Preview: Grading Bruce Harrell's State of the City

[00:00:00] Hello, Seattle Nice listeners. This episode that you're about to hear is just a preview of our special emergency State of the City episode. If you want to hear the entire thing, just head on over to patreon.com slash Seattle Nice and sign up to become a Seattle Nice supporter at any level that's right for you.

[00:00:27] Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde with Erica C. Barnett of Publicola. Hi, Erica. Hello, David. And political consultant Sandeep Kaushik. Hey, David. I'm surprised this isn't a special emergency. Oh, it is. It is. You anticipated exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, this is a special emergency edition State of the City edition because Bruce Harrell has just given his State of the City here for 2025.

[00:00:55] Restoring parks, reducing the crime rate, getting downtown bustling again. I think there's a different mood in the city, a different spirit, if you will, a renewed spark. A renewed belief and optimism that we are on the right trajectory. We describe it as Seattle being on the rise. Now, we all know we have a lot of work to do, so we're not hanging the mission accomplished banner on the door.

[00:01:20] Now, Seattle's never been that way. We will always seek new heights, new firsts, new ambitions, new breakthroughs, new innovations. We learn how to reinvent ourselves. My first question before we get to content was style. If this were a class, what marks would you give Bruce Harrell as a Merrill speechmaker? And I'm going to start by saying clear points, comfortable and funny, especially compared to 2007 when he first ran for office.

[00:01:50] You know, a couple stumbles and a couple of jokes that maybe didn't land. But I would say, you know, B plus or A minus. And with great inflation, it's probably like an A triple plus as a speech. But what do you all think? I mean, I think I can't I'm just trying to pull up my my write up of his recent State of the City speeches. But I'm just going to from memory say that I think I said it was meh in the past. The State of the City was meh. And I think this time, you know, he's running for reelection. This is a reelection speech in a lot of ways.

[00:02:20] And, you know, he brought the energy, you know, definitely focused on the positive, you know, described a set of politics that, you know, I'm not sure I would ascribe to him. But, you know, was was definitely trying to be a crowd pleaser. And I thought some of his jokes landed. But, you know, it's not Saturday Night Live or whatever. I mean, it was probably about equally funny as Saturday Night Live. But I definitely thought some of his jokes landed. I think there was a couple that that seemed to fall flat. That's all I meant.

[00:02:49] Like, I take a little bit off. That's why he gets a B plus or an A minus in my non great inflation world for me. But what would you give him, Erica? Oh, I don't know. About the same. Solid B. All right. Sandy Kausik. Yeah. I mean, if we're just talking about the delivery of the speech, I think the mayor was on, you know, he's on his game. Like, he's actually good at this kind of thing. This is he's a the mayor is a really good retail politician. Right.

[00:03:14] He's good at, you know, being a kind of, you know, we talked about in the very first we covered his very first state of the city speech. And I remember we called him the cheerleader in chief for Seattle. Right. And I think that's a role he's really comfortable with to talk about, like, you know, how much he loves the city and he's a product of the city and the city's great. And we're a place of innovation and cool things are happening. And one Seattle and, you know, you know, you know. So he did that. Right. Like he did that in his speech. And he's good at doing that.

[00:03:42] And and, you know, I think he did a fine job of that in on this occasion. It's morning again in Seattle. That's what I was. Yeah. Funny how it happens every four years. Ronald Reagan, 1984. All right. So let's get to substance then. He said a number of things. I'm not going to summarize all of it, but city hired more cops. We've heard this before. He's made public spaces safer, especially Pike Pine, violent crime down, decrease in emergency service calls, number of other things, downtime revitalization.

[00:04:11] But what stood out to you, Erica, in terms of the stuff that that Harold was emphasizing where you would say, yeah, you know, I'm going to give him some credit for that. This is this is a point where Mayor Bruce Harrell has actually made some progress or if any. Well, I mean, I don't think that, you know, mayors individually make progress. Right. I mean, I don't look at the city that way.

[00:04:33] I think that this was a speech where he kind of recanted some previous positions or, you know, or at least expressed different views on unpopular positions he's expressed in the past. He started out by kind of doing an anti-Trump rally. And, you know, we're going to protect our immigrants. And he said, we're going to protect our women in a moment that just like made me cringe massively.

[00:04:55] I'm not being an alarmist when I say we should have great concerns for what the Trump administration has in store for our city and its people. The actions and the rhetoric coming from the White House take aim at parts of our community that we value central as to who we are.

[00:05:14] Our LGBTQ plus community as an example, our community, our trans individuals, as an example, our immigrant and refugee neighbors, our women, our working families, unconstitutional executive orders and bad economic policies. We mean revenue impacts and fewer resources to invest in local services that truly make a difference.

