All of your questions answered

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde on our Christmas Eve holiday edition of Seattle Nice. Erica C. Barnett wearing red in, I'm not sure where you are as a matter of fact. You're not in Seattle though.

[00:00:24] I'm in an undisclosed location, as you can see on the Zoom, but listeners can't see. Obviously, there are a bunch of karate trophies in the background.

[00:00:34] Oh, wow.

[00:00:34] There's a gun safe. I had to move a spur out of the way to make a stand for my recording device.

[00:00:42] There you go. It's a very kinky dungeon-like setting.

[00:00:46] Actually, there's the spur.

[00:00:48] Wow. Wow. So putting all those things together, I couldn't tell you. Yeah, that's hard to guess. If you were to guess spur plus karate, I don't know.

[00:01:01] Trophies. I don't know. It all sounds very perverted to me.

[00:01:05] Yeah, well, that's everything. Sandeep Kaushik, political consultant.

[00:01:09] Yeah, you make it dirty.

[00:01:11] So today we're doing the much discussed but never yet done until now. This is something we heard from especially some of our Patreon folks and others wanting to do a bit of a mailbag.

[00:01:22] So we're going to try to do more listener questions as a part of the show on a regular basis.

[00:01:27] But this time we're just going to do a whole bunch of listener questions and see how it goes, starting with John Ostenson, who wants to know about Bruce Harrell's re-election race for 2025.

[00:01:37] 2025, Bruce Harrell of Seattle up for re-election. How do you handicap his re-election race? And will any credible candidate come forward to challenge him?

[00:01:47] Sandeep Kaushik, you've got your finger on the pulse of Seattle politics. What's the definitive answer to both of those?

[00:01:54] I think the definitive answer is that the mayor is right now appears to be cruising to re-election.

[00:01:59] He's got an approval rating. Last time I saw some polling, which is a couple of months ago, but in the mid-50s, which is strong.

[00:02:06] It's not spectacular. It's down a bit from where it was earlier in his term, but it's still very strong.

[00:02:11] And more importantly, I'm hearing from the kind of the funders on the left are not really out there beating the bushes looking for a strong candidate to run against him.

[00:02:22] I think they're making their piece of the mayor. I don't think that there's a huge appetite on the left to spend a bunch of money.

[00:02:29] There will be opposition, obviously, that someone will emerge, but it doesn't look like it's there's going to be a big concerted effort to try to oust the mayor, at least from what I'm seeing right now.

[00:02:39] So I think he's in a very good shape. He's in very good shape, headed headed into 25 and is reelect.

[00:02:45] Erica, what are you hearing? What are you thinking about the mayor's race next year?

[00:02:49] Yeah, I mean, I would agree with Sandeep. I mean, I don't I don't have, you know, I the same ends, as I've said a bunch of times with the sort of political elite who are making these decisions ultimately.

[00:03:00] But the mayor seems pretty popular. Just finally fired former police chief Adrian Diaz, which I think, you know, is probably, you know, a decision that inoculates him somewhat from the left.

[00:03:12] We'll see how this new police chief ends up being in the next few months, chosen without any public process.

[00:03:20] But, you know, I mean, I don't see a credible challenger on Sarah Nelson.

[00:03:25] I mean, that's that's going to be an interesting race if there can if the left can come up with a good challenger for her.

[00:03:31] I think she is vulnerable. I think she is not super well liked in the public.

[00:03:36] And Sandeep's going to say that I'm wrong and that, you know, the homeowners on Phenny Ridge love her, which is probably true.

[00:03:44] But I think that, you know, that she is not a beloved figure and she does not like have the kind of community support that Mayor Harrell does in certain segments of Seattle.

[00:03:55] So I think that I think that she could be beat. It just depends.

[00:03:58] And I'm hearing a lot of names on that one, but none that I can divulge right now.

[00:04:04] So Sandeep, I guess the same question we got from the same lister, John Ostenson and Erica went right there.

[00:04:10] What do you think? Sarah Nelson more controversial than Harrell, but mostly aligned with him.

[00:04:15] Yeah, that shaping up to be a very different race.

[00:04:17] I was just saying and this goes to I think Bruce Harrell has.

[00:04:21] Well, there's a lot of skepticism of Bruce on the left.

[00:04:24] I think he's done a good enough job of placating some of the more powerful kind of constituencies and interest groups on the left, particularly Labour to avoid them playing in a serious challenge.

[00:04:37] Sarah is, I think, the mirror image case where it is very, very well known that Labour's lining up.

[00:04:48] Labour in particular has been lining up to try to find a strong candidate to run against her.

[00:04:52] They made the rounds of a whole bunch of Seattle legislators asking them to get in.

[00:04:57] They struck out on that front.

[00:04:59] But I have heard recently and I'm going to tease our audience here by saying that Labour has found, my understanding is they have found someone they consider to be a really strong candidate.

