Is the Seattle City Council race over?

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice with Erica C. Barnett. Back from vacationing, Erica, I picture you in the lovely Seychelles Islands, since you never reveal your destinations.

[00:00:24] Yeah, like that, but with more gloom and wind.

[00:00:28] Grim gloominess and wind. Okay, all right.

[00:00:30] And graffiti.

[00:00:31] Interesting. All right. Also with us, Sandeep Kaushik, who has also been vacationing down in sunny Portland, Oregon.

[00:00:39] Yeah, I wouldn't call it a vacation when I was down for Parents Weekend in Portland.

[00:00:44] All right. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about the race this year, the one that will determine the future of democracy between Tanya Wu and Alexis Mercedes Rink.

[00:00:54] We've got something about Rob Saka's border wall.

[00:00:56] But first, untruthful information cited as a reason former Seattle Police Chief Diaz placed on leave.

[00:01:02] Sources say that, according to reporter Ashley Haruko for KUOW, Erica C. Barnett Diaz allegedly providing untruthful information during an investigation into whether he hired an alleged romantic partner to be his chief of staff.

[00:01:17] Yeah, alleged, alleged, alleged.

[00:01:20] I would say it's not just that sources say.

[00:01:23] There was an all-staff email, which I reported on last week, about the reasons that RAR was putting these two on leave.

[00:01:31] And in the email, RAR was kind of unusually candid and said it was because Jamie Tompkins, Diaz's former chief of staff, now communications director, had lied in an investigation and had provided an untruthful handwriting sample.

[00:01:49] And that Diaz had also been untruthful.

[00:01:52] So this is something that the cops generally take very seriously.

[00:01:55] And it's one of the better ways to get yourself fired if your police officer is lying.

[00:02:02] So that's what they are both accused of allegedly doing, according to police chief Sue Rahr.

[00:02:09] Sandeep Kashuk, what's going on with Chief Diaz and SPD?

[00:02:13] Good question.

[00:02:14] I mean, the short answer is I have no fucking idea what's going on.

[00:02:18] I mean, so from my kind of completely outside, you know, observational perch, it seems to me like we're in the midst of a particularly spectacular flame out on the part of Adrian Diaz here.

[00:02:33] Right.

[00:02:33] There's not just a suspension that you just brought up over this, quote unquote, untruthfulness.

[00:02:39] It's alleged lying.

[00:02:40] But he's also now turned around and sued for $10 million, I think it is, you know, claiming that he's the victim of essentially anti-gay discrimination.

[00:02:53] Right.

[00:02:53] So this is a very public, very messy, very head scratching sort of blow up, flame out, whatever you want to fucking call it.

[00:03:03] It's it's it's kind of.

[00:03:06] Yeah.

[00:03:07] What a frickin soap opera.

[00:03:08] We got to provide a little bit of the history of how we got here.

[00:03:12] Former chief Adrian Diaz was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with his chief of staff at the time, Jamie Tompkins.

[00:03:19] And the reason we're able to sort of name her publicly now is that Sue Rahr named her publicly in her email to staff.

[00:03:27] And in the wake of these allegations or immediately after he was removed as chief, in part because of these allegations, allegedly, he went on the Jason Rantz show, a right wing talk show, and said that he was gay and suggested that this meant that it was not likely that he had had a relationship with a woman.

[00:03:47] Although, of course, he is married and has children with a woman and and has been extraordinarily aggressive about policing and and, you know, threatening reporters who have even mentioned these alleged these allegations about the relationship with his chief of staff.

[00:04:05] Yeah, he threatened me with a lawsuit, which ended up costing me a lot of money.

[00:04:11] But he also threatened other reporters.

[00:04:13] Some simply removed their stories about this as Diaz demanded that I do.

[00:04:19] I did not.

[00:04:19] And KUOW also did not.

[00:04:21] But they were super aggressive about these these rumors about the relationship and the timing of his announcing on a right wing talk show that he was gay was widely viewed as a sort of way to combat these these rumors, you know, sort of suggesting that the allegations of harassment against him, the allegations of a misogynistic environment, the allegations of this specific relationship were unlikely because he said he is gay.

[00:04:49] Right. And just to fill out Erica's context here, the circumstances that seemingly led to his removal as chief for the mayor deciding to to make a change there was not just that he was that there were pervasive rumors that he was having an affair with Jamie, a former TV reporter that he had brought on to SPD and a senior in senior roles in SPD command.

[00:05:17] But that there were a series of, well, at least multiple lawsuits that had been filed by women at SPD claiming harassment involving both Diaz and other members of Pants that we've talked about in previous episodes, some of that in previous episodes of Seattle Nice.

[00:05:35] Right. So so so so so. So it was not just like, hey, he had an affair, therefore rebooting you.

[00:05:40] It's it's that there was this sort of miasma of allegations and uproar and tumult within the upper ranks of SPD.

[00:05:51] Some of those allegations directed directly at Diaz himself.

[00:05:55] Right. And then and that was the context for him then sort of claiming, well, no, I'm gay.

[00:05:59] Therefore, I I didn't do any of this stuff. Right.

[00:06:02] Or I couldn't have wouldn't have done any of this stuff.

[00:06:04] What's so wild to me is he was just again.

[00:06:07] I mean, I'm chapped because he threatened me directly.

[00:06:10] And, you know, and what is so wild to me is how aggressive he was about, you know, insisting that, you know, this this I'm gay thing.

[00:06:19] And, you know, and you can't mention anything about the affair rumors, which KUOW originally reported.

[00:06:27] You know, they've been floating around for a long time.

[00:06:29] But, you know, KUOW has attorneys and they were aggressive about this and they reported it.

[00:06:36] And, you know, they got a lot of threats from him.

[00:06:37] But I mean, knowing knowing that allegedly he and Jamie Tompkins lied to investigators that they were so aggressive about this and, you know, paid attorneys.

