled in a major scandal after it was revealed they misused millions of dollars in funds.

Could Republicans scoop up seats in a Blue State near you? Based on the unpopularity of the Democrat/Biden plan, polls are showing voters want change and want it badly.Further, they don't just want wimpy Republicans who will go along with the swamp. Voters are DEMANDING America First, patriotic leaders who aren't in it for the special interests, but to serve the American people.One of those patriots is Tiffany Smiley, currently running in Washington's fourth district. After her husband was wounded serving our nation overseas, Smiley was confronted with the incompetence and corruption of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Enraged by the poor quality of her husband's care, Smiley swore to fight for our heroes and drain the swamp that caused this mess, creature by creature.On an epic Sara Carter Show, Smiley and Sara discuss the issues that voters are thinking about as they head to the polls. Smiley highlights the federal government's attack on Washington dams, the open border, fentanyl, and wokeness in American classrooms. Smiley ends with an impassioned plea for concerned parents to get involved and fight for their country before it is too late.Sara also shares a clip from a recent Oxford Union debate on populism and why your vote isn't evil or shameful: It is actually something to celebrateTime Stamps:0:05 Our vote is not the problem5:10 What it means to be a patriot…12:19 Tiffany Smiley joins the show17:08 Are Republicans divided?19:14 Real issues in the district21:15 Seeing incompetence firsthand23:24 Fentanyl epidemic26:34 Fighting woke culture in school30:24 Talking to high school kids32:27 Are suburban women speaking up?34:21 How to helpPlease visit our great sponsors:Goldcohttp://saralikesgold.comGet your free gold kit today and learn how to get $10,000 in bonus silver. My Pillowhttps://mypillow.comUse code CARTER for $25 prices and free shipping on orders over $75.Visit: https://www.tiffanysmileyforcongress.com/

Jimmy Failla is heading down to Florida for a weekend of stand-up shows, so we called up former Congressman Jason Chaffetz and asked him to pinch-hit for him on Fox Across America. Jason is joined by his old colleague, former New York Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin, who talks about the absurdity of what's been allowed to take place on college campuses throughout the country. Criminal defense attorney David Gelman sheds light on the irrelevance of former adult film star Stormy Daniels' testimony in former President Trump's hush money trial in Manhattan. Criminal defense attorney Lexie Rigden tries to make sense of the case the prosecution is attempting to lay out in this Trump trial, and explains why it would be a bad idea for the former president to take the stand. Chairman of the Republican National Committee Michael Whatley discusses the importance of having presidential debates this fall before early voting begins. Former GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Washington State Tiffany Smiley tells Jason what has prompted her to now run for Congress. Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Dan Meuser slams President Biden for his recent threat to withhold aid to Israel if the nation moves ahead with plans to invade the city of Rafah. Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich shares his thoughts on the Biden administration's callous indifference toward the crisis at the U.S. Southern border. Co-host of “The Big Money Show” Taylor Riggs explains why ‘shrinkflation' has become more prevalent in the U.S. PLUS, North Carolina Republican Congressman Greg Murphy talks about how Biden should be focused on bringing American hostages held captive by Hamas back home, not caving to the demands of anti-Israel protesters on college campuses. [00:00:00] Lee Zeldin [00:14:40] David Gelman [00:18:25] Lexie Rigden [00:36:50] RNC Chairman Michael Whatley [00:48:53] Tiffany Smiley [00:55:20] Rep. Dan Meuser [01:07:12] Mark Brnovich [01:13:35] Taylor Riggs [01:32:07] Rep. Greg Murphy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FAA opens another investigation into Boeing, Tiffany Smiley is running for Congress, and PSE says it could shut off power during wildfires. It's our daily roundup of top stories from the KUOW newsroom, with host Paige Browning.We can only make the KUOW Newsroom Podcast because listeners support us. You have the power! Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/KUOWNewsroomWe want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

What’s Trending: UW activists want to ban Charlie Kirk event to protect First Amendment rights. UW Professor Stuart Reges returned to the antisemitic encampment and was once again harassed. Hamas has attempted to win the PR war by saying they have agreed to a ceasefire. // Tiffany Smiley has announced she will primary Republican incumbent Dan Newhouse in Washington’s 4th congressional district. Pramila Jayapal spent the weekend in Oregon campaigning for her sister’s congressional bid. // Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said that the company should go back to focusing on coffee instead of other products.

What’s Trending: Antisemitism continues to run rampant at college campuses. Is anyone going to do anything about it? Florida Congressman Carlos Gimenez says Biden’s wavering support of Israel is fomenting antisemitism. Trump says many of the protesters are backed by Biden’s donors. A new FAA investigation found that employees working on Boeing’s 787 falsified inspection records. // LongForm: GUEST: Tiffany Smiley announced that she’s running for Congress. // The Quick Hit: Jen Psaki says Biden should do more media hits with The View and Howard Stern. Nancy Mace blats Marjorie Taylor Greene on her bid to oust Speaker Mike Johnson. Bill Maher tells Jerry Seinfeld that he’s not going to crazy if Trump wins again.

This episode was recorded on June 22nd, 2023. Welcome to the podcast, where we are honored to host Tiffany Smiley, a nurse and advocate whose life transformed when her husband, Scotty Smiley, was blinded in Iraq. Tiffany emerged as Scotty's unwavering advocate, ensuring his dreams and proper care, resulting in him becoming the first blind active duty officer in the U.S. Tiffany has since become a veterans advocate, collaborating across political lines to reform the VA and support catastrophically injured individuals and their caregivers. Tiffany's dedication to service extended to a U.S. Senate run in Washington, where she champions conservative values of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and individual freedom. Join us as we explore Tiffany's extraordinary journey and gain insights into her experiences and lessons learned. Find more from Tiffany: PAC website: http://www.endeavorpac.com c4 website: https://www.rescuingtheamericandream.org/.   Connect with me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tammypetersonpodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TammyPetersonPodcast TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tammypetersonpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tammy1Peterson Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TammyPetersonPodcast  