[00:05:09] And are sort of lining up to pull resources together for big IE spending.

[00:05:15] So I think the Sarah Nelson race is going to be a full on, you know, classic Seattle business versus Labour, left versus centre left battle.

[00:05:26] And it's going to it's going to be a, you know, it's going to be a war.

[00:05:29] Right. And one thing I will point out, though, my neighbors on Finney Ridge, Erica, are not the Sarah Nelson base.

[00:05:35] They're actually the, you know, my neighbors on Finney Ridge are are are left.

[00:05:42] Right. Finney Ridge is the man Anderson crunched the numbers.

[00:05:45] Fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:05:46] It was the fourth leftist, fourth farthest left neighborhood in Seattle in the in the latest.

[00:05:51] After Columbia City, probably.

[00:05:52] But since you're just teasing it, I'm going to speculate.

[00:05:55] What about the other Sarah Nelson, the international labor leader for the flight attendants union?

[00:06:00] Who's kind of a radical labor leader? Be like Sarah Nelson versus Sarah Nelson.

[00:06:03] Yeah. Perfect.

[00:06:04] There you go. I don't think she lives in Seattle.

[00:06:06] She does not live in Seattle. No. But but, you know, if she's a listener, she should consider it.

[00:06:11] That'd be a great race.

[00:06:12] She could probably get a flight in, though, given that she's a flavor.

[00:06:15] Sarah Nelson, Erica, has been more successfully.

[00:06:20] I don't want to use the word demonized because it seems so pejorative, but more successfully demonized by her opponents than Bruce Harrell has.

[00:06:28] Is that because of who Sarah Nelson is and how she's governed?

[00:06:32] I mean, they've governed kind of similarly.

[00:06:34] They're political allies.

[00:06:35] Why is Sarah Nelson less popular potentially or seems like a more vulnerable target from your perspective than Bruce Harrell?

[00:06:43] Well, I mean, I guess the question is, who is Sarah Nelson's base?

[00:06:47] I mean, sure, it's the Chamber of Commerce.

[00:06:49] It's business.

[00:06:50] But and that's money, but that's not people.

[00:06:53] And I think Bruce Harrell has a base not just of all the money on the business side, but he also has a base of people who generally like him.

[00:07:01] And I have never gotten the impression that Sarah Nelson has a strong community base.

[00:07:07] I think she has definitely been very successful at getting money.

[00:07:11] She's been successful at getting her colleagues to support her because she supported them.

[00:07:16] I mean, she worked to get most of the people that are on the current council elected.

[00:07:19] So they're going to endorse her.

[00:07:20] But I don't think that she has a strong community base of actual voters.

[00:07:25] And I also think that, you know, you say that she's been demonized.

[00:07:29] I would say she has made a lot of unforced errors on the council in terms of, you know, shutting down public comment in a way that just seems, you know, I mean, you can shrug at that.

[00:07:40] It's just a couple of times where she's shut down the chambers and had people arrested.

[00:07:44] But you don't want to be the person who shut down the chambers and had people arrested.

[00:07:47] I mean, it looks anti-democratic.

[00:07:49] It looks like you're imperious and you don't care what anybody has to say.

[00:07:52] And I do think that actually makes an impression, you know, even among people who might have voted for her, not just among people who are protesters.

[00:07:59] And I think she that that just gives a vibe of, you know, I'm not here to listen to people.

[00:08:05] And I think that is a problem.

[00:08:07] But I think, you know, the bigger problem is just I don't know who who loves her within the voting public.

[00:08:13] Yeah, I said I didn't want to use the word demonize because it is so pejorative.

[00:08:19] But but what about Sandeep?

[00:08:20] You know, is her is her base kind of the silent majority?

[00:08:23] She definitely has a base.

[00:08:25] Right.

[00:08:25] And, you know, I think she's going to run a campaign that's going to focus significantly on what she's going to call the gains we've made on public safety and things like that.

[00:08:36] And I think there's definitely a base of support for that.

[00:08:39] There are a lot of people that, you know, have not forgotten what the city looked like a couple of years ago when Sarah Nelson and, you know, as Sarah Nelson and Bruce Harrell were coming into office.

[00:08:50] And so I think she's going to make an argument that her opponents are going to want to take us back in that direction.

[00:08:56] I don't want to put words in her mouth, but that's the obvious place.

[00:08:59] They're going to unleash another pandemic.

[00:09:01] You know, well, you know, they're going to, you know, stop the sweeps and push to, like, cut police funding and, you know, end drug laws and all of that stuff.

[00:09:12] Right. One place that I do think, David, to your question, though, where I think Sarah Nelson and Bruce Harrell have differed and is kind of leading into the differences and how these races are shaping up is over some of the economic issues.

[00:09:27] Right. So this new council coming out of the gate, led by Sarah Nelson, raised questions about the earning standard law for delivery that the previous council has passed.

[00:09:39] I think rightly so. I think that law has.