[00:06:48] God knows how much money to come after us.

[00:06:51] And just to, you know, to fight this, you know, going on Jason Rantz, doing this full court press.

[00:06:56] And it may turn out, you know, and I'd say very likely will turn out that, you know, both of them end up getting fired over this.

[00:07:04] And again, I mean, it's just I don't really understand the anger and aggression about this.

[00:07:10] If, in fact, it is true that he had an affair with this woman who was his chief of staff, which would be inappropriate.

[00:07:16] It's not just that it's an affair.

[00:07:18] People have affairs all the time.

[00:07:20] But that he elevated her to a position of authority in the department, which is a completely inappropriate thing to do in a workplace context on top of all the other allegations.

[00:07:30] So, you know, I mean, one of the things he even said in his own defense was that these allegations were ridiculous because he's gay and that other LGBTQ plus command staff.

[00:07:41] And he was referring to a lesbian command staff member had had similar allegations about straight affairs.

[00:07:48] And so I just thought it was very interesting that he's looping in somebody who who happens to, you know, be among the people that have made allegations against him at saying like, look, she she had the same allegations.

[00:08:00] So this is just part of a pattern of discriminating against gay cops.

[00:08:05] And and so I think, you know, we'll know in a few weeks at the most what how this is going to shake out.

[00:08:12] Obviously, he still has his 10 million dollar lawsuit.

[00:08:14] But I think he's on his heels pretty hard right now.

[00:08:17] How do we know from the outside that what we think we know is true?

[00:08:21] We don't. I don't think I mean, short answer is we don't know.

[00:08:25] I mean, we know what has been publicly put out there.

[00:08:27] Right. As Erica mentioned, Sue Rahr, the acting chief, has put out an email revealing some details about why they were both suspended.

[00:08:37] And we know what you know, he did file this 10 million dollar lawsuit, which doesn't have a lot of information in it.

[00:08:44] But he does sort of he makes the allegation in this lawsuit that basically the mayor and one of the senior or one of the main deputy mayors, Tim Burgess, were essentially discriminating against him because he's gay and told him not to come out publicly because, you know, he's gay.

[00:09:06] And so he's so he's sort of throwing around this charge of homophobia, I think, quite extensively and widely and in ways that, you know, I don't know what's what's true here or whatnot.

[00:09:18] This all needs to get adjudicated. All the lawsuits and stuff need to get.

[00:09:22] But it does knowing what I know about the city and the mayor and his staff.

[00:09:27] And it does, I will say, strain my credulity.

[00:09:31] Right. That some of what motive, what possible motive would the mayor?

[00:09:35] Or Tim Burgess have in Seattle to tell somebody to not come out as gay.

[00:09:39] To be homophobic and whatever. That doesn't compute for me.

[00:09:44] Right. Knowing them.

[00:09:46] We shouldn't probably speculate too much.

[00:09:48] But I mean, this kind of a story, if the allegations or what we think we know are true are true.

[00:09:54] What do people know about Diaz?

[00:09:56] What's the gossip about what are his motivations?

[00:09:59] Both. I'd like to hear from Erica for one minute and then you.

[00:10:02] Well, I'm certainly not going to having having been threatened, you know, aggressively by him.

[00:10:07] I'm certainly not going to engage in gossip about him because he is extremely.

[00:10:12] Should we be worried here on the podcast?

[00:10:14] No, I don't think so.

[00:10:15] I just think we should avoid gossip.

[00:10:17] And I think that I think that ultimately to answer your question, you know, there's no way to prove somebody is gay or not gay.

[00:10:24] There's no way to prove somebody, you know, ultimately, you know, engaged in, you know, an affair, you know, a physical affair, an emotional affair, whatever.

[00:10:34] I mean, there's just evidence that come out. Right.

[00:10:36] I mean, the evidence about Diaz is that he says he's gay and he's been married to a woman and had children with a woman.

[00:10:45] And he is alleged to have had an affair with a woman who he elevated to a senior role in the police department.

[00:10:52] So those are those are things we know.

[00:10:54] What we can't know is, you know, is is stuff that just simply can't be adjudicated.

[00:10:59] Like, you know, is he gay?

[00:11:01] Did he become gay?

[00:11:03] Did he have an affair?

[00:11:04] You know, there's there's just there's stuff that, you know, is is kind of speculation.

[00:11:09] But we can you know, it is possible to prove that he or to demonstrate that he lied, which, as I said, is the kind of thing that cops do get fired for.

[00:11:18] And and I will speculate that the Diaz is going to get fired over this.

[00:11:23] And so is Jamie Tompkins.

[00:11:24] But again, that is that is just a guess.

[00:11:26] And we will see.

[00:11:27] So there's no knowns, unknown unknowns and then speculation.

[00:11:32] Yeah, I will say this.

[00:11:33] I don't know.

[00:11:35] Chief Diaz, I wouldn't say that I know.

[00:11:36] I did a couple of years ago.

[00:11:39] He would sat next to him at a charity dinner.

[00:11:42] And so we, you know, spent an evening jibber jabbering.

[00:11:45] And I came away at the time, I will say, with a pretty favorable impression of the guy.

[00:11:50] You know, I think I've referred to him in the past year on the podcast as kind of the 40 year old version.

[00:11:56] Like I had sort of had the sense of, you know, he didn't have the macho cop thing.

[00:12:00] Right.

[00:12:00] Like he didn't come across as some, you know, kind of chest beating or like, you know, like a Dave Reichert kind of figure.

[00:12:07] You know, he seemed like a kind of nerdy guy.

[00:12:09] He was talking to me about his baseball card collection and, you know, stuff like that.

[00:12:13] So I came away from him thinking like, hey, he might be a pretty good fit as the head of the police force in Seattle.

[00:12:19] But subsequent to that, I have heard not just Erica's experience with him where he came after her super aggressively and after other reporters.