[00:05:39] You know, I think he got a lot of applause for hating on Trump previously, as we've talked about in this podcast. He said that he would collaborate with Trump, the Trump administration any way he can. And I think he realized that was a political misstep. He should have realized that it was a policy misstep probably from the beginning. But, you know, I think that I certainly agree with him that, you know, Seattle's sanctuary city status should remain as it is. And we should protect immigrants. But that's not exactly what he was emphasizing just a couple months ago. So I thought it was a very political speech.

[00:06:09] I thought he, you know, sounded extremely progressive, didn't bring up a lot of his major policy initiatives that have not been progressive. And, you know, was kind of trying to win the progressive vote more than the kind of, you know, red meat, pro-cop, pro-surveillance, pro-crackdown on drug users vote that I think, you know, he knows he already has. Sandeep Kashuk, same question.

[00:06:34] If you were to listen to this and say, yeah, here's a place where the mayor's made some progress, what would you say? Well, look, first, the first thing I would say is that I agree with Erica that it was a political speech, right? I think I think I would take it a step farther and say it's really a it's a campaign re-election speech, right? The dude is running for re-election. And the whole conceit of the speech was the classic Ronald Reagan question, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

[00:07:03] Like he starts off the speech kind of reminding people of what it was, what the city was, you know, in his view, like when he became mayor, right? And the first time I did this and there were all these people wearing masks and we were all kind of struggling with COVID. And he talked about how gloomy the city felt and there were encampments everywhere. And, you know, downtown was dead.

[00:07:24] And, you know, and so that was the sort of setup for him to then say and look at how much things have gotten better in the three plus years that I've been your mayor and heading into my, you know, this is all implicit, but heading into my re-elect in November. Right. And he said he paints a picture of like a city on the rise. Right. That was the title of the speech. Yeah. Yeah. That's the sort of thematic thing. Seattle is on the rise. He kind of telegraphed that at the beginning of the speech.

[00:07:53] And so, yeah, I do think I was campaigned in political space. We can we can talk more about some of the substance and issue individual issues. But I thought that was the central conceit. You guys are both great because I asked the same question to both of you and neither one answer it. You should both run for office. You should both run for office. You know, that's an interesting question, Dave. You didn't even say that. You were just like what I'm going to talk about is something completely different than the question you're asking me. Yeah. All right. So how about this? Hey, talk about whatever the fuck you want to talk about, Erica. I guess that's my role now. Yeah. Yes.

[00:08:21] Well, you're asking me to agree with the mayor that he should take sole credit for something. No, no. I said, was there anything? Was there anything? Has he made any progress over the last four years or a year? I mean, has the city improved over four years? No. Has Mayor. Does Mayor Harold deserve credit for anything? Erica C. Barnett. If so, what is it? And what did he talk about in the speech where you go? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The mayor deserves some credit for that. Well, I mean, I said, you know, for being for protecting our sanctuary city status. But apparently that was not an adequate answer for you. That's fair.

[00:08:52] That's fair. Sandeep didn't answer it at all. How about you, Sandeep? Any of those? If we're using the mayor's metric of, you know, are things better off now than they were when I took office? And there's a whole bunch of different areas that he name checked some of them. He laid out some crime stats saying, you know, crime downtown is down 14 percent from I think it was a year ago. And the number of EMT calls are down 15 percent. And, you know, this is down 40 percent or whatever. You know, so yeah, I think he's right. I mean, things, you know.

[00:09:21] But Erica says he shouldn't get credit for that stuff, though. Like violent crime down whatever was 14 percent overall. Well, why this year, like, does he get any credit for those things in your mind? Of course, yes, he gets credit for those things. Absolutely. Sure. You know, I mean, I think his policies have read led directly to reduce crime when it's a nationwide trend coming out of COVID. Or I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, that that's not the case. But like what to echo David, you know, like what policy reduced crime in the city of Seattle or violent crime?

[00:09:51] Like what what city of Seattle policy made that happen or was it part of the national trend that's happening in every other city as well? Well, I think the mayor, if I'm going to since I'm playing proxy here. No, I see your opinion. You know, look, I think there have been some policies that that, you know, that he named checks and I think probably have made some difference. Right. Like major action against graffiti taggers, for example. Well, right.

[00:10:16] He talked about that, that we put an emphasis on some really pretty graffiti that I saw on my on my drive home the other day that I hope they don't know about. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt. He talked about eco blocks look better. Yeah. You guys. He talked about like putting an emphasis on Third Avenue with police. He talked about a few other things. Right. That they've done.

[00:10:37] But but here's the here's the thing about, you know, because the mayor is very fond of talking about how he's a big picture vision, big think kind of kind of mayor. Right. And what really struck me as I listened to him talk about that in this speech is that he sees that vision as very kind of geographical and structural and sort of architecture based. So the city.

[00:11:05] So the speech where he talks about all the big things that he's done and that are happening are all about kind of specific. Like groundbreaking. Groundbreakings. And yeah. Yeah. He talks about like the waterfront and what happened there. He talks about sort of sort of changes at Pike Place Market. And what I couldn't quite tell was he actually saying he's going to get rid of vehicle. He was not reduced. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't tell whether that was what that was. Right.