On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Andrew Villeneuve, founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute! Crystal learns about the Northwest Progressive Institute's (NPI) work to advance progressive policies through their focuses on research and advocacy, what's covered in NPI's long form blog The Cascadia Advocate, and the importance of reframing in progressive politics. Andrew then describes how six initiatives bankrolled by a disgruntled wealthy Republican are designed to cause a lot of damage to Washington, how NPI's careful approach to polling has led to successful results, and why NPI is advocating for even-year elections to improve voter engagement and participation. 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 Andrew Villeneuve and the Northwest Progressive Institute at @nwprogressive and https://www.nwprogressive.org/   Resources Northwest Progressive Institute   The Cascadia Advocate | Northwest Progressive Institute   Stop Greed   “Initiative 2113 (allowing dangerous police pursuits to resume) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Reject Initiative 2113 to keep reasonable safeguards on police pursuits in place” by Sonia Joseph and Martina Morris for The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2117 (repealing Washington's Climate Commitment Act) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2081 (jeopardizing student privacy) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2109 (repealing billions of dollars in education funding) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2111 (prohibiting fair taxation based on ability to pay) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2124 (sabotaging the Washington Cares Fund) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   Coalition for Even-Year Elections   SB 5723 - Giving cities and towns the freedom to switch their general elections to even-numbered years.   HB 1932 - Shifting general elections for local governments to even-numbered years to increase voter participation.   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, today I'm thrilled to be welcoming Andrew Villeneuve from Northwest Progressive Institute to the show. Welcome! [00:01:00] Andrew Villeneuve: Thanks, Crystal. [00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Happy to have you here. For those who may not be aware, Andrew is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He's worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. A recent focus of his research and advocacy work has been electoral reform. With Senator Patty Kuderer, Andrew and the NPI team developed the legislation that successfully removed Tim Eyman's push polls from Washington ballots - I'm a huge fan of that legislation. And with Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Andrew and the NPI team developed the charter amendment that 69% of King County voters approved in 2022 to move elections for the Executive, Assessor, Elections Director, and Council to even-numbered years - here's to also doing that statewide for municipalities - when voter turnout is much higher in even-numbered years and more diverse. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Welcome - really excited to have you on and talk about everything that you're doing. [00:02:15] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here and can't wait to dive into the conversation. [00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So starting off, what is the Northwest Progressive Institute and what do you do? [00:02:25] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, the Northwest Progressive Institute is a 501(c)(4) strategy center that works to lift up everybody. We try our hardest every day to advance progressive policies that will enable people to lead happier, healthier, more prosperous lives. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary last August, and we have had a lot of success moving policy over the last two decades. We're particularly adept at using research to show people why we need a particular policy - so that could be health care, it could be environmental protection, it could be more education funding. We're not confined to just one issue - we think across issues. But that does mean, of course, that we see all of the places where we're held back. So we look for areas where we can move issues forward simultaneously and that has led us to do a lot of work on tax reform, election reform, and media reform - because those three issues are connected to every other issue. So that's why you'll see us doing a lot of work on fair revenue. on trying to address media concentration, and trying to make sure that elections are fair. Because ultimately, those things do have results, impacts for environmental protection, healthcare, education, foreign policy, every other issue that we care about. I think we're all frustrated by sometimes the slow pace of progress, and so any area where we can link up with another area and make progress at the same time - that's a real opportunity for us. And there's actually a term for this - it's called "strategic initiatives" - comes from George Lakoff. We're big fans of his work. We also do a lot of efforts on reframing. We try to help people understand what frames are and how to use successful arguments so that you don't fall into the trap of debating the other side on their terms. Because we all know when that happens, the best you can do is lose an argument gracefully - you're not going to win the argument. Reframing is key, and we believe that everybody who works in progressive politics needs to understand how to do reframing. So we're always trying to help people figure out - okay, how do we use words that evoke our values and our policy directions and not the other sides'? So that's sort of a taste of what we do. Of course, we could talk for hours about all the specific projects we've worked on, but that is an overall view of what NPI does. [00:04:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also under the NPI umbrella is The Cascadia Advocate, a publication that I recommend everyone listening follow - very informative. What has been your approach with The Cascadia Advocate and what do you cover? [00:04:55] Andrew Villeneuve: The Cascadia Advocate is a long form blog. It was founded in 2004 in March, and so that means it's going to be celebrating its 20th anniversary itself this spring. And what it is - is it's a place where you can find progressive commentary, sometimes even breaking news, on a daily basis. So if you want to find out why we should pass a particular bill in the legislature, or you want to find out what's happening with Bob Ferguson's latest lawsuit - for example, he just sued Kroger and Albertsons because they're trying to merge and create a giant grocery store chain - we cover those things on The Cascadia Advocate. We publish guest essays. We cover a lot of things that the mass media cover - so we'll sometimes critique how they're covering things, but we'll also provide our own original commentary in addition to just critiquing others' coverage. There's a whole mix there. So you're going to find research findings, media criticism, you're going to find book reviews, you're going to find documentary reviews. You're going to find Last Week in Congress, which is our almost weekly recap - weekly when Congress is in session - of how our delegation voted. So this is a place where you can see Washington, Oregon, and Idaho's Congressional delegations' votes. And that's really helpful. If you're too busy to watch C-SPAN every day - I know I don't have that kind of time because I'm trying to move the ball forward on progressive policy - but I do want to know how our lawmakers voted, I want to be informed. And I imagine a lot of other people listening to Hacks & Wonks would also like to be informed about what our delegation is doing. And so Last Week in Congress is something you can read on Sunday morning - takes a few minutes of your time to skim it. And at the end of that skim, you're going to learn a lot more about how our delegation voted that week. So those are some of the things you're going to find on the Cascadia Advocate. I think it's a great publication. It's well-established and we have a superb code of ethics and style guide and commenting guidelines to make sure that we're putting out a professional product. So we're very proud of that. And the name is right there - Advocate, right? So we're not hiding what we're about. You're not going to have to worry - Well, what's their agenda? How will I know what it is? Because we're going to tell you what our agenda is. We're going to be very upfront about that. But we're also going to be fair, even to those that we criticize. So whether that's Tim Eyman - quoting his emails, letting people know what he said - we're going to tell people what the other side is saying. We're not just going to say what we're saying. But we're also going to be very clear - this is what we believe and this is what we're fighting for. And it's not going to be a mystery to any reader what that is. [00:07:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - I appreciate it. And as many have seen, have shared links in our episode notes many times - recommend that as part of a healthy local media diet. Now, I want to talk about some issues that you've been engaged with since their inception. One of the big ones that we're going to be hearing about, voting on later on this year are the six statewide initiatives coming in 2024 in Washington state. Can you tell us about these and why they're so important to pay attention to? [00:07:42] Andrew Villeneuve: Definitely. So very early this year, a group called Let's Go Washington, which is funded by a hedge fund manager and millionaire named Brian Heywood - he lives not far from me out here on the Eastside in Redmond - east side of King County, that is. He decided that he was going to go all-in on trying to get the right wing back into the initiative business. For those who have been in Washington for a while, the name Tim Eyman is probably familiar to you - Tim Eyman, for years, has been running initiatives to cut taxes and wreck government in Washington state. His agenda is to drown government in a bathtub, so it's basically Grover Norquist at the state level. And Brian Heywood has come along here after several years of Tim Eyman being out of the initiative business. Eyman's last initiative qualified for the ballot in 2018, and it appeared on the ballot in 2019. And despite our best efforts - it had a really dishonest ballot title that it was hard to educate voters what that was, so even though we raised a lot of money and ran the best No campaign that we could - when I say we, I mean the coalition Keep Washington Rolling that formed - we weren't able to defeat that last Eyman initiative. But we were able to go to court after the election was over and get it struck down. So it never went into effect, - which averted a massive transit and transportation catastrophe, I might add. So fast forward a few years, Eyman has been in trouble with the law because he just blatantly disregards public disclosure law, doesn't care about following it. And he also was double-crossing his own supporters - they just weren't getting the truth from him. And so that's why his initiative factory fell apart - when you're lying and cheating all the time, eventually that's going to catch up with you, and that's what happened to Tim Eyman. So he had to declare bankruptcy. The state won a big judgment against him, and he's been out of the initiative business. But Brian Heywood has come in - and Brian Heywood, unlike Tim Eyman, has a lot of money. And he doesn't need to turn to anyone else unless he feels that he has to, but he hasn't done that yet - he's mainly relied on his own money. So he decided that not only was he going to try to qualify a tax-cutting initiative, but he was going to take aim at all these other laws that the Democratic majorities have passed that he doesn't like. So there's six initiatives that he wanted to get on the ballot this last year, so 2023, that are now we're going to be on the ballot in 2024. And that's because these are initiatives to the legislature, so they go to the House and the Senate first. That's something you can do in Washington - you can either submit initiatives directly to the people, or you can submit them to the legislature. And for those who don't know, an initiative is just a proposed law. So it's like a bill of the people - it goes before the legislature. If the legislature doesn't adopt it, then it goes to the people by default. So an initiative - again, just like a bill, but the people get to vote on it, and it comes from a citizen petition. So these initiatives - last year there was going to be 11, but they pared them down to 6. It's kind of like making up for lost time - We weren't on the ballot for several years, so now we're just going to do a whole bunch of initiatives. The first one that they're doing would repeal the Climate Commitment Act. The second one would repeal our capital gains tax on the wealthy, which is funding education and childcare. The third one would repeal the WA Cares Fund, partly by letting people opt out. Then they have one that would roll back our reasonable safeguards on police pursuits. They have one that would establish a parental notification scheme, which is intended, I think, to jeopardize the health of trans youth in part - which I don't like that at all. And then they have one to ban income taxes. And their definition of income tax is anything that falls under this really broad, adjusted gross income umbrella, which could potentially jeopardize the capital gains tax and other sources of funding for things that are really important in our state. So these six initiatives collectively would cause a lot of damage to Washington. We're talking about billions of dollars in lost revenue. We're talking about good policies being repealed. We're talking about a lot of destruction. And so we're working very hard to defeat these initiatives. We've created a PAC that will oppose all of them. And that joint effort is called Stop Greed - to oppose all six initiatives. We have a website - stopgreed.org - and the operation is already up and running. You can donate, you can sign up for the mailing list. If you want to get involved in stopping the six initiatives, we are ready to have your help because this is going to be a year-long effort. We're going to be working with a lot of other allies, organizations that also share our values to protect Washington. But these six initiatives - the legislature can't reject them and then just have them disappear, they're going to go to the ballots. So we have to be ready for that big fight in November. And they're going to appear at the top - so ahead of president, ahead of governor, ahead of everything else that we're thinking about as activists and civic leaders and whatnot. This is going to be the very first thing that people see underneath those instructions - is these six initiatives. So we're getting ready. And again, we invite others to join us in taking on this challenge so we can protect Washington. [00:12:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this is going to be one of the biggest battles that we've seen in quite some time in Washington state. Those six initiatives that you covered - for those who may not be familiar with Washington Cares, it's basically long-term care insurance that's state provided - trying to meet a need that is massive. Many studies have showed more than half of people over age 60 are going to need long-term care insurance at some point in time for the remainder of their lives. This often is not covered by health insurance, and it is something that has bankrupted people, has left people just in very precarious positions. As we age, as our parents age, this is something that is top of mind for a lot of people. And although no one loves an extra thing to worry about, having the confidence that when you or your family member or friend is in need of care, that they will have access to it is a very, very important thing. In addition to all these other ones - this is our landmark climate legislation, which I've definitely had some criticisms of, but do not support a repeal. I support fixing the areas that need to be fixed. And I think we can't ignore these things. These are some of the biggest pieces of legislation that we have passed that will equip us to deal with the challenges that we face today and that we're going to be facing tomorrow. So really appreciate the effort, the coordinated effort, to make sure that there is a vigorous defense against these. Now, looking at what's going to be involved to beat these - looking at what these ballot initiatives may serve, even beyond their individual goals, is that a lot of times people look to ballot initiatives to motivate a base and to turn out a base. And certainly in Washington state - statewide, Republicans have been not having a good time, have been reaping the consequences of being out-of-touch policy-wise - whether it's on abortion rights to privacy rights, to their views on taxation and things that serve to defund and dismantle our government. What do you see as threats beyond these initiatives individually, but the threat of a motivated conservative voting base here in Washington state in November 2024? [00:14:52] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I think they're tired of Democratic rule. So they're going to be motivated to turnout because they probably will have Dave Reichert as their gubernatorial candidate - we can't really say nominee because Washington doesn't have a real primary, so we don't nominate people for the general election ballot like they would in other states. But they probably will have Reichert as their candidate, their standard bearer. And that is their best chance to get the governor's mansion since 2012 when Rob McKenna was their candidate in the general election - so I think they're going to be motivated for that reason. I also think the six initiatives are designed to turnout right-wing voters as much as possible - people who are disenchanted with Washington's direction, not happy that we're going a different way than Texas and Florida and Idaho and other states that are Republican-controlled. And so I think that that's an opportunity for them, but it's also an opportunity for us. There can be a backlash to a backlash. And I'm not sure if Brian Heywood and Jim Walsh, who's - by the way, Jim Walsh, the state Republican Party Chair, is the sponsor of all six initiatives. So you've got Heywood and Walsh together - Heywood's the funder, Walsh is the sponsor. I'm not sure if they realize that backlashes can have backlashes. We saw this after Trump came in - there was a backlash to Democratic rule, but then there was a backlash to Trump's electoral college victory. And we saw that play out over the course of four years. It was really, really strong. What happened? You had this mammoth effort to correct what was going on, to have Democrats respond, to say - Okay, well, we're no longer just going to sort of lay down, right? We're going to actually work to turn out people. So we had this huge effort to flip the Washington State Senate in 2017. Then we had this big effort to win the midterms, which saw Democrats get control of the House. And then there was the effort to get the White House back, which also allowed us to get the U.S. Senate back, too, with that runoff in Georgia. So you think about all those sequence of events - how much had to align in order for all those goals to be realized? Because in 2017, Republicans had complete control of the federal government - they had it all - they had the White House, they had the House, they had the Senate, they had the Supreme Court. Democrats had nothing. All we had was some resistance in the states, basically. And we went from that - in the span of three years, we were able to take back the two legislative houses and the White House. We don't have the Supreme Court, but we were able to get the others. And the majorities were narrow, but they were majorities, which meant that we could actually work on progressive policy again. So we were able to pass the American Rescue Plan, CHIPS and Science, we were able to do the infrastructure law. We were able to do a whole bunch of other policies as well - bipartisan postal reform. We did electoral reform to deal with election certification so that we wouldn't have another January 6th. We got marriage equality put in. I mean, there are so many things that happened - I don't know if people remember all those accomplishments. So you think about what we've done federally. And in Washington State, we've been doing the same thing - marching forward - all these laws that Heywood and Walsh want to repeal. So I think they're looking at this as an opportunity to say - It's time to roll back the clock. And that is an opportunity for them. But the opportunity for us is to say - Nope, we're not going to roll back the clock. We're going to keep moving forward. I think doing six initiatives is risky for them. Because one initiative, maybe people aren't going to - they're just not going to rouse themselves as much to care. But six seems like a four-alarm fire for those who are watching from our side. And so it's been really easy for me to - when I explain what's going on, when I make the pitch that we need to stop the initiatives, people are receptive right away. It's not difficult to get people roused and ready to go because they understand six initiatives targeting six progressive accomplishments, whether it's comprehensive sex ed or the climate law or the capital gains tax that's funding education - these are things that we've worked hard on that we're proud of. We don't want them all to be wiped away in the span of one election. So it's an organizing opportunity for us as much as it is for them. And that's the downside of deciding to do so much at one time - is that you're presenting your opponents with an opportunity to do organizing as well, that's sort of a banner opportunity. And they just have to live with that decision - that's the strategy they chose, and so we get to make the most of it from our side. [00:18:55] Crystal Fincher: We've been seeing a number of polls - certainly a lot of discourse and reaction - to whether it's the conflict between Israel and Palestine, whether it is the failure to address climate change, healthcare kind of globally, nationally, to a degree that seems is necessary to actually make a dent in these issues. Do you see motivation in the base, especially the younger progressive voters, as being an issue that may be problematic come November? Or do you think that there are things that can be done to mitigate that, or that it won't be an issue? [00:19:33] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, it's hard to know the future. I always tell people I don't do predictions because predictions are fraught with danger. It's just - you can easily be wrong, and people are convinced that they know what's going on. I take the view that it's hard to know what's going on and that's why we have to do research, so that we can try to understand it better. And I also warn people against the danger of drawing too many conclusions based on what you've seen on Twitter, which Elon Musk now calls X, or Facebook or TikTok or any of those platforms. Those are not representative of public opinion, not even young people's opinions. There are many people who just aren't there. So you can obviously follow some vocal voices and you can see what they're saying - there's nothing wrong with that, checking in - but don't sweep to conclusions about what those folks are saying and say - Oh, well, all Gen Zers are upset about what's happening here or there, because that's the prevailing sentiment on TikTok, right - that's a mistake. That can give you clues as to what people are thinking and feeling, but it's not where you want to draw your conclusions. And polling helps to get a little broader perspective, but it's still a sample. So we do a ton of polling at NPI. One of the things we're known for is our research. And I caution people - you can do enormous amounts of research and still only see a fraction of what you want to see. There's so much you could look at in terms of public opinion, like this issue, that issue, this race, that race - so many detailed, specific follow-up questions you could ask. And in a given survey, there's going to be limitations - you can only ask about so much. We try to do a lot of insightful research, but I'm mindful of the limitations of public opinion research. In the end, you come into every election somewhat unprepared because you don't exactly know what's out there, right? So that's why what I call big organizing, which is a term that comes out of the Sanders campaign and other efforts - big organizing is this idea that we're going to talk to everybody as often as we can, which is hard because how do you have all those conversations? Well, it involves canvassing, it involves actually going out there and doing neighborhood meetings and doing that organizing - having those discussions with people. It turns out even people who are unhappy with politics want to talk politics when they get the right settings - you got a canvasser, who's very understanding, going to somebody's door, having a half an hour long conversation. People actually feel better after they've had that conversation - they're very appreciative that somebody wants to hear from them. So as a movement, I think we need to go out there and have those conversations with folks. And we need to make sure that if people live in areas that are hard to doorbell, that we're finding other ways to reach them. But that all requires investment - primarily time. Money, too, but primarily time because someone's got to go do that organizing, that outreach work. And they've got to be able to go to the door or go to that other setting where they're going to have that conversation. So in terms of getting young people plugged in and engaged, I think it's going to be tough. I think there's a lot of distractions in our culture now, it's very hard to get people to decide - yes, I'm going to vote, I'm going to take the time to do that - especially if you live in a state where they've made voting hard, like Georgia. Washington - we're blessed, because voting is easier here than anywhere else in the country. But we see in odd years, it's still hard to get people to vote. That's why we're so big on even-year elections for local governments, because those even-numbered years, more young people come out. But we've just got to have a strategy for mobilizing people. It doesn't just happen on its own. You can't just sit back and go - Oh, well, we'll just hope that it works out. Nope. You don't let events shape you. You go out there and shape the events with a strategy. And so it's very important that as progressives, we don't just let the Biden campaign do the work. We don't just let the Democratic Party do the work and say - Well, they'll figure it out. We all have to be working together to figure out what the strategy is and then implement that strategy, to the extent that we can agree on what that strategy is going to be. So for those who are not involved in some kind of direct action organization, I would find one - I think that's worth doing. This is a year when democracy is on the line. So getting involved in some way - no matter what the outcome is in November, you're going to feel good that you invested some time in trying to mobilize and turn out young voters and get them to save democracy along with everybody else who's going to be voting. So that's my advice for folks who are listening - find an organization to plug into that's going to do something to help young voters get engaged in this election, turnout and vote, save democracy. Because there's only one way to do that - and that is to reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris, in my view - there's no other outcome that will allow us to make any progress on issues we care about, including trying to bring an end to the violence in the Middle East. What's happening in Gaza is terrible, but that's not going to get better if Donald Trump gets back in. [00:23:58] Crystal Fincher: Now, I want to talk about research - your polling. Local polling is hard - you hear that from a variety of polling organizations, we see it in results that have been really wonky in the past several years with surprising outcomes in several individual states. Polling on a smaller scale - smaller geographies, smaller communities - is a challenging thing. However, you've managed to do quite well at it. We've seen in your polling in the Seattle City Council elections, which looked straight on. You polled previously the Housing Levy, King County Conservation Futures Levy, Senate races, House races - were right on. And so I just want to talk a little bit about your approach and how you put those together, and why you feel like you're seeing better results locally than some other organizations. [00:24:54] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you for that. It starts with a rigorous commitment to the scientific method. One of the things that I think people don't understand about public opinion research is anyone can do it. You don't have to be an objective organization to do objective research. You can be subjective - and we are - but your research has to follow the scientific method if it's going to have any value. And what that basically comes down to is neutral questions asked of representative samples - that's the key. And actually, it's very hard to ask neutral questions of representative samples. The question writing part is particularly fraught with difficulty because there are so many ways to write a question that is loaded or biased and to use language that favors the agenda of the asker. Basically, writing a push poll is easy, writing a neutral poll is hard. And we've seen that over and over again, especially when I look at the work of our Republican friends across the aisle - Moore Information, Trafalgar - these firms are just, I can see their work product and I have deep questions about especially what they're not releasing because I know that what they are releasing is only a fraction of what they're actually asking. But when you ask a question - and you look at a group that does put out all of their work, like Future 42, which uses Echelon Insights, you read through their questionnaire and it's - okay, after the first four questions, which are so simple it's hard to get them wrong. After that, you start going to the rest of the questionnaire and it's biased. It's loaded. The questions are favoring conservative frames. So you're not going to find out what people think if you tell them what to think first - that's one of the cardinal rules that I tell my team all the time - Whatever the topic is, we have to get this question right because we're not going to learn what people think if we don't. You don't want to have worthless data come back. And that really means that you've got to think about - Okay, well, how are we presenting the issue? What are we going to say in the question? And a lot of the times what we'll do is, we'll say - Proponents are saying this and opponents are saying that. So that's one way you can do it. And you have to really go out there and you have to find their words, their frames - so you have to be fair to their perspective. Even if you don't like it, it doesn't matter. As a question writer, you want that perspective represented to the best of its ability, right? So if Rob McKenna has said that the capital gains tax is an income tax - it's an illegal, unconstitutional income tax that will kill jobs and wreck the economy. We're putting that whole thing into our question, because we want people to hear what it is that they're saying. And then we're going to put that up against our best arguments and see what wins. So we've done that and we found that our frames, our arguments beat their arguments. And that's good news. But we only learned that because we actually did a fair question. If we had just said - Oh, well, this is why the capital gains tax is great. What do you think about the capital gains tax? People are going to say it's great. And so we haven't really learned anything other than - yes, people respond to our question prompts in the way that we would want them to. But that doesn't really tell us what people have brought to the table in terms of their own opinions. So that's part of how we've been successful is - when we do polling, we're not trying to gin up some numbers for a particular cause or a candidate. We're not looking to get numbers that just reinforce the conclusion that we already reached. And I think a lot of consultants jump to conclusions, like at the beginning of a race, they'll say - Well, let me tell you how it's going to be. And our approach is we don't know how it's going to be - let's go out and get some data and see what people are thinking and feeling. And of course, we understand that whatever that data is, it's a snapshot in time and that the race could change. So like with the governor's race, we've been polling that and we're seeing some changes - Bob Ferguson is consolidating support, he's not as well known as people who are on the inside of politics might think he is. Nor is Dave Reichart, for that matter. People know who Jay Inslee is. They know who Joe Biden is. They know the top names in politics, but the attorney general is not the governor, and people don't know the attorney general as well as they know the governor. And they don't know Dave Reichert, as well as they know Jay Inslee either. So we're seeing in our polling, the candidates have an opportunity to introduce themselves to voters. And we know that if we ask a neutral question about anything, again, whether it's the governor's race or another race, then we're going to have hopefully an opportunity to find out where people are. And then presenting that data in a way that's responsible, not just dumping the numbers out there and letting people jump to their own conclusions about what do the numbers mean. Even if they were responsibly collected, I think responsible publication includes context for those numbers. What do the numbers mean? Why are the numbers the way they are? What's the explanation for that? So when we release a poll finding, we never just put the numbers out there, we never just dump a poll file out there for people to read. We always provide analysis - this is what we think the numbers mean. And you can read the analysis on The Cascadia Advocate - that's the vehicle for all the poll findings to be released. People, when they want to see our polling, we're going to give them an opportunity to really understand what we're thinking when we saw the numbers - Okay, this is our take. And we always tell people in those analyses - We don't know the future, this is suggestive, it's not predictive. And you should expect that there's a possibility that the poll is off. But, I will say in the 10 years we've been doing research polling, we've yet to have our results be contradicted by an election result. And that's just because we write the neutral questions. And then our pollsters, who I haven't talked about yet, but we work with three different pollsters. And they've all got a strong commitment to responsible fielding - building samples that actually look like the electorate. That's how you get results, too. It's not just the questions are good, but the fielding is appropriate - you're building those representative samples. And then you can hopefully get data that reflects the actual dynamic that's out there. And so when the election then occurs - if the polling has correctly captured the public sentiment that's out there, you should expect to see a correlation. It won't line up exactly. I've had people tell me - Well, your poll was off. The margin was this and your poll said it would be that. I'm like - Polls don't predict, so you shouldn't expect the margins to line up one-to-one or anything like that. But if a poll says such-and-such is ahead of their rival and they then go on to win the election, that's an indication that the poll did understand something about what's going on out there. So that's basically validation in my book. You're never going to get perfect alignment, like the poll has 54% and the candidate gets 54%, and it's off by maybe just a fraction of a decimal or something - that's not going to happen in polling, you don't expect that alignment. So I think that's why we've been successful is that commitment to the scientific method. And we're not going to deviate from that - we're just full steam ahead with that same commitment to excellence. [00:31:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I really appreciate you explaining that. I do think that is a big reason for why your polls have seemed to accurately capture public sentiment. And I appreciate you talking about - you can be a partisan organization and still poll accurately. In fact, it's really critical that the accuracy is there. I think there's this assumption that - Oh, it's a partisan organization - they just want something to confirm what they already believe, to tell them that what they want to happen is popular. And that is a recipe for disaster in the medium and long-term - that sets you up for thinking you're in a different situation than is realistic. And then you don't win campaigns, you don't win ballot initiatives - you have to accurately understand where the public is in order to do anything with that from a campaign perspective, which is really important. And I do see polls from the Chamber where reading through the poll - and I highly recommend every time there is a poll, especially from news organizations, I will say Cascadia Advocate does excellent poll analysis - but most articles and most publications that I see, I always find different things than are encapsulated in their poll write-up when I read the actual poll. Reading the actual poll is a really illuminating thing - and you can see questions asked in very leading ways, you can see one side's argument is presented and another isn't, or one is misrepresented. And those are really problematic things for a poll. Sometimes people do use polls - if they aren't really looking to get information - just as a marketing tactic. But that becomes pretty apparent when you're reading the poll, when you're seeing - they aren't really asking these questions to get informative answers about what the public believes and why. So I think that's been really illuminating. Looking forward, what do you plan on tracking? Are you going to be tracking the six initiatives? Are you going to be polling the statewide races? What is your plan for research? [00:33:13] Andrew Villeneuve: Yes, we're going to be doing all that. The governor's race - we have a commitment to the public that we're going to poll on the governor's race - and no matter what the data is, we're going to release it, that's our commitment. We've polled on the governor's race three times already this cycle. And we're going to do it three to four times again this year. At the end of the cycle, you're going to have gotten six to seven different findings from us - different seasons of data - which will tell the story of the governor's race. How did it start out and where does it kind of end up? When I say end up, I say "kind of" because - of course, the election happens after that last poll. So we're going to have election data soon after that final poll comes out in October and that data will tell us who wins the governor's race. And that's the final word. But until we have that election results, then polling will help us understand what could be happening out there - I say "could," because again, we don't know what is happening until people vote and the election data comes in and then tells us - Okay, this candidate's ahead of that candidate, this is the voices of millions of people. Polls can only give you a peek into what might be happening at the time - that's the best we can do because there's no real way - sometimes people will ask me about sample sizes. This is a fun inside bit of polling. So a lot of people are convinced that the larger a sample size, the better the poll is. Not so. A poll can be perfectly representative if the sample is just 300 or 400 voters - it's not the size of the sample that matters, it's how representative it is. If it reflects the electorate, then it's a good sample. If it is not representative of the electorate, you've got a problem. So you could have 10,000 voters in your sample, which would be huge, right? Nobody has samples that big. But if they're all progressive voters in Seattle, or if they're all Trump voters from somewhere in rural Washington - it's not representative of the electorate and the data's worthless. It can't tell you what's happening in a statewide race. So we'll be polling the governor's race. We'll be looking at Attorney General, we're going to look at U.S. President, we're going to look at U.S. Senate. We're going to look at basically all the competitive statewide races. In October, I expect that we'll have a poll result for every single statewide race. And there are so many that that's probably going to be the entire poll. We're not even going to be able to ask any policy questions because we're going to have six initiatives, possibly a few State Supreme Court races. We're going to have U.S. President. We're going to have U.S. Senate. We're going to have nine statewide executive department positions. Plus, we're going to have a generic question for Congress and legislature. So that's our poll - the whole poll is already written. I already know what's going to be in the poll because there's so much on the ballot this cycle that there's no room to ask about anything else. That's a lot of poll results to have to release. And it will take us some time to ship them all. We're not going to do it all in one day, that's for sure. Because I think what's responsible is to provide that analysis, as I said. So we're not going to do - Okay, here's the entire poll. Goodbye. Enjoy it. No, we're going to take the time to look at each of the results. And so that probably means it'll take us a whole week to talk about all the different poll results. And people are going to say - Why don't you release everything at once? I want to see it all. Well, because we want to give you the context. We want to give you our view on what's happening so that you understand the background, especially if you're not from here - if you're from another state, you're reading this polling, you want to know who are these people, what are the dynamics in this race, why is such-and-such ahead, what's the theory behind that. That context is going to be really helpful to you as a reader, so we're committed to providing it. [00:36:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And what polling firms do you work with? [00:36:30] Andrew Villeneuve: So there are three we work with. Public Policy Polling out of North Carolina is the one we started working with first - our relationship goes back over 10 years, and they've done excellent work for us. I'm particularly proud of our 2020 and 2022 polling because those are the two most recent even-year cycles. But in 2020, this was the first time that we went up and down the entire statewide ballot, including State Supreme Court races. And we're the only ones polling on State Supreme Court races. Nobody else does that, I'm especially proud that we do that. Probably this year we're going to poll on them - any that are contested, we'll do at least two rounds of polling - probably May and October. And you mentioned earlier that polling can be tough, especially at the state and local level. And one of the reasons it can be tough is because a lot of people will tell you they're not sure who they're voting for. If the race isn't partisan, then you can have an enormous number of people who say they're not sure - sometimes over 80%. And that can make it very difficult. But you still learn something when you ask people about their opinions - because you'll find out people's familiarity with the candidates, and you will also discover if there's been a change. So like in 2020, we said - Okay, we've learned that no one else polls State Supreme Court races, so let's poll them repeatedly because then at least we'll have data of our own to compare to from different seasons. So in May, we polled them and then we polled them again in October. And that was really valuable to have that comparison and to see just little small changes. What we saw was the incumbent justices like Raquel Montoya-Lewis - they picked up a little bit of support, so that suggested they were actually getting some awareness of their candidacies before the voters. And that was illuminating - so there weren't many people who really knew much about these candidates, but still there were a small number who had heard something and had decided how they were going to vote. And that was an indicator. And that indicator proved to be accurate. It accurately foreshadowed what really did happen in the election. So we're committed to doing that again. And we believe that it's crucially important that people have some data in those races. If you're an observer, data that gives you some inkling of what's going to happen in a race that's so far down-ballot that nobody else is really, frankly, writing about it - I mean, that's gold. These are the things that I wanted back in the day when we weren't doing all this polling. So I've always been of the mind that if it doesn't exist and you really want it, you should create it if you think it's really needed. The other companies we work with - Change Research does a lot of our local polling. They've been working with us in Seattle and Spokane, and they've worked with us in Snohomish County and Pierce County. We've polled all the major counties with them, and we just love working with them. They're great. And then our third pollster is Civiqs. They are more recent on the scene. They're not as well-established as Public Policy Polling - they're a newer company, but they do great work. Their polling in the Senate race last cycle with Patty Murray and Tiffany Smiley - they were the ones who had Murray really way out there ahead and Smiley well behind. When I saw that work - they were dedicated to putting out this really great polling, said - Well, we need to add them to our group of trusted pollsters because they've proved they can do great work. So we've got those three now, and I'm not averse to working with other pollsters that have proved themselves as well. But every pollster we work with has to be committed to the scientific method. We will not accept any work that is done contrary to that method because that will yield worthless data. We don't want to pay for data that doesn't have any value, that isn't collected transparently and with integrity. We love working with all of our pollsters and we're excited to do good work with them this cycle. [00:39:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate that breakdown. I appreciate something you said earlier, particularly as a political consultant. There are several consultants - lots industry-wide, it's an issue - where they have preconceived notions of what's going on and they are looking for confirmation, or they decide that they know what the dimensions of a race are and why people are aligned on certain sides and sometimes stick hard and fast to that. There's a different approach. You can wait and see what the information is. Certainly, we have our theories and ideas, but we learn so much more by actually looking at the data, waiting on the data, not being so devoted or tied to a specific theory or something that must happen. If you leave yourself open to say - I think this might be happening, I'm seeing something happen, I think these could be reasons why - test that, understand the data and research, and see how it turns out. And one thing you mentioned - I think it's particularly illuminating for people who do that - any race, most races, especially if it's not someone at the top of the ticket, is going to have a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the people involved. There are going to be a lot of people who are undecided - just not familiar with an issue, not familiar with a candidate. But when you do poll over time like you do, and when you do see how those people who were initially undecided then wind up making a decision, how they align on those - that can tell you a lot about why people are favoring something or another, who messages are landing with, what is effective and what's not effective. So even if you aren't getting specific data of someone saying - I don't know - polling over time and then once they do figure that out, or sometimes they just end up not voting, right? All of that information is valuable in putting together a picture for why people believe the things that they believe, why people are favoring certain candidates or policies, and how that might translate to other issues or races. So appreciate the repeated polling. Now, I do want to ask you - as someone who does work with polling organizations and hearing a number of nonprofits, other 501(c)(4)s, be interested in that space - what advice would you give to organizations who are potentially interested in working with a pollster to field polls of their own? [00:42:04] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I guess the top advice I'd give is go seek out people who do it regularly. NPI is always happy to help people find out how we can answer our research objectives. Maybe you're trying to pass a bill in the legislature, maybe you'd like to get a ballot measure passed, maybe you're working on a policy that you think will come to fruition in 10 years and you want to get some initial data - we're happy to help. And of course, you can just go approach a pollster. But in our experience, most pollsters - their goal is to do the fielding and their goal is to get the project turned around and back to you. And then they move on to their next project because that's the polling business. Pollsters specialize in fielding and they do polls every week. They can't really linger on a project for six months and be - Well, we'll help you analyze that data. Their job is to give you the data, not necessarily to help you make sense of the data. Of course, they will try, in a basic sense, to help you make sense of it. If you are like - Well, I don't understand this crosstab, or I don't understand this results, or can you help me with this? - they'll do that. They'll answer all your questions to the best they can. But what is, I think, missing there is the guide. The pollster is going to do the fielding to the best of their ability. But can they actually guide you through all steps of the process? Some pollsters do specialize in providing more of that guidance, but they also charge a lot more. If you want that guidance, if you want that expert hand to assist you at all stages - not just writing the survey, but also deciphering what comes back - you're going to pay more. Lake Research Partners, FM3, other pollsters I can think of - that's their model. They do excellent work. I love them. We don't work with those pollsters as much because we're able to bring a lot of our own expertise to the table. So we work with pollsters that primarily do a really good job of fielding, but they're going to let us design the questionnaire because we want to do that. Of course, we'll take their input and counsel, but we'd like to write our own questionnaires. And so we work with pollsters that are comfortable with that arrangement. But if you're a nonprofit who needs help writing the questionnaire, then going with a firm like Lake Research Partners is going to be a great idea. But you are going to pay a minimum probably of $25,000 for that project. And you can expect to pay as much as $50,000 or more for that assistance and that data. Research - it's something that can be really expensive to collect. So for those who love our research, we do accept donations to keep it going. You can donate at NPI's website. We do put the money that people donate right into our polling, so people do have that ability to support our research budget directly. And we actually use a donation processing platform that has no credit card fees, so the processing platform eats the fees. And the reason they can do that is because people can leave tips for the processor. So regardless of whether you leave a tip or not, though, we get 100%. So it's not quite the same as - well, click here to pay the nonprofit's credit card fees. You can actually just donate. And whether or not you tip or not, we're going to get 100%. And that's very innovative - that's the kind of thing that NPI does. We look for ways to make sure that we're running the most fiscally responsible nonprofit that we can. We try to be very cost-conscious. So when we do an event, it's usually in a public space. We usually source the food ourselves - we find a restaurant that will do a really great job for us, a local restaurant that we want to do business with, and then we bring them in to do the food in a public space. And that allows us to keep the costs under control of that event. When we do a fundraiser, a lot of that money can then go right into our research polling. So if you come to our spring fundraising gala - you buy a ticket - most of your ticket's actually going to go into research and advocacy. It's not going to go into event costs. And that's not something that every nonprofit can say. So for those nonprofits that want to learn - how do we do it? How do we keep the costs in check? How do we practice research responsibly? We're happy to talk and provide advice and guidance. And whether or not you want to take advantage of what our expertise is and work with us on a project, or whether you want to do something yourself - we can help. We can provide you at least with the leads that you need to get started and do your work. But if you are going to be doing research and you haven't done it before, and you're going to work with a pollster and you're expecting them to provide a complete package for you - just be prepared to pay well out of the five figures. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Right. That expertise is valuable. And that is reflected in some of those costs, as you mentioned. Now, I do want to talk about your work this legislative session. The session recently started and there's a lot on deck. I want to start off talking about the even-year elections bill. What is that and why does it matter? [00:46:27] Andrew Villeneuve: So this is a bill that would let localities switch their elections to even years when turnout is higher and more diverse. There's two versions of the bill - one that NPI wrote is in the Senate, and it just covers cities and towns. And the other one, which is based on the one we wrote and is sponsored by our friend Mia Gregerson - which we also support, we support them both - covers a lot more local government. So it's cities and towns, but then it's also ports and school boards and so on. And basically what we're trying to do is we're trying to liberate these important local elections from the curse of super low, not diverse turnout. So we know that in odd years, turnout's been declining - in fact, last year, 2023, we set a record for the worst voter turnout in Washington state history, around 36%. We're getting into special election territory with our odd year turnouts. So that means that in a special election, the turnout's going to be somewhere between like 25% and 35%. Well, regular election turnout in odd years is now approaching that special election average, which is not good. And so to liberate localities from that problem of having their leaders chosen by the few instead of the many, we want to let localities switch into even years - at their option. We're not making them. So we could propose a bill that would make it mandatory. And New York State is actually switching a lot of their localities to even years and it's not an option, as I understand their legislation. But our legislation makes it optional. So that way we could do some pilots to see how it would work here in Washington state. Because there's a lot of folks in the election community who are real skittish about this. Because we've had a system in place for 50 years where local governments go in odd-numbered years for the most part - there's some exceptions, which I'll mention in a second - and then the state and federal is in even years. And they're comfortable with this arrangement. It provides continuity and consistency - every year there's going to be work for our election staff to do. And people should get into the habit of voting every year - I think the auditors are in love with this bifurcated system. And the problem is the voters are not. And so the old saying is, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Well, we can schedule the election in the odd-numbered year, but that doesn't mean people are going to vote then. And I think it's wrong to have - in my city, I look at Redmond's turnout percentages, and it's true for other cities too, like Seattle - you can look at the turnout and say, Well, 37% of the voters are picking who's the mayor of our city? I don't like that. I want the mayor being chosen by like 60% to 80% of the voters. And that's what would happen if that election was being held one year later or earlier. It just doesn't make sense that we're having these elections at times when most people aren't voting. We know that if we move them to an even-numbered year, people will vote in them. There are some folks who say - Well, they're down-ballot, so no one's going to vote in them. Not true. When you look at data from other states, or when you look at data from here - because sometimes we have a special election. One of the things you were talking about earlier is the governor's race. But Seattle's actually going to have a special city council election this year - it's an even-numbered year, and there's going to be a city council election right there on the ballot. And that election - you and I can go over the data after it comes back, but I'm willing to say right now, even though I told you I don't like predictions, but I'm willing to tell you, I think the turnout in that city council election is going to blow the doors off of the regular turnout for that same position three years ago. It's going to be like twice as much or something in that territory. And that's because it's a special election in an even-numbered year. And it will be way down the ballot. People will vote for it. So what that shows is that people are still going to keep voting, even after they get past president and governor and these higher-profile positions - they're going to keep going. They're going to keep voting. And that's the benefit of local elections moving over - is they get to ride the coattails of those state and federal offices. And we will hear, of course - people say, Well, you're going to kill local issues. You're going to bury local issues because you're having these elections at the same time as state and federal. So they're going to get drowned or swamped out. And actually, I love paradoxes. And one of the things that's a real paradox in politics is - you might think local issues just can't compete with state and federal. Oh, no. Local issues do very well when they're in the mix. Why is that? Because first of all - if people are not paying attention to begin with, it takes an enormous amount of energy just to get them to care about anything. So if you're a canvasser in Kent and nobody knows there's an election, nobody knows. So you're going door-to-door and you're like - Well, have you voted in the election? What election? What are you talking about? Okay. It's a lot harder to get people to care about the election when they don't know about it and they're not interested and they think it's an off-year. And I hate that term "off-year," by the way. Don't use it, but it's out there. It's used all the time, so people think - Oh, it doesn't matter. My vote doesn't matter. It's an off-year. Well, it's not. Every year is an on-year - but people hear that it's an off-year, so they think it doesn't matter. So they don't vote. And then they're told at the door maybe - if somebody comes to their door, which may or may not happen - but if someone does, they get told, Well, it does matter - but does that conversation actually move them to care? Whereas in an even year, that same person comes to their door - they already know there's going to be an election, they're already primed to vote. So now you're just trying to get them to take action in a race where they're already going to vote - they just need to make sure that when they get to that bottom of the ballot, they're going to check for a particular candidate. So as a canvasser, that makes your life so much easier. And people can still do - we've heard all about, Well, TV ads are going to cost more and radio is going to cost more. Well, that might be true. But local candidates need to be doorbelling anyway. So doorbelling is not going to cost more in an even-numbered year - it's going to be the same price. You're not going to have to worry about that. It might cost a little more to print your literature because you'll be competing with more campaigns. But there are trade-offs, which is if you're a local candidate, you're running for Teresa Mosqueda's council seat that she's given up because she went to the County Council - well, you can go out and campaign with other endorsed candidates, like your legislative candidates. You'll be able to doorbell with them if you want, because they're going to have to doorbell too. So there's opportunities to do joint campaigning that haven't existed before. And you mentioned earlier that King County is moving to even years as a result of our charter amendment. So even if our legislation doesn't pass at the state level for cities and towns and other local governments, we're still going to get data back from the county starting in 2026, because voters have signed off on that already. And I'm convinced that what we're going to see is that folks like Claudia Balducci are going to be running for a four-year term in 2026, and they're going to find all these opportunities to go out and campaign with people. And the turnout in their districts and countywide is going to be much bigger than what they've seen in the past. And this is an opportunity to get people connected to King County government who don't even know that it really is there. So it's very exciting - that's what our bill does is it gives localities the option. They can either do it through ballot measure or they can do it councilmanically if they want. If they do it councilmanically, they have to hold several hearings spaced 30 days apart so that people know that it's happening. So we don't want anybody being surprised by such a change. The way I see it - if this bill passes, let's say Seattle wanted to do it - if they were prepared, they could turn around a charter amendment to the people of Seattle in time for the November general election. Because they have to change their charter - they can't just pass an ordinance in Seattle, because that's a first-class city. So if we pass our bill, it gets signed into law in March or April, then by June it's in effect. And then the City of Seattle can use that law - they could propose a charter amendment and then submit it by August, turn it around. The vote happens in November. By 2025 - by this time next year - Seattle could, in a best case scenario, if they wanted, they could be starting their transition to even-year elections. But first, our bill would have to pass - either the Senate version or the House version, doesn't matter. One of them has to pass. And that has to get signed into law.