[00:12:28] But I have heard from another someone with inside knowledge of the department that subsequently that who said some things about Diaz that really gave me pause and suggested that, you know, some of the ongoing behavior in the department that has led to these lawsuits is rooted in, you know, at least from this person's perspective was rooted in actual stuff that happened.

[00:12:53] So, Erica, I want you to respond to Sandeep, but also what's the big picture here like about the future of SPD and its relationship to the city?

[00:13:02] Like, does this matter beyond a story about two people?

[00:13:06] Well, I can respond to Sandeep and answer that in the same response.

[00:13:10] I mean, Sandeep, if you say that you finally talked to someone you believed, I remember talking on this podcast a number of times about these allegations of misogyny and harassment, specifically against Diaz, but also against others in the department.

[00:13:27] You know, and you were really skeptical.

[00:13:29] And what I said was, I talked to the women.

[00:13:31] I talked to the women.

[00:13:32] They told me what happened.

[00:13:33] I believed their stories were credible.

[00:13:36] And you were incredibly skeptical at the time of these direct stories.

[00:13:41] And I'm just saying that, you know, I think that if, you know, as opposed to sort of judging on vibes at a dinner party, what you think somebody is like, listening to, you know, what people say happened to them, you know, at the hands of this person as a result of this person's leadership, you know, might have given you a better idea that, you know, that some of this stuff might have been true.

[00:14:01] Sandeep, are you Orrin Hatch in the Hill hearing here?

[00:14:04] I'm laughing because, Erica, I really feel like you're mischaracterizing both what I said back then and what I'm saying now, right?

[00:14:09] What I said back then was, hey, these allegations are super serious allegations.

[00:14:13] They've got to be adjudicated, right?

[00:14:15] We shouldn't rush to judgment until we, you know.

[00:14:20] You're very skeptical, Sandeep.

[00:14:22] I'm going to cut this one off and say, listeners, you'll have to go back and listen and judge for yourself because we're not going to solve that here.

[00:14:29] Okay, so anyway, so whether Diaz is a nice guy or not, I mean, my experience with him as a reporter has been that he's just, you know, kind of nervous and evasive in a way that, you know, I didn't put too much into, you know, one way or the other.

[00:14:44] But, you know, obviously never really wanted to talk to me.

[00:14:47] But, you know, that's not, that's not unusual.

[00:14:50] Yeah.

[00:14:50] An unusual thing.

[00:14:52] Yeah.

[00:14:52] Yeah.

[00:14:52] I mean, but, you know, but I think as far as what it means to the department is like, as, as Hu Ra has said, and she is the interim chief, she's going to be leaving once they appoint a new chief, you know, but she is, she has said, you know, this is, this is not something we can fix, you know, right within, you know, the, the time span of like this year.

[00:15:11] It is a cultural problem within the department, the fact that, you know, guys like Diaz and like John O'Neill, who used to be the communications leader in the department, you know, get elevated despite, you know, ongoing allegations against them is part of the culture.

[00:15:26] And until SPD fixes a culture of misogyny and racial discrimination that's been identified over and over again, including in this report, which said if you were also skeptical of the 30 by 30 interviews that were done with women describing their experiences at SPD, I believe you said that they, you know, were maybe not representative.

[00:15:48] But, you know, I think until that culture changes, then nothing's going to change.

[00:15:52] And, you know, which is why I'm kind of disappointed.

[00:15:54] I mean, although I understand that Su Ra is leaving because I think she is committed to that kind of cultural change as much as any, you know, longtime police officer head of the department can be.

[00:16:05] And she's been a lot more transparent than previous leaders at the department.

[00:16:09] So, you know, it's just going to be, it's going to be a long road if they choose to go down it.

[00:16:14] I'm a little skeptical because I think that this stuff is so baked into the culture at SPD that it's going to be really hard to root it out.

[00:16:21] I have long said, I think, quite clearly that I think there are ongoing cultural issues at SPD that need to be worked on, significant ones.

[00:16:29] And so I don't think I've been dismissive or rejecting the idea that there are potentially really significant issues around these lawsuits and the allegations and all this stuff swirling around Diaz.

[00:16:43] I just don't think that's right.

[00:16:45] So, Sandeep, just to take it one step further, what does this mean for Bruce Harrell?

[00:16:49] He's made some bad picks or potentially could be accused of having made some bad picks next year heading into an election.

[00:16:55] But when we're talking about policing, he's not just facing pressure from folks who want to reform the cops.

[00:17:01] He's also, you know, dealing with crime and other issues.

[00:17:05] So it seems like there's a lot of pressure on him to make a good selection here when it comes to the next police chief.

[00:17:12] Absolutely. Right. And I think it's absolutely fair to say that there's some, you know, this messiness around Diaz.

[00:17:20] However, it gets resolved and it doesn't sound like it's going to get resolved in any in any, you know, neat and orderly way at this point is to some extent a reflection on on the mayor and the decision he made when he came into office back at the beginning of 2021.

[00:17:36] One, ostensibly launched a police chief search, but he made it very, very clear at the outset of that search that Diaz was going to be applying that he liked Diaz and essentially signal that he wanted Diaz to remain as chief.

[00:17:52] So I think that that search became kind of a a kind of pro forma or or, you know, something that was that that was, you know, it didn't feel like a very real search or that there was much suspense about the outcome of that search.

[00:18:07] So in that sense, Diaz was his man. Right. So so there is a reflection there on the mayor.

[00:18:13] And I think that's a fair thing to say. And David, your point, I think is absolutely right.

[00:18:18] It's that makes it all that much more incumbent on them to have a successful search, which is ongoing right now.

[00:18:25] Right. Rahr has said that she wants to leave. She doesn't want the job.

[00:18:30] She's not part of the application process for the new chief.

[00:18:34] She's an interim. She wants to go back into retirement as soon as the search is over.