[00:09:42] And for those listening, sorry, the earning standard for delivery.

[00:09:46] I mean, I would call that the minimum wage for gig drivers like for Uber and DoorDash.

[00:09:52] There is a debate over whether to lower that minimum wage.

[00:09:55] Yeah. Well, they said it well above Seattle's minimum wage.

[00:09:58] And I think the argument was that they killed the market by setting it too high, which I think is what happened.

[00:10:02] And I should say here, I consult for DoorDash.

[00:10:05] And so I'm not a neutral actor in this, but I've also seen the internal numbers.

[00:10:09] And driver pay is actually less now than it was before this law went into effect, which is the exact opposite of the intended effect.

[00:10:16] But nonetheless, she came out of the gate with that.

[00:10:17] And then I think what labor is really pissed off about was something that Sarah wasn't directly involved with, but they blamed the current council for, which was a very short-lived, aborted push to revisit the actual Seattle minimum wage.

[00:10:31] Right. Not to get too down in the policy weeds of it, but there's two tiers over the last 10 years where larger businesses sort of ramped up their wage faster than smaller businesses, businesses with less than 500 employees.

[00:10:45] And so at that 10-year juncture, right, January 1st, those two tiers are supposed to reconcile with the smaller businesses now paying what the larger, the same wage for larger businesses are.

[00:10:57] And the delta between them is about three bucks an hour, which is a big boost all at once in the minimum wage that these smaller businesses, 500 and less are.

[00:11:07] Gosh, whoever could have anticipated.

[00:11:09] Right.

[00:11:10] How could they have known?

[00:11:11] Joy Hollingsworth had, you know, working with the Hospitality Association, had introduced some legislation without a lot of groundwork laid to make the two tiers permanent.

[00:11:23] And it caused a huge blow up from labor folks.

[00:11:27] They're still very, very mad about it.

[00:11:28] She withdrew that legislation in less than a week and it never ended up going anywhere.

[00:11:33] But nonetheless, the fallout from that, I think, is one of the things I know is one of the things that's strongly motivating the labor folks to mount an all out campaign to try to take out Sarah Nelson this year.

[00:11:44] And by the way, and that's something where Bruce Harrell kind of took an opposite position from Nelson and basically kind of sided with the labor folks and said, we're not going to mess with the law.

[00:11:55] From a non-insider's perspective, what's interesting to me is, you know, the characterization that we had earlier this year was of the Seattle City Council being a do-nothing council.

[00:12:05] I kind of wondering, well, why don't we hear more about it being a do-nothing mayor?

[00:12:10] And why isn't the mayor more vulnerable on that charge?

[00:12:14] Because what Sandeep is saying is in some ways Sarah's done too much from labor's perspective or she's proposed things that they didn't like anyway.

[00:12:21] Whereas what about Bruce Harrell?

[00:12:23] I mean, before we've been talking about what's Mayor Harrell's legacy, what are his major accomplishments?

[00:12:28] I mean, this is inside baseball.

[00:12:30] Labor might run a candidate against Sarah Nelson.

[00:12:32] And therefore, she's sort of more vulnerable.

[00:12:34] But is she really more vulnerable than Mayor Harrell, given like how much he's either done or not done compared to her?

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[00:13:32] Yeah, I mean, again, I would not put it the way that, you know, I mean, I do think that business and labor are obviously huge forces.

[00:13:38] But I mean, I think that people look at, you know, voters to some to whatever extent.

[00:13:43] I mean, if somebody gets famous for wanting to lower the minimum wage and, you know, and that's the soundbite, then people don't typically like that in Seattle.

[00:13:52] And so I think that that is a blow with voters, not just with, you know, big labor and big business, you know, being the real deciders.

[00:14:00] But I think that's a great question about Harold.

[00:14:02] I mean, he is a vibes guy.

[00:14:04] And on the council, he was a vibes guy.

[00:14:06] And, you know, was not the one, you know, pushing out lots of legislation and, you know, being really assertive on the council.

[00:14:13] I'll just say that much.

[00:14:15] You know, he was he was not known as the guy who did a lot of stuff and, you know, I can just hear him listening to this.

[00:14:22] I don't know if you listen to this show and pushing back on it because I know that he really hates that characterization.

[00:14:27] But but I do think there is a question.

[00:14:29] I mean, a very good question of, yeah, like what what has he done as mayor?

[00:14:31] He appointed Adrian Diaz, which blew up in his face and now has a new guy.

[00:14:36] He's going to oversee the comprehensive plan, which he's late by quite a bit on to the point that, you know, we're just butting up against the edge of the state taking action against the city of Seattle if we don't get a new new zoning plan out there.

[00:14:52] So, yeah, I don't know.

[00:14:53] I mean, I guess I'd ask one of Bruce Harrell supporters, Sandeep Kalshik, what is his legacy of accomplishment in your mind?