Jimmy is finishing up his much-needed Christmas break, so we gave former Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz a call and asked him to guest host Fox Across America. Jason is joined by Director of the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project Mike Howell, who sheds light on his organization's decision to sue the CIA over an alleged cover-up regarding the origins of COVID-19. Ohio Secretary of State and GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in the Buckeye State Frank LaRose talks about how every state in the U.S. is now a border state due to the Biden administration's lenient approach to illegal immigration. GOP Congressional candidate for Virginia's 7th District Derrick Anderson tells Jason why a growing number of combat veterans such as himself are running for office in the next election. Former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Washington State Tiffany Smiley explains how President Biden's policy decisions have failed military families. Founder and Executive Director of Power The Future Daniel Turner enlightens us on all of the good things fossil fuels do for humanity, despite what the climate change warriors want you to believe. Former Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon shares her reaction to 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley's botched response to a voter's question about what caused the U.S. Civil War. PLUS, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody slams sanctuary city mayors like Eric Adams of New York City and Brandon Johnson of Chicago for only starting to care about the illegal migrant crisis when it began impacting them. [00:00:00] Jason Chaffetz reacts to Nikki Haley's Civil War flub [00:12:50] Mike Howell [00:20:03] Frank LaRose [00:38:05] Derrick Anderson [00:56:33] Tiffany Smiley [01:14:50] Daniel Turner [01:24:42] Tudor Dixon [01:33:14] Florida AG Ashley Moody Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this Wednesday topical show, Crystal chats with Pete Hanning about his campaign for Seattle City Council District 6. Listen and learn more about Pete and his thoughts on: [01:05] - Why he is running [01:49] - Lightning round! [09:15] - What is an accomplishment of his that impacts District 6 [10:54] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services? [14:39] - Public Safety: Alternative response [18:43] - Victim support [23:20] - Public Safety: Police accountability [25:52] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages [27:15] - Climate change [29:42] - Bike and pedestrian safety [31:24] - Transit reliability [32:49] - Addressing public drug use [38:30] - Small business support [40:47] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility [43:22] - Difference between him and opponent 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 Pete Hanning at @pmhanning.   Pete Hanning As a lifelong Seattle resident, this city has helped shape who I am.  For the last 35 years, I have been a leader in the nightlife/hospitality industry. I owned the Red Door in Fremont for twenty years. My experience as a small business owner has honed my ability to solve problems and provide service to others. I've been civically engaged throughout my career, with a focus on improving public safety and supporting small businesses. I've served on many boards, including the Fremont Neighborhood Council, the North Precinct Advisory Council, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, the Seattle Restaurant Alliance, and the Washington Restaurant/Hospitality Association. I helped form the Seattle Restaurant Alliance and the Seattle Nightlife & Music Association.  I am currently Executive Director for the Fremont Chamber of Commerce. I believe the small businesses increase the quality of life of our community and form a key part of the fabric of our shared neighborhoods. I will always champion these small businesses and businesses throughout Seattle.  We are in a pivotal time as a city and I am running because we need a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach to shape our shared future. I live in Fremont with my wife and two cats.   Resources Campaign Website - Pete Hanning   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, today I am pleased to be joined by a candidate for Seattle City Council District 6, Pete Hanning. Welcome, Pete. [00:01:01] Pete Hanning: Thank you very much for having me - I'm happy to be here. [00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So starting out, why did you decide to run? [00:01:10] Pete Hanning: Well, I've been in Seattle now 52 of my 54 years, and I have loved my community for that entire time - and I find the most amount of satisfaction when I am of service to my community. I have always found that my community has given back even more when I am fully engaged. I come out of 35 years in the hospitality industry, so being of service comes naturally in that way. And then currently I'm the executive director of the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, so I am helping our small businesses in that community on a daily basis. [00:01:48] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Well, this year we are doing our candidate interviews a little bit different and including a lightning round. So there are some quick yes or no, or quick answer questions here before we get back to our regular type of questions. So starting out - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy? [00:02:10] Pete Hanning: I did. [00:02:11] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy? [00:02:15] Pete Hanning: I did. [00:02:15] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? [00:02:20] Pete Hanning: I did. [00:02:21] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor? [00:02:26] Pete Hanning: I voted for and supported Bruce Harrell. [00:02:28] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney? [00:02:35] Pete Hanning: Well, I have a long relationship with Pete Holmes, so I was supportive of Pete Holmes. But he didn't make it into the general and I endorsed Ann - or I supported and voted for Ann Davison. [00:02:47] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor? [00:02:54] Pete Hanning: I voted for Leesa Manion. [00:02:56] Crystal Fincher: And in 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate? [00:03:03] Pete Hanning: My smile does not mean that - who I voted for. I voted for Patty Murray. [00:03:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence? [00:03:10] Pete Hanning: I have owned the home we live in since 2003. [00:03:14] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord? [00:03:17] Pete Hanning: Yes, my family - my mom lives in and rents property along Westlake - commercial property. [00:03:25] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district? [00:03:35] Pete Hanning: Maybe. [00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: Are there instances where you support sweeps of homeless encampments? [00:03:40] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:03:41] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority? [00:03:47] Pete Hanning: Maybe. [00:03:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed? [00:03:54] Pete Hanning: No. [00:03:55] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD? [00:03:59] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:04:00] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools? [00:04:03] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:04:04] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for civilian-led mental health crisis response? [00:04:10] Pete Hanning: Yes, I like the co-responder program - I believe that we would need, in a lot of instances, law enforcement in second position. [00:04:22] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:04:27] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:04:28] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach? [00:04:36] Pete Hanning: No. [00:04:37] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures? [00:04:46] Pete Hanning: Perhaps. [00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites? [00:04:54] Pete Hanning: Perhaps. [00:04:56] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs? [00:05:01] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:05:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG, or Seattle Police Officers Guild, contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power? [00:05:14] Pete Hanning: I'd have to see exactly what the contract looks like, but I am concerned that we are trying to fight a no-sums game where we need to have some compromise. And I think we have a priority to get that contract signed soon. [00:05:29] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? [00:05:39] Pete Hanning: Perhaps. [00:05:40] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? [00:05:52] Pete Hanning: Perhaps. [00:05:53] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? [00:06:00] Pete Hanning: In certain situations, yes. [00:06:01] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? [00:06:11] Pete Hanning: I'm running for city council, not school board. [00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: But in your capacity as a city councilmember, would - if a vote came to it - vote to support? [00:06:21] Pete Hanning: I would think so, but I would have to read it - exactly how it is written. [00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender? [00:06:32] Pete Hanning: 100%. [00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax? [00:06:39] Pete Hanning: No. [00:06:40] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way? [00:06:45] Pete Hanning: Perhaps. [00:06:46] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront? [00:06:49] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:06:50] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy? [00:06:58] Pete Hanning: I think they're a good step, and I don't think it's only for economic reasons why they should be implemented. I think there are societal reasons and cultural reasons why they're really important. [00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week? [00:07:12] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week? [00:07:15] Pete Hanning: Oh, yes. [00:07:16] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic? [00:07:20] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:07:21] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:07:30] Pete Hanning: It depends on what those measures are taken - to speed it up. I mean, District 6 is the only district currently that doesn't have a light rail station within the city, so we are woefully behind all the other districts. So I would definitely love to see it happen, but we don't - at what cost? [00:07:52] Crystal Fincher: Well, District 1 is probably in the same boat as you are there also. [00:07:57] Pete Hanning: Well, District 1 does - just to - because with the new district, they get all those SODO stations. [00:08:02] Crystal Fincher: Oh, redistricted - they did, they did. You are correct. [00:08:06] Pete Hanning: I know that. I'm a nerd about that kind of stuff. [00:08:11] Crystal Fincher: A wonk on Hacks & Wonks. Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety? [00:08:20] Pete Hanning: Yes. [00:08:21] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union? [00:08:23] Pete Hanning: No. [00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting? [00:08:32] Pete Hanning: Perhaps. [00:08:33] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked a picket line? [00:08:37] Pete Hanning: No, but I've also not crossed picket lines on purpose. [00:08:41] Crystal Fincher: Well, that was the next question, if you've ever crossed a picket line. [00:08:44] Pete Hanning: No. [00:08:44] Crystal Fincher: So that is a no. Is your campaign staff unionized? [00:08:50] Pete Hanning: Currently, I have no staff. I have some consultants and some groups that I'm working with, but - so the answer would be no. [00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: If you did have staff and they wanted to unionize - or in any future endeavors you have - would you voluntarily recognize their effort? [00:09:07] Pete Hanning: Oh, for sure. Everyone has the right to collectively bargain. [00:09:11] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the end of the lightning round. Hopefully pretty painless there. [00:09:15] Pete Hanning: For sure. [00:09:15] Crystal Fincher: Well, lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district and what impact it has had on the residents there? [00:09:30] Pete Hanning: Well, I can share with you one of the things that I was instrumental in having formed was the Seattle Restaurant Alliance. Back when I was running The Red Door, we had a wayward chapter of the Washington State Hospitality Association's Seattle chapter - sparsely attended. And so myself and a few other restaurateurs decided to really take a look at ways we could create a more active and vibrant group that represented the hospitality sector. One of the things I was really clear on and fought for - and I'm glad to say that we have - is you do not need to be a paying member of the state association to vote and participate in the Seattle Restaurant Alliance. And so that really encouraged those smaller businesses, that might not have seen themselves in the state umbrella, really have a voice and have an opportunity. And out of that, when we were in the COVID times and we started looking at ways to help protect these small businesses, the Seattle Restaurant Alliance was the major organization that was able to help advocate for the hospitality sector in our community. [00:10:53] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now I wanna talk about the City's budget situation. The City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million beginning in 2025, meaning that preparations and plans need to start now. Because the City is mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address this deficit are either raise revenue, cut services, or some combination of that. Which one will be your approach to addressing this budget shortfall as a city councilmember? [00:11:26] Pete Hanning: Most likely Option C, the combination of the two. With a real first - first and foremost, you have to make sure that the resources that you currently have and are using are being spent wisely, and that they - we're getting the amount of services from each dollar as much as we can. And then we have to look at, if we're not able to meet our obligations, then where funding will come from, extra funding will come from. But first and foremost, before we ask for extra money, we have to make sure that the money that we currently are bringing in is spent right - and it's in the right departments, and we're using it to the best of our abilities. And we also, as a municipality, I know we have some very wealthy people in our city, but we have a lot of people who are on fixed incomes or on the lower margins. And so the way our tax structure is in this state, it's very regressive. So I'm very concerned that, as much as we try to be targeted, we really don't have those tools. And I don't think those tools are best used at the municipal level. I really do feel like true fundamental change around our tax structure should happen at the state level. [00:12:43] Crystal Fincher: I agree that we do need fundamental change at the state level, but if that doesn't happen and no guarantees that that happens, what would you advocate for at the city level? [00:12:57] Pete Hanning: Well, I'm really concerned that we continue try to create these false walls around our city around tax structure, where most of the businesses that operate in our city also operate in other local jurisdictions, neighboring cities. And so we create this complexity of varying rates and varying taxes. We also incentivize businesses to leave Seattle in that way. And so I'm not sure that that would be my first approach - is to raise taxes. It would be a last measure. [00:13:37] Crystal Fincher: So in that case, what would you prioritize cutting? [00:13:42] Pete Hanning: I think we have to take a look at the amount of employees that we are currently staffed - in all the departments in our city. And that is a really difficult conversation to have - I recognize that. I do not say that cavalierly or with any malice. First and foremost, our City employees are our greatest resource and we should invest in them. And we should make sure that they are paid a very good wage in which they can live and thrive in this city. But there is also the reality of the amount of resources in which we can extract from our local citizens. And when I'm knocking on doors, I am hearing - a lot of people feel very concerned about A) the amount that they're paying, and B) that they don't see a real actual tangible return. [00:14:38] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Well, I do wanna talk about public safety, particularly starting with alternative response. And while other jurisdictions around the country and in our own region have rolled out alternative response programs - and the Seattle City Council has funded alternative response - Seattle is stalled in the implementation, in what is a widely-supported idea by voters in the city. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian led versus co-response models? [00:15:08] Pete Hanning: I prefer co-response models. I think it's really important that all the agencies are there at the same time - and so that they are getting the same information, so that people are not trying to say one thing to one group and another to another. And I understand that we do not want to have, nor do the police wanna be in first position on a lot of the responses that we get calls for in our city. But for the safety of everyone, having law enforcement in that second position is a good idea for most situations. I do outreach along the Leary corridor here with the Salvation Army and their street-level program - they don't go out without a King County Sheriff - and that's for good reason, it's for the safety of everyone. And so I feel really strongly that we have created this situation where we are saying that the police aren't part of the solution. They don't want more responsibility, they wanna be able to have clear understanding of what their role is in that, but they are part of the solution. [00:16:24] Crystal Fincher: So for other jurisdictions that are similar, like Denver or Austin, who have implemented alternative response programs without a co-responding police officer, are you saying that you don't think that type of model would work here? [00:16:41] Pete Hanning: It may work here, but I think that we would be better off going with the co-responder response. I think we should put our priorities there. [00:16:51] Crystal Fincher: In the situation that SPD is in now, where they're saying that they're having challenges deploying the appropriate amount of police because they say they have a budget shortfall - or a staffing shortfall- [00:17:02] Pete Hanning: It's a staffing shortfall, and which they do. [00:17:04] Crystal Fincher: Correct. And so in that situation, do we still have the staff to deploy to all of that? Would you look at redeploying in any other way, or just maintaining the current status quo? [00:17:15] Pete Hanning: Well, I think that gets back to your question earlier in the lightning round of - are there some roles in which sworn officers that we might see not participate in all the calls? And I do think that we need to have a hard look at what are the main priorities in which we want our police officers to be engaged in. So when I talk about doing outreach to our unhoused neighbors - the situation in our city - those folks need all of our help and all of our kindness. In most encampments, though, there is one or two tents or RVs in which there are people perpetrating crimes upon our unhoused neighbors - specifically in the sale of fentanyl, which is a poison. And we have to be really honest with ourselves. And we need to make sure that we have law enforcement there so that when we see that kind of sale of that poison within our communities, that we put a stop to it - because we have too many people dying on our streets because of it. [00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Now we will talk about housing and homelessness in just a little bit, but are you viewing homelessness as a public safety issue? [00:18:31] Pete Hanning: Public safety plays in the homelessness crisis for sure. And the unhoused are, by far, our greatest victims. [00:18:43] Crystal Fincher: I do wanna talk about victims, actually. And there's a lot of speaking being done - people say they're speaking on behalf of victims, a lot of victims claim they're being spoken over. But what victims are saying and what data show is that victims overwhelmingly want two things. One, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them again or to anyone else. And they also want better support through and beyond what happened. What can we do to better support victims of crime, or people who have been harmed? [00:19:18] Pete Hanning: We're in a community crisis. And by that, I mean, people are really struggling in finding healthy places in community. And especially those folks who are struggling with mental health or addiction - we have to do more to give them on-roads back into healthy community. And that starts with each one of our individual efforts. When I do outreach, I make sure that people know that I see them. That does not mean that they also don't recognize - and I let them know that I care about them, I see them, here are some resources - and I'm advocating for them to be moved from their current location because it is affecting that business that they are right out in front of. And it is not appropriate for them to be there. I'm honest. And I want people to really know that we have to have an honest conversation about what it means to be in a healthy community. [00:20:26] Crystal Fincher: Well, I guess what I'm really trying to say - if they're, I think you were talking about some, you know, moving people or sweeping people away from where they're at if they're homeless, but I'm more focused on people who have been victims of crime and who have been harmed. The people who we talk about - if someone has had their car broken into, their business broken into, or has been assaulted, or stolen from - yes. [00:20:49] Pete Hanning: Hear gunshots - yeah. [00:20:50] Crystal Fincher: What can you do to better support people who have been through that? [00:20:56] Pete Hanning: Time again, one of the things I'm hearing from the residents who I'm talking with while I'm on the campaign is they want some kind of police presence in the form of what is formerly referred to as beat cops, right - patrol officers in their community. Now, I know enough about policing, that beat cops - they do not reduce the amount of crime in our communities. They don't - we know the statistics, if we go off data. But like - policing is like every other job in America - there is both a tangible science to it and there is an art to it. The CPT program, which we did away with - the Community Police Team Officers - which is kind of a beat cop, if you will. It's officers who are embedded in a community who aren't in a patrol car, who are able to respond the day-after to events, is what we do find is - those communities, their sense of safety increases greatly by that presence of those kind of programs, right? And so, yes, it doesn't show up in the data, but it does show up in our sense of safety. And so, I really think - and that's why earlier when you asked about police officers in our schools - we have to build back a relationship where children don't feel afraid to have police officers in their communities, where they can build that dialogue. Now, how that's done and to make sure that those police officers are reflective of their community and understanding the community that they're serving - for sure, we need to always be on there. But what I'm concerned is, is we are creating these false barriers that actually widen that distance, sever our ability to be in community, to accept all of us in this bigger thing - to really widen the table, to make room at the table, does not mean to remove the law enforcement officers. It just means making more space for others also at that space. So, that's where I think people are really wanting - they're wanting more responsiveness. [00:23:20] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I - just following on to that, you were talking about wanting community police officers and to bring back that program. Is it wise to bring that back without more accountability work done? Or is there a role for accountability, additional measures? Do you plan to pursue any additional accountability or reconciliation measures on behalf of the police? [00:23:42] Pete Hanning: For sure. But in order to have that conversation, we have to rebuild the relationship with the law enforcement agencies and the police department so that they know that they are seen, that they're valued. And so that it starts with trust. And then you have those difficult conversations. And without that, you really just get everyone crouched, like we currently are, in these really polarized positions. And it's not giving - the community as a whole is frustrated because they're not getting any of the benefits. [00:24:22] Crystal Fincher: Well, based on some of the recent votes, it looks like the community is frustrated at some of the slow pace of some of the accountability measures that have been promised, but haven't come to fruition. Are there any specific policies that you plan to advocate for in the area of accountability? [00:24:38] Pete Hanning: What votes are you speaking towards? [00:24:40] Crystal Fincher: Like the King County public safety vote, where they reorganized the Sheriff's department, implemented public safety reforms on a county-wide vote - that passed, obviously passed county-wide, but certainly in the City of Seattle. Looking at reforms that passed in that, do you have any specific policies that you would advocate for on the city level when it comes to accountability and good governance for the police department? [00:25:09] Pete Hanning: So years ago, I did public testimony at the city council around then that turn's contract, which is now expired. I believe our police officers should be tested for drugs if there is a use of force, because I am fully aware that drug use in society as a whole is a certain percentage. And it would be naive for us to think that our law enforcement aren't also struggling with some of those issues. And we should know when our officers are struggling with signs of addiction and illegal use of drugs. [00:25:52] Crystal Fincher: Now I do wanna talk about homelessness, particularly one thing called out by experts nationally - by people who have been involved in the local response, both in the city and the county level - is that frontline worker wages do not cover the cost of living in Seattle. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for Seattle? And how can that be made more likely with how the City bids for and contracts for services? [00:26:22] Pete Hanning: Yes, everyone deserves a living wage. When we have so many different agencies and nonprofits all dealing in the same space, there is some inherent duplication of certain positions and inefficiencies that I think we have to be honest about. And just because a nonprofit has been doing yeoman's work for decades in our community does not mean that it's necessarily the right nonprofit, moving forward, to be spearheading that work. And so I think we do need to make sure that we are also maximizing and being efficient with how we spend our resources so that we get the best outcome possible. And so those employees actually are getting as much resources of it as they can. [00:27:15] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about climate change. On almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts ranging from extreme heat and cold, wildfires with smoke, floods, and so on - we are experiencing impacts now. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet those 2030 goals? [00:27:40] Pete Hanning: Climate change - boy, it's a loaded question. My wife has a master's in environmental science - used to do environmental work for decades - so she is the expert in our household for sure. It starts with our own lifestyle choices that we make each and every day. And early on in my adult life, I became clear on a couple of things that I knew that I did and didn't wanna do. I chose not to have any children - first and foremost, a very big reduction in use of resources in our community. My wife and I have one car, and I bike to most of the places that I go to or use transit. We live next to a community garden and then we have 16 raised beds in our own yard and grow hundreds of pounds of produce every year and put it down. I choose and try to only eat animal protein one meal a day because I know both for my own internal personal life, it's better, but also for the environment as a whole. So those are all personal things that we can do. And then we can share that and encourage others to do it. But at the city level, we have to continue to look at ways to encourage people to carpool, to use transit, to walk, to bike. Then we also have to make sure that our freight is done at the most efficient way possible, but also to protect and to incentivize the movement of goods, just like we do transit. Because those - not only is it important to move those goods about and those services about, but those are jobs - and we forget about that. I'm a big proponent of our freight community, because it really does represent the backbone of what Seattle is. [00:29:42] Crystal Fincher: Well, one area that is preventing people from biking and walking is the issue of safety. We're basically having a crisis with the amount of pedestrian and bike deaths in the city of Seattle reaching an all-time high. How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety? [00:30:02] Pete Hanning: I would love to see every community have pedestrian boulevards or areas in which they were activated - if not 24/7, on major times - so that we were putting different kinds of activities on our streetways and not just car activity. One way, though, is we also have to do a better piece about educating people. So in the Fremont community, in which I live and work, we're a very big tech corridor. And the amount of people that I see glued to their personal device, not looking up - there is an awareness that has to happen. There's also, there's some stuff that we really just at the city level, we're not gonna be able to affect, but the scale and size of some of the personal vehicles that are being purchased these days and built is really alarming. And so sight lines and just certain safety features just are not put first and foremost. You know, I also - I'm very fortunate - my community has a lot of great bike access to it, and so, and bus routes, but we need to continue to incentivize that behavior. [00:31:24] Crystal Fincher: Now there are definitely mixed opinions on whether we're appropriately incentivizing and protecting transit. But one thing that's absolutely happening is that transit reliability is falling through the floor right now, with - staffing shortages are being cited and various other things. Now, granted Sound Transit is a regional entity, King County Metro is a county entity, but the City does provide for transit service and supplementing that. In your role as a city councilmember, what can you do to help stabilize transit reliability? [00:32:02] Pete Hanning: We need to make sure that riding the bus, and waiting for the bus, and getting off the bus feel safe - first and foremost. It's the number one thing I hear why people aren't going back to the buses. Reliability might be second, but safety is always the first thing I hear. And so really it is making sure that folks can feel safe - to and from, and on our transit system. [00:32:30] Crystal Fincher: How can you make them feel safer? [00:32:32] Pete Hanning: Well, we can pass - we can get in line with the state's law around public use. And we can be a lot more clear on what is expected and accepted in our communities around consumption and the sale of drugs. [00:32:49] Crystal Fincher: Now it is illegal to use drugs in public spaces in Seattle, so in what way- [00:32:56] Pete Hanning: But it's - it's illegal in name and, you know, I mean - most people won't see this, but you and I are on video and you smiled when you said that, recognizing there's a wink and a nudge there, there's a fallacy to it, right? We can go to 12th and Jackson, you can go down along the Leary corridor, you can be along Third Avenue that's being called Fentanyl Way now. I mean, like - I am not trying to mischaracterize other drugs - fentanyl is a poison though. What it is doing to our community is truly a poison that we need to meet head on and directly because all these other issues aren't gonna be solved unless we really do better with that. [00:33:48] Crystal Fincher: And I should just state for the record, my smile or grin was not in reference to that drug there, but so am I hearing - when you say we need to get in line with that, what does that mean or look like? Does it mean that you think that people need to be arrested and that jail is the appropriate response? [00:34:05] Pete Hanning: Oh my god - we need to increase all of the tools in our toolbox and jail should be, and we hope, the last response. But there are those in our community who do need some time to calm themselves and to settle out and to sober up. I don't know if you've done any outreach to these folks who are in the thralls of this poison, but it is really hard to reach them. It is unlike any other drug. And I sold alcohol for over 30 years - I have a long experience of talking to people who are inebriated in one capacity or another, and this is different. And we see it - we see it on our buses, we see it in our bus stops, we see it in our streets, we see it in the front of our businesses, we see the businesses being shoplifted from - I mean, I wish it weren't the case, but it is. [00:35:09] Crystal Fincher: I have done a lot of outreach and worked on this particular issue quite a bit. One thing that data overwhelmingly shows, but also that the majority of people who have been referred to, sought out, forced into incarceration or treatment say is that jail is more destabilizing than stabilizing, and that having better resources - or any available resources in some situations - for substance use disorder treatment is the most appropriate intervention. Do you agree with that, or do you think jail is effective? [00:35:42] Pete Hanning: Oh, I totally agree with that - I would love if we had enough resource. Jail is a poor substitute for those other options. Sometimes it's the only option we have, unfortunately, right now. And the community at-large also is a victim in this, and we have a responsibility to everyone in this. [00:36:09] Crystal Fincher: How do you address the revolving door issue there? Because even if you were to throw the book at them for what the law says, they're back on the street, not that long after. How would you address that? [00:36:22] Pete Hanning: Well, I mean, the way I address all these situations is with compassion and honesty. And, you know, look - today is my 26th month of being sober, personally. And, you know, my journey is my own personal journey to it, but oh my gosh, am I so thankful of my sobriety - because the way I recreationally used for 30-plus years, there's no doubt in my mind that fentanyl would have made it into some substance in which I would have used, right? And that's really scary. And I have the utmost compassion and understanding that it takes numerous attempts for lots of us. It's like the tide - it rolls up the beach, it rolls back. Hopefully the tide - the next time it rolls a little farther up the beach, and at a certain point, you get to that beachhead and you've passed that tide line. And now you're back on stable land, right? And we have to, and there are many ways in which people find their road back. Your path is not my path. I do not wanna limit the amount of opportunities, nor say that anyone isn't able to really make change in their life for the better - for sure they are. But there are also people, Crystal, who have said they didn't get sober until they went to jail. And there is lots of family members who ache for their loved ones who are on the streets in crisis, just to even get into jail so that they know that they're at least somewhat safe - 'cause they're so fearful for their family members. And that's real. And that's not a great solution - maybe it's not a eloquent answer, but it's an honest one. [00:38:24] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. It certainly is something that we are going to have to do a better job contending with overall. I do wanna talk about our economy, and we have a very vibrant local business community. We do have some of the largest corporations in the world headquartered here and nearby, but we have a vibrant small business community, including in your district. What are the top issues facing small businesses here in your district, and what can you do to better support them? [00:38:56] Pete Hanning: I might sound like a broken record, right? I mean, it's public safety. It's no different than what the residents I'm hearing from - you know, in my day job as executive director of the Fremont Chamber, or when I ran The Red Door, you know - if my team didn't feel safe coming to work, if my customers didn't feel safe walking into our door front, if my business was not protected so that the goods and services, so that I could provide them to my guests, like I wasn't able to be successful. And so first and foremost, that is what we have to provide to our small business and our local business economy and community. The other thing, and you and I both brought it up - it plays out in every sector is employment, right? Workforce development, encouraging those who are no longer in the workforce to get back in the workforce. And, you know, we see - you know, when I see folks on the street, on Leary Way, I also would - not only would I love for that human to find some happiness and some relief and be able to join a healthy community again, I'd love to have them back in our economy 'cause we need everyone to be carrying the water right now - whether it's healthcare workers, first responders, maritime community, bus drivers, as you brought up, at Metro, service industry, still even tech - tech is hiring still. It's just certain segments have - you know, they downsize, but not to a great extent. We need to help our businesses find good employees. [00:40:47] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now I wanna talk about a related issue really - and part of finding good employees, part of employees being available to work - is childcare. We can't have a conversation about employment or inflation without talking about childcare. It's the number two cost for a lot of families, behind their mortgage. The number one for some families who have multiple children. And we just received reporting - recently received reporting - that childcare is now more expensive than college on an annual basis. What can you do in your role as a city councilmember to bring relief to residents in your district, dealing with the high cost and low availability of childcare? [00:41:31] Pete Hanning: Yeah. You know, I know former Councilmember Burgess did all that great work around the preschool program - so making sure that's fully funded and that we have good access for it. And I'm glad you call it childcare because I always bristle at the term daycare - because a lot of childcare happens in the evenings and other time periods. I come from nightlife and hospitality. And although what kids should be doing in the evenings is usually, you know, winding down, doing homework, playing, and then going to bed - they still need appropriate and safe care while they're doing that, if their parents are working shifts in the different time slots. And so we do need to really take a look at that segment as a whole. Both it needs more people to join it - we need to make sure that it's a livable wage. And we need to shine a light of what a great career it is as well, right - and you are doing something so important for your community - taking care of our youngest and our oldest should be one of the most respected positions in our community. [00:42:46] Crystal Fincher: To your point, it is also one of the most underpaid. It's minimum wage in a lot of situations. What can be done to help on the workforce side and on just the wage side of that? [00:42:58] Pete Hanning: You know, I'm not sure that the City itself is the proper place to be the main arbiter of that. But I wanna make sure - you know, we do have our minimum wage standard for all jobs in our city. But above and beyond that, I wouldn't see that the City is - that that's their role. [00:43:22] Crystal Fincher: Well, and as we move this conversation to a close today, there's a number of people who are trying to make the decision between you and your opponent. What do you say to people when they're saying that they aren't sure who they're gonna vote for? [00:43:38] Pete Hanning: You know, well, I first encourage them to continue to read up and get the facts. That participation is the most important piece of it, right - if everyone is well-informed and the outcome is what the outcome is, that's a pretty good outcome, right, for our community. And so engagement is the first and most important piece. But I feel like I'm at a place - I know I'm in a place in my life - this is not a career position for me. You know, I'm in my mid-50s. I had a successful career in another industry. I really want to give back to my community and I have some strengths and some skills. I've been on a lot of boards. I've been in counsel, given counsel, taken counsel. I don't personalize things very much. I want to find really pragmatic solutions that we can all compromise on, because I do feel that that is the best way forward and we have some really difficult problems ahead of us - so I bring that experience. And I also bring this understanding of running a business for over 20 years and the importance to that - why those small businesses are important, and what you have to do to make sure that you stay within a budget, and that you can't be all things to all people. You really can't. That is an unfair thing to say. And so I, at least, don't - as today's interview is probably a good indication - I don't shy away from saying what I believe. [00:45:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to share who you are, what you do believe, and what your plans are should you be elected to the city council. Thank you so much, Pete Hanning. [00:45:36] Pete Hanning: Crystal, it was a pleasure - thank you very much for having me today. [00:45:39] Crystal Fincher: 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.