[00:11:34] Was that that commitment or it certainly sounded like he was saying he was. The city sent it out in in a sort of amend another document that went along with the speech. Saying reduce pedestrians. Reduce vehicular traffic. But as I as I listened to the speech, I actually was writing in my notes all the kind of places and the specific place changes. He talked about Aurora Avenue. He talked about the waterfront. He talked about Pike Place Market. He talked about downtown.

[00:12:02] He said a new memorial stadium at Seattle Center. He talked about expedited light rail design and permitting. He talked about 1120 John Street, about Third Avenue, how we're going to add a thousand units of housing. And so it was a very specific place based kind of location based sort of we're transforming the city. Well, maybe he heard your criticism that we don't have a new space needles. And, you know, space needle thinking means building things. And he was like, yeah, that's right. Right.

[00:12:28] But where I just to finish the thought and then where I what I think. Isn't his vision of transformation or I heard much less of in this speech is the policy based stuff. Right. Like what is there are gestures. He's doing an executive order. They're doing some new policing initiative that we didn't really get any details on, but it's a new kind of policing. And then we're going to do, you know, there's a task force. There's some task forces and policy gestures.

[00:12:56] And but but there there was a kind of lack of specificity to a lot of that. And to the extent there was specifics, it all felt kind of fairly small ball. Right. Compared to where I think his energy was in the sort of geographical, physical transformation of the city. Yeah. He talked about stratified policing. And I have never heard that term before, but it sounds from the way he described it, like very akin to broken windows. Those identifying and tackling, you know, immediate small things that they can fix.

[00:13:24] But maybe, you know, a nicer, softer kind of version of broken windows. I do think, you know, his emphasis on on places really jumped out at me when he was talking about the waterfront because I work on the waterfront. And, you know, so I see it a lot on the south end in Pioneer Square. And, you know, in many ways, that waterfront project is kind of a shit show on that end. They've done some really nice stuff on the street where my office is located on Washington Street. But, you know, it's a massive freeway.

[00:13:51] And there was a lot of sort of retconning of Greg Nichols' role in creating this beautiful, wonderful waterfront that we have now. And, you know, and a lot of emphasis on the Pike Place Market end of it. But Greg Nichols, you know, was responsible for, I mean, was partly responsible for creating this boondoggle of a tunnel that we have now that's never going to pay for itself. And this waterfront highway that we have now that is going to be very hard to narrow in the future and probably will never be narrowed.

[00:14:17] And so I thought that was that's kind of just an interesting aspect of the speech that stuck out to me. You know, this this beautiful, amazing waterfront. I mean, I wonder how many people really go down and walk the entire length of the waterfront because it's not all beautiful and amazing. I can tell you that. But it's a pretty fun bike ride down across, you know, the new waterfront bike ride past that park and into downtown. It's so much nicer than it used to be. Although it doesn't seem to me that the person who cuts the ribbon is the one who gets to take all the credit for all of that necessarily. Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:46] You know, he talked also about doubling our zoning capacity with a new comprehensive plan that will create at least 120,000 new homes. So no credit on the comprehensive plan.

[00:14:59] I would definitely not give credit on on on most of those homes because they were we were we were finally forced to do that by the state because the city of Seattle failed and failed and failed to make any progress in changing, you know, the sort of early 1900s, mid, you know, mid 1900s single family zoning. So no, I wouldn't give him credit for that. I mean, maybe he supports it, but he doesn't get credit. The city has managed to hire more cops than it did in previous years. Well, the first time they're not bleeding cops.

[00:15:28] They've actually added a few cops. We talked about this before. You know, he's linking that to an Eric probably wouldn't do this. The possibility of improving public safety in Seattle. And you give him credit, though, for I wouldn't say you give him credit. But you, Erica, thought that raising police salaries is one of the things that did lead to that in part. Right. Right. Absolutely. But I think that contract that they signed to raise those salaries had no new accountability measures in it.

[00:15:53] And so, I mean, they completely dropped the ball on actually getting anything in exchange for these massive new salaries. I mean, six figures to start for, you know, a 22 year old, you know, rookie officer. That's a lot of money. And you would think that there should be, you know, maybe some concessions to the law that they adopted in 2017, which, you know, still hasn't been enacted on police accountability. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm a cynic. I'm not going to be like rah-rah any mayor. So it's not, you know, it's not just it's not just Bruce Harrell.

[00:16:23] You know, it's any mayor taking credit solely for for anything. If Sandy, if the city is feeling better today than it was four years ago, if people feel like the status quo is good, they don't pay that much attention to local politics anyway. And maybe Bruce Harrell has done a good enough job to get reelected just on that ground. That seemed to be kind of the case that he's making here based on what you're saying anyway. I think that's right. Yeah. And look, I think the mayor right now. OK, that's it for this week's preview.

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