[00:14:59] Well, I think I think the question that I don't know whether Bruce will explicitly ask this, but I think the question that often comes up when incumbent is running for reelection and an incumbent in an executive position is, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

[00:15:16] Right. And I think that's the sort of crux of Bruce Harrell's case for reelection is that, you know, whether things may not be great.

[00:15:24] Maybe we haven't solved our problems like, you know, homelessness or street disorder or or crime.

[00:15:30] And those are still kind of persistent issues.

[00:15:32] But the state of the city is better than it was when I came into office.

[00:15:38] You know, there are fewer encampments and, you know, some of the issues that were really troubling people about, you know, rampant public drug use or, you know, some places like like right now, Third and Pike and Pine, the Blade.

[00:15:51] Right. Which has been a persistent problem area for open air drug markets has been cleared up and stuff like that.

[00:15:57] I think that's the argument that the mayor is going to make.

[00:15:59] Right. And I think that's why.

[00:16:01] Yeah, there's the argument he's going to make.

[00:16:03] But I'm asking you if you if you can show a record of accomplishment.

[00:16:05] I mean, not it not being the pandemic is like better than it being the pandemic.

[00:16:11] I mean, they're for public health reasons.

[00:16:13] They've also changed policy.

[00:16:14] They were not doing anything with encampments during the during the pandemic when Jenny Durkan was mayor for a very brief period.

[00:16:21] I mean, there were policy changes that happened.

[00:16:23] And yeah, I mean, any mayor who is, you know, is four years out of the pandemic can say that we're better off, obviously.

[00:16:31] Right.

[00:16:31] Well, look, first of all, I think the left and the previous council use the pandemic as a reason to push through a whole set of progressive policies right at the time that kind of blew up in their faces, which is why they're no longer in office.

[00:16:44] Right. And and the mayor does probably get some credit for changing those.

[00:16:47] That said, I do think it's fair to say that Bruce Harrell has not been some kind of, you know, big ticket, big vision, transfer, transformational mayor.

[00:16:58] He's been in many ways a kind of status quo.

[00:17:02] You know, let's sort of let's fix some of the really egregiously sort of, I would say, bad policies or overreaching policies of the left and the previous council.

[00:17:14] And let's sort of dial some of that ideological stuff back.

[00:17:17] But he's not actually put forward, to your point, you know, big new initiatives to, say, address fentanyl.

[00:17:26] Or, you know, it's been a lot of small ball, even downtown revitalization, which has been a big, you know, central feature of the mayor's agenda, has been a agglomeration of a lot of small ball stuff rather than any kind of signature big ticket.

[00:17:42] Hey, here's a here's a really bold move we're going to make to kind of re-envision the use of downtown or that sort of thing.

[00:17:48] Right.

[00:17:48] Well, maybe maybe we will see a challenger on that one.

[00:17:51] Let's turn to another question on Blue Sky.

[00:17:55] Real Seattle nice on Blue Sky.

[00:17:57] Right, Erica, is our is our title over there.

[00:18:01] Red Hoodie Guy has this question.

[00:18:03] One thing I've been curious about, what's the legal significance of the Seattle Comprehensive Plan?

[00:18:08] Like, can zoning be changed outside of it?

[00:18:11] If we get a YIMBY in office after Herald, can they make changes for the better?

[00:18:16] Or a yes, in my backyard, this person saying Bruce Harrell is not that.

[00:18:19] They want more density.

[00:18:21] Erica, what's the answer to this question?

[00:18:23] I mean, I think that the comp plan is quite significant.

[00:18:28] That's, you know, one reason it takes so long.

[00:18:30] It has to go through a lot of process.

[00:18:31] And it is the sort of overarching guide to, you know, primarily, I mean, growth and development, but zoning in Seattle.

[00:18:38] And so it is a really big deal and it can be amended and has been amended.

[00:18:44] You can go and, you know, look on the city's website and see all the different versions.

[00:18:48] Hasn't been amended very radically.

[00:18:49] But yeah, I mean, if we got a YIMBY in the mayor's office and had, you know, a council that was really dedicated to, you know, allowing more people to live in Seattle and live in more places, then yeah.

[00:19:02] I mean, they could certainly change it.

[00:19:04] But in the absence of that, the comp plan is the comp plan.

[00:19:07] And if you have, you know, a comp plan that says you can't have apartments anywhere outside, like busy, dirty arterials, which is what the comp plan essentially says now, then that's just going to be where apartments get built.

[00:19:20] So, and, you know, and if you live in a single family house and you don't want any renters near you, it says that that's pretty unlikely.

[00:19:29] So, yeah, so it's both.

[00:19:30] It's both really important and also really changeable if you have, you know, a totally different administration and council.

[00:19:39] Let's go to this one.

[00:19:40] Please, this is a little wonky, but in a minute we're going to be asking about the wildest Seattle politics story for the year.

[00:19:46] This one, please discuss how the 1% levy increase cap.