On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with ChrisTiana ObeySumner about their campaign for Seattle City Council District 5. Listen and learn more about ChrisTiana and their thoughts on: [01:06] - Why they are running [04:49] - Lightning round! [12:20] - What is an accomplishment of theirs that impacts District 5 [16:09] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services? [21:48] - Public Safety: Alternative response [26:58] - Victim support [35:53] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages [39:25] - Climate change [43:28] - Transit reliability [46:58] - Small business support [52:48] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility [56:33] - Difference between them and opponent 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 ChrisTiana ObeySumner at @votechristiana.   ChrisTiana ObeySumner ChrisTiana ObeySumner is a Black, queer, non-binary, and multiply disabled person, community organizer and activist. They are CEO and principal consultant of Epiphanies of Equity LLC -- A social equity consulting firm that particularly specializes in social change, intersectionality, antiracism, and disability justice. For two decades, they've dedicated their life and career to amplifying the importance of social equity – defined as the lifelong work of deconstructing inequitable sociological impacts and products such as policies, institutions, cultures, biases, and constructs; and facilitating strategic and embodied pathways towards the construction of equitable processes, accountability structures, and outcomes.    Resources Campaign Website - ChrisTiana ObeySumner   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. Today, I am excited to be welcoming to the program candidate for Seattle City Council District 5, ChrisTiana ObeySumner. Welcome! [00:01:02] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Thank you so much for having me - I'm so excited. [00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm excited to have you. And just starting off, I'm wondering what made you decide to run? [00:01:11] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I get asked this question a lot - you know, it's, the best way I can put it is this. I have been engaged in some sort of civic, politics, social equity since I was a small child. My grandmom was a Black Panther, my family was always very opened and talked a lot about what it meant to be - you know, if not you, who, if not now, when - sort of things. And especially growing up in a family who was chronically unhoused or homeless - a lot of folks who were disabled, a lot of folks who under-resourced - most of my family is in Camden, New Jersey, in Philadelphia area. And so, and for me being autistic as an 80s child, so the ADA did not really help as much. There was always sort of a need and a early exposure to what it meant to advocate, to speak up for yourself, to speak up for others, to really call out inequity when you see it, to get into good trouble. And that has really been the through line of my life and my life's work - I have done that as a youth leader, I've done that for Mad Pride - especially in Louisville, Kentucky. I've done that in terms of homeless and housing unstable youth, especially in colleges - I came here to Seattle in 2010 to go to Seattle University, where I became Commuter Student rep and Non-Traditional Student representative for those reasons. I've worked in direct social services at DESC, Compass Housing Alliance. I did my AmeriCorps at Full Life Care for Harborview. My first work-study job here was in the Office of City Clerk where I learned how to read policy. I started my business, Epiphanies of Equity, in 2018, right after the running for the transparency seat in 2017, where I came second to Kirsten Harris-Talley. And since then has worked with over 250 businesses, governments and organizations across the country - obviously concentrated here - where we have specifically been working for social equity, for policy advocacy, for disability justice. Essentially when humans are human-ing with other humans, we know that certain human things happen - how can we work towards a society where humans are working towards equity? And through all of this work - additional to the co-chair Disability Commission and Renters' Commission - I'm putting all of this resume out here to say, I have approached a lot of the work, especially since being here in Seattle, from a lot of different angles. And especially in the last few years, has really heightened where I've worked with a lot of folks in the city and beyond - this is the next natural step towards that work. And so when the incumbent or the previous councilmember, Councilmember Debora Juarez, announced that she was not going to run, I must've gotten - between Gluttonous Eating Holiday and the 1st of the year - got somewhere between a dozen and a half calls from folks who were just like - So, you heard, right? Open seat, you gonna run? And I really thought about it for a while 'cause I'm a wonk - of the Hacks & Wonks, I'm the wonk part of that - and I just really wanted to go to the policy piece and I decided, you know what, let's give it a shot. So here I am. [00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: And here you are. Well, at this point, we're gonna switch up this interview a little bit and add an additional element that we haven't added before - a lightning round. Just quick answer, yes or no, or quick answer questions to level set a little bit. And then we'll get back to our regularly scheduled full-length answers where we can wonk out about everything. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy? [00:05:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:05:18] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy? [00:05:22] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:05:23] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? [00:05:28] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. And Epiphanies of Equity was one of the folks who also tried to endorse it, as well as the JumpStart Tax. [00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor? [00:05:44] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Lorena González. [00:05:45] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney? [00:05:51] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: NTK. [00:05:53] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor? [00:06:03] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I don't remember. I don't recall. [00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: Okay. [00:06:14] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Sorry. [00:06:15] Crystal Fincher: Did you, in 2022 - no, that's totally fine. In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate? [00:06:23] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Patty Murray. [00:06:25] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence? [00:06:27] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I rent. [00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord? [00:06:30] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:06:32] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district? [00:06:41] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, it's actually part of my platform. [00:06:44] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments? [00:06:49] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No - not at all, in any form. [00:06:52] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority? [00:06:57] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed? [00:07:05] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I do believe, yes - I'm abolitionist, so I think all the jails should be closed. [00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD? [00:07:14] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:07:15] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools? [00:07:18] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:07:19] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response? [00:07:26] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, if it's civilian-led and it's not further padding SPD budget. [00:07:31] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:07:36] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely. [00:07:37] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach? [00:07:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:07:47] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety measures? [00:07:57] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, if they're unfilled. [00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites? [00:08:04] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs? [00:08:11] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. As a violence intervention program - I was, I think in my head I was getting, I have them mixed up the two different things - which, when you're talking about them, which one are you talking- [00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Like community-led violence or organizational-led violence intervention programs. [00:08:28] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Oh! Yes, yes, yes. [00:08:30] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. [00:08:31] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract, a Seattle Police Officers Guild contract, that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power? [00:08:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:08:46] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian, or police versus non-police? [00:09:04] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Can you ask the question one more time? [00:09:05] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? Should there be a cap on civilians? [00:09:19] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:09:21] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose - yes. These are confusingly led - we're not - these are not intended to be gotcha questions, so I want to totally make sure you understand. And that one's a little kludgy. [00:09:34] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: There should not be a limit on civilians. So yes, I would oppose something that would have a limit. Yes, okay. [00:09:39] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move funding to police safety alternatives? [00:09:48] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? [00:09:56] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Support eliminating in-uniform work by off-duty? [00:09:59] Crystal Fincher: In-uniform off-duty work, like if they were to work in a security capacity elsewhere. Would you support eliminating them doing that in-uniform? [00:10:08] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:09] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? [00:10:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender? [00:10:23] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:24] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax? [00:10:29] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:30] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way? [00:10:35] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:10:36] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront? [00:10:41] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: It's all right. [00:10:42] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy? [00:10:49] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely not. [00:10:50] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week? [00:10:53] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:54] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week? [00:10:58] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have a disability that doesn't allow me to ride a two-wheeled bike, but I do have a tricycle that I ride sometimes. [00:11:03] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic? [00:11:09] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:11:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:11:18] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety? [00:11:26] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah. [00:11:27] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union? [00:11:29] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, SEIU 1199 Northwest. [00:11:31] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting? [00:11:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:11:41] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line? [00:11:43] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have. [00:11:44] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line? [00:11:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely not. [00:11:48] Crystal Fincher: Unlike Drew Barrymore, evidently. Is your campaign unionized? Is your campaign staff unionized? [00:11:56] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have pushed for that because I use a organization that is in the process of unionizing. [00:12:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and so assuming they're unionizing, will you voluntarily recognize their efforts? [00:12:10] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, yeah, yes. And my business is a co-op as well. [00:12:16] Crystal Fincher: Awesome. Well, that concludes the lightning round - hopefully pretty painless. Now, back to regular questions. So lots of people look to work that you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district, and what impact that has had on your district's residents? [00:12:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah, so I've lived in District 5 the entire 13 years that I've been here. One of the things that people don't understand about District 5 is it's a lot more diverse than folks believe it is. I think the people who are the loudest seem to be seen as the demographic here - as primarily white, wealthy, middle-class, upper-class, homeowner types, right? But there's a lot of folks here who are people of the global majority, people who are disabled, people who are renters, people who are students. And one of the things that was really great to be able to advocate for was when I was co-chair of the Renters' Commission - at the time with Jessica Westgren, who was my co-chair - the Renters' Commission really advocated and wrote a letter of advocacy to City Council and to other pertinent entities, put out a press release in the news about some different rent stabilization and renter protection pieces that we'd like to see. What was able to come out of that was Councilmember Sawant's office passed the six-month advance notice for any rent increases, which was really significant for me. When I moved here in 2010 as a student, one of our first apartments that me and my mom lived in did have a pretty significant rent increase. I remember it was around the holidays and we only had maybe 30 or 60 days to get out or pay. My mom was on SSDI, I was on SSDI going to school - we did not have that. We were lucky to find another place to live, which eventually did end up getting sold. But there had been several times, either living with my mom or after I got married living with my partner, where if we didn't have that six-month advance notice, that we wouldn't also have had the opportunity to either save money if we could, get assistance if we could. I don't think people understand how quickly and how swiftly being housing unstable or becoming unhoused can really be. It really just takes being in a situation where you are responsible for an extra $200 a month - which means food, which means co-pay, which means transportation. In these cases, I don't know if you call the universe, luck, the ancestors, Buddha, whatever you call it - that was able to help us to find another opportunity for housing, but especially working in direct social services, I knew firsthand that that's not the case all the time. And so, especially as there's increased renters in the city, I think that's really helpful for that. There's other things that come to mind, but I feel like that's one that folks have heard me talk a lot about. [00:16:07] Crystal Fincher: And that is helpful. I wanna talk about the City budget. The City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million, beginning in 2025. Because the City is mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address this coming deficit are either to raise revenue, or cut services, or some combination of both. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its residents? [00:16:35] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: One of the things people hear me say a lot on this campaign trail, which I think I can get into a little bit with this question, is - I say a lot, either getting to the taproot of the issue or finding upstream solutions for effective collective and downstream results, which sounds - I understand it sounds very schmaltzy but let me explain what I mean with this question. There's this both-and situation that's happening with the budget that is really a interconnected effect to some upstream issues. And so there are certain areas of the way that the City gets revenue that are longer-term solutions that we really need to address. For example, we have the most regressive tax structure in the state. Washington State has the most regressive tax structure in the country. When we talk about some of the suggestions from the task force that just put out - the opportunities for progressive revenue task force - there are really promising things in there, like say having an income tax - which I know in Seattle, I'm learning, is a dirty word. This is the seventh state I've lived in, this is the first state I've lived in that did not have an income tax. Now I will say living in Louisville, Kentucky, it went a little bit too far, to be honest - I mean, they had a state tax, a city tax, a borough tax, it felt like a tax tax, they had all kinds of taxes - I'm not saying that. But we don't have an income tax at all in the most regressive tax structure in the country that also has one of the widest income disparities - the top 20% of income earners in the city makes 22 times more than the bottom 20% of income earners - there's a difference between $400,000 and about $18,000. So if we have a state constitutional law that says we can only have equality-based taxes and not equity-based taxes, or flat tax, that's not really gonna help have a progressive tax structure now, is it? So there's long-term pieces that folks have asked me before - Well, what, are you just gonna go off to the state and try to advocate to change the constitution? Yes, I will, if it's causing these issues. Now, in the short-term - we can increase the JumpStart Tax to bring in more funding. We can look at, especially parts of the budget that is going towards criminalization and punishment. And I think to explain a little bit about when I talk about reallocation of funds, community and SPD have both said that there are certain things that they're doing that they feel is outside of their purview and what they actually feel is necessary for them to do. We're in agreement there. And a lot of those sort of lightning questions you had around domestic violence, around violence intervention, around social services, even around parking or events - District 5 has a 7-minute response time in SPD. And a lot of it is because they are going all over the place. I listen to the police scanner - I think it's something I got into after the 2020 protest comms, things I used to do - and there's so many, I would say like one in every four calls, that seemed like it was either like someone's in the elevator or someone's screaming down the street, something like that. If we were to take those services that the community feels like SPD is out of their purview, SPD feels like it's out of SPD's purview - and we reallocate those services to community-based services, not necessarily that they would also have SPD come along. First of all, that'd be against the point in a lot of ways. But we have them go to alternative community services - true alternative community services, preferably nonprofits and organizations that are already doing this work on the ground. You see the average cost that it took for SPD to do those services that we would be reallocating, and we reallocate that part of the budget to those new services, especially if there are upstream pieces that could help - like housing. It would be in our best interest - whether it's for our community, for the folks who are impacted, or for taxpayers - to have money that's going towards, say, sweeps, go towards permanent housing. And so I would really, if elected, love to continue to work on how do we implement those seven or nine suggestions from the Progressive Revenue Task Force, and also continue to look at innovative solutions towards balancing this budget in ways that we can take the burden off of just increasing taxes - on the real estate taxes - in a way that's regressive. I think that we want to do, say, like a capital gains tax - I definitely think we need to do that. We want to do vacancy tax, we want to do land value or land banking taxes - I think that's important. I also feel, I feel really strongly - again, I know this is state - but I feel really strongly that as a city councilperson, it's my - any city councilperson's responsibility to advocate for issues that are impacting their community. And having flat rate taxation and regressive taxation is having a devastating impact on the community. [00:21:48] Crystal Fincher: I also want to talk about public safety and particularly alternative response, because we do - as you said before - need a more comprehensive approach to public safety, and that goes beyond policing. While the council and mayor have definitely taken action to increase the police budget, give retention bonuses, and other incentives to retain and hire more police, we're lagging behind other jurisdictions around the country - and even in our own region and county - with alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises and other issues. Seattle has stalled in implementing what is a very widely-supported idea. So where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models? [00:22:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Major part of my platform - I guess now, because folks ask about it a lot - is that I firmly, firmly believe that we need to transition from hyper-relying on the police and having alternative solutions that is 100% civilian-led. I mean, let's look at it this way, like with the example I gave, right? If SPD is saying they're working out of their purview, it's impacting their response times. It's impacting how much their workforce burden is. It is forcing them to redeploy folks out of places like investigations, causing these huge backlogs in the lab, to street patrol. Why then would we require them to be a co-lead with the alternative solutions? We are trying to remove that hyper-reliance and burden off of them completely - like if it's out of their purview, it's out of their purview, and that's all that on that. Now, like I said, a lot of my family lives in Camden, New Jersey, and they had a huge reduction in their crime right before 2020 George Floyd racial reckoning by completely overhauling to community interventions and alternatives. They have some situations where there is a co-lead model, but those are for situations where there's active threats of harm with weapons involved, right? But if it's more so things, like I said - like intimate partner violence, domestic violence, someone needs social services, mental health services - things that wouldn't require police to be there, which is gonna be very few things. It has led to such a significant change in a place where it used to be considered one of the more dangerous cities in the country. So I think what's really important here is I think when folks hear me talk about this, their first thought is like - Ah, this is a Defund the Police, BLM person. I think that that has definitely been something, looking the way that I do and sort of wanting to talk to what's really gonna get to the taproot of the issue, has been part of what folks have considered in terms of my viability, or like how am I going to be when I'm in office - one of those things, right? But the reason why I went through that whole resume in the beginning was not to toot my own horn, so to speak, it was because it shows that I have successfully and continue to successfully sit in spaces where folks are in conflict, folks are scared, folks are confused, folks do not have a lower risk tolerance that is needed for true transformative social change. And I am able to support and move along progress towards goals, especially goals at the organizational level and even the policy and governmental level. It's not as well known because I'm sort of - I am working with the folks who then go off and do the press conference, as opposed to one doing myself, right? But that is what I bring, that is the toolkit that I have built. And that toolkit has worked time and time and time and time again. In terms of SPD and public safety in a lot of ways, like I said - I look at it like if you go into an organization, you have a team or a department that is working outside of their scope, outside of their purview, they're overburdened, their work is suffering - you're sort of in a space of like, do we give them more money to give them more team to do all the things we're asking of them? Or do we do something else? And what I would always say in this case, if it was in the scenario is - you take all of the tasks that is not core and central and imperative to that team or department, and you reallocate it and create a new team or department. And you reallocate the budget that averages what that team and department does for those services - and then you continue to watch for progress. And I am very confident that if we actually diversify what we do to address all of the different multiple pathways towards this shared goal of community safety, we would be in a way better spot than continuing to throw money at a bunch of overworked, overburdened people working out of scope. [00:26:57] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. I also wanna talk about victims. So many times we're talking about stats and responses and all that, and sometimes we don't focus on people who've been harmed or victimized. And a lot of people speak for victims, but we don't do a good job of listening to people who have been harmed themselves. And usually what they say is that - one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else again. And they want better support. And that support - not just talking about within the system currently - they call police, there's a response. But even if police respond and come and take a report and do their thing, that person is still left - if it's a property crime, without property, with damage, without money, sometimes having to take off work - and it really does impact lives. How do you propose to better support victims or people who have been harmed? [00:27:55] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I think one of the biggest upstream solutions we really have to address is - if we are to have services and supports that help folks help victims, we need to make sure that they are resourced to be able to do so, and right now they are not. And when we say resourced - not just a budget for the projects, right, or the services, or the interventions, housing, funding, whatever that is, but the people who would actually work in those positions. We know, like for example, in emergency services or shelter services, folks are so woefully underpaid it's a national crisis. But also the resources to be able to have folks in those positions who are being amplified in their voices and leadership because they are part of those most intersectionally impacted. One of the reasons why - I guess another reason why I'm running for office is, you know - if we want to talk about the knowledge of the policy process, how to put bills forward, things like that - I definitely have that. But there is an additional piece of that - the wisdom of lived experience - that can help to understand how these things happen in the actual reality on the ground, beyond a theoretical philosophical perspective. As a social service worker, as also someone who is not just a survivor - I guess we could say survivor of domestic violence - but continue to live it, especially running for office 'cause everything's public, right? There's a lot of different requirements, structures, pathways in place that it just leaves you to wonder that if there were folks who, whether it was directly making those decisions or through advisory councils, that was able to keep to-date the ways that our policies, our systems, and our structures are gummed up on the ground, in the lived experience, in the actual reality - if we could move some of those things so that they could be more helpful. That has been the biggest barrier I've seen for folks being able to get care, or to get resources, to get supports after they've been harmed - whether it's for their property, whether it's for their life, whether it's for their wellbeing, whether it's for their safety - the money isn't there. The staff is overworked and underpaid, and the attrition rate is so high that it's hard to move through the system at all. And then when you do go through the system, some of the requirements that you have to meet or some of the standards put in place in the framework doesn't get to the core root of what you need. A quick example - I guess I can say it for myself 'cause that's a safe thing, right - is when I first moved here to Seattle, there was a person who came here with me, who I had been involved with. When they came here, they were abusive in very many ways - emotionally, physically, psychologically. It was the physical abuse that finally was able to remove them, to get a no contact order - however, they violated it. They finally left the Seattle area around 2013. But especially running for office, we have found him on the website, on the socials, sort of finding me again after all this time. It's interesting because first of all, there really isn't protection order resources or domestic violence resources across state lines. There really aren't spaces to go where - you can't point to someone states away and say that this person is causing harm because it's on the internet. There was a event that the campaign was gonna go to where there was information that led us to believe that there was a credible threat to my safety. And so the campaign went, but I did not go. And I think when you do something like run for office, there are some folks who are like - Well, you signed up for that - but you don't really, right? And I guess I'm sharing my own story because it's the safest. However, I share this story because the dynamics of it is replicated every day, all day. Sometimes it's not because someone is in different state. Sometimes it's because folks have a different cultural background where they're not able to get like services - say, get emergency shelter, emergency motel, or income. You have to make a written statement that's signed that you are experiencing these things. And if it's family, if there's other sort of cultural pieces people may not feel comfortable doing that. So how do we have folks who have that experience be able to support having a framework in place that's going to be centered in intersectionality and inclusiveness? There's some folks who - this is impacting them financially in ways that are not documented because they're having to take more sick days, or because it is making them more sick, it's increasing their chronic health issues, or their productivity goes down at work. So how do we have supports in place where folks can understand those dynamics so folks are not getting verbal warnings from their boss, folks are not having less hours put on their schedule, folks are not having to then take time off of work to go to the hospital because they're having increased health issues. There are some folks who they do have property damage - when the physical altercation that led to this person finally being removed from my space at that time, they used my laptop in the event. And I was going to school - I didn't have money to buy another laptop. The only recourse would be to try to get this person to pay for it through a legal process - I didn't have money to go through that legal process, that person didn't have money to pay for a new laptop. There really wasn't any resources available to help me get another laptop, even though it was part of this event. A lot of that required other qualifications for me to have that I just didn't have at the time, and a lot of which - because this person wasn't physically living in my home, which definitely doesn't stop these sort of things from happening. So when you do have property damage or property loss, and the only option is to go through a legal process - and you may not have money for that, you may not be able to take time off for that, you might not be able to get child or dependent care for that - what do you do? And so these are the sort of pieces where running for city council, running for office, doing this work is coming at this not just because I want to be on the dais or - yes, there's a policy pieces that's really important - it's because there's this lived experience here, either individually or in my community or in the work that I've done, where I really would love to see a governance system where we are bringing in that actual reality, that grounded reality of how intersectionally we experience the outcomes or the bottlenecks or the gaps in our policy, in our investments, and in our understanding and framing of the issues. [00:35:53] Crystal Fincher: So you alluded to it a little bit before, but I wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And one thing called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is frontline worker wages that don't cover the cost of living. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how the City bids and contracts for services? [00:36:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: You know, I think the really sad thing is that our nonprofits - nonprofits are operating in large part through funding from a larger entity, whether it is the City, whether it's usually the federal government - nonprofits need to be able to pay their staff, not just a living wage or a thriving wage, but a Seattle wage, right? The average person working in emergency or directs housing and social services right now is making between $50,000 and $55,000 a year. But a median one-bedroom apartment - if you were gonna have it as be three times your rent, it's about $1,651 a month. And the National Alliance to End Homelessness just put out a report where they suggested that the staffing component of the Homeless Assistance Grant is increased. But they said that it's a national issue and that in order for across the country, even just direct social service workers and homeless emergency shelter workers to be brought up to being able to pay for the average one-bedroom apartment, it would take 4.8 billion, with the B, dollars to do so. And so by nature of being a nonprofit, where is that gonna come from for a nonprofit? I mean, definitely going back to the task force for progressive revenue, we can look at the wage and equity taxes and see where that is. But really for a nonprofit, that's not gonna be really the case. What we really need is to redistribute - when we talk about reallocating funds, we also need to reallocate the funds in a city with such a high wealth disparity. And so I believe that part of the progressive revenue - we really wanna address, say, ensuring that we have even housing and services for folks so that we can end the crisis of who we could physically see outside, we also have to address what's happening in housing instability, economic injustice, labor injustice of folks who are only one paycheck - if that - away from also physically being outside. And as someone who worked in direct social and housing services, I know that I worked with folks and also experienced situations where folks already were outside - they could not afford their rent and are receiving the same services. My quick story for that that I've been saying is that I remember having to get a conflict of interest waiver 'cause I had to take my client to DSHS. But when I looked at their letter, their DSHS caseworker was the same as mine. And so when we're looking at - oh, where's all the money going? If we only have these like, at minimum, 14,000 people outside, why are we using all this money? Well, because it's not just these 14,000 people who are needing these services, it's even the people who are providing the services that need the services. And so we really need to, as a city, actually not just talk about, but actually put to action economic and labor justice for this and other industries. But we also need to make sure that they are unionized and that they're able to collectively bargain for what they need for the future as well. [00:39:25] Crystal Fincher: Now on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, smoke, floods, you name it - it's here. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet those 2030 goals? [00:39:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: You know, when people ask this question, I always start off with saying - across living in seven states, that I believe I've experienced every type of natural disaster except for a tsunami, a sinkhole, and a typhoon. And yes, it does also include volcano eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides - all of those different sort of things - I have been through it. I always said I was just unlucky. As I got older, I realized it's because of climate disaster. We know that the climate disaster is human-made. It's based on consumption. We also know that the human-made climate disaster can be concentrated to a very select few people, who are in an owning class of organizations or businesses, or sort of other sort of production means that is contributing to this - whether it's shipping, whether it's fossil fuels, whether it's even folks who rely on that. The airline industry, I saw that Washington State did just pass a law to start to move towards green aviation fuel for planes, so we're not using all the gas, but even then - really in this Green New Deal, there's a couple of things. Number one, we need to really look at the building efficiency and energy performance pieces. We need to make sure that we are having Green buildings, that we're retrofitting for Green buildings - going back to those resources questions, we need to make sure we have the resources to help folks move towards having more Green buildings because we know that not everyone is going to be a multimillionaire or have a corporation where they can fund that on their own. The second piece is that we really do need to divest - in all ways, in all spaces - from fossil fuels. And not just the fossil fuel organizations themselves, but those who are hyper-reliant on fossil fuels. If there is an organization that is resistant to divesting from fossil fuels, then it is in our best interest to consider alternatives to using those services or patroning them. We also - I would really love to see how we address the deforestation of our urban forest, that is the city that we lived in. We have lost so much of our tree canopy that it is causing not only these sort of high heat zones that are really harming folks, but we also see them happening along the lines of segregation and redlining. There is increased impacts of environmental racism and injustices leading to folks, especially during the wildfire season, having to go to the hospital because of exacerbations of their asthma - that is leading to other chronic health issues, that is only going to lead to public health crises down the line. And there's so much more even from there, right - reducing our reliance on individual transit, which means that we have to really invest in our public transit infrastructure so it's reliable, so that the workers and operators are able to get everything they're asking for in their current collective bargaining and they're able to be paid a Seattle wage, and that we are able to make sure it's accessible to all people. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot - we didn't just get to climate disaster in the last couple years, really - this has started since the industrialization period. We know it's really picked up since the 1970s, but that means that we're going to have to really work double time to make sure that we are able to have a sustainable future for life. And that's not being - I mean that literally - like so that we can actually continue to live as humans on the planet, 'cause that's where we're at. [00:43:26] Crystal Fincher: That is where we're at. Now you talked about transit - right now, we are in a world of hurt when it comes to transit, particularly reliability. Some of that is because of shortages of operators or mechanics, but people are having a harder time finding buses that arrive on time or sometimes arrive at all. Understanding that Sound Transit is a regional organization and King County Metro is a county organization, what can the City do? And in your role as a city councilmember, if you're elected, what can you do to stabilize transit reliability? [00:44:03] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah, it goes back to what I was saying earlier - you know, if elected a city councilperson, it's not just my job to do what I can and legislate within my purview. It is also my job to advocate and amplify what is happening in my district and in my city. And so that is the biggest piece of how we can have the multiple pathways towards shared goals in this case. If it's outside of my purview, that doesn't mean like - Oh well, I guess I can't do anything - but no, I'm supposed to go and advocate and say - Yo, what's going on with the 40 bus because it is taking, is like 20 minutes behind, or what's going on with, you know, the light rail and being able to get there, or what's going on with the E line. And I would continue to do that. I mean, advocating to King County Metro in terms of its accessibility and its affordability and its reliability is something I've already done in multiple ways - and it's on record of what I've done. But I definitely think what's really important here is going a little bit back to the climate justice conversation is - if we really truly want to reduce our reliance on vehicles, especially vehicles that are using gas, and we want folks to use more public transit, that's gonna, first of all, require like Complete Streets and making sure we have a pedestrian focus, if not pedestrians and public transit centered streets. But we also have to make sure the public transit is going to be a competitive option to having a car. And as someone who can't have a car because of my disability, I can only have public transit unless my partner drives me - and he works four tens a week, so most of the time I'm taking transit. You know, there has been situations, especially going east to west in District 5, where if I were to be able to drive a car, get an Uber, I can get there in 15 minutes. If I was to take the bus, I have to take two different transfers and get there in 45 minutes - if that. And so if we're in a situation - it's multifaceted with the infrastructure, where it's going, the operators - how much they're getting paid, their labor standards, are they getting breaks? Are they - do they feel safe? Are they getting medical for sitting all day? And is it affordable? You know, I talk a lot about first mile, last mile as a disabled person - can I get to a bus stop within a mile from my house, if I can walk a mile? Can I get to my destination within a mile from my bus stop, if I can walk that mile? What is the multimodal transportation going to look like? We really need to look at all of these different factors and the city councilmember's job is to advocate and amplify that to whatever level is needed and work together to get those solutions for your community as much as possible. [00:46:58] Crystal Fincher: Now I want to talk about the economy. The City of Seattle has a vibrant business community - some of the largest corporations in the world are headquartered here and nearby, but also just a ton of small businesses - lots of entrepreneurs, micro businesses, especially in the district. What can you do to better support small business in District 5? [00:47:22] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Well, I can tell you as a small business owner, too - it's really hard out here, right? Because there's so many different factors looking at, even just from the perspective that I have, with having staff where I have to make sure I have payroll every month and everything like that, right? The first thing I'll say is we know from the state and the city that we have a significant equity issue with public procurement. I am a business that relies on public procurement in a lot of ways. We need to make sure that we are actually putting the actions in place for public procurement and other equity for business owners. We have the Washington Women and Minority Business Enterprise certification that continues to need funding - to provide the grant funding, the infrastructure and supports needed for those businesses and others - that we can advocate to work for at the city and at the state level. Another thing I think is really important for businesses that have brick and mortar is I absolutely 100% believe in density, increasing housing density, increasing the amount of affordable housing that we have - 'cause we don't wanna just be putting housing in for housing sake and then be charging like $3,000 a month and people can't live there. But making sure we have affordable, accessible housing. One of the things that I've seen and folks have been really concerned about is you have these sort of small businesses that their commercial lease is maybe in the $1,000 a month area. Then they say - Hey, we're gonna build a development, but don't worry, we're gonna have retail space for you once the development is done. And if they can survive however long it takes to build this building - because they have to continue to be in operation - but then when the commercial leases or the retail spaces come online, they're in the $3,000 or $4,000 a month - three to four times increase of how much they're able to pay. And so they can't pay that and so those businesses just go away forever. And this is why folks get upset when they go from having a small coffee shop or a small diner or a small bookstore or a small grocery store in their neighborhood, and then the building goes up and now they have a Trader Joe's or they have a non-unionized Starbucks or they have something like that that shows up - someone who can afford those $3,000 to $4,000 rents. And so we need to also have a right-to-return put in place. We need to make sure that businesses, especially the smaller businesses, are able to have the supports they need if they are displaced, similar to like with renters - if there's a displacement where they will not be able to operate their businesses anymore, that they will be able to help. And I wanna be very clear. When - I think a lot of times in the city, and what's really important about this question for me, is when we talk about businesses in Seattle, I think folks are thinking about the big businesses. They're thinking about the Amazons - heck, they're thinking about the restaurants that have multiple chains, right, and they sell different sort of things - that they're not gonna be as impacted, right? They're impacted, sure - 'cause the pandemic is pandemicking and that's impacting everyone. Especially when we're talking about JumpStart Taxes, right - we're talking about businesses that are making $8 million or more a year. And I'm talking about businesses like myself and other folks in District 5 - I'm talking about like $500,000 a year or less, right? Like I'm not talking about the same people. Even if you're thinking about - if you have staff, if you have a commercial lease, stuff like that - even a million dollars a year, which would be - I think I would just feel like I was sort of like, like the "In the Money" song would start playing if I ever hit a million dollars a year gross sales. But that's not common. When I talk about what is needed for small businesses in this district, I'm talking about those folks, right? I'm talking about the people who might be living in, around, above their business, who is - just like you can live paycheck to paycheck for your rent, living paycheck to paycheck for their business to make payroll, that have services or goods that they provide that the pandemic created this huge gap where they were not able to do that anymore, especially if they're a performer and needing stages to perform or something like that, or gallery space. Especially folks who are at the intersection of being, you know, what they call economically disadvantaged businesses, so they don't make a lot of money. Folks who are non-binary, trans, femme of center folks, folks who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, folks who are disabled, folks who are veterans - especially if they do not have the sort of veterans supports and services that you could get otherwise, especially if they, how service connected they are or what length of service they've had, 'cause that can vary. There's a lot of folks who really need help and that's where really understanding what's happening on the ground can come into play when we're making these investments in these policies to make sure that we are centering folks who are the most intersectionally impacted, and that we are not continuing to center folks who are, you know, in a completely different space and continuing that regressiveness in even the investments that we make. [00:52:48] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about a related issue of childcare. It doesn't just affect parents - it affects businesses, it affects everyone in our community because it impacts people's ability to participate in the economy and just make their bills. We recently got reporting and research that shows that now childcare is more expensive than college on an annual basis. It's many people's number one or number two expense who have families. What can you do to lighten the burden of childcare costs and availability for residents in District 5? [00:53:24] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: What we've seen across the country is that when it's subsidized, either through local governance, state governance, federal governance, or through the employer - and really preferably a mixture of both - it can have an astounding effect on affordability. Really, it's one of those multifaceted issues, right - where we also need folks to be able to do, like to work the childcare. They're another industry that's woefully underpaid, as well as our teachers in our education systems. We need to make sure that we have childcare that's multilingual, multicultural, that is going to have disability justice and universal accessibility standards, that we have dependent care that can also support folks who have dependents who are not children - which is not always considered, whether it's elders or whether those are folks who are adults who may or may not be children, but they still require dependent care - that can make it really hard to go to work if you are unsure how they will be able to move throughout their day without some sort of support, without putting them in somewhere like a group home. Especially for adults, I would love to see what it would look like to have clubhouse-style day programs that are moving towards having that disability justice approach, if it's for disability. Or having it be something cool, like maybe free education and learning about trades, so that we can increase the pipeline of folks going into the trades or just certain things like that. But really when it comes down to affordability and second, it comes down to employer cooperation. We need to make sure that if, say, someone does get sick and you need to take care of your family - really, I know it's a federal law, but FMLA is just not very helpful. Again, one of those actual reality experiences, right - the policy, great intention, impact not so much. And so we can't really rely on things like FMLA or even the Paid Sick and Safe Time - which you can go through very, very quickly, depending on what's happening - to help if there's an emergency, if you can't get childcare that day. Childcare in the United States is going for anywhere between $700 if it's subsidized to about $2,500 a month. That's rent. People can barely afford their rent now, let alone a whole other rent. And so we really need to find ways to subsidize this down to as free as possible, so that is just one area that's not concerning for employees. But again, just like I said with housing, we don't just wanna be building housing for housing sake - we wanna make sure it's actually going towards the taproot of the issue. We don't wanna just be having childcare, independent care for the sake of it. We wanna make sure that the people who are in there is going to be able to have the economic and labor justice, and that's gonna actually meet the intersectional, multilingual, multi-ability, multicultural reality of our district and our neighborhoods. And that's what I would be fighting for. [00:56:33] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we close today with this final question, there are a lot of people trying to consider who they should vote for - between you and your opponent. When you talk to voters who are trying to make that decision, what do you tell them? [00:56:48] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: If you look at my opponent, Cathy - Cathy, again, has one of those resumes that's very out in front and I think it leads a lot of folks to wonder like - Why you? Right they're, you know, they're a former circuit court judge, been sort of in that space for a while. But there's also a piece of that where I ask folks to really consider the archetypes of things - you know, what is really the archetype of what makes a good candidate or a viable candidate? A lot of folks are like - Well, are you knocking the doors? You know, are you a homeowner? Do you have the money? Look, here's the point - I'm a renter, I've had to work 40 hours a week doing this because I don't have money to just take off of work. I come from what they call network impoverishment. Folks have been like - Can you ask your family for support? I'm like - I'm the person they come to that gives support, I don't have that. If I don't work, there is no one's house for me to go couch surf at. I'm a transit rider, I am a multiply disabled person, I understand what it means to have to fight for your Medicare, to have to have $200 copays. A lot of those both-and pieces - yes, I rent a single-family house in Greenwood, but the reason why it's affordable is because it's sinking into this ravine in the backyard - and as I look up in the ceilings, there's cracks in the foundation. You know, there's a lot of these different sort of pieces where if we want to talk policy, right - and I go back to helping, being a part of passing the six-months advance notice on rent increases, co-organizing and passing one of the nation's first bans on sub-minimum wage, working with legislators on fighting for lifting the cap on special education, fighting to make sure that youth continue to use the bus for free, finding out what's a taproot issues, fighting for making sure that we have disability justice implemented throughout our cities, that we are actually holding - not just saying a thing, but doing a thing if we really truly care about race and social justice. We want to talk about policy process, how to move that forward, how to work with people, how to make sure you find multiple pathways towards shared goals, the policy theory and the process - I got that. And me and Cathy can go - you know, we can really match that up. What I bring that's different is that wisdom of lived experience - not just for myself, but in all of the folks I've worked with as a consultant, as a commissioner, as a direct social service worker, as a youth leader across seven different states throughout the nearly 40 years of my life. And I truly believe and have seen success in the toolkits that I bring, that when you bring both the knowledge and the wisdom together - where you are both taking into account how the lived experiences of those most intersectionally impacted can be amplified in voices in leadership, into policy, into solutions, into leadership, into investments, to true equity - you will see progress. And if you focus on that, you don't get caught up by the minutiae, you can move forward. I have seen and worked with a lot of different folks, processes, organizations, piece - in this city - where we get caught up in the minutiae. I've been successful before in being able to move things forward in a smaller way, but you make the white paper and you give the recommendations and you look at it and they put it to the side. This being the next natural step of being able to have that voice, that conduit for my community on the dais is one that I really truly hope to bring to this community in a way I haven't before. And I'm always happy to chat with folks, get coffee, have a Zoom meeting and talk about some of the other things that I've done because as you can tell, there's so many stories and so little time. [01:00:27] Crystal Fincher: There are. Well, thank you so much, ChrisTiana ObeySumner, for taking the time to speak with us today about your candidacy for Seattle City Council District 5. Thank you so much. [01:00:39] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Thank you. [01:00:40] Crystal Fincher: 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.