[00:18:38] And on that front, I will say I've talked to people close to the search who tell me that they're pretty happy about how this search has been going, that they feel like they will have they have multiple really good candidates and that we will likely have a new chief by the end of the year.

[00:18:58] Right. Is what I have heard.

[00:18:59] Erica, I don't know who the heck would want is it's shocking to me to hear that that's the case, because who the hell would want to be the head of SPD at this point?

[00:19:09] It's just one of those jobs that that.

[00:19:13] Yeah, I mean, I don't have the as I've said, I don't have the special insight into what people on the seventh floor of City Hall are thinking that Sandeep does.

[00:19:21] But I do know that at least one and I've heard multiple candidates have dropped out of the search process.

[00:19:28] So, you know, I'm hearing much more mixed things about the search.

[00:19:33] But and Rard did confirm to me directly that one person has dropped out.

[00:19:38] And and I linked to some information about that in my coverage and interview I did with her.

[00:19:43] But but yeah, I mean, we'll see.

[00:19:45] End of the year seems optimistic to me.

[00:19:46] But but, you know, maybe they'll be able to maybe maybe they'll surprise me.

[00:19:51] Well, one of the things that we should note about this search, right, is that it's much less public than previous police searches have been right.

[00:20:00] Typically, in previous police searches, there have been sort of identified candidates, finalists put forward big sort of public processes where they come to town and do interviews and meet with constituency groups and stuff like that.

[00:20:15] This is a very different search.

[00:20:17] Right. There's none of that.

[00:20:19] None of that public stuff has has really taken place here.

[00:20:23] It's all happening behind closed doors.

[00:20:25] And we're all living off kind of the tidbits that we hear from various folks.

[00:20:28] Right. I had not heard that about a person dropping out.

[00:20:31] But, yeah, I mean, the the vibe or what I'm hearing from the seventh floor is very positive right now.

[00:20:37] But I don't know. There hasn't been a lot of public process about it.

[00:20:40] Right. So I think that's an interesting move on their part.

[00:20:43] To kind of keep this much more behind closed doors.

[00:20:49] I mean, lack of transparency is is kind of standard for this administration, I should say, I would say.

[00:20:55] Look, if they have if they have a good result from the search, I doubt people will care that much.

[00:21:00] But but I think it is noteworthy.

[00:21:02] The greatest argument against public.

[00:21:04] Well, I'm agreeing with you, I think, Erica, it is noteworthy that there has not been the kind of public process we typically associate with a police search.

[00:21:12] OK, OK. Speaking of city and city politics, new poll out on this existential race between Tanya Wu, the business Democrat and progressive.

[00:21:22] Alexis Mercedes Rink, 52 percent saying they had or were voting for Mercedes Rink, only 28 percent backing Tanya Wu and Sandeep Kashuk.

[00:21:34] I read this in the Urbanist a couple of weeks ago.

[00:21:36] Seattle voters are backing progressives and rejecting the centrist coalition that swept into power in 2023.

[00:21:43] So the question for you are Seattle voters about to send Sarah Nelson and her centrist coalition on the city council a message that they don't like her law and order anti-tax style of governance.

[00:22:04] Hey, Seattle nice listeners.

[00:22:06] Seattle politics got you low.

[00:22:09] We'll get high with Uncle Ike's.

[00:22:12] Pissed at the mayor?

[00:22:14] Relax with a dollar joint.

[00:22:17] Pop a tire in a pothole.

[00:22:19] Eat a two dollar gummy and chill.

[00:22:22] Whether you need something to pump you up for Saturday's protest or a mellow strain for your next sit in.

[00:22:29] Ike's is your best friend.

[00:22:31] Now is the time to roll up, Seattle.

[00:22:34] Download the Ike's app today or head on over to Ike's dot com.

[00:22:39] That's Ike's dot com.

[00:22:46] I don't know, man.

[00:22:48] I would say it would behoove us maybe and for progressives, including the people at the Urbanist or whatever, to wait until we actually see some some real election results before deciding what the outcome of this election was.

[00:23:01] Look, if you put a gun to my head, I would say Alexis Rink probably will win this race.

[00:23:07] But I would take that polling result that NPI put out yesterday with a massive grain of salt.

[00:23:12] There are.

[00:23:13] And I had a text conversation with Andrew Villeneuve about this last night at NPI.

[00:23:20] There are massive internal issues with that poll that make me think it's not credible.

[00:23:26] And to add on to that fact, last year, around this time in the election, Andrew put out a very similar poll saying Joy Hollingsworth was 24 points ahead of Alex Hudson in that race.

[00:23:39] Now he's saying that that Alexis Mercedes Rink is 24 points ahead of Tanya Wu in this race.

[00:23:45] Sorry, who won in that race?

[00:23:46] Yeah, Joy won, but by six points.

[00:23:49] It was an 18 point deviation, right?

[00:23:51] Which is a massive polling error, right?

[00:23:54] I would be look if if Alexis wins this race by 20 or 25 points, the way this poll says, I will come on next week and say I'm absolutely happy to say I was wrong.

[00:24:03] I don't I would be very I would be very surprised if it's that kind of margin.

[00:24:11] I will say, you know, the thing I mean, I'm not you know, I'm not going to speculate on the poll because I have been out of town and have not looked at the methodology.

[00:24:19] But I will say that I got when I got back from my trip, I had quite a few mailers in my inbox that were really, really, you know, I think I said on one of the social media platforms, they seem desperate.

[00:24:36] And from Tanya Wu and Tanya Wu supporters, there's one from Tanya Wu directly that had a bunch of, you know, it said everyone's talking about Tanya Wu.

[00:24:45] And then it had a bunch of like made up quotes emanating out of thin air and no actual quotes from people, which is very weird mailer.

[00:24:52] And then there are two more from the business backpack that is opposing Alexis Mercedes Rink.

[00:24:57] One of them spelled her name wrong in both instances.