[00:19:51] First of all, please discuss what that is.

[00:19:53] It creates the structural deficits in Washington governments.

[00:19:56] It's dash.

[00:19:56] There's not enough public awareness of the annual de facto property tax cuts in local government.

[00:20:02] I mean, this is like real green eye shade stuff.

[00:20:05] Sandeep, I see wearing his green eye shade as he often does while we're taking this podcast because of a kind of colorblindness.

[00:20:12] That's all I'm wearing, right?

[00:20:13] Yeah.

[00:20:14] Oh, my God.

[00:20:16] Oh.

[00:20:17] So what do you want to know?

[00:20:20] Yeah.

[00:20:20] What about the 1%?

[00:20:21] Well, first of all, what is the 1% levy cap increase?

[00:20:25] How does it create the structural deficits?

[00:20:27] I'm going to have to go back, and I'm dredging the deep recesses of my political memory here.

[00:20:32] But going back to the early 2000s, Tim Eyman passed an initiative initially, if I remember this correctly, it was an initiative that capped property tax increases to the rate of inflation.

[00:20:46] But I think that got either wiped out by the courts or the legislature.

[00:20:50] I can't remember which.

[00:20:51] And so Tim Eyman, kind of in a punitive way, came back and ran a second initiative that capped property tax increases on an annual basis to 1%.

[00:21:02] That means your jurisdiction can only, year by year, raise the total property tax levy by 1%, which is obviously lower than the rate of inflation.

[00:21:12] And so over time, that would be a significant cutback in government funding.

[00:21:18] I think that was a punitive ballot measure.

[00:21:19] That measure, too, was thrown out by the courts in around about 2005 or 2006.

[00:21:25] But then in a very unseemly way, the legislature at the time stampeded to reimpose the 1% limit legislatively because they were worried about political blowback at the time when the courts invalidated it.

[00:21:39] So, yeah, you know, property tax, the rate of growth of property tax funding coming into governments has over the last 20 years been significantly below the rate of inflation and has caused real constraints in the ability of us to fund our public sector priorities.

[00:21:57] Where that really has an impact is places like the county where property where they're even more reliant on property tax than the than the city, which has which is reliant on property tax, but has some other funding streams available to it.

[00:22:09] And it's a county that really felt a pinch over the years because the property tax increased.

[00:22:13] But, yeah, it's a real problem.

[00:22:14] I mean, you can't raise enough.

[00:22:16] You can't increase property taxes enough to even keep pace with inflation.

[00:22:21] Yeah, I mean, I think the other the other thing is that, you know, when people are living in Seattle and in King County, too, I mean, we have all these levies.

[00:22:30] And so, you know, whenever we want to fund something over and above whatever we're currently funding that is, you know, degrading in value year after year because of the levy lid, we have to pass another tax for it.

[00:22:43] And this just also goes back to I mean, I'm sure our listeners are aware of this, but we have an incredibly regressive tax system in Washington state because we don't have an income tax.

[00:22:54] And so that's why, you know, here in undisclosed location, southern United States, people are complaining about the, you know, insane sales taxes that are like eight percent.

[00:23:04] And that's why we have sales tax.

[00:23:06] It's almost 11 percent because this is how we fund everything.

[00:23:09] So, you know, just just a very regressive system.

[00:23:12] And property taxes are obviously also regressive, but in a different way.

[00:23:16] And, you know, not directly every single time you want to buy something the way sales taxes are.

[00:23:22] It is a regressive system.

[00:23:23] And I would point out we are now not the 50th most regressive tax code in the country.

[00:23:28] We're now 49th because of the capital gains tax that was passed in the legislature and just upheld by the voters.

[00:23:34] That has that is a strongly progressive tax.

[00:23:38] Right.

[00:23:38] And that has moved us up one notch, though we're still 49th place is no no great shakes in terms of of the regressivity question.

[00:23:45] I would say the other really quick point to make is not only is it regressive, but it but Erica's other point, it's really fragmented our our our governmental fiscal house and funding mechanism.

[00:23:56] So we have had to kind of piecemeal go and fund various pieces of our government through, you know, ballot measures, through levies, through other things.

[00:24:07] You know, I was involved in the campaign back in 2014 when we passed the Metropolitan Parks District in Seattle, which sort of created an independent, permanent funding source for the park system.

[00:24:18] Right. The county has their own parks levies that they run.

[00:24:21] So all of that, I think, is fallout in part from this kind of onerous restriction on the ability to kind of allow the basic taxing structure of this of the of governmental entities to keep pace with inflation, at least when it comes to property tax.

[00:24:36] All right. Let's go to egg on it.

[00:24:39] Egg on it.

[00:24:41] Also on Blue Sky.

[00:24:43] Shout out to egg on it just for that that handle.

[00:24:45] That's I have no idea what it means, but I love it.

[00:24:47] What was the wildest Seattle politics story of the year?