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn! They discuss how the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) Vice President who mocked Jaahnavi Kandula's death is now on red light camera duty, how a KING 5 story effectively victim blamed Kandula for what she was wearing, and how Seattle will pay nearly $2M after a man died of heart attack after incorrectly being on a 911 blacklist. Crystal and Lex then talk about Senator Nguyen's bill to detect gas price gouging, the Week Without Driving, Burien making their camping ban worse, how Bruce Harrell's dual responder program fails to civilianize crisis response, and a new GOP candidate in the 3rd Congressional District race. 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, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn.   Resources “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 police officer heard joking after woman's death has been taken off the streets” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times   “New video shows moments before woman is hit by Seattle police vehicle” from KING 5   “Seattle to pay nearly $2M after man dies of heart attack at address wrongly on 911 blacklist” by The Associated Press and KIRO 7 News Staff from KIRO 7   “Sen. Nguyen moving forward on bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump” by Brett Davis from The Center Square   “Could You Go a Week Without Driving?” by Tanisha Sepúlveda from PubliCola   “Burien Makes "Camping" Ban Worse, Auderer Now on Red-Light Camera Duty, Harrell Order Subtly Improves New Drug Law” from PubliCola   “Harrell's Dual-Responder Proposal Would Fail to Civilianize Crisis Response” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist   “Lewallen emerges as GOP alternative to Kent in rematch with Gluesenkamp Perez” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times   Find stories that Crystal is reading here   Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here   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 Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review 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 this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 4 candidates, Maritza Rivera and Ron Davis. Have a listen to those and stay tuned over the coming weeks. We hope these interviews will help voters better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. Hey! [00:01:36] Lex Vaughn: Hey, nice to be back. [00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. And I just have to say before we get into it - The Needling is so good. You do such great work there. And like the last two weeks are as good as it has ever been. There's no one in the country doing it better than The Needling right now. It's just absolutely great. If you guys are not tuned into The Needling - website, Patreon, social media - please get into it. [00:02:03] Lex Vaughn: Thank you so much, Crystal. [00:02:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we have a number of things to talk about this week. Wanna start off talking about an update to the story of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed by an officer who ran over her while going over 70 miles per hour in response to a call - although he did not have his siren going at the time - and a story that came out in KING 5 also related to that. But just starting - update to that story is the SPOG Vice President, Daniel Auderer, who was caught on tape mocking Jaahnavi's death is now on red light camera duty - has been taken off the street. It is not uncommon for officers to be reassigned to administrative positions while investigations are ongoing - that's the case here. What do you think about where we stand here in terms of accountability? [00:03:00] Lex Vaughn: I think no one should feel like anything real has happened as far as accountability or punishment goes - he's been reassigned, but he could be, as soon as we take our eye off this, he could be put back in the same position he was before. Auderer is still a major part of the guild leadership, so it's like - this isn't just any cop. This is guild leadership that forms a lot of the culture of the entire department, so it's upsetting to not see - once again, how - it's just upsetting to see how hard it is to even get real punishment happening for some of these people after what they do. They should be fired. And I think the next thing I'm focused on is just what's gonna happen in this next police guild contract - it's up this year and it's in negotiations right now. I just, I hope it's slightly better than the contract before - and it would just be nice if it was easier to hold police like this accountable. [00:03:59] Crystal Fincher: I'm right there with you. And I hope it's significantly better than it is right now. And there's a model in place for it - the City of Seattle passed an ordinance in 2017 that included many accountability procedures that the SPOG contract that's currently in place, that was signed in 2018, supersedes. It has written in there that it supersedes City law - so if there's a conflict, the SPOG contract is what wins, basically, over what the City says. And as we've seen, there've been several examples of things that regular people look at and say - This is not okay, this is not what we want - where we see officers commenting across the country saying - This is inappropriate, incorrect. Yet it seems like not much can be done, and the most that's done is they're suspended without pay then reinstated, or assigned to desk duty, various administrative tasks. It's a challenge. [00:04:55] Lex Vaughn: And I'm so tired of the shrug that happens - Well, I don't know, police contract. What are you gonna do? Well, now we're in negotiations. You are actively in a position to do something about it long-term. I don't want any shrugging right now about this 'cause we are actually in a zone where we can change the contract, or change how the City interacts with that union as a whole. I'm just learning myself about what options there are in increasing accountability. Is there a way to decertify this union completely if - I mean, I think a lot of what they support and don't fight against in their own ranks is kind of criminal itself. You're enabling people to kill innocent people - for me, to me, that's criminal. And it's like, I wish that was kind of acknowledged more often - where's the line here where some of what they're doing is criminal. [00:05:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you know, the other thing I look at here is this is a threat to public safety in Seattle, particularly for people who say and believe that - Hey, we need more officers on the streets now, we need to hire more officers, there is a shortage. One, if there's a shortage, why are they responding to overdose calls, crisis calls in the first place and redeploying it? [00:06:11] Lex Vaughn: You know, as outlets like DivestSPD have reported in detail, it's - this call, where this young woman was killed by a cop going three times the speed limit in a high pedestrian area at night without a siren - he was rushing to a reported overdose call where health personnel, paramedics were already headed there. And apparently there were like six police units headed there as well? This is just inefficient, like at a minimum, at a minimum - incredibly inefficient and dangerous. And it really kind of underlines - how could you think we need more cops when in a situation like this, they're over-responding and actually a danger to the community. The entire way this operation is working is faulty and not increasing public safety. [00:07:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely not increasing public safety. And hurting the effort that they've invested a lot of money into to recruit additional officers. Since they offered retention bonuses, you know, there was a lot of talk over the past couple of years that - Oh, they need more money, they need an incentive to stay. Well, the incentive is not money. Many of them are compensated fairly handsomely, but since that was approved and they've been receiving retention bonuses - the attrition has not improved - we're still hurting as badly as we ever have. And it's time - and I appreciate Tammy Morales in a forum last night, as well as others, and there've been several other people who've also talked about this - just plainly stating, Hey, these incidences happening are a problem, are a disincentive for people to apply to be a police officer, to want to be a police officer, particularly in Seattle. And especially when so many cities are talking about having shortages, why would they choose a city that has so many visible problems and problematic officers instead of another one there? So, I mean, this is - the culture is as much of a problem in terms of recruiting as anything else. But also, we do have to stop and say - What are we even doing overall? - to your point. I also want to talk about this KING 5 story that came out recapping it, but got a pretty severe pushback and lots of call-outs - because in that story, they detailed what Jaahnavi was wearing, while it - was it dark colored this or that, you know, potentially talking about a drug test. And as you said - to be clear - she was in a crosswalk. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. The person doing what they weren't supposed to be doing was a person responding to a call that was questionable that they should be going to anyway. [00:08:55] Lex Vaughn: I cannot stand anyone acting like - Oh, she just didn't look both ways. This was a high pedestrian area - at night, no sirens. How many of us would expect, as soon as we're entering a crosswalk, for a cop, a giant car to barrel at us at over the speed limit of what's, on our freeways? Okay - that's fast. She didn't, she barely comprehended what was going to happen to her before it happened to her. [00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and when you look at there, it's not - one, it's a crosswalk, and drivers should be aware of crosswalks and crossings marked or unmarked. This is a marked crosswalk - there's a crosswalk sign, there's barriers in the road - this is not an area - Oh, who would know that there would be a pedestrian there? Like, if there was a place for a pedestrian to be, it is there. And to essentially victim blame in that way and not talk about the responsibility of the person in the vehicle that has the power to instantaneously obliterate someone - what their culpability and responsibility was there - is just really disgusting. [00:10:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I have to say, I'm really disappointed in KING 5 for that report, 'cause I mean, in Seattle, I think we tend to think of KOMO as the station that would run something like that, not KING 5. And it's hard to understand what the motivation of that report was. I mean, I guess they were maybe giddy that they had new video that hadn't been seen before, and I don't know, maybe there was only so much they had to say about it - she's wearing black clothes - but it just came off as very victim-blamey. You know, this is not a report that you wanna turn into a pedestrian safety cautionary tale - where that's not really the moral of the story here - 'cause I think any of us, most people, that would have happened to them, no matter what they were wearing, I doubt that cop would have all of a sudden had time to brake if she was wearing yellow. He was going way too fast. [00:10:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Absolutely going too fast to respond in any kind of way at that speed, to be able to take any kind of evasive action - and we see that in how the accident played out. I think this is reflective of the super car-centric culture and how problematic that is - instead of realizing that everyone has a right to use the roads and therefore everyone, whether you're walking, biking, riding. But the responsibility that people have in understanding that - yes, if you have the potential to do greater harm, then you must take greater responsibility. The consequence for a pedestrian walking out into the street to a car is negligible - there's going to be no damage there, right? Like, you know, looking at the worst-case scenario is entirely different than someone losing their life. And so I suspect in this situation - a problem that we've seen in lots of news media in that they saw the video, they looked at the police report and what the information that the police gave out, which unfortunately too often only focuses on, especially when situations when police are involved, only focuses on the pedestrian that is involved or the non-police entity that's involved. Just really striking, we - was the officer driving - were they tested for drugs or alcohol? Were they, I mean, you know, a sign of impairment there, so how in the world it makes sense? [00:12:22] Lex Vaughn: They were not. She was, he wasn't - despite the fact that this guy who ran her over, apparently had had his driving license suspended in Arizona the year before he came here and got hired with a bonus. So, you know, if you think these bonuses are getting us anyone quality, all you have to do is look at this case - not the case - we're not getting anyone special here. [00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, you know, I don't know who it's bringing, but there absolutely needs to be a different strategy implemented here. And everyone needs to do better in reporting, and considering how they talk about this, and what our stance as a community is about this. I also wanna talk about another story this week that didn't seem to percolate, but that was surprising to me. And it was news that Seattle had to pay nearly $2 million to the family of a man after he died of a heart attack after getting delayed response because his address was wrongly on a 911 blacklist. One - okay, there's a 911 blacklist - there's news. [00:13:29] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I did not even know that. Oh, God. [00:13:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so the situation is this person had a heart attack, fell out - had lived in the unit for a year. The people who lived in it before him wound up on a list - and responders and police say they keep a list of people who have been hostile to or problematic with police, which, you know, I don't know what hard and fast rules about that, how subjective that is, but you can see how that could come to be. But they wound up on this list because of a prior tenant - that wasn't told to them on the call, there was no indication, you had - no one has any idea - [00:14:06] Lex Vaughn: I had no idea that was a thing. [00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: - that - yeah, that the list exists or that they may or may not be on it. So this guy's lived here for a year. It's not even like he just moved in there. [00:14:16] Lex Vaughn: And I'm like - oh my God. So it's like based on address, not even like phone numbers? 'Cause like I would imagine almost everyone has like a cell phone now. Like almost no one has a landline. [00:14:27] Crystal Fincher: Some people have a landline. [00:14:28] Lex Vaughn: I mean, okay. [00:14:29] Crystal Fincher: Some people don't have cell phones. [00:14:30] Lex Vaughn: It's like a small fraction of people. [00:14:32] Crystal Fincher: Most people do, some people don't - but either way - so they call and they're like - Okay, help is on the way. But the help is - they see there's a flag, so they have to wait for basically police to co-respond with them, which delays the call. You know, another 911 call comes in after a paramedic is apparently on the scene, but not going in because they're waiting for police. And they're saying help is on the way, but no indication that there's a delay. The man passes away because of - looking at the settlement, feeling like had he received more timely medical care, he certainly would have had a better opportunity to survive. But that this was the reason why he died - and that this list exists, that finding out through this, that evidently the list was neglected - they don't take people off the list or hadn't before this - was very problematic. In response to this, they're now saying they'll age people off of the list after 365 days. But you can imagine- [00:15:28] Lex Vaughn: Why did it have to take this to do that obvious a thing? [00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: Why did it have to take this? And how does no one engage with the fact that, especially with half of Seattle residents renting, right? [00:15:39] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I'm a renter. And I read this and I was like - Okay. I mean, I've lived in this place that I'm in for three years, so well - I mean, I don't know. It's like, I want to check - I don't know who lived here before. [00:15:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, how do you get on? Is there an appeals process to come off? The lack of transparency surrounding this seems like it could create another situation like this in the future. So this was a story reported by KIRO 7 - would be interested to find out exactly what criteria are to get on the list. Are people ever removed from the list now other than aging off? And even with things aging off over a year, people move all the time - renters move all the time - this is absolutely disproportionately impacting people who rent. And a year is a long time to wait for something to edge off. If you have an emergency and you haven't lived in your place for a year, who knows if when you call 911, there's some reason that you don't know why people aren't responding. So I found that just really interesting. [00:16:43] Lex Vaughn: And just another important part of that report is that apparently a dispatcher was punished and also sued the City because he tried to fix that system. And he was kind of like wrongfully punished on the job for trying to bring up and reform that 911 blacklist. And it just seems like - wow, you know, a person like me - I didn't even know it existed, but I think we all got to take a hard look at that 'cause that's a tragedy that didn't have to happen. [00:17:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolute tragedy. And very interested to learn more about how that list operates and if it is in line with best practices and it just seems- [00:17:24] Lex Vaughn: It seems very outdated. [00:17:26] Crystal Fincher: It really does. Wanna talk about another story that is part of a larger story. And it's Senator Joe Nguyen, our state Senator, is moving forward on a bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump. Gas prices have been in the news a lot lately - they find their way into the news every year for a variety of reasons that - the price of gas is high. It's a cost that a lot of people incur. And as the prices rise, people feel that in their budgets, certainly - don't wanna minimize that at all for people who are on a tight budget. But for people who care about that, I hope they also have urgency in dealing with housing costs, childcare costs, some of the biggest costs that people have. But gas is a factor in there, and so we have a situation where gas prices are volatile - they have been, they always are. In this situation, we have Democrats and Republicans calling for a couple of different solutions. Republicans call for a gas tax holiday, they blame the Climate Commitment Act - which was passed here in this state, which assigns basically a price to carbon - and saying, This is the reason why gas prices are high. Other people have pointed out for quite some time that we still have these oil companies making record profits and that accounts for more of the gas price there. And these increases in price don't seem to correlate with the increase and decreases in cost. And we hear - Oh, you know, refinery's offline for maintenance. Well, that seems to coincide with major holiday weekends and times when they know people will be driving to make the price skyrocket. California passed a bill similar to this, which Joe Nguyen said he looked at and is modeling this off of. And they found that there was some, you know, shady stuff going on. And what this does is basically establish a commission, or a tribunal, or some organization that can review pricing information and kind of proprietary data from these companies - saying that this isn't public data, so it's not like there are gonna be competitive disadvantages for sharing and it's not gonna be given to the public. But this group can review it and say - Okay, is this in line with costs, or are you just raising the price of gas to price gouge consumers - which appears that it's happened before. So this is an interesting bill that Senator Nguyen is moving forward with to detect price gouging. And I'm gonna be really curious to see how this plays out. What do you think? [00:19:47] Lex Vaughn: I mean, I'd be interested to see how they plan on changing that behavior. 'Cause I guess I applaud the effort to detect price gouging and do something about it, but I'm almost in like a state of - I've just accepted oil companies do that all the time. I mean, I think especially in that year after - since the war in Ukraine, it seemed like there was a period where they were artificially jacking up the prices when they didn't really need to - even after President Biden had taken action to reduce that problem, the prices were still high. So I'm just so used to the price gouging that I assume is always happening, I'm like - Oh, okay, you gonna do something about it? Good luck with that. I don't have high hopes, but- [00:20:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think there are bigger structural issues involved. I mean, we are trying to phase out fossil fuels in a long-term perspective, and that is going to make the cost of gas increase in the long-term. Now, as with many things - and part of that is the price is inherently volatile, it's gonna become more volatile, especially as - even if we wanted to burn all the oil in the world, there's a limited supply of oil. So this was coming at some time. How do we make this transition in a way that is as fair and equitable as possible? And that's what the proceeds of the Climate Commitment Act are supposed to do - these proceeds that are exceeding expectations from these carbon credits - that's what the push towards more renewable forms of energy, electric cars - but even better, getting the cars off the road and using transit - and making, building our infrastructure and building our communities in a way that make that a viable and attractive option for people. 'Cause right now we still have a long way to go for that. And in this Week Without Driving, many of us are experiencing that firsthand- [00:21:39] Lex Vaughn: How was that? [00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: It's still ongoing. I shared online that I have a trip today to make where it's a two hour one-way trip, even though it's only 17 miles - but it underscores how important it is to improve transit service everywhere - and it benefits everyone. We have to get out, we have to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We have to get on this and accelerate our efforts to meet our 2030 goals - to have a shot at meeting our goals that are further down the line. We have a long way to go, but improving the accessibility and the experience on transit will improve traffic, will improve air quality, will improve finances. It costs a lot less if that's a reasonable option to do. [00:22:24] Lex Vaughn: I'm always shocked when people aren't completely on board with building great public transit as fast as possible everywhere. 'Cause even if you're a driver and you're never taking public transit, how is it not in your interest as well for as many people as possible to be in public transit? You get less traffic. It should be a win-win-win for everybody to get more of these things online. [00:22:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think there's a lot of misinformation about there. And I think the way that we have allowed communities to build and grow - that we've allowed sprawl and basically enabled- [00:22:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:00] Crystal Fincher: -the inaccessibility of transit in communities makes people - the default lifestyle for many people is a car-based lifestyle. And we've allowed transit to atrophy in many places, if it even was readily available in the first place. So people - when people can't see it and can't see it working, they have a hard time conceptualizing it. [00:23:22] Lex Vaughn: Oh yeah. And I mean, whenever you do that Google Maps route - I mean, I do that sometimes where I'm like - Oh, what's the public transit route? If it's very long, I'll opt for using my car for part of that trip somehow. And that usually is the defining thing, right - is just looking up on a Google Map - is this a half hour trip or a two hour trip? [00:23:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:23:44] Lex Vaughn: I mean, that's a big difference. [00:23:45] Crystal Fincher: It's a humongous difference. And for several - I fortunately am privileged enough to not have to drive often. But for those I do, that's an absolute consideration. And I would like to take transit. And there are some advantages even on a longer trip - you can do other things, you can multitask, you can just decompress - you don't have to be present and aware, paying attention while you're driving, you don't have the stress of traffic sometimes, which is nice. So I mean, even on a longer trip, there are some advantages to transit, but also it can be less convenient depending on there. And if you have to walk a long way, especially in poor weather, when it's cold. Or if there aren't adequate facilities at a transit stop - I saw someone yesterday comment, Hey man, I looked up something and it was a two and a half hour trip, and my bladder can't securely make that trip and we don't make public restrooms readily available to people. There are a lot of structural barriers in place for people to be able to use transit, and we have to do a better job at removing those barriers if we're gonna make progress. And so the Week Without Driving is really bringing that home to a lot of people in ways that we can talk about, but when you do it and you feel it, it just provides additional insight and urgency into that. I also wanna talk about the City of Burien - yet again - who passed their camping ban and then decided to make their camping ban worse. So what Burien did was now expand the number of hours per day in which being unsheltered will soon be illegal. PubliCola has been doing an excellent job covering what's been happening in the City of Burien - we will link this article and update in our show notes also. But basically the Burien city attorney said that the city decided to make the adjustment after learning that shelters begin making their decisions about who to admit around 4.30 in the afternoon. And by 10, most are closed. And according to him, it would be too late to take people there - that's questionable reasoning. And by starting the ban earlier in the evening, the city thinks that it can plausibly say shelter was available - which is important in order to pass the constitutionality test - and that people refuse to accept it. Those are not hard and fast rules, and especially with some of the new shelter coming online, it is more flexible. The shelters making such decisions and closing early are part of the reason why it's hard for people to do that anyway. A meaningful percentage of people who don't have homes still have jobs. Lots of people who don't have homes or who are housing insecure have jobs. And if their shift goes beyond 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever the closing time is- [00:26:32] Lex Vaughn: Very unreasonable. [00:26:33] Crystal Fincher: -you have to choose between keeping the job that has a shot at either getting you back into housing or keeping you from falling into a further precarious position on the street. It just doesn't make sense. So they expanded the hours that they were doing that. During the meeting - there's a lot of misinformation that comes from the council majority on this council - they were saying that they, Hey, it increases the amount of time that they're able to camp, which is just false. Like it was weird. It only allows camping between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. - or the ability to be in public while you're unhoused, basically - even though that there aren't good options for where these people to go. And as we've been reminded several times, options are available and on offer to the City of Burien to have people have a place to go - land has been identified for them. And this is a seven-member council, it's a split council - so four members in the majority, three members in the minority. That four-member council majority has not decided to take the county up on the offer of a million dollars to help with long-term placement, hasn't taken - two entities now who have offered Pallet shelters here. It's just really unfortunate. [00:27:49] Lex Vaughn: Has that city been sued yet? Or like - 'cause it does seem illegal. I mean, they're not even, they're rejecting housing for these people and then doing this camping ban at the same time. I would think that's illegal. [00:28:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the question. And it does strike a lot of people as illegal, which is one of the reasons why the King County Executive's Office sent a letter to Burien saying that - Hey, because your police department contracts with the King County Sheriff's for your deputies, we're telling you our deputies cannot participate in these sweeps because it's unconstitutional. [00:28:23] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, that's great. [00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: And they say - Ah no, it's not. They try to do an end around and find a loophole by leasing to a seemingly faux dog park organization that - then they could trespass people off of land. It's just a whole mess. [00:28:40] Lex Vaughn: The extent they're going to boot homeless people out of their city is crazy - without helping them. [00:28:48] Crystal Fincher: Without helping them, yeah. [00:28:49] Lex Vaughn: The option is right there, the money is right there - and they're not using it. I imagine a lot of these things just aren't true that they're saying? But is that true - that thing they said about all these homeless shelters accept people at 4.30 and not afterward? Is that a thing? [00:29:06] Crystal Fincher: And the way he phrased it even is vague in and of itself - they begin making their decisions at 4.30. [00:29:12] Lex Vaughn: Begin making their decisions at-- [00:29:14] Crystal Fincher: Yes. [00:29:14] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, and it's like - yeah, just think about, I mean, the average person is not done with work at 4.30. They're not even home from work at 4.30, if they're not a remote worker. And yeah, and there's a lot of different shifts out there that people might be taking. And it assumes that people who don't have shelter don't have jobs, which is just the worst piece of misinformation. [00:29:38] Crystal Fincher: Or don't have any other interests, or places to go - it's just challenging. And speaking of the King County Sheriff's, this is a big concern - who are they gonna have to actually enforce this? - which is a question that was asked. And Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said on the dais that - Hey, the King County Sheriff's Office signed off on the change. However, PubliCola followed up with the King County Sheriff's Office, and a spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine told PubliCola that the county has not made a decision about whether and how to enforce the law. So, that is absolutely not true - what Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said - that evidently is still under review. And it looks like they were, once again, in a rush and moved hastily without even knowing if this is something that they can enforce. It is just, it's just a challenge. [00:30:31] Lex Vaughn: Come on, Burien - get some new people on that council. [00:30:34] Crystal Fincher: Speaking of challenges that are pretty easy to foresee, or things that don't quite make sense based on what we're being told - is news that, hey, finally, finally, the mayor's office who has had the funding to do this and for some reason hasn't for a long time, announced that they're going to launch a dual responder program. However, this dual responder program would still fail to civilianize the crisis response, which is what the mayor's office had initially said they wanted to - we had a conversation with Deputy Mayor, then-Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell on this show about that before. But in the way this is going to be - in the way it's proposed, in the way it looks like it's going to happen - a new Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, or CARE Department, will launch a dual dispatch pilot consisting of teams of two civilians, some of whom are behavioral health providers, who can be dispatched alongside SPD officers. And so this program hired six responders so far, $1.8 million has been proposed from the mayor in the 2024 budget. And in the press conference, which I think you said that you watched, they talked about this being similar to or based on programs that have gotten acclaim in a few other major cities. However, ours is substantively different than theirs - in that, theirs don't rely on co-response - meaning that an armed officer has to go with someone all the time - or they have options out of that, that is not a requirement of the dispatch. And there's good reason for that. One, most of these calls don't apply to that. In Denver's program, they found that they only needed to call for armed police response 2% of the time where their crisis responders were dispatched - especially as you said before, when they're saying they don't have enough cops to do the job that is expected of them, you would think that'd be like - Oh, that's great news. We can deploy our resources in areas where they can be more effective. [00:32:44] Lex Vaughn: That's why it's probably a dual response. They don't want our city to discover that we don't need police at every single one of these calls. And it's unfortunate that the mayor and this police department are more concerned with how can we get this police department more money, more people. It's, I guess, a rough transition here - to say the least - to get this city to wrap its head around the fact that you do not need police at every single one of these 911 calls. And in fact, it's very dangerous for a lot of these cops to show up, especially in cases where someone's having a mental health crisis or something. When I was a reporter at The Seattle Times, I unfortunately reported on cases where someone was having a mental health crisis and they were shot for not immediately obeying orders. That was, you know - I - if you have a loved one that struggles with mental health issues, the police - they're not who you want to call. It's dangerous, 'cause I think a lot of police are - they're just too willing and ready to shoot as soon as they're not listened to. And so I'm very disappointed that this is a dual response thing, when it's so clear we need that CARE team to just respond on their own, with their own expertise, without anyone armed on the scene. [00:34:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and especially in crisis calls, armed responses - an armed presence - is its own escalator. [00:34:17] Lex Vaughn: Yes - yeah, like duh - for anyone. And then imagine you're also in crisis - just not a great mix. [00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: It's challenging. You know, Crosscut previously reported that while only 2.2% of calls for service in Seattle were crisis calls, those calls accounted for 25% of Seattle officers' use of force. And if we recall, Charleena Lyles in 2017 was a perfect example of that, really unfortunate example of that. It's just really challenging. They seem determined to have an officer respond - to your point, it seems like they are afraid of relinquishing anything. But that seems to be happening - if you listen to their logic - at the expense of everyone else's safety and more effective deployment across the city. Then another really meaningful point brought up is just the scale of this pilot - what are we really able to see? [00:35:12] Lex Vaughn: Six people, right? [00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Six people - yeah, absolutely. And that is completely out of line with the scale of the programs in these other cities. [00:35:21] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, Albuquerque - 70 people. They're really doing it. [00:35:25] Crystal Fincher: Look at how many officers we have. Look at the size of the city. And one thing that's been noticed by lots of people for a long time is that we put out these pilots, we say we need to see results, and we need to get data on them to see if they're gonna continue. And you just throw a couple people out there - and you can't reasonably expect any meaningful intervention from a few people. Now when you do look at that, they do outsize good for what they're there. So it's like, just imagine if we were to appropriately invest and deploy in numbers that could effectively manage this problem citywide. But we continue not to do that, which is frustrating, and watch more of the budget continue to go to police officers, vacant police officer positions - and it's just frustrating. [00:36:16] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I mean, it's like the police department and the City are trying to make this argument that we don't have enough officers. And it's like - Well, what if we're just not doing this efficiently at all? And it's just unfortunate to see that the priority here seems to be retaining dependence on a police department that is as bloated as possible, and not just creating a more efficient public health and public safety kind of operation system here. Like you said, a lot of these calls - they do not need an armed cop, especially one that might be barreling through a high pedestrian area at 75 miles per hour, coming to the call. And if we're really interested in public safety here, I really think we don't need more cops. We need to use the cops we have more efficiently, with more accountability. And expand this other program, the CARE program, and let them respond independently to a lot of these calls and expand it. And I'm worried that this program is being set up to fail. Some people might say that - Well, this is better than nothing. It's a start. - I guess, but I think it's being set up to fail. This is six people - not that many people - and they're not being allowed to be the first to intervene, which is really where I think the magic of those programs happens. It's like - Wow, the situation did not get escalated. This person got the help they needed without a gun on the scene. [00:37:48] Crystal Fincher: And it feels like someone is coming to help, right? And it really is the difference in - is someone coming to help me, or is someone coming to control me? Is someone coming to make me do something, to stop me? [00:37:59] Lex Vaughn: Yep, that is - that's it - right there, yeah. [00:38:04] Crystal Fincher: And that makes such a big difference when someone is already in a place where they're unstable, where they're worried, concerned, where they're not perceiving things as well as they can be. And then expecting them then to be able to - oftentimes be calmer than the officer that's responding - and just rationally follow everything. You're being called because this person is not behaving rationally, right - so we know that from jump - everything else that stems from that, it's predictable that that's not going to have a great outcome. And again, we have to get to dealing with the root causes of this. There's nothing a police person can do to address a behavioral health crisis. [00:38:47] Lex Vaughn: That's not their expertise at all. [00:38:49] Crystal Fincher: That's not their expertise, it's not their job. It's not their - no training, no resources in order to do that. The people who actually can make those connections - who do understand our complicated and inadequate, but you know, system - and to try and get people in there and to get them some help that they need, so this is not a chronic problem. So this doesn't escalate. It's really important. The last story I want to talk about today is the emergence of a new GOP candidate in Washington's 3rd Congressional District. This district is now notorious for being one of the biggest districts in an upset race in 2022, where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez beat Joe Kent, a very far right-wing Republican in 2022 - biggest upset race in the country. And so Joe Kent announced that he was running again, he's been running, and he's endorsed by the likes of Trump and you know, a lot of really, really, really far right extremists. And that is what a lot of people blame on his loss that - wow, even that was too much for this pretty solidly Republican district. So it looks like other Republicans in the state - I don't want to call them moderate Republicans, 'cause I don't think that is an accurate descriptor - but ones who realize that Joe Kent- [00:40:11] Lex Vaughn: Maybe just smarter, like more strategic Republicans. [00:40:16] Crystal Fincher: Right - is a tainted brand, right? And are trying to operate more strategically. And so Leslie Lewallen, a city councilmember in Camas in Clark County, has entered the race and drawn early support and endorsements from prominent Republicans like former Attorney General Rob McKenna, former Secretary of State Sam Reed, and Tiffany Smiley. And Tiffany Smiley, who's the challenger to Patty Murray in 2022. And so they are not going the MAGA route, they're trying to go the other route. Although if you look at the issues that she's talking about, this is really, you know, how they're dressing up someone who holds a lot of the same core beliefs when it comes to women's choice, when it comes to these really troubling attacks and book bans that we're seeing in schools, attacks on the trans community and the LGBTQ community - just a lot of worrisome things. This is not, you know, what we had previously described as a moderate Republican. This is still a pretty far right Republican, but it's not Joe Kent. And, you know, Joe Kent is out of touch with reality in a variety of things - it's hard to really explain how wild this guy is without just being like - look at this, I cannot - I had to do this in 2022. Like I can't do justice to what this is with an explanation, just watch him talk. [00:41:42] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, him and Loren Culp were kind of an insane, you know, pair to talk about back then. [00:41:48] Crystal Fincher: They were just not in touch with reality. But, you know, this will be interesting. And we see this effort, with Dave Reichert in the governor's race, to try and dress someone up as a more moderate Republican to kind of assuage some of the fears that people have of someone too extreme. MAGA - the MAGA brand - is not popular throughout the state, that's not a winning brand in the state. And Republicans have been losing ground because of it. But I think, especially when we look at a lot of these races in King County - like I'm thinking of the 8th Congressional District race, the Reagan Dunn race against Kim Schrier - even someone who has, you know, traditionally branded themselves as a moderate, they still hold beliefs that are pretty repugnant to lots of people. Kind of first and foremost, the issue of abortion rights, right - these are pretty fundamental rights. The issue of privacy protections - pretty fundamental rights. Wanting a stronger safety net - pretty fundamental, you know, support by a lot of people in the state. And Republicans seem to disagree with that. [00:42:48] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, or at a minimum, they're just spineless because Reagan Dunn, at certain points, has - if it's advantageous to him, you know, hasn't been as conservative, but just depends on where he's trying to mold himself. [00:43:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:43:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:43:04] Crystal Fincher: So at this moment, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has a pretty substantial financial lead. I think I read that she has like a million and a half dollars and Joe Kent has like a shade under $500,000. But I - this will be a district that this cycle, I'm sure, attracts a lot of attention and a lot of outside spending. Definitely on the list for Republicans to pick up. Now, you know, we're sitting here as Republicans just kicked out Speaker McCarthy, which makes Patty Murray now second in line to the presidency since there's no current Speaker of the House. But, you know, Republicans have problems from the very top of the ticket all the way on down, so it'll be interesting just to see how they manage this chaos. [00:43:49] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, well, this whole next year is gonna be an interesting Republican identity journey - I don't know if it's a crisis, they've kind of been in crisis for a little while, but it's - they're gonna have to make some decisions about who they're gonna be in the future. Are they gonna continue the Trump route or are they trying to find this other, I don't know. I guess almost as far right, but just a different tone, different leaders at the helm kind of leading that. I don't know. [00:44:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, very - it'll be interesting to see. And, you know, we'll have another shutdown battle coming up in about a month. Who knows if we'll have a speaker by then? Who knows if we'll be in any better position for anything by then? [00:44:39] Lex Vaughn: I just heard yesterday there's a possibility of Trump being a speaker? [00:44:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so- [00:44:45] Lex Vaughn: Oh my God, I didn't know that was a thing. [00:44:47] Crystal Fincher: Fun fact is the Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House or Congress. So yeah, they can appoint - they could do that with Trump if they wanted to, I think? [00:44:58] Lex Vaughn: Ahh, this world is insane. [00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's, you know - it is frustrating - the Republicans are not a party serious about governing right now. And I just wish we would contend with that more directly. Or at least- [00:45:14] Lex Vaughn: And the people who vote for them. Like what are you doing? [00:45:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll continue to follow this, but that will certainly - is an interesting new element in that 3rd Congressional District race that will have impacts here locally and nationally. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, October 6th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. You can find Lex on Twitter @AlexaVaughn, V-A-U-G-H-N. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter and most other networks @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else 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 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. [00:46:41] Lex Vaughn: Bye.