[00:24:59] And both of them had some pretty outrageous lies, including that she wants to bankrupt the city with a 12 billion dollar plan to end homelessness and that she wants homeless encampments all over the city, that she wants to eliminate funding for police.

[00:25:15] I mean, it just felt like and Sandy, I'm curious if you were involved in these.

[00:25:19] I will.

[00:25:21] So I well, I.

[00:25:24] I sounds like a yes to me.

[00:25:26] Well, no, I let me let me explain.

[00:25:28] I talked to some folks in the business community who pulled that IE together.

[00:25:32] I gave them some advice, including and I will say helping them put a poll in the field.

[00:25:37] This was a couple of months ago.

[00:25:38] So I I know what their polling results showed.

[00:25:42] Now it's been a couple of months.

[00:25:43] Maybe it's all changed.

[00:25:44] And in terms of the message of that, IE, I think that messaging is absolutely appropriate and spot on.

[00:25:53] Right.

[00:25:53] I mean, I mean, I mean, it's just I told them that the lies are outrageous.

[00:25:57] No, they're they're not lies.

[00:25:59] And and they are exactly.

[00:26:02] And I don't usually use the word lies, but they are lies.

[00:26:04] Erica, let me don't interrupt.

[00:26:06] Let me finish my point.

[00:26:08] Alexis Mercedes Rink has all of the exact same vulnerabilities that the left lane candidates have had in recent election cycles.

[00:26:16] She has she has not really deviated in her positions on issues around public safety or encampments from the kind of orthodox left lane line.

[00:26:27] You're obviously not the target audience for that mail.

[00:26:32] Well, but in previous election cycles, including just last year, a whole series of candidates won with those same criticisms.

[00:26:40] Right.

[00:26:41] These are lies.

[00:26:42] I mean, this is the point that I'm making.

[00:26:44] I'm not saying that.

[00:26:45] OK, so one says that she wants to increase the cost of living with costly regulations.

[00:26:54] Huge spending increases.

[00:26:56] No evidence for that.

[00:26:58] She wants more homelessness encampments, which is a strange phrase, but no stranger than misspelling her name, I guess.

[00:27:05] She wants to allow dangerous encampments around parks, playgrounds and sidewalks.

[00:27:10] Again, no evidence for that.

[00:27:11] She wrote an astronomical plan that would bankrupt the city.

[00:27:16] She has corrected Tanya Wu directly on this because Tanya Wu makes this claim, too.

[00:27:20] She worked for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and helped write the five year plan for ending home, which which had an estimate of what it would cost to actually address homelessness in the entire region over five years.

[00:27:37] And it was twelve billion dollars.

[00:27:38] It was never a plan to spend twelve billion dollars.

[00:27:40] So that's a lie.

[00:27:41] And interestingly, it also refers to the KCRHA is incompetent and scandal plagued, which is a strange position for a Tanya Wu pack to take, given that the city just signed another interlocal agreement with KCRHA and is working with them just fine.

[00:28:00] So, yeah, I'm sure lying about people was effective in the last campaign.

[00:28:05] We've talked about the NTK ads.

[00:28:07] We've talked about lots of other ads that scared people.

[00:28:11] But, you know, to my mind, you know, these kind of speak of desperation.

[00:28:15] They also came out after long after ballots had dropped.

[00:28:18] So I'm not sure how effective they're going to be with early voters.

[00:28:22] So, right.

[00:28:23] I think the reason.

[00:28:25] So, first of all, I don't think they're lies.

[00:28:27] Right.

[00:28:27] I think they're actually rooted in in in absolutely true things.

[00:28:32] Right.

[00:28:32] Alexis Rink wants to sharply reduce the pace of encampment cleanups, including a winter moratorium on encampment cleanups.

[00:28:43] You know, she wants to cut positions at SPD.

[00:28:48] She's told the stranger that when she announced her run for city council.

[00:28:54] I mean, there's a series of she was one of the primary authors of the 12 billion dollar plan that you, Erica, yourself criticized at the time it came out.

[00:29:02] Right.

[00:29:02] We did an episode because it wasn't a five year.

[00:29:05] You said it was politically stupid.

[00:29:07] Right.

[00:29:08] At the time to put that out and that it would come back to bite, you know, folks.

[00:29:12] And guess what?

[00:29:13] It was politically stupid and it's coming back to bite her a little bit on this.

[00:29:17] So, again, I would I would suggest people listen back to that episode where I also clarified exactly what this quote unquote plan is.

[00:29:25] And it has never been in doubt except in, you know, I guess in Tanya Wu's mind and the minds of, you know, the political opponents of spending money on homelessness.

[00:29:34] So anyway, the.

[00:29:37] The reason I think Alexis will likely win this race is not because there's been some massive sea change in the Seattle electorate and they now are repudiating all of those concerns they've had with kind of the left progressive side of the of the political equation.

[00:29:53] But because the business community.

[00:29:57] And the people that came together to do the IE in that race came together late, they didn't raise all that much money and they didn't do a whole lot with their IE.

[00:30:05] And they were much more engaged in previous election cycles, including last year.

[00:30:12] But Sandeep, voters got to know Tanya Wu a little bit because she ran last year and lost.

[00:30:17] She's been the incumbent, so she's had a bit of a soapbox.

[00:30:22] It is also true that centrists are in charge.

[00:30:25] So if Alexis wins, even if it's only six points, maybe it doesn't bode so well for centrists next year.

[00:30:34] And also, I mean, there's a whole bunch of other things on the list.

[00:30:37] Like, why would you run a candidate who had already lost, you know, privately did everybody who was backing Tanya Wu think she was the highest quality candidate that they could have possibly run?

[00:30:48] And I would also just bring up the fact that, you know, some of the attacks on Tanya Wu are the same attacks that we see every year.

[00:30:54] But I think the reality is, is that Seattle voters don't want to vote with big business.