[00:24:52] Erica, what's the answer?

[00:24:53] I mean, maybe this is recency bias, but I really do think it was the wildest political story is the the saga of Chief Diaz, you know, lashing out at critics when he was demoted from police chief to a guy making a police chief salary within the police department in May.

[00:25:12] And, you know, came out, went on the Jason Rantz show.

[00:25:16] Right wing talk show host on KTTH said, I'm gay and implied that, you know, all of the sexual harassment discrimination claims against him were, you know, unlikely to be true, shall we say, because he doesn't like women that way anyway.

[00:25:31] And what ended up taking him down was actually the affair that he is alleged to have had with his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, a woman, and which he denied vociferously to the point that he, you know, he lied to investigators, as did she, who were looking into this.

[00:25:50] And, you know, there were a lot of allegations related to that affair that, you know, involved violations of police policy that we've talked about.

[00:25:58] But it was just it was just wild to see, you know, this sort of this infuriated response to critics like, oh, my God, well, how dare you?

[00:26:08] I've been keeping the secret.

[00:26:09] I'm gay.

[00:26:10] And, you know, and never mind my wife and kids.

[00:26:13] And, you know, and don't ask me any questions about this alleged affair that I had with a woman because I have answered the question.

[00:26:21] I'm gay and pleading gay to all charges.

[00:26:25] And that was supposed to be the end of it.

[00:26:27] I mean, it's just an outrageous thing.

[00:26:28] And if you read the the report, I mean, look, I'm pissy about it in part because he threatened me a bunch about this stuff, including the affair, which was like the main thing that he was mad about,

[00:26:40] because I mentioned the existence of a rumor that and linked back to a KUOW story about it.

[00:26:45] But the transcripts of the interviews that he did, you know, what we've seen so far, just the stories don't make any damn sense.

[00:26:54] You know, he changes his story multiple times within the same paragraph on some of the stuff that he was asked about.

[00:27:00] It's just you get the impression that these are just not the the smartest characters.

[00:27:05] The wild thing to me, and then I'll shut up.

[00:27:07] I want to hear Sandeep's take.

[00:27:08] But the wild thing to me is just the deny, deny, deny decision.

[00:27:13] It was so obviously not going to work.

[00:27:16] And and yet they just stuck with it and, you know, and hired lawyers to go after people and all this stuff.

[00:27:21] And it fell apart.

[00:27:22] So that was the wildest part about it to me.

[00:27:25] I mean, I'm in agreement.

[00:27:26] And it's the wildest story.

[00:27:27] Right.

[00:27:27] And I know we just talked about it last week.

[00:27:29] But I mean, the kind of soap operatic quality of the whole thing.

[00:27:32] I mean, Eric, you forgot he's also filed a 10 million dollar lawsuit against the city.

[00:27:38] Discrimination.

[00:27:39] Yes.

[00:27:39] That accuses the mayor and one of the deputy mayors of demoting him because of anti-gay bias.

[00:27:46] Right.

[00:27:47] That that's the crux of the lawsuit.

[00:27:50] The balls.

[00:27:52] The balls to do that.

[00:27:54] So anyway.

[00:27:55] Yeah.

[00:27:55] I mean, I think that's a pretty wild story all around.

[00:27:57] The whole thing is is is is there's got a lot there's a lot of twists and turns to

[00:28:03] it.

[00:28:03] And yeah.

[00:28:04] My answer to this is more more boring.

[00:28:06] But just to say something different, I would say it's Tanya Wu's blowout loss or I guess

[00:28:10] Alexis Mercedes rinks blowout win.

[00:28:13] 17 percentage points, nearly a 20 percentage points gap gap between the progressive and

[00:28:18] the moderate in a citywide race.

[00:28:20] When is the last time we've seen that big of a win by a progressive candidate over a

[00:28:26] centrist for a citywide race?

[00:28:28] Like this is a tough question.

[00:28:30] But well, well, her appointment was the wild thing.

[00:28:34] Yeah.

[00:28:35] I mean, look, the fact that she lost and then immediately got appointed.

[00:28:38] Right.

[00:28:38] There have been plenty of races that have been blowout races in Seattle politics where you

[00:28:41] have a weak, you know, whatever centrist candidate.

[00:28:44] Remember, but I think I think that but I do I do take your point.

[00:28:47] I think it is one of the biggest stories of the year.

[00:28:49] It's it's not as wild as the Diaz soap opera, but I do think it's what it's a big story.

[00:28:54] And I think the equivalent was really when when the current mayor, Bruce Harrell in 2021,

[00:29:01] beat Lorena Gonzalez by 17 points.

[00:29:03] Right.

[00:29:03] In the in the 2021 mayor's race.

[00:29:06] And I think that was a huge sea change.

[00:29:09] Right.

[00:29:09] A huge marker that that, you know, politics in Seattle was going through a shift at the

[00:29:14] time.