On this Wednesday topical show, Crystal chats with Ron Davis about his campaign for Seattle City Council District 4. Listen and learn more about Ron and his thoughts on: [01:04] - Why he is running [02:42] - Lightning round! [08:50] - What is an accomplishment of his that impacts District 4 [10:36] - Climate change [12:51] - Public Safety: Alternative response [14:31] - Victim support [16:18] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages [17:21] - Housing and homelessness: Highest priority plans [20:34] - Bike and pedestrian safety [22:20] - Transit reliability [24:10] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility [26:10] - Small business support [27:59] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services? [30:38] - Difference between him and opponent 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 Ron Davis at @seattle4ron.   Ron Davis Ron Davis is a public school dad, law school grad, and tech entrepreneur that has worked for most of his professional life on improving the lives of seniors, workers and patients. He's an active member of the 46th Dems and the Transit Riders Union, where he serves on the progressive revenue committee. He also serves on the boards of Futurewise, Seattle Subway, the University YMCA and the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association, working on housing and climate legislation, transit policy, and on delivering social services to kids and their families, and to young adults.   Resources Campaign Website - Ron Davis   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, I am very pleased to be welcoming Seattle City Council District 4 candidate, Ron Davis, to the program. Welcome, Ron. [00:01:01] Ron Davis: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. [00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, I just am first wondering - why are you running? [00:01:08] Ron Davis: Yeah, that's a great question. So I've been working hard in my community to make it affordable and safe for a long time, and I've reached a point of frustration where I don't feel that the people representing me are doing a good enough job. So sort of backing up into sort of the deeper story - my parents were teenagers when they got pregnant with me - I grew up in the Portland area. And I got very lucky along the way, but some of that was because housing was more affordable then. So while my parents both worked at a diner, my dad was able then to get a job at a factory - minimum wage - but he worked 60, 70, 80 hours a week. It was brutal. And my parents were able to get a toehold in the middle class 'cause they could afford housing and they were actually able to afford to buy a house a few years in. And that became this platform that allowed my sister and I to rise - we both got bachelor's degrees, I got really lucky and ended up at Harvard Law School. And I've landed in this beautiful, comfortable place in Northeast Seattle - where I live in the comforts of the professional class - and I recognize like that was a lot, lot, lot of luck. And it would have been impossible without affordable housing, it would have been impossible without community support. And you just cannot have a journey like mine in Seattle. And that is frustrating to me - Seattle should be a place where people can start a career, raise a family, age in place - and not have to be filthy rich to do it. And so I am fighting to make Seattle a place where people can do those things. And where if people do happen to be unlucky, we come together and we put a floor on how far they fall because it could happen to any of us. [00:02:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely could. Now we're gonna switch up the program from what we normally hear, or frequently heard in our previous past candidate interviews, and we're doing a bit of a lightning round- [00:02:52] Ron Davis: Oh, dear. [00:02:52] Crystal Fincher: -here. So just a brief - mostly yes or no, or short answer questions. But just to help the listeners get a better view of who you are on a wide range of topics before we dive into the detail. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy? [00:03:11] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:03:12] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veteran, Seniors, and Human Services levy? [00:03:15] Ron Davis: I did, yes. [00:03:16] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? [00:03:21] Ron Davis: I did. [00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor? [00:03:27] Ron Davis: In the general, I voted for Lorena González. [00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, in the general, did you vote for Ann Davison or Nicole Thomas Kennedy for City Attorney? [00:03:35] Ron Davis: Nicole Thomas Kennedy. [00:03:36] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor? [00:03:43] Ron Davis: Leesa Manion. [00:03:43] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley? [00:03:47] Ron Davis: Patty Murray. [00:03:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence? [00:03:51] Ron Davis: Currently own - for seven years - rent all before that. [00:03:54] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord? [00:03:56] Ron Davis: No. [00:03:56] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district? [00:04:04] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:04:05] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments? [00:04:11] Ron Davis: As I understand the definition of sweep, it is where you're clearing a homeless encampment and there's nowhere for people to go - like no actual housing. So no, unless there was some imminent public health risk, like during - there were moments in COVID - but as a general rule, no. [00:04:24] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority? [00:04:30] Ron Davis: Absolutely, and I did some campaigning for I-135 as well. [00:04:33] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed? [00:04:38] Ron Davis: Yeah. [00:04:39] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD? [00:04:43] Ron Davis: No. [00:04:44] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools? [00:04:48] Ron Davis: I think the schools should decide that, but my instinct is no. I think the students have been pretty clear that's what they don't want - they don't want that. [00:04:55] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow it? [00:04:58] Ron Davis: Ah, I see. No, not currently - I don't have any reason to think I would. [00:05:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response? [00:05:09] Ron Davis: Me and two-thirds of Seattle, yep. [00:05:11] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:05:15] Ron Davis: Yes, it's egregious how much they're underpaid. [00:05:18] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach? [00:05:26] Ron Davis: Yep. [00:05:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures? [00:05:36] Ron Davis: Yes. I do want to clarify - so when we say unfilled, we think the ones that are unfilled or unfillable in this budget cycle - but then yes. [00:05:43] Crystal Fincher: These are yes or no questions. [00:05:45] Ron Davis: Well, it's yes if it's the ones that are fillable or not. [00:05:49] Crystal Fincher: Perfect. So let's do yes or no - we have plenty of time to get into the nitty gritty and detail of all the other stuff. [00:05:55] Ron Davis: Got it. [00:05:55] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites? [00:06:01] Ron Davis: I do. [00:06:02] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs? [00:06:06] Ron Davis: Yes, I do. [00:06:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power? [00:06:16] Ron Davis: I would oppose such a contract, yes. [00:06:18] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? [00:06:29] Ron Davis: Oppose that doesn't remove - sorry, I'm trying to make sure I got the question right. [00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: If they don't remove limitations about how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian- [00:06:39] Ron Davis: Yeah, I would have a problem with that. They've gotta be civilian. [00:06:42] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? [00:06:51] Ron Davis: Yeah. [00:06:52] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off duty work by SPD officers? [00:06:59] Ron Davis: I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about, specifically. I'm sorry. [00:07:03] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? [00:07:12] Ron Davis: Yeah. [00:07:13] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender? [00:07:19] Ron Davis: Yep. [00:07:19] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax? [00:07:24] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:07:25] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way? [00:07:30] Ron Davis: No. [00:07:30] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront? [00:07:34] Ron Davis: No. [00:07:34] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates like the one issued by Amazon are necessary to boost Seattle's economy? [00:07:41] Ron Davis: No. [00:07:42] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week? [00:07:44] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:07:45] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week? [00:07:48] Ron Davis: No. [00:07:49] Crystal Fincher: Or the past month? [00:07:50] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:07:51] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic? [00:07:55] Ron Davis: No. [00:07:55] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:08:03] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:08:03] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety? [00:08:10] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:08:11] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union? [00:08:14] Ron Davis: Not unless you count the Transit Riders Union - not an actual worker union - no. [00:08:18] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting? [00:08:26] Ron Davis: Yep. [00:08:27] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line? [00:08:29] Ron Davis: Yes. [00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line? [00:08:32] Ron Davis: Never. [00:08:32] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign staff unionized? [00:08:36] Ron Davis: We are not. We've encouraged it, but it hasn't happened. [00:08:38] Crystal Fincher: So if your campaign staff wanted to unionize, would you voluntarily recognize their effort? [00:08:44] Ron Davis: Absolutely. [00:08:45] Crystal Fincher: So that's the end of the lightning round - thank you very much for that. Pretty painless, hopefully. Now, lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you've prioritized and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district that's tangible or visible to the people who live there and what impact has it had on them? [00:09:06] Ron Davis: That's a great question. In my district - um, depends on who and who it would be visible to, but I can think of a couple, a couple things that would be significant. One is I'm on the board of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association and one of the areas I'm working on there is transportation - and specifically, transportation and pedestrian safety. So for instance, we had a situation where a number of people were turning out of driveways the wrong direction on a one-way street and it was creating scary conflicts and some residents raised the issue. We raised the issue to SDOT. We've also raised the issue to - I championed us raising the issue to both SDOT and local businesses - we got better signage implemented. We're getting way, way, way less reports of that. Let's see, something that I specifically get credit for. So also we've done - I'm on the board of the YMCA, so I was our biggest fundraiser last year. And we raised thousands and thousands of dollars to get it - to fund scholarships so that young kids could get afterschool care and summer care that was the same care that fully-paying families were getting. And so that was visible, of course, only to those families - we don't identify which families those are because we don't want those kids to experience any sort of identity segregation around that - but that brought a lot of kids into amazing wraparound care. And we also did some work related to that to bringing food into their families. So there's a couple of things I've worked on recently in the district. [00:10:35] Crystal Fincher: Perfect, thank you. Now on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, to wildfires, floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 goals? [00:10:52] Ron Davis: Yeah, so number one is we have to address transportation. So 61% of our emissions come from personal and commercial transport in the city. And so to make progress there, we have to make it so that people don't pay a time and safety and reliability penalty for doing something other than riding a car. So that means everything from a better built-out and disability-accessible sidewalk network - and street crossing network that is safe. Bike lanes that are separate and actually protected, and that form a grid that go from where people are to where they want to be without breaks in them where they're risking their lives. And then of course, frequent, fast, reliable transit. All of those things cost money and they also will cost road space. We are going to actually have to - if we want to make it so that people have a real choice, 'cause right now we're putting a huge thumb on the scale - pushing people into cars. If we want people to have a real choice, we're going to have to make genuine trade-offs in right-of-way. So I think that's the biggest - absolute single best biggest - thing we can do. Obviously we need to electrify everything that remains. To support that, we also need to address our biggest other area of emissions, which is housing and commercial buildings, right? And so denser housing is more climate friendly, has lower emissions. Mass timber construction is much lower climate - I'm sorry - carbon intensive at construction. And that denser housing of course supports the kind of transportation network that I just described, so there's a virtuous circle there. The other piece that goes with that is allowing commercial in all neighborhoods without forcing businesses to build extra parking, right - through mandates. And once you do that, then also a lot more trips can be confined to existing neighborhoods and don't even need to be - the person shouldn't even have to be able to ask, shouldn't even have to ask themselves the question of - Do I need to get on a bus or do I need to get on a car? - when maybe they can go a block away or three blocks away. [00:12:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now I wanna talk about public safety, particularly while other jurisdictions around the country and several in our region have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises - or with a challenge that isn't quite a legal challenge, but needs some intervention - Seattle is stalled in implementing what is a widely-supported idea. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models? [00:13:22] Ron Davis: Okay, great questions. So one is we definitely need non-police response to non-police-appropriate calls. And a huge percentage of those calls could be appropriately handled without a sworn officer present. So I believe SPD did a study of itself and said 12% of calls could be immediately triageable. There was an external body that came in and said it was more like 49%. I have not been close enough to that data to know which one is right, but it's a lot. And it's embarrassing, to be honest, that a city as rich and capable as ours has fallen so far behind in delivering on this - especially when we have this massive behavioral health crisis, when we have a shortage of police officers so their ability to respond to every kind of crisis is diminished. We need to be handing off this workload to people who are better trained for it, because - well, A) because they're better trained for it, B) because a lot of those interactions are where some of our more racially inequitable interactions happen with police, and C) so that we can cut response times - which I think should answer the other part of your question. So I don't think co-response is necessary in most cases. [00:14:30] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now, I wanna talk about victims a little bit. There's a lot of people saying they're speaking on behalf of victims, but really speaking over them. And what we actually hear from victims is - is one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them never happens to them or anyone else again. And two, that they want more support and help to recover after what they've just been through. How can we do a better job supporting victims of crime? [00:14:59] Ron Davis: That's a wonderful question. I have thought about certain parts of that - and I'll tell you which parts - and then I think that you've identified a gap in my own thinking, policy-wise. So the part I've thought about is restorative justice programming, where - and I campaigned for Pooja Vaddadi on this because I was very much interested in, now Judge Vaddadi's, championing restorative justice programming - which ultimately bring, when people come into the justice system, makes part of their restoration program not only focused on rehabilitating them and bringing them back to community. But also trying to make whole or right what they - whatever damage they've done - with care to protect victims from having to relive trauma. So I've thought a lot about it from that standpoint, and I've thought a lot about it in our social safety net. What I haven't thought a lot about is direct victim, direct sort of post-victimization programming. So I don't have a great answer, other than to say that you make a really interesting point - which is we love to talk about victims as sort of in the political chess, but too often we're not actually paying attention to them and their needs. And so I would definitely support spending money to make sure that we are taking care of people who've been victimized, 'cause trauma has lasting effects. [00:16:17] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely does. I wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And one thing called out by experts as a barrier to reducing homelessness is that the frontline workers - their wages don't cover the cost of living, leading to shortages and challenges there. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area, and how can we make that more likely with how we bid for contracts and services? [00:16:45] Ron Davis: Yeah, I do. I do think they have that responsibility and often they're constrained by funding, but often the funder of last resort is us. And so because our contracts - through things like public development agreements, labor harmony agreements, things we do with other contractors - more often for-profit contractors, we can set the terms on which we engage. I think we need to be setting terms that require higher pay. Now, that being said, we can't get something for nothing. And so we can't just say you have to pay more and then not actually provide the funds in those contracts. So we're gonna have to put our money where our mouth is, or our treasure where our heart is - as the scripture says. [00:17:21] Crystal Fincher: What are your highest priority plans to address homelessness? [00:17:26] Ron Davis: Yeah, so I think the data is pretty clear that what causes homelessness to vary by city is housing related, right? So although there are individual causes that push people into homelessness - like mental health, behavioral health issues, or other tragedies in people's lives - the thing that makes homelessness happen in a city is the lack of affordable housing. And so for me, my big focuses there are a mix of supply, subsidies, and stabilization policies. So on the supply side, that means a broad zoning reform - at least tripling the zoning envelope around the city, making sure that no neighborhood is exempt - and creating sort of livable, walkable communities where there's plenty of space to build. And it also means permitting reform, right? So moving to a single-track permitting process - right now we have this dual-track process that's really Byzantine and takes two to three years and it should be more like six weeks to six months - and potentially actually putting a time limit on that and allowing for a builder's remedy. On the subsidy side - even if we get permitting right and zoning right, we start to bend the curve on housing costs and make it so middle-class families can afford to live here again - it's still gonna be tough because this is America and it's an unequal society. And people wanna live in Seattle, so land is expensive. And so we are not gonna be able to meet the needs of all of the market, which means we also need to pay money in - so this is the subsidy side. So aggressive investments in affordable housing, in social housing which is mixed-income, investing in permanent supportive housing for people with chronic behavioral issues, direct subsidies or vouchers for people that appear that they just need a hand up and can get back into the market - you can generally segment the homeless population this way pretty effectively. And then on the stabilization side, displacement often pushes people into homelessness or further down the economic ladder. And so thinking about everything from - I would like to implement now an anti-rent gouging excise tax. I think it would get tied up in court, but I think it actually would be constitutional. It would be a way of sort of backing into something like a milder form of rent control without maybe running afoul of State constitution. I'm fine with the trigger law as well. I would also be interested in something called right-to-return legislation, which basically says - Hey, this is a high displacement risk neighborhood and so if you build here, people need to be able to return at the same price to the equivalent and be compensated in the meantime - which means some of those projects aren't gonna pencil out and it means more housing will get built in richer, lower displacement risk neighborhoods. That's okay. Or it means if people do have temporary displacement that they're gonna land well. I also think just direct aid to folks who appear to be at risk of homelessness - we found in, during the pandemic, is pretty good at - it's one of those pay a dollar in, save seven dollars later and keep people out of actually being on the street. [00:20:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure. [00:20:18] Ron Davis: Oh, I should say tiny homes - that's my other, I forgot one other thing, sorry - tiny homes. I also think we need, I do think we need to get, it's a - think of it as like kind of a tourniquet, right? It's not a long-term solution, but it can protect people and kind of stop the bleeding for folks who are on the street right now and have nowhere to go. [00:20:33] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Now it comes to transit and transportation, we have a long way to go to address our current pedestrian and bicycle safety crisis. We are seeing injuries and deaths at record rates and community demanding change. How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety? [00:20:53] Ron Davis: Yeah, great question. So, this is one of those things where my money is where my mouth is - just like on the last one, I didn't say I worked on statewide legislation to pass the missing middle housing bill. Here, you know, I'm on the board of Seattle Subway, I previously was on the citizen oversight panel at Sound Transit, I'm involved with Neighborhood Greenways, and working on Lid I-5. I - to me, the only safe street is a street is - that is engineered to be safe. And to be - a street that is engineered to be safe has some of the following features. One is it doesn't have long open stretches or really clear visual lines - long, clear visual lines. Two, it doesn't have really wide lanes or series of lanes. Three, it doesn't have wide crossings. So, some of it is just starting to actually engineer our streets because - in a way that slow people down, because we know that when people do - when there are conflicts and there are collisions and people are going slow - first, there's less likely to be a collision. And second, it's much less likely to be nearly so harmful. I mean, it's killing 30 people a year and injuring countless more. Other things that have been proven to be effective - bike lanes have been proven to just reduce overall harm on a road while not significantly impairing total vehicle throughput, raised crosswalks, better signalization, no right turn on red, as you mentioned earlier. I think we need to put more imperative language in our Complete Streets ordinance so that every time we're touching a road, we are moving it toward genuine safe - making it genuinely safe and complete. [00:22:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm also wondering - we are dealing with transit reliability challenges now with a lot of routes being missed and seeing ghost buses, whether from lack of staffing or because there's just not the funding to continue in some places. What can the City do - recognizing that Sound Transit is a regional entity, King County Metro is a county entity - but what can you do in your capacity as a city councilmember to stabilize transit reliability? [00:22:51] Ron Davis: There's a few things we can do. So one is we could increase funding - direct supplementary funding - from the general fund, we could increase funding through the transit levy - both. And we do, through the transit levy, buy additional hours from Metro so we have those relationships - we can do that. But I would say - just sort of backing out - there's a few gaps that I think are fundamental. So one is - something I loved about the Crisis Care Center levy is that it also included money for building up a workforce with more living wages, with training, with wraparound services to get people actually into that workforce and retain them. I think we need to be doing that for our transit workers and actually making that a career that's viable for more people. Of course, I also think that has to be paired with more affordable housing around here as well. Second, I think, of course, direct funding to make sure that there's enough buses - again, that we have frequency is high, but you mentioned reliability. I think another big piece of reliability is traffic. Much, much, much of our transit - other than a good chunk of Link - mixes with traffic. And so the cheapest, easiest, fastest way to improve that is red paint. So while Bus Rapid Transit is awesome and I love it, it's expensive - the first thing we can do is take our busiest transit routes and convert them to transit-only lanes and make sure that buses get places fast and reliably. And then you've tackled a huge part of the frequent, fast, reliable trio problem. [00:24:10] Crystal Fincher: Now, another challenge that Seattle residents are dealing with is the extremely high cost and sometimes low availability of childcare. And that has so many impacts on our larger economy - even for people that don't have kids, this affects our community. But for those who do, the average cost of childcare is now greater than the cost of college, which is just eye-popping. [00:24:36] Ron Davis: Unbelievable. [00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: How do you propose to help this problem and to help families with this challenge? [00:24:43] Ron Davis: Yeah, I think there's small things we can do, and then there's kind of one larger thing that we can do. So I think on the small side, just building capacity - we did see some success during the pandemic with funds that were set aside to say, make small remodels in an in-home childcare setting that would get a bathroom on the first floor that would allow doubling of the number of children available - things like that, that went a long way. So I think there's some smart things we could do there. I think there's smart things we could do in retooling some spaces downtown, which I think would actually bring more office workers downtown. And certainly exempting childcare from floor area ratio - basically it's free square footage, right, for audience members who aren't that nerdy, although most of your audience, I'm guessing, is a little bit nerdy and probably does know what that is - and allowing it, legalizing it at every neighborhood. I think the longer term, though - at some point, we're gonna have to more seriously fund a direct stream here that ensures that the workers are paid wages that make it viable - make it a viable career. And that the capacity is there, and that the affordability is there. And so for me, I imagine - I think that if I'm not mistaken, I think that economists say an affordable childcare is like no more than 7% of your gross income, I can't remember the exact number - but whatever that is, I think we should be capping it and subsidizing it accordingly. [00:26:08] Crystal Fincher: A lot of good ideas there. I wanna talk about the broader economy a little bit. Seattle has a very, very diverse business community, as does District 4. We have some of the largest companies in the world here, as well as a really diverse and vibrant small business community. And I wanna talk about small businesses who are facing a lot of challenges - I guess from your perspective, what are the biggest challenges that they are facing, and how can you help? [00:26:35] Ron Davis: Yeah, I think the two biggest are the sort of public safety behavioral health crisis that's happening on their doors - 'cause at least when I think of small business, archetypically I'm thinking of our little retail businesses. Although as a former small business owner, I guess there's multiple types, and that was not what I did. But, and then the other is real estate costs, right? It's very, very expensive to run a shop. So if it's expensive, and you're dealing with behavioral health issues at your door, and there's no civilian response you can call, you're really in a world of hurt. And so obviously everything we talked about earlier with public safety is how I would address the public safety issues, as well as I think we should be investing a lot more just generally in drug treatment and supplementing, even supplementing the Crisis Care Center levy in Seattle. But on the real estate side, Andrew Lewis recently proposed some legislation that is sort of the equivalent of a kind of a soft rent control for small businesses. And I'm interested in that, I like that. I haven't studied it closely enough to know exactly like how much, what do I think, what are the right situations? But especially for some of our like historic districts where a lot of those small minority and immigrant owned businesses tend to get started - like the Ave in Seattle - like I think we absolutely need to not have all of those turn into just open air malls like they have everywhere else. And I also think people need to be able to get started here and be successful. [00:27:58] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Now, big issue looming over the City of Seattle is the projected revenue shortfall of $224 million - that's what it's currently projected to be starting in 2025. Because the City's mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address the deficit are pretty binary - either raise revenue or cut services. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its constituents? [00:28:28] Ron Davis: Great question. So one is, I wrote an article a while back that said - it was called "Seattle Needs Money" - and it was related to this exact topic. And it was, my argument was - Hey, this is a shortfall. We're losing a lot of revenue because of things like the real estate excise tax slowing down and we're gonna have to gut essential services or we're gonna have to raise money. And so the best choice of those is to raise money. And by the way, our taxes are really regressive - they fall a lot, much more on working class people, middle class people, poor people than they do on wealthy folks. And so our taxes need to be more progressive - as in they need to take more from people who have more - to rebalance our tax code a little bit. How would I do that? Some of my favorite options right now that I'm interested in and would probably just vote yes on now would be A) we could increase JumpStart - we could increase its scope and we could increase its magnitude a little bit. I think it should run from more like 1-4%, not 0.7-2.1% or whatever it is - I think you're still very much in the safe zone where you're not killing the golden goose or anything like that. Alex Pedersen has proposed a 3% top-off to the 7% tax on extreme capital gains - I think that's also a reasonable idea, I wouldn't do his funny switch with water bills, but it could be a significant - that'd be at least another $30 million. Between those two, you'd start to see a substantial difference. I think a vacancy tax is fine - it's not gonna raise a ton of money. I'm also interested in - I have spoken with some constitutional scholars to make sure this would be cool - but I am very interested in a 1% income tax with a $700 rebate, which would be free or actually a check if you make $70,000 or less, and above that would start to bite at 1% of your income. So it would be de facto progressive, but statutorily it would be written in flat. So between those, you could cover the entire gap and you would have money left over for things like fentanyl treatment, and affordable housing, and standing up a behavioral health crisis response, and offering people transportation choices - which in contrast, my opponent says she wants to do all those things, but wants to cut $200 million, right? You can't just do magic. [00:30:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I do enjoy hearing concrete ideas - much appreciated for that. Now, as we wrap up today, there are a lot of people trying to make the choice between you and your opponent who you just brought up - trying to determine why they should vote for you versus your opponent. What do you tell voters? [00:30:54] Ron Davis: Yeah, I mean, usually, obviously I'm talking to them and understanding their values and what it is that's important to them, so it kind of depends on the issue. But I would say, like - at a high level, you know, I think we should raise money to deal with our deficit. My opponent Maritza Rivera thinks we should cut $200 million from the general fund, which will impact things like affordable housing, and drug treatment, and civilian responses, and pothole filling, and transit. I think that our city's tax code needs to be more progressive, she does not want to make it more progressive. I'm really focused on housing and homelessness as well as public safety, I think she's kind of only focused on public safety. My public safety plan doesn't ignore what SPD says is possible when it comes to hiring more officers, hers says that we can hire 12 times as much as they say is possible. So I think one of us is much more grounded in reality and aligned with our values, and I think the other is not. One last thing is our histories too are something that are worth looking at, right? I have a history of touching things, and having them go well, and having the people around me say - Hey, this was a really, really good experience. And 26 of 40 of her employees wrote a letter to the mayor not long before she announced that she was running - saying she shouldn't be trusted with City funds and had created a toxic work environment along with her supervisor. So I think the contrast is clear. [00:32:16] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your plans should you be elected to city council with all of the listeners today. Thank you so much. [00:32:25] Ron Davis: Thank you so much, Crystal. It's an honor to be on your show - I'm a diehard listener. [00:32:29] Crystal Fincher: Much appreciated. 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.