[00:30:59] We saw that in the Progressive Sweet election of 2019.

[00:31:02] Maybe we're going to see a little bit more of this year.

[00:31:05] It is an even year election.

[00:31:07] And where MAGA fascists are on the ballot, centrist messages about Seattle's kind of urban problems like crime, homelessness, addiction, just aren't going to resonate the same way compared to odd years where national issues and national candidates aren't in the ballot and people aren't freaking out about Trump and the law and order fascists winning at the national level.

[00:31:29] So there's a whole bunch of reasons, I think, aren't there why it might not be a good year for the Sarah Nelson team.

[00:31:36] Maybe.

[00:31:36] Why don't we wait till we see the fucking election results?

[00:31:39] I'm actually stroking my kitten here to calm myself as I talk about this.

[00:31:43] I mean, it's very funny that you talk about polls.

[00:31:45] Wait, hold on.

[00:31:46] Hold on.

[00:31:46] Not fair enough.

[00:31:47] Because, Sandeep, you talk about polls all the time.

[00:31:50] You're obsessed with polls.

[00:31:51] You say that they, you know, are incredibly predictive or they're bad if they don't go your way.

[00:31:56] That's not true at all.

[00:31:56] So, of course, we're talking about the election.

[00:31:59] Like, what are you talking about?

[00:32:01] We can talk about the election all you want, but you guys are assuming the outcome of an election that hasn't happened.

[00:32:05] No, I'm not.

[00:32:07] You were saying if Alexis wins, here's why.

[00:32:11] And I was like, aren't there six other reasons in addition to the one that you just mentioned?

[00:32:14] I'm not making any assumptions.

[00:32:15] I have no fucking idea who's going to win.

[00:32:17] And I'm petrified about the national race.

[00:32:19] So, yeah, I have no idea.

[00:32:21] Yeah.

[00:32:21] And I think, Sandeep, if it was your candidate going into a race with the kind of margin that, you know, that Alexis Rink won by, you would be touting that as great news for the upcoming election and not saying, oh, who knows?

[00:32:37] You know, things could go wildly different.

[00:32:39] So, you know, I think I think you are a motivated speaker here.

[00:32:43] Look, I talked about this after the primary.

[00:32:47] Those were good results for Alexis in the primary.

[00:32:50] But again, I don't think primary results are particularly indicative of the general election electorates in Seattle anymore because I do think primary results tend to tilt to the to the left.

[00:33:03] Lower turnout primaries tend to tilt left.

[00:33:06] Not to talk out of school about the polling that I saw a couple of months ago, but we're in a presidential year electorate.

[00:33:13] So we haven't had a race like this where we're going to have 80 percent turnout in a municipal race where there has been way more attention paid to things like the presidential race and the governor's race and the hot congressional races.

[00:33:24] Right.

[00:33:24] We don't get the level of attention to this city council race that we would in an odd year.

[00:33:30] And we have a huge electorate, right?

[00:33:32] Much, much bigger electorate than we would.

[00:33:35] And contrary to the progressive belief that those voters are all, you know, you know, young, fired up progressives.

[00:33:42] What I will say is this.

[00:33:44] Most of those those new voters in presidential year are people that know jack shit about municipal politics or people that never vote in municipal races.

[00:33:54] They don't know who Tanya Wu is.

[00:33:56] They don't know who Alexis Rink is.

[00:33:58] They're just like blank slate voters.

[00:34:01] Right.

[00:34:02] And then it's it's the it's what they know, you know, I mean, they're just not engaged.

[00:34:08] They're garbage people.

[00:34:09] They're garbage.

[00:34:10] They're not.

[00:34:11] Their votes are worthless.

[00:34:12] They're not.

[00:34:13] Votes aren't worthless.

[00:34:14] Their votes count.

[00:34:14] But they're there are people who are not not who come into the race not having been engaged in municipal politics or with preformed ideas about it.

[00:34:23] Right.

[00:34:23] So they're they're pretty they're pretty unpredictable and susceptible to, you know, what they advertising.

[00:34:29] Right.

[00:34:29] But also what The Stranger says or potentially what The Seattle Times says.

[00:34:33] Yeah.

[00:34:34] So you're saying that young voters are going to look at you're saying young voters are going to look at these these anti these anti Alexis Rink mailers that they get in their mailboxes and say, oh, I care about crime.

[00:34:46] Gosh, I don't want to spend 12 billion dollars bankrupting the city.

[00:34:50] I guess I'll vote for Tanya Wu.

[00:34:51] I mean, I guess I just don't understand what the argument is there.

[00:34:54] That doesn't seem like a message that resonates with young voters.

[00:34:57] They're not all younger voters.

[00:34:58] First of all, it's a it's a huge chunk of the electorate.

[00:35:01] Again, we're talking about almost, you know, 75 percent more voters.

[00:35:07] These are voters who, again, did not vote in last year's, you know, municipal or in the mayor's race a few years ago.

[00:35:15] These are people that just don't pay a whole lot of attention.

[00:35:18] We obsess about city politics.

[00:35:20] They don't pay a whole lot of attention to it.

[00:35:22] And, you know, I will say some of the progressive beliefs about younger voters are obviously getting tested in the presidential election here.

[00:35:29] We're seeing particularly younger men kind of moving in political directions nationally that maybe we wouldn't have expected.

[00:35:37] Also true of particularly non-college educated men of color.

[00:35:42] Some of us would have expected them.

[00:35:43] But I don't think that how much how much that has to do with whether people are going to vote for this woman or that woman on a local municipal election, I think, is pretty dubious.

[00:35:53] But but I mean, and also like I personally am not surprised that young men are voting based on misogyny.

[00:36:01] That surprises me.

[00:36:02] Not a whit.

[00:36:03] Right.

[00:36:03] One thing that may happen here, and it's kind of an interesting test case, is do these sort of blank slate voters, do they go?