[00:29:14] And maybe this is indicative that it's shifting back.

[00:29:17] We'll see.

[00:29:18] Let me submit one more possibility for wildest stories of the year.

[00:29:21] And that is just the antics of the city council in general.

[00:29:24] I mean, you know, and the one example I'll throw out there is Rob Sokka's dedication

[00:29:30] to getting a curb taken out in his neighborhood because it prevented him from turning left.

[00:29:35] So that was for his kids preschool at the time.

[00:29:37] And the latest budget funds turfing the field where his kids play.

[00:29:42] And so that's just, you know, a small example.

[00:29:46] But this council has just kind of I don't know, it's been in a wild transition point.

[00:29:51] The meetings have certainly become interesting to watch again.

[00:29:55] And and so that that to me, I mean, just the sort of the sort of internal chaos at the council

[00:30:00] has been very wild to watch meeting to meeting this year.

[00:30:03] All right.

[00:30:04] All right.

[00:30:04] And then and then Sandeep, let's go to you for the part two from Egg on It.

[00:30:10] Please keep your questions coming.

[00:30:11] Egg on it.

[00:30:12] I keep saying that.

[00:30:14] Yeah, you're egging on egg on it.

[00:30:15] I'm egging on egg on it.

[00:30:16] Yeah.

[00:30:17] What would you let's get some egg on it here?

[00:30:19] What would you like?

[00:30:21] It's like bird on it from Portlandia.

[00:30:23] Put it put an egg on it.

[00:30:24] Must be like a new thing.

[00:30:25] What would you like to see from Seattle politics next year?

[00:30:29] Sandeep Kashy.

[00:30:30] Oh, man, that there's there's so much I'd like to see going back to our questions about

[00:30:35] like, you know, I've actually been wanting to write a piece about this, but I think.

[00:30:42] We're bereft of big ideas in Seattle to address, you know, ideas that are on a scale that are

[00:30:48] commensurate with some of the problems that we're facing.

[00:30:50] And so there is a whole bunch of things I would like to see happen.

[00:30:53] I'd like to see a conversation happen about conservatorship.

[00:30:58] How do we get people who are severely mentally ill on our streets, get them housed and into,

[00:31:06] you know, and get them care for their illness?

[00:31:10] I think there's a conversation to be had on that front.

[00:31:13] I would love to see a conversation about a real therapeutic court in Seattle.

[00:31:17] If we really want to have a court where we're going to divert people out of the criminal

[00:31:22] system to get them the help they need to address their underlying conditions.

[00:31:26] Could we come up with a version of it that actually does that?

[00:31:29] Like, that would be a nice move.

[00:31:32] So there's any number of like big things and big problems out there that are crying out

[00:31:37] to be solved that I'd love to see some action happen on.

[00:31:40] I'm not super optimistic that we will see action on those, but but but there's stuff like

[00:31:44] that, particularly, I think the condition of of of people on our streets related to homelessness,

[00:31:50] mental illness, addiction.

[00:31:52] And there's a whole complex of things where I really feel like we haven't done enough

[00:31:55] and there's a lot more we could be doing.

[00:31:57] Erica C.

[00:31:58] Barnett.

[00:31:59] Wow, you really thought that through.

[00:32:00] OK, I guess, you know, I am sort of, you know, a bit of a cynic and a pessimist about

[00:32:06] the ability of Seattle to make big changes year to year.

[00:32:10] I don't, of course, support the idea of widening conservatorships for people on the street to

[00:32:16] be forced into various forms of treatment that won't work.

[00:32:18] But but I do you know what I would like to see happen is probably more modest, which is

[00:32:24] that the progressives and centrists and conservatives on the council start talking to each other

[00:32:31] and coming up with compromise solutions to problems that they identify, which I think is

[00:32:37] happening a little bit right now.

[00:32:39] We'll see how it plays out.

[00:32:40] But Alexis Mercedes Rink, who is the newest council member progressive, is working with

[00:32:46] Kathy Moore, who's one of the I mean, she's iconoclastic.

[00:32:51] I don't know.

[00:32:51] I guess I'll call her a centrist.

[00:32:52] I think she's left on some things and right on some things.

[00:32:55] She's working with Kathy Moore to come up with some alternatives on the less lethal force

[00:33:00] legislation that Bob Kettle and Bruce Harrell have put forward.

[00:33:04] So I'd like to see the council working together a little more.

[00:33:06] Um, and again, modest, I would like I really hope that the KCRHA, the Regional Homelessness

[00:33:12] Authority gets its shit together this year.

[00:33:15] And, you know, stops having sort of all the drama that set it back a couple of years since

[00:33:21] its inception and has, I think, really destroyed the trust of the city, certainly and the county

[00:33:27] to some extent in this project of a regional response to homelessness.