On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Maritza Rivera about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 4. Listen and learn more about Maritza and her thoughts on: [01:06] - Why she is running [04:46] - Lightning round! [19:29] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 4 [22:51] - Response to ARTS staff letter complaints [24:58] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services? [29:02] - Public Safety: Alternative response [31:24] - Victim support [33:33] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages [34:49] - Climate change [36:56] - Transit reliability [39:15] - Bike and pedestrian safety [39:52] - Small business support [41:43] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility [43:40] - Difference between her and opponent 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 Maritza Rivera at https://maritzaforseattle.com/.   Maritza Rivera Maritza is running to make restoring our public safety system a priority because she knows from personal experience that failing to take public safety seriously harms low-income and underserved communities the most. She won't rest until we get to 5-minute response times for priority 911 calls, take home and car break-ins seriously, get guns off our streets and out of our schools and shut down open-air drug markets. Maritza loves Seattle, the small businesses, food, arts, music, and diverse populations that make up our city's rich fabric. Maritza is committed to listening to everyone and working with everyone – to find real solutions to real challenges we cannot ignore any longer.   Resources Campaign Website - Maritza Rivera   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, today I'm very pleased to be welcoming a candidate for Seattle City Council District 4 to the program - welcome, Maritza Rivera. [00:01:01] Maritza Rivera: Thank you, Crystal. Thanks for having me on the program today. [00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I wanted to start off by hearing why you are running. [00:01:12] Maritza Rivera: Thank you for the question, Crystal. I'm running because I'm a mom of two teenage daughters who go to Ingraham High School, where - sadly, and I'm sure you know, and everyone else by now knows - there was a shooting in the fall last November. And a student got killed by another student. And our kids were all in lockdown for hours. And as I was sitting - not sitting, standing - at the parking lot waiting for the kids to come out and my girls to come out, it was, you know, a frightening experience. And I thought, you know, the public safety issues in Seattle right now are such that I can't sit around and watch what's happening. And when our current councilmember, Alex Pedersen, decided not to run again, I thought - I have 30 years of public service, I have something I can offer the city council, and I can't sit around and watch - I have to try to do something. You know, I grew up in New York City in the Bronx, in a mainly Black and brown neighborhood - and it was low-income and it wasn't safe. You know, we were safe in our homes, but it wasn't safe walking to and from school. And I moved to Seattle 22 years ago because it was so safe and vibrant and beautiful - and I thought what a great place it would be to start and raise a family, and we did that. And then fast forward - you know, things have really changed in Seattle - and, you know, I got into the race to address what I think is most urgent right now, which is the public safety issues across the city that the D4 is also experiencing, like the, you know, the shooting at my daughter's school, like the - daughters' school - the, there are home break-ins and car break-ins, the businesses on the commercial corridors of the D4 are suffering. Those small businesses - they're getting their windows broken into, there're folks using drugs blocking their entryways. So, you know, these are all the issues - there've been shootings in this neighborhood apart from the school shooting. And so we really need to address that. And, you know, we need to do various things on the, you know, unhoused folks - we need to get folks off the street. I think it's inhumane to leave people living on the street where there's no sanitation and amenities, where women and youth are particularly vulnerable. Lots of folks in those encampments are vulnerable to, you know, the drug dealers who are preying on these folks. We really got to get them indoors. We need to provide services - both mental health and drug addiction services - but we need to have folks off the streets. You know, we need to do better that way. And so for all these reasons, I thought - you know, I'm going to get into this race and I'm gonna do what I can to help get our city back on track. I think the mayor's doing a great job, but he needs a city council that's gonna work with him to actually accomplish positive change. [00:04:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Well, we are going to add a different element into this than we have in some of our prior years' candidate interviews and do a little lightning round here in the interview. Pretty quick and painless - but just some quick yes or no, or quick answer questions. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy? [00:05:08] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:05:09] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy? [00:05:13] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:05:14] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? [00:05:21] Maritza Rivera: That's the PDA [Public Development Authority]? [00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: Yes. [00:05:25] Maritza Rivera: No. [00:05:26] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor? [00:05:30] Maritza Rivera: Bruce Harrell. [00:05:32] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney? [00:05:38] Maritza Rivera: Ann Davison. [00:05:39] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor? [00:05:46] Maritza Rivera: Oh my God. I'm so sorry, I'm having a - Leesa Manion, Jim - I can't remember, Crystal. [00:06:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay. In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate? [00:06:10] Maritza Rivera: Patty Murray. [00:06:12] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence? [00:06:15] Maritza Rivera: Own. [00:06:16] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD? [00:06:24] Maritza Rivera: I don't have an opinion on that one. [00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord? [00:06:30] Maritza Rivera: We are. [00:06:31] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to better help plan housing and development needs in the district? [00:06:47] Maritza Rivera: You know, I'm gonna say maybe on that one. [00:06:51] Crystal Fincher: Are there instances where you support sweeps of homeless encampments? [00:06:57] Maritza Rivera: I, you know, we need to get people off the streets. So I do support getting folks off the streets and into sheltering. [00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority? [00:07:17] Maritza Rivera: And that one also, I would say maybe, because it depends on - the reason I didn't vote for it was because I feel like we have all these programs for housing and I need to see, you know, where are we with what the investments we're already making before we add another thing. So I just have concerns about adding something else before we know what we're doing with the current investments that we have. But I think that, you know, it passed. So it doesn't matter, you know, it's the law of the land and I respect that. And I think that we should have - you know, let them do a, let us do a project - let us invest in a project and see how it goes. And if it's successful, then great - we should keep funding it. [00:08:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed? [00:08:20] Maritza Rivera: You know, to be honest, Crystal - I don't know enough about why he's, you know, he's making the recommendation to close it to be able to answer yes or no on that one. [00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Would you vote to allow police in schools? [00:08:37] Maritza Rivera: Depends what kind of police. Like I think if it's community police officers and if it's in a - you know, what the details around it is - I think I might support something like that, but it just depends what it is. [00:08:53] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow any armed presence in schools? [00:08:59] Maritza Rivera: Armed presence. I don't think we need armed presence in schools, but I do need - I think we need to make the relationship between, you know, our youth and schools and the police more - you know, a better relationship. [00:09:16] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response? [00:09:25] Maritza Rivera: I would have to see what that looks like. Civilian-led without any experience working with mental health folks - I'm sorry, with folks that are experiencing mental health crisis - like, I mean, you need mental health professionals to work with folks. So if it's in conjunction working with the mental health professionals, perhaps. But folks experiencing mental crisis really need a mental health professional. [00:09:54] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and for these, we're going for quick yes, no, or maybe answers. We have a whole section to talk about all the details. So I promise you - you'll get the ability to explain yourself on topics in a fuller way after we get done with this. Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:10:14] Maritza Rivera: Sorry, can you repeat the question? [00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:10:25] Maritza Rivera: Maybe. [00:10:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach? [00:10:42] Maritza Rivera: Most, I mean, maybe, Crystal. Again, we need to look at what the proposal - these are hard to answer yes or no because without the details, it's hard to say on some of these. [00:10:54] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety measures? [00:11:06] Maritza Rivera: We need to hire more police officers. So, I mean, taking money away from being able to do that, and you can't do the money- [00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Right, this isn't for hiring police officers. This is money that was allocated for unfilled positions that were then not hired yet. So in this year's budget - where there is money there for them to be hired, but they weren't hired yet. [00:11:29] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, but it's not ongoing funding. So, you know, that's a maybe - because if it's, you're funding something temporarily, but then once you hire the officers, you're not gonna have the money to redirect the resources. So if you're saying the funds for this year's budget that haven't been used, and it's a one-time thing- [00:11:51] Crystal Fincher: Well, there would still be money for hiring in successive budgets. It's just if they didn't use it in the current year. [00:11:55] Maritza Rivera: Correct - current, but I mean - yeah. [00:11:57] Crystal Fincher: So you think it should be saved and added to the next budget? Is that- [00:12:01] Maritza Rivera: No, no - what I'm saying is if you're gonna use it for a one-time investment in something, then that's fine. But if it's not for ongoing - if you need to hire the officers, right? 'Cause the problem, Crystal, is sometimes - you know, if you're investing in something, that thing you're investing in, if it's a community thing, that needs ongoing investment as well. So I just wanna differentiate - if we're not using it this year, then we should redirect it to something else, like the budget in general of the City. But then it has to be something that's a one-time because then for the following year, you're gonna need it to fund the thing you originally- [00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Yes. [00:12:44] Maritza Rivera: -fund, right? [00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: And that is a useful differentiation. [00:12:48] Maritza Rivera: Yeah. [00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites? [00:12:56] Maritza Rivera: I would support - you know, I've had- [00:12:58] Crystal Fincher: Going for a yes, no, or maybe, yes, no, or maybe. [00:13:01] Maritza Rivera: Well, maybe on that, but- [00:13:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay. [00:13:05] Maritza Rivera: More leaning toward no, because I think the Fire Department actually has a better solution that I would support instead of consumption sites. [00:13:14] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Do you support increasing funding in the City- [00:13:16] Maritza Rivera: I'm sorry, the Fire Department, did I say Fire? [00:13:18] Crystal Fincher: I think you said that. [00:13:21] Maritza Rivera: Okay, great. [00:13:22] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs? [00:13:28] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:13:29] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power? [00:13:40] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about that, Crystal. [00:13:43] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? [00:13:53] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about the SPOG contract. So anything related to that. [00:14:00] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So again, opposing a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Again, not enough information? [00:14:12] Maritza Rivera: Can you tell me the question again? Sorry. [00:14:18] Crystal Fincher: Sure. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? [00:14:32] Maritza Rivera: So take money away from the police department to put into police alternatives. [00:14:38] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that prohibits, or impedes, or makes harder the ability of the city to move police funding to public safety alternatives? [00:14:53] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, I do need more information. [00:14:55] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? [00:15:04] Maritza Rivera: Ask me again - sorry - do I? [00:15:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? So if they're working - doing parking duty, or traffic direction duty - off-duty. Or if they're working in a security capacity off-duty. Do you support eliminating their ability to do that in SPD uniform? [00:15:37] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about that too, Crystal. These are very detailed. [00:15:45] Crystal Fincher: They're specific questions. [00:15:47] Maritza Rivera: Very specific - correct. [00:15:49] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? [00:15:58] Maritza Rivera: Yes, I support that. [00:16:00] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender? [00:16:05] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:16:06] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax? [00:16:14] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:16:16] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way? [00:16:24] Maritza Rivera: Need more information about that - it depends. [00:16:27] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront? [00:16:34] Maritza Rivera: I mean, as a user of the waterfront, I think it's a great project. Obviously, I don't have the details of the investments that are being made and how things are getting completed, but I think it's a great project for the city. [00:16:53] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates like the one issued by Amazon are necessary to boost Seattle's economy? [00:17:02] Maritza Rivera: Yes, absolutely. [00:17:05] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken- [00:17:06] Maritza Rivera: We need to get folks back into the office if we're gonna get downtown back on track. [00:17:11] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week? [00:17:14] Maritza Rivera: Yes. Light rail. [00:17:15] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week? [00:17:19] Maritza Rivera: No. [00:17:20] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic? [00:17:25] Maritza Rivera: Actually, I would like to see it closed off to non-commercial, which is a proposal - I know - that's being floated around. [00:17:34] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:17:42] Maritza Rivera: Sorry, ask again. [00:17:43] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:17:50] Maritza Rivera: Yes, we should do all we can to finish the extensions. [00:17:56] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety? [00:18:04] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:18:05] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union? [00:18:08] Maritza Rivera: I haven't personally, but my dad was when I was growing up. [00:18:15] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting? [00:18:24] Maritza Rivera: I definitely support that. [00:18:27] Crystal Fincher: So you would vote to increase funding? [00:18:30] Maritza Rivera: I mean, I support doing it. I can't say - I mean, I don't know what the current, where we currently are with that work at OLS [Office of Labor Standards], but I definitely support it. And if we need more funding, then we need to look - figure out how to get it. [00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line? [00:18:49] Maritza Rivera: Yes. No - like walked with the picketers. [00:18:53] Crystal Fincher: Supporting. Supporting the picketers, yes. [00:18:56] Maritza Rivera: Supporting - yes. [00:18:57] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line? [00:19:04] Maritza Rivera: No. [00:19:05] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign staff unionized? [00:19:12] Maritza Rivera: Campaign - no. [00:19:13] Crystal Fincher: If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort? [00:19:19] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:19:21] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the end of our lightning round. Pretty painless, there we go. So back to other questions. Lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district, and what impact that has had on residents there? [00:19:44] Maritza Rivera: I've worked - so I've worked at the City for a number of years now - I just resigned from my position as Deputy Director in the Office of Arts and Culture, where I primarily was in charge of getting our budget through the budget process. And prior to that, I was in Mayor Durkan's administration - worked in the Mayor's office and worked with a portfolio of City departments - a lot of it related to their budgets and reviewing of their budgets. So I think in general - not just in the D4, but across the city - I've been involved in reviewing department budgets and working to make sure and bring accountability to those budgets. And making sure that I was implementing the mayor's - and the city council, when they passed the budget - implementing the programs and the services that were passed in the budget. So like I'll say most recently, 'cause I was just at ARTS, there was recovery funding for arts organizations and artists across the city. And I worked - our staff did a great job - and I worked with our staff to get those dollars out the door as quickly as possible, particularly post-pandemic. And the department gives grants out to organizations, arts organizations, across the city. So we work to make sure and we were getting those grants out as quickly as possible. So I think these are things that are not just specific to the D4, but do include the D4. True, in the Durkan administration - unfortunately, we were in a pandemic. And one thing that I feel really proud of is - I worked on reopening of the farmers markets after everything was shut down. It was really the first thing that was opened, and I worked with the farmers markets across the city - including the one at the University District - to make sure that they opened it safely during that post-pandemic, not post-, but during the pandemic, actually - I shouldn't say post-pandemic - during that pandemic time. And I'm really proud of the work that I did there because the farmers market was open and available to the residents here in the D4. And I'm proud to say there were no outbreaks at the farmers markets because we were following the public health guidelines, and working with the farmers markets' leaders who did a great job in putting the guidelines - following the guidelines and making sure that they were doing all they could to make sure that there were no outbreaks so we could continue to keep the markets open. [00:22:51] Crystal Fincher: I wanted to ask more about your time at ARTS because there was reporting related to your time there saying that 26 out of 40 ARTS staff at the time signed a letter really detailing complaints against you, highlighted by three - that leadership disregarded City policies, that there was a toxic work environment, and that the staff's ability to do its work for the community was hindered. With over half of the employees there signing their name to this letter publicly and this being handed over to the Ombuds office with their concerns, how do you respond to this? Do you think that accurately reflects your time there? Were there any thing that these employees said that to you was something that you could improve or reflect on? [00:23:39] Maritza Rivera: I'll say, Crystal, that the mayor brought in Director, or former Director - or former Interim Director - royal alley-barnes to direct the office. She, in turn, brought me on - I was backfilling for someone at the time. And, you know, I know that staff - you know, every time there's change of leadership, staff has - some staff have a hard time. And so - you know, we, I feel really proud of the work that I did while I was at ARTS. And I have a lot of respect for the folks that work there. I know change is hard, but we worked together and we were able to get a lot accomplished, and I feel really proud of my personal work while I was at ARTS. [00:24:36] Crystal Fincher: As you consider those allegations in your time there, is there anything to you that you could have done differently to change that outcome? [00:24:47] Maritza Rivera: Again, I just feel really proud of the work that we were accomplished - I mean, that we accomplished together. That's - you know, I feel proud of the work there. [00:24:58] Crystal Fincher: Well, I wanna ask you about the budget, because the City of Seattle is projected to have a $224 million budget shortfall in 2025. The City's mandated to pass a balanced budget, so the options to address this are either raise revenue, cut services, or some combination of those two. Which one of those will be your approach to the budget? [00:25:22] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, thank you for the question, Crystal - and obviously this comes up a lot. First and foremost, I think we need to look at the budget and make sure that we are accountable to the dollars that we're currently investing. So I say that, to say - we need to look at the programs that are being funded and make sure that they're having the outcomes that we intended - because part of budgeting is making sure that the money that you're using is being well spent. And you don't know that if you don't know what outcomes you're getting - How many folks are you helping? Is it really helping? Does the community feel like it's helping? And so we need to do the reviewing of those programs in each of those departments to make sure that the programs that we're funding are actually, like I said, having the intended outcomes. If they are, then we should continue them. If they're not, then we should redirect the resources to something different that will have the outcomes that we're intending. So we need to engage in that exercise before then we look at - excuse me - raising revenue. And so that, to me, is really important - the accountability piece. I feel really strongly - I mean, my dad was a blue collar worker and he paid taxes, and I just, I'm very sensitive - people work really hard for their money and we wanna make sure that we're spending their money, we're accountable to those dollars. And then once we do that exercise, then we can look toward - if we need to raise revenue, then we can look at how we would do that. But I do feel like the accountability piece is really important and it's been missing. [00:27:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, I do wanna get into more specifics here because that is not a small budget cut - pretty significant - so unless that review winds up with some pretty steep cuts or that's the outcome - that will end up, there will also need to be revenue. There were some options presented by a revenue workgroup. Do you support revenue options, and which ones do you see yourself supporting or advocating? [00:27:44] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, Crystal - I can't say now which ones I would support. You know, I'd have to, I'd look at it and see and talk to, you know, folks. And see and then talk to my colleagues and see what makes sense for the city - and talk to the mayor, obviously, as well. So we need to do this working together. We need to find these solutions working together as a city council and working with the mayor. So I can't say today which ones I would support, but I will say that we need to work together to look at which ones make the most sense for the city. [00:28:25] Crystal Fincher: Are there any of the recommendations that you would not support, or what would be the priority revenue options or what you'd be most likely to support? [00:28:36] Maritza Rivera: I don't have - I can't say today what that would be. [00:28:41] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so nothing from the workgroup that you've heard makes it to the top of the list? [00:28:48] Maritza Rivera: There's nothing today that - I wouldn't prioritize it right now. I'd wanna have conversations about it. [00:28:54] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. I do wanna talk about- [00:28:56] Maritza Rivera: I haven't met with the workgroup and I haven't had the opportunity to have those conversations. [00:29:01] Crystal Fincher: I see. When it comes to public safety, several jurisdictions around the country and in our region have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having a behavioral health crisis or other issues, but Seattle has stalled in implementing what's a widely-supported idea. Money's been allocated, but it has not been implemented yet. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models? [00:29:32] Maritza Rivera: Well, I think that we need to support alternative responses because we know that, in certain cases, a police officer is not trained to handle a situation - but a mental health or social provider or social worker's in a better position to, is trained to respond to those situations and be able to deescalate. In terms of - you know, I think the non-police solutions where there's a co-response - sometimes that's appropriate and that's what we, you know, should support. You know, I think the Health One model is a great model - it's proven to be successful and it's one that we should look to invest more in. Those are the kinds of models that I think have proven results to work and something that we should look at expanding. And then, also - I mean, in terms of in the community - when the police budget got cut, things like the police, the community policing efforts, also - those are the things that kind of go first. And I think those are a really great way of working with community in the neighborhoods to really do, to handle, to address the public safety issues. And so I think that we need to go back to basics that way and make sure that all our neighborhoods have that community policing - community police and those neighborhoods working on the ground with the community folks to address the public safety issues in the neighborhoods. [00:31:24] Crystal Fincher: Now, I do wanna talk about victims and survivors. We talk a lot about victims - people who have been impacted by crime or who have been harmed - but most of what we hear are people speaking for victims or over victims. And we don't often listen to what they're saying, and what they say mostly is that - one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else ever again. And they want better support, more effective support, in helping to get beyond what happened to them - to help mitigate the harm that occurred, whether it's from an assault or a theft or you name it, some help getting beyond that. What can you do, in your capacity as a city councilperson to better support and help victims or people who have been harmed? [00:32:19] Maritza Rivera: I mean, I think - I mean, we need to listen to folks and we need to listen to - you know, we need to listen to their experiences and we need to listen to, you know, their needs. I think that about victims and also survivors - and just in general, as a city councilmember, your job is to listen to your residents in your - to the residents in your district, in this case district. It used to be they weren't district positions, right? They were citywide. But now you need to listen to folks in your district and make sure that you are, you know, not operating in a vacuum when you are doing the work because really, ultimately, the work is to support the residents of the city. And so that includes victims as well - listening and listening to what their needs are, because you need to be well-informed when you are making these decisions that have an impact across the city. [00:33:33] Crystal Fincher: One thing called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living - causing staffing issues, impacting the level of service. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can you make that more likely with how the City bids for and contracts for services? [00:33:59] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, absolutely - I think the nonprofits need to make sure that they're paying living wages to the folks that they hire, in the same way that the City does. And, you know, I mean, I think with the bids - that's an area where you can, as you're working with these providers and nonprofits, making sure that you're setting up funding models that require nonprofits and providers to support workers and make sure that they're paying living wages to their workers. [00:34:49] Crystal Fincher: Now, on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods locally and around the globe. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals? [00:35:09] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, I think my biggest priority in terms of the climate is really on the transportation front. I think - you know, I came from a city where we had a robust transportation system and it meant that I didn't have a driver's license 'til I was 30 years old because I - and I took public transit everywhere. So, you know, Seattle - we need to be investing in a transportation system that's on par and competitive with other cities across the country. And, you know, we've lagged behind - it's taken us a long time to get even where we are, but we need to go further. And it really - I think, is one of the best ways that you can address climate change - is to get people out of their cars and using public transportation. And so I support, you know, the light rail, buses. We really need to get folks, you know, utilizing these services, but we can only do so if we have a robust service. And so we really need to focus on investments in the transportation. So, you know, like Move, the Move Seattle Levy's coming up next year - or not coming up, but, you know, renewal, hopefully. The council, whoever's sitting council, will vote to renew it and put it on the ballot again for folks in the city. But I really do think that we need to continue and we need to expand on the transportation investments, so we can have a robust system that folks will utilize and we can get folks out of their cars. [00:36:56] Crystal Fincher: One major issue that people are saying is preventing them from getting out of their cars right now is transit reliability. Because of staffing shortages, other issues - the reliability of buses has been tanking with buses not showing up when they're scheduled, routes being suspended, some being canceled - and really putting people who are currently riding in a bind, forcing some of them out of transit and into cars. Now, Sound Transit is a regional entity and King County Metro is a county entity, but as you talked about with the Move Seattle Levy and other things, the City does impact transit service in the city. So what can you, as a city councilmember, do to stabilize transit reliability? [00:37:43] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, well, we need to work in partnership with Sound Transit and the county to make sure that we are providing a service to residents that is robust and reliable. But we can only do so if we have strong partnerships, because to your point - we make investments, but Sound Transit is the entity that's responsible for implementing, right? So we need to have really strong partnerships with these entities. And I will say reliability is a huge issue, but I'm gonna say my experience is public safety is a huge issue as well. Right now, public safety, in my opinion, has impacted people's not wanting to take the light rail and buses. And then we've also seen bus drivers that have been impacted because of folks doing drugs on the buses and the light - well, bus drivers on the buses and the operators on the light rail. So we need to do, we need - I think public safety is an equally important piece to address when we're looking at trying to increase ridership of the light rail and buses across the city. [00:39:10] Crystal Fincher: How would you- [00:39:11] Maritza Rivera: And we need to work with our partners on that as well. [00:39:14] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety? [00:39:20] Maritza Rivera: We need to make sure we have the robust bike lanes and we need to do things like the signal - I don't know what you call it - but the signal, when it changes, it lets the pedestrian, it gives some time for the pedestrian to cross before it changes for the driver. And so we need to do more of that across the city. We have that in certain places, but it's not robust. And so we need to do that - those kinds of things - to promote pedestrian and bike safety. [00:39:52] Crystal Fincher: Now, we have a vibrant economy and a vibrant business community in the city and in the district. We have some of the largest companies headquartered here and nearby, but also really diverse and varied small businesses. What are the highest priorities for small businesses in your district, and what can you do to better support those businesses? [00:40:17] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, the small business owners that I've talked to in the district are really concerned about public safety because they've had to deal with, like I said earlier, windows broken into. There's a business in the D5 that I know has gotten broken into five times and have been robbed. And so - those five times - so we need to support the public safety issues. We would need to provide support for the public safety issues that these small businesses are facing. You know, as you said, we have a vibrant economy. And I think that the lifeblood of any city is it's small businesses - it really - the small businesses keep a city vibrant. Obviously big business provides jobs, so that's important too. But right now I think what the small businesses are mostly facing are those public safety issues. And so we need to really work with them to make sure that we are addressing those issues so that folks are coming out and going to those businesses, and the business owners aren't losing money just trying to deal with the public safety issues that they're experiencing. [00:41:43] Crystal Fincher: Now I do wanna talk about another issue crucial to our local economy and that's childcare. Many families are dealing with a high cost of childcare - it's the number two cost behind housing for most families. And we recently got reporting that shows that childcare is more expensive than college now. Families are breaking their budgets trying to afford this, and we can't talk about inflation or affordability without contending with childcare. What can you do to ease the burden on families for childcare costs? [00:42:18] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, so it - I mean, I experienced firsthand just the childcare issues, a lack thereof. And I'm particularly concerned - I mean, I'm lucky that I actually took some time off to be able to care for my children because it wasn't penciling out - what I was making was going toward childcare. And it was difficult to even find the childcare to begin with, so we need to be supporting the opening of more childcare centers. We need to make sure that childcare providers are working - workers I mean, are making living wages because it's a hard job and, you know, folks are not gonna wanna do it if it's not, you know, a living wage. And so we need to support those things. And I know that the City has some childcare subsidies and my understanding is not everyone is aware - so making sure that community folks, you know, in low - in our underserved communities are aware of the services is really important too on the childcare front. But we definitely need more childcare options and we need to make sure workers are making a living wage so that they will want those jobs. [00:43:40] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we move to close this interview, there are still a lot of people trying to make up their minds between you and your opponent. When a voter is asking - Why should I support you? Or what is the difference between you and the person you're running against? - what do you say? [00:43:58] Maritza Rivera: What I say, Crystal, is that there is a stark difference between us in that - my opponent does not support the mayor's proposal to hire more police officers to address public safety. My opponent doesn't support the drug possession law, which is supported by the mayor and which I do support - and which our current councilmember in the D4 brought forward, actually, with Councilmember Nelson as well. That is huge. If folks - public safety, I have a sense of urgency of public safety. I've said, and I've been consistent, this is why I got into the race to begin with - was the public safety issues because of what happened at my daughters' school. And my opponent is not supporting the laws that would address public safety right now in the city - and that's what we're suffering the most from in the city currently - are the public safety issues. So that is a huge difference. I also think that my opponent's rhetoric is divisive. He's named-called councilmembers. And I talked to a voter the other day who said - my opponent went to her door and was, you know, name-calling and being derogatory on some councilmembers and they didn't like that my opponent was doing that. So I don't think that - you know, you can agree to disagree on the city council and still work together. I worked for Tom Rasmussen when Tom was first elected. And, you know, one thing I saw with that group of city councilmembers - they didn't all agree, you're not always gonna agree, but they did work together to find compromise and move forward. And there was civil discourse. And that's what's missing from the city council right now. And, you know, my opponent's divisive rhetoric is more of the same of the city councilmembers who are engaged in that type of behavior. And so those are two stark differences between us. [00:46:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, candidate for Seattle City Council District 4, Maritza Rivera. Thank you so much. [00:46:39] Maritza Rivera: Thank you, Crystal. Have a great day. [00:46:42] Crystal Fincher: 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.