[00:36:10] Are they all going to go to the stranger?

[00:36:12] Right.

[00:36:12] And kind of read and just sort of vote the stranger line.

[00:36:15] That may be the case.

[00:36:16] It may be that that this actually increases the impact of those sorts of endorsements from sources like the stranger.

[00:36:23] I don't know the answer to that question.

[00:36:25] Right.

[00:36:25] Which is why I'm saying let's see what the fucking results are before we start pontificating about what it all means.

[00:36:30] Wow.

[00:36:31] Anti-pontificating.

[00:36:32] Sonia Koshif after pontificating for five minutes.

[00:36:35] Yeah.

[00:36:35] I will say like your your point about how crap that poll was last time, the NPI poll, a 20 percentage point error is is a 18.

[00:36:46] 18 points.

[00:36:47] But yeah, 18 percent.

[00:36:48] But that's pretty bad.

[00:36:49] I mean, that's poll aggregators would chuck that one out.

[00:36:52] But I would like to see Sonia's poll that says that Tanya was going to win.

[00:36:55] And I didn't say that there's a poll that says she's going to win.

[00:36:58] I know that.

[00:36:59] Let me finish, Sandy.

[00:37:00] I'm saying we know that we won't see that poll because it doesn't exist.

[00:37:04] And so if there was if there was evidence that she is going to pull like a 15 point turnaround, I think we would see it.

[00:37:11] That's not true.

[00:37:11] That's not true.

[00:37:12] I would when I do or when a lot of people I know smart political consultants do private polling, we tend not to release it even if it's favorable.

[00:37:24] And I'm not talking about I'm not talking about releasing and I'm talking about you blabbing your mouth, Sandy, because you talk about private polling all the time.

[00:37:32] You say, oh, I can't say anything.

[00:37:34] But, you know, what I'm hearing is that she's doing really well in polls.

[00:37:39] And I think you would be saying in fact, I know you would be saying that if you do.

[00:37:42] He's saying in this situation that there's polling that suggests that maybe Tanya Wu has a shot.

[00:37:47] Is that what you're saying, Sandy?

[00:37:49] I'm saying I would think that this race would be a lot closer than that NPI poll shows.

[00:37:56] That's what I'm saying.

[00:37:58] So we'll see.

[00:37:59] We'll see what happens.

[00:38:00] You know, we'll see.

[00:38:02] I know enough about elections to know that they're inherently, you know, subject to variance and change.

[00:38:12] Well, you know what's not subject to variance?

[00:38:14] Border walls, Erica.

[00:38:15] Rob Sacco's border wall.

[00:38:18] What on earth?

[00:38:19] I mean, you know, for the uninitiated, you'd think we're talking about national politics.

[00:38:24] But no, we're talking about the Seattle City Council.

[00:38:26] Yeah.

[00:38:27] So Seattle City Council member Rob Sacco has identified as his top budget priority for his district, which includes West Seattle, Georgetown, South Park, Pioneer Square, Soto, some other neighborhoods.

[00:38:40] He wants to.

[00:38:41] So there is a there is a hardened center line, which is a sort of raised barricade, the kind you see all over the city.

[00:38:47] They're yellow and they prevent people from turning left in their cars across traffic.

[00:38:51] In this case, there's one of these barriers that prevents Rob Sacco from turning left into the preschool where his kids attend or attended.

[00:39:00] And in his Delridge neighborhood on Delridge.

[00:39:04] And it was put there as part of the Rapid Ride project in that area, which basically is a bus route.

[00:39:10] You know, new bus stops, new signage, a bike lane, pedestrian improvements and a lot of pedestrian safety stuff.

[00:39:16] So it's there to prevent cars from turning, you know, into the line of buses, also into the bike lane, also into pedestrians, including the preschool kids who go to that school.

[00:39:27] But Sacco is very annoyed.

[00:39:29] He complained about this to Estot and demanded that they remove it before he was a council member, complained to city council staff and, you know, and compared it to Trump's border wall and said that, you know, people in Delridge are low income people of color.

[00:39:43] Now, he, of course, is a former meta attorney and is not low income.

[00:39:49] But, you know, his kids go to the school and he said that it's discriminatory.

[00:39:53] Very small preschool, you know, a few dozen kids.

[00:39:58] And, you know, again, this barrier was put there in part to protect them from cars driving into traffic.

[00:40:05] There previously there was a double yellow line that I guess Sacco crossed speculating.

[00:40:12] But, you know, he's he's very angry about it.

[00:40:14] So anyway, in the budget, he wants to set aside two million dollars to remove this thing so that he and others can drive left into the path of buses, pedestrians and bikes and other cars.

[00:40:25] What is it?

[00:40:26] What is it with West Seattle City Council people getting special deals when it comes to traffic?

[00:40:31] What what other one are you thinking of?

[00:40:34] Yeah, David.

[00:40:35] Spill, David.

[00:40:36] Wait, are you talking about Grace Kronikin?

[00:40:39] No.

[00:40:40] Oh, no.

[00:40:41] It was it.

[00:40:41] It was the old to the Mayor Nichols got got his his street plowed in the big snowstorm in 2008 before.

[00:40:48] But but but that but that turned out not to be true.

[00:40:52] And I think bad reporting by The Seattle Times at the time.

[00:40:54] But there's also allegations about Lisa Herbold getting, you know, special treatment about there was like an RV camped in front of her.

[00:41:02] Oh, I mean, I reported on that very extensively.

[00:41:06] The right wing talk show host who sent people out there to harass Lisa Herbold was incorrect in his reporting.

[00:41:18] And and but yes, Lisa Herbold did call the police because she was concerned about people, you know, coming out there and, you know, and also didn't want the person to get towed or harassed who was living in this vehicle.

[00:41:31] And she got reprimanded for that and had to pay a fine.