[00:33:31] And so I think what that's going to look like is, you know, getting all the contracts off

[00:33:36] the door on time, um, you know, not having any dramatic blowups or program failures, you

[00:33:42] know, hiring people who can get stuff done like public disclosure requests and, you know,

[00:33:49] and just making it a more effective agency that builds some trust so that it can get more

[00:33:54] funding because that's ultimately what's needed to solve homelessness.

[00:33:57] You know, in part is more funding, um, to go to the right things, which we can debate.

[00:34:02] But, you know, right now that's, that's not happening.

[00:34:04] So no more sex offenders on, uh, on, on various KCRHA boards.

[00:34:09] That, that would be a start.

[00:34:10] Well, I mean, that was, that was not a board that, you know, that controls the KCRHA,

[00:34:15] but, uh, but, you know, I mean, it just, yeah.

[00:34:17] But it was indicative of the kind of internal chaos, I would say.

[00:34:21] Right.

[00:34:22] Absolutely.

[00:34:23] Yeah.

[00:34:23] Yeah.

[00:34:23] For sure.

[00:34:24] For sure.

[00:34:24] And, you know, so, so that's my hope at modest, modest, um, but noticeable improvements at

[00:34:29] KCRHA that allow it to build some trust back and, um, and continue to exist.

[00:34:33] I have two, uh, one is self-serving, which is, I would like to see Seattle Nice continue

[00:34:37] to moderate debates in 2025.

[00:34:40] We may have an announcement for you coming up in January about another debate.

[00:34:45] So that's kind of exciting.

[00:34:47] I would also like to not see the national guard get called into Seattle to police us.

[00:34:53] If there are protests and I wonder if either of you know, when was the first time that

[00:35:00] federal troops fired on and killed a crowd in American history?

[00:35:04] Kent state.

[00:35:06] I'd say Kent state.

[00:35:07] When was the first time federal troops fired on and killed a crowd in American history?

[00:35:11] It must've happened in like the early 1800s.

[00:35:15] I don't know.

[00:35:16] It wasn't, it was in the mid, it was in 1849.

[00:35:19] Okay.

[00:35:19] And it was the Astor place theater riots where a crowd of working class men were writing over

[00:35:28] the fact that their favorite Shakespearean actor, Edwin Forrest had been insulted by a

[00:35:35] British actor, William McCready on his tour to England.

[00:35:38] And so the two of them were performing in competing spaces in New York in 1849.

[00:35:43] And the crowd came and, and attacked the Astor place theater partly over that, but partly

[00:35:48] it was kind of a class-based riot.

[00:35:50] I want to end.

[00:35:51] And you just knew that off the top of your head, right?

[00:35:53] No.

[00:35:54] David went to grad school.

[00:35:55] I went to grad school.

[00:35:57] But the Astor place riot is really fascinating.

[00:35:59] I mean, the fact that like everybody was fluent in Shakespeare to the point where there

[00:36:03] was a fucking riot, right?

[00:36:06] Right, right, right.

[00:36:06] That is so crazy.

[00:36:07] Yeah, I would have thought there would have been some big race riot or something in New

[00:36:10] York City.

[00:36:11] You would have thought a lot of things other than a riot over competing Shakespearean

[00:36:15] performances.

[00:36:16] Yeah.

[00:36:17] So I wanted to try ending with a holiday lightning round.

[00:36:20] So this is an either or lightning round for the two of you.

[00:36:23] Uh-oh.

[00:36:24] Starting with pecan or pumpkin pie, Erica.

[00:36:27] Well, first of all, it's pecan and pecan.

[00:36:30] It's definitely, it's definitely pecan.

[00:36:32] Well, is it pecan?

[00:36:33] No, it's pecan.

[00:36:34] I don't know what it is now, but it's, but, but I do know that pumpkin pie is an abomination

[00:36:38] and should be, you know, banned.

[00:36:40] Okay.

[00:36:40] The correct answer there was pumpkin.

[00:36:42] Okay.

[00:36:43] Bagels and lox or waffles?

[00:36:46] Bagels and lox.

[00:36:47] Waffles.

[00:36:47] But my family's Jewish.

[00:36:48] Waffles.

[00:36:49] Waffles.

[00:36:50] Bagels and lox.

[00:36:51] Also the correct answer.

[00:36:52] Definitely.

[00:36:53] Erica got that one.

[00:36:53] Okay.

[00:36:54] And then turkey or please got anything else?

[00:36:58] Ham, right?

[00:36:59] It's turkey versus ham.

[00:37:01] I guess it's the police guy or anything else.

[00:37:02] I'm, I'm, I'm partial to turkey, but, but I get the ham argument.

[00:37:08] All right.

[00:37:09] That's it for another edition of Seattle Nice.

[00:37:11] Uh, she's Erica C. Barnett.

[00:37:13] He's Sandeep Kaushik.

[00:37:15] I'm David Hyde.

[00:37:16] Our editor is Quinn Waller.

[00:37:18] And, uh, thanks everybody so much for listening.