~ Dagen McDowell, anchor and analyst on the Fox Business Network and Co-Host of the new show The Bottom Line with Dagen McDowell & Sean Duffy at 6 PM ET ~ House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry, R-N.C  ~Former Republican Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley of Washington State Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you see what many of our politicians and bureaucrats do to us every day, and how most of the media shamelessly cover for them, it can be easy to get discouraged and wonder if the fight is worth it. Sara knows that it is because of the sacrifices her family and your family have made to make this nation great. She traces her own family's commitment to service, from her colonial ancestors all the way to her husband's service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sara has never stopped fighting for the future of this nation and you can't either.Sara is also joined by her friend Tiffany Smiley, who battled the Veterans Administration on behalf of her husband after he was blinded in Iraq - and won! They discuss Tiffany's recent U.S. Senate campaign in Washington state, how to convince voters they really do have something to fight for, and what Tiffany is doing now to create a brighter future for our nation.Please visit our great sponsors:Allegiance Goldhttps://protectwithsara.com Click or Call 877-702-7272 tell them Sara sent you and get $5,000 of free silver on a qualifying purchase. Donors Trusthttps://donorstrust.org/saraLet my friends at Donors Trust help minimize your tax liability while maximizing your giving. Fast Growing Trees https://fastgrowingtrees.com/carterVisit fastgrowingtrees.com/carter today to save 15% off your entire order.

We're one day from Election Day! Megyn Kelly is joined by Tiffany Smiley, GOP senate candidate in Washington, to talk about whether she can upset longtime incumbent Patty Murray, how crime has affected the race, why Democrats say they're voting for her as their first GOP candidate ever, Trump's involvement in 2022 and 2024, moms and education in Washington, and more. Then Tudor Dixon, GOP governor candidate in Michigan, joins to talk about her potential upset of incumbent Gretchen Whitmer, how the education system plays a role in her race, the issue of abortion in Michigan, election security, crime in her state, and more. Then Eliana Johnson and Chris Stirewalt, host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast, join to discuss NBC "expiring" its Paul Pelosi story, the lack of curiosity in the press and labeling skepticism "misinformation," the faults of Dr. Oz and John Fetterman, the extremism of the left and right and why it will hurt the left more, Democrats refusing to listen to their voters on crime, the possibility for a major GOP red wave, whether Lee Zeldin might actually win in New York, what happens to Biden after the election, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

On Thursday's Mark Levin Show, President Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the three individuals in recent history who have done the most to destroy this country because they hate the America we know and love. They despise any system that doesn't afford them power and work with their partners in the media to undermine our republic in the name of the democracy they incessantly speak about. They call patriots deniers but it's they that deny individual liberty, economic prosperity, faith, morality, and the nuclear family while calling you a deplorable, racist, semi-fascist, threat to society. Then, the DOJ leaked to CNN that they might open a special counsel investigation into Donald Trump if he runs for President. The heavy-handed politics simply doesn't end when it comes to criminalizing Trump. Later, Lt. Col Jennifer-Ruth Green, a combat veteran, pilot, and congressional candidate joins the show to discuss her race for Indiana's 1st District. Green says that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have a clear disdain for America and too few have served in uniform to understand the human cost of war. Green says that ideology has no place in the classroom. Afterward, Herschel Walker calls in with an update on his US Senate campaign in Georgia. Walker noted that this election is bigger than him but for all Georgians and Americans. Walker says that we must have leadership in Washington that doesn't threaten democracy, as the democrats say, because Biden and the Democrats are the biggest threat the country faces. Finally, Tiffany Smiley, candidate for the US Senate in Washington state checks in with a report from the campaign trail. She aims to turn crisis into hop once elected to the US Senate.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Biden to address country tonight on "threats to democracy." What are Democrats trying to do? Tiffany Smiley joins Clay and Buck to tell us what she'll deliver when she beats Patty Murray in Washington State. Dems will freak out if Tiffany Smiley wins. The #MadMom battalion is about to shake up American politics.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tiffany Smiley is a triage nurse whose life changed when her husband Scotty was severely wounded by a suicide bomber while serving in Iraq. The Army tried to get her to sign discharge papers that would have ended his career, but she refused. She fought the government and won. Her husband went on to serve as America's first blind active-duty Army officer. Now she is fighting to be the U.S. Senator for Washington State and unseat Patty Murray, who has been there for almost 30 years. Tiffany joins Lisa to talk about her story and why she is running. Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tiffany Smiley is a triage nurse whose life changed when her husband Scotty was severely wounded by a suicide bomber while serving in Iraq. The Army tried to get her to sign discharge papers that would have ended his career, but she refused. She fought the government and won. Her husband went on to serve as America's first blind active-duty Army officer. Now she is fighting to be the U.S. Senator for Washington State and unseat Patty Murray, who has been there for almost 30 years. Tiffany joins Lisa to talk about her story and why she is running. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Solomon, Editor-in-Chief of Just the News, hosts 'On Offense: Policy for the People' sponsored by Heritage Action for America for an in-depth discussion on the fast approaching midterm elections on November 8th with Republicans and Democrats watching to see if this is an affirmative or repudiation election of the Biden administrations policies. Interviews including: Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, Georgia Republican Rep. Austin Scott, Washington GOP Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley, Florida GOP House candidate Cory Mills, and Heritage Action for America Executive Director Jessica Anderson.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ulta released a podcast with a biological man who expressed what it's like to be a mother and a woman. Glenn plays "When Did This Become Normal?" as he reviews various troubling stories. Why haven't you heard anything about the protests in Europe? The world is preparing for energy, food, and health care shortages, while the American government is focused on transgender issues. Pat Gray joins to blast Senate candidate Evan McMullin for his recent conduct against Sen. Mike Lee. Sen. Mike Lee joins to explain why his seat is crucial to saving America. Glenn questions America's priorities as he further dives into the dangers on the horizon. Washington U.S. Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley joins to discuss the red hue taking over the deep blue state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sara welcomes her friend and Washington U.S. Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley to discuss her fight to unseat 30-year incumbent Sen. Patty Murray. Smiley explains how crime and rug addiction are soaring thanks in part to Murray's failed policies and how she would lead differently.They also discuss how The Seattle Times and even Starbucks are trying to hurt Smiley's campaign and how securing the open southern border is critical to achieving so many national security priorities.Sara also unloads on the FBI and Christopher Steele after the revelation that the bureau offered Steele $1 million for proof that the allegations in his anti-Trump dossier were true but he couldn't do it. Yet the FBI still used the dossier as a premise to spy on Trump campaign figures.Finally, she blasts New York City Mayor Eric Adams for whining about thousands of migrants being sent to his city, which he previously declared a sanctuary city.Please visit our great sponsors:My Pillow https://www.mypillow.com/carterSave on the new Percale Bed Sheets with code CARTER.The Association of Mature American Citizenshttps://amac.us/carterThe benefits of membership are great, but the cause is even greater.

Desperate Democrats go after DeSantis on Hurricane Ian response. Kamala Harris says Hurricane Ian relief will be based on "equity" then ignores questions on what she meant. Buck says, "Kamala Harris sounds like someone who gives HR seminars." Bill Maher and guest want Democrats to dump Kamala, but think they can't because of identity politics. Go to VolunteerFlorida.org to help the citizens of Florida. Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis has announced more than $20 million raised. Every bit counts. Brazil polling was way off, going to runoff after media said leftist would win easily. C&B remind that polls just look at one snapshot in time. Seattle Times, Starbucks and the Seattle Seahawks send Washington State Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley cease and desist letters over recent ads. She has the Democrats rattled.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gas Prices Spike Again As Saudis Turn on Biden. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Standing Up to Crazy Leftist Policies. Tiffany Smiley, Sen. Candidate for WA, on the Shameful Attacks Against Her Campaign. Jesse Kelly Stands His Ground After We Call Him Out Over Expensive Tequila Shots.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Desperate Democrats go after DeSantis on Hurricane Ian response. Kamala Harris says Hurricane Ian relief will be based on "equity" then ignores questions on what she meant. Buck says, "Kamala Harris sounds like someone who gives HR seminars." Bill Maher and guest want Democrats to dump Kamala, but think they can't because of identity politics. Go to VolunteerFlorida.org to help the citizens of Florida. Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis has announced more than $20 million raised. Every bit counts. Brazil polling was way off, going to runoff after media said leftist would win easily. C&B remind that polls just look at one snapshot in time. Seattle Times, Starbucks and the Seattle Seahawks send Washington State Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley cease and desist letters over recent ads. She has the Democrats rattled.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Tuesday's Mark Levin Show, Florida braces for hurricane Ian and after ignoring him, President Biden finally spoke with Gov Ron DeSantis to discuss steps to prepare. While this is happening, we have a Democrat suggesting that voting Democrat will help stop hurricanes. Also, the DOJ's FBI has become a Democrat Party Stasi. What they've done to Donald Trump, what they've done to citizens that peacefully attended January 6th demonstrations, and we've seen what they've done to cover up for Joe and Hunter Biden. Later, the Democrats resisted the Civil Rights act, and it wouldn't have passed without Republicans. Democrats have long embraced bigotry despite the media's efforts to cover it up. Afterward, Washington Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley calls in to discuss her campaign. Smiley says her opponent is a rubber stamp for Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wharton School economist blasts the Fed's big mistakes. Should GOP impeach Biden if they win the House? Tiffany Smiley cuts Patty Murray's lead down to 2 in the Washington State senate race. Senator Tommy Tuberville joins Clay and Buck to defend women's rights against Biden's Title IX attack. Clay and Buck read VIP email on submarine movies.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sen. Candidate for WA, Tiffany Smiley, on Giving Handups, Not Handouts. Christine Drazan Should Be the Next Governor of Oregon. Dr. Mehmet Oz on the Dangers of a Fetterman Win in PA. JD Vance, Senate Candidate for OH, Takes it to Tim Ryan. Latest Polls Show Super Red Wave Back in Play.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tiffany Smiley, is running for Senate in the state of Washington against liberal Patty Murray, who won't even show up for a debate. This is truly elite liberalism at its best.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bidenology: Analyzing the Crazy Stuff Biden Says. Libs Hate When Their Intelligence is Questioned. Charles Gasparino on the Economy: the Soft Landing vs. the Crash Landing. Tiffany Smiley, Sen. Candidate for WA, on Giving Handups - Not Handouts.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charles Gasparino of Fox Business joins Clay and Buck to give us his read on just how bad the Biden economy could get. Bigoted Oregon fans chant "F- the Mormons" at BYU football team. Washington Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley joins C&B to tell us how she can upset Patty Murray. C&B take calls. 50 days to the election.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.