[00:41:35] But I don't think that's anywhere on the scale of saying saying in a budget deficit, you know, they're facing these massive multi hundred million dollar deficits year year after year to set aside two million dollars to take out this barrier that SACA considers an annoyance.

[00:41:51] And Dan Strauss, the budget chair, made a big point last week of noting that he doesn't really agree with this as a priority.

[00:41:58] But since it's SACA's priority for his district, he's not going to stand in his way.

[00:42:02] I think it is ridiculous and embarrassing.

[00:42:05] And, you know, I just I don't understand why he is so sort of obsessed with this one thing.

[00:42:14] But I'm sure his constituents could probably think of better uses for that two million dollars that he's going to be setting aside the budget.

[00:42:21] And why are other people on the council going along with it as well?

[00:42:24] I mean, as you say, boy, Santeep.

[00:42:27] What? So I've neither been tracked.

[00:42:29] I didn't track the Lisa Hurble thing, particularly back when it happened.

[00:42:33] So I don't really have an opinion on on on, you know, how much of a fuck up that was on her part or whatever.

[00:42:39] And I'm not been tracking the SACA thing either.

[00:42:42] I know that this is a little bit of a of a poke at Rob thing that that that Eric and her friends on the left are sort of sort of drenching up.

[00:42:51] I haven't looked at it.

[00:42:53] Wait, wait, wait. I am the one who reported this, Santeep.

[00:42:55] Santeep, I am the one who reported this and not dredging it up.

[00:42:58] I broke the story because it's an interesting story.

[00:43:02] And, you know, back in this happened back in 2022.

[00:43:04] I reported on it in 2023 and it's back up now.

[00:43:08] I'm not dredging it.

[00:43:10] Rob Saka is dredging it by putting it in the budget.

[00:43:13] It was a dead issue until he identified this as his number one priority for his vast council district.

[00:43:19] So I take huge exception with the idea that I am dredging this up.

[00:43:23] It was not a story that I planned to revisit because I thought it was over and done with.

[00:43:28] But here we are.

[00:43:30] OK.

[00:43:30] And why is the council going along with it?

[00:43:32] You know, we'll see if they go along with it there.

[00:43:35] You know, I mean, I think that they are in an era of good feelings and are sort of supporting each other's stuff to some extent, at least the council members that all got elected together.

[00:43:44] But, you know, we'll see what happens when they actually get down to budget business.

[00:43:49] It makes it seem pretty bad.

[00:43:52] It is pretty bad.

[00:43:53] Like, not a great thing to have on your resume when you're running for re-election.

[00:43:57] It's just, Sandeep, I don't get it.

[00:43:58] I mean, I haven't been, you know, double-checking Erica's work.

[00:44:02] But given the story that she's done here, it just, I mean, you know, is it defensible?

[00:44:06] You've got nothing to say, it sounds like, really.

[00:44:08] I haven't looked into it.

[00:44:10] So I don't have anything to say about it.

[00:44:12] Yeah.

[00:44:12] I really don't.

[00:44:13] I haven't looked into it.

[00:44:14] And I have no judgment.

[00:44:16] Can you think of a justification?

[00:44:17] I'm just so curious.

[00:44:19] Like, this is an S-DOT project.

[00:44:21] Erica, I have nothing to fucking say about it because I haven't looked into it.

[00:44:24] You know, you can say whatever you want about it.

[00:44:27] Like, I will say more broadly about the budget as it's going through this process,

[00:44:31] I wonder if there's not a bigger story here that we should come back to in the next few weeks about what has been, how has the budget changed?

[00:44:40] Is it changing under the kind of council's plan?

[00:44:44] Changes, right?

[00:44:45] They just came forward with all of their ads and changes that they want to make.

[00:44:49] And I think we should come back and revisit that because my sense is the mayor left some reserves.

[00:44:54] Some of that money is getting spent.

[00:44:56] I mean, I think we should kind of look at some of the bigger picture stuff going through.

[00:44:59] Okay.

[00:44:59] Just before we end then, who's going to win the presidential election?

[00:45:03] Erica C. Barnett.

[00:45:05] I don't do that.

[00:45:07] I'm very superstitious and I will not do that for that reason.

[00:45:11] I don't fucking know.

[00:45:12] If you put a gun to my head, I would say Trump will win the presidential election.

[00:45:17] But I don't know and I'm hoping I'm wrong about that.

[00:45:20] Are you saying that to double jinx it or whatever?

[00:45:22] To reverse it?

[00:45:23] Yeah, yeah.

[00:45:24] That's what I'm doing.

[00:45:24] You know, I talked to somebody who's working on the Harris-Walls campaign the other day,

[00:45:35] who was, you know, kind of fairly pessimistic, was saying it could go either way.

[00:45:41] But some of the internal stuff they had seen was a cause for concern.

[00:45:45] And obviously, so it's all, you know, we're all going off tidbits and vibes and stuff like that.

[00:45:49] I was talking to a Democratic operative.

[00:45:51] But then somebody else told me a day after that that they were talking to someone else on the,

[00:45:55] working directly on the presidential campaign who was much more optimistic.

[00:45:58] So, you know, who the fuck knows, right?

[00:46:00] We don't know.

[00:46:00] It's that close.

[00:46:02] Nobody knows what's going to happen.

[00:46:04] All right.

[00:46:05] Well, we'll leave it there.

[00:46:06] And we'll be back with another edition of Seattle Nice.

[00:46:09] With Erica C. Barnett, Sandeep Kashuk, I'm David Hyde.

[00:46:12] Our editor is Quinn Waller.

[00:46:13] We'll have election results to talk about maybe on Friday or something like that,

[00:46:19] if Erica and Sandeep are available.

[00:46:21] Does that sound good?

[00:46:21] Yeah.

[00:46:22] Sounds good to me.

[00:46:23] Yeah.

[00:46:23] All right.

[00:46:24] Everybody, thanks so much for listening.

[00:46:25] And God help us all.