Special Emergency Seattle Nice: The Seattle City Council Is Un-Cathy Moored!

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to another episode of Seattle Nice. This is an emergency podcast. We're recording on Sound the Klaxons. We're recording on Monday at about six o'clock. I'm Erica Barnett. He's Sandeep Kaushik. And we are here to talk about the decision of Kathy Moore to resign her position on the City Council effective in just over a month. We should say no David Hyde, right? So the wheels have come off. No safety to have.

[00:00:40] It's just me and Sonny this week. Prepare for the terror of Erica and I unmediated. Oh my God. Oh my God. I feel like that's an idea. But Sandeep, can I just get a vibe check? What was your initial reaction when you heard this news? And I don't know when you heard it, but what was your initial reaction?

[00:01:03] I think my initial reaction was here we go again. You know, I mean, obviously, Tammy Morales pulled a surprise resignation earlier this year back in January, I think it was. And so, yeah, I don't know that we've had two council resignations in a single year in the era that I've been paying attention, the 20 plus years that I've been paying attention to Seattle politics.

[00:01:26] And usually it's because somebody, I mean, in the past, historically, council resignations have come because somebody gets a better job, right? They're like, fuck this. I can make more money. I'm going to go work for, you know, the, what did Rob Johnson go to work for? He worked for the Kraken, basically, doing transportation stuff for the Kraken. For the Kraken. Yeah. Sally Clark got a job at the UW. But in both of these cases, the council members have cited problems that they've experienced on the job.

[00:01:55] So Tammy Morales said that she was bullied relentlessly by her colleagues and resigned because of that. And Kathy Moore has not said exactly why she's resigning. She said it was health and personal reasons, which could not be more vague. But it's widely assumed. And what I've heard is that it's, you know, because she quite obviously did not like the job, particularly the fact that she has to be subjected to the public.

[00:02:21] And a lot of times the public doesn't like what the council does and they're very loud about it and they can be very annoying. And, you know, I don't know why a council member would not know that that is part of the job at this point. But I think that she was very unhappy from day one with that part of the job. Look, I think that's that's right. I mean, she did say that she'd been having some kind of unspecified health issues for the last few months. And that's the the reason that she's made this decision after what? She's only been there, what, about 18 months in office, something like that.

[00:02:51] Less than 18, less than a year and a half. It'll be about. But I'm hearing the same stuff you are. Right. I mean, it kind of felt like I don't know. I've not talked directly to Kathy Moore about this, but it certainly seemed to me like she wasn't loving the job. And, Erica, as you mentioned, look, you say it's the public. I'd say it's like annoying activists on the left that would come there and shout and yell. Who are her constituents?

[00:03:16] Some of them and some of them are just sort of, you know, loud mouth, you know. If you live in Seattle, you're a constituent of the whole country. To your point, that was true before Kathy came on the council, too. Like the vibe at council has been this way for a long time. In fact, in the era when Sawant was more active, right? When Shama Sawant was still on the council and she would turn out her, as you pointed out to me before we started taping, what are now the brown shirts.

[00:03:45] Or not the black shirts. Pretty in sleep. But before with the red shirts, right? You know, there used to be some really wild, wild scenes in council chambers, right? And this is what, yeah. And this is what I think people kind of forget. When this council came in and their whole thing was we are not the old council. We're so much more civil. We're so much more organized. We are going to act in lockstep. We agree on basically everything.

[00:04:12] And we agree with the mayor's, quote unquote, one Seattle goals and message. And so we're really going to get shit done where the last council kind of flailed. And I think that what people forget about the last council is they're the ones that Sawant, who brings the loudest protesters to council meetings, they're the ones that Sawant opposed, even when she was on the council. And because she was on the council, she could bring like hundreds of people as opposed to a dozen, two dozen, which she's bringing now.

[00:04:39] Now, I don't think that Kathy Moore resigned because people have been protesting her proposed ethics rule changes, which is kind of what you're talking about. The Sawant crowd has really been showing up for that. But I think, you know, she showed the fact that she didn't like these protests and opposition way back at the very beginning of her term when she was demanding that people be arrested for pounding on the walls after the council kicked them out. So I think we saw this very early on. Yeah.

[00:05:08] Look, I don't want to minimize. There were some, you know, look, I really don't think that the levels of vitriol that we sometimes see coming from your term members of the public by term, like, you know, annoying, you know, annoying loudmouth activists like is is is is good.

[00:05:31] Right. I don't think it's conducive to good government to expect that council members should take this kind of steady diet of kind of abuse or whatever. And this has been going on for for a long time, as we were just talking about. But it hasn't been good for a long time. I think it's been a problem whether it's true. And I think this is true, whether it's directed at the left council members or the, you know, center left or more moderate council members.

[00:05:54] It's just bad for governance if we think the standard is that council members need to, like, take a lot of. Yeah, it's one thing to come come to express your disagreement with the council. I do think it's really important for the council to take public testimony and to hear the voices of the public, including voices that tell them they're wrong.

[00:06:15] But I think there's a line, right, that when it turns into, like, you know, yelling obscenities or or abuse at public officials, that's not great. That's not great for governance. Well, I mean, it wasn't yet anyway. I mean, one of the things that I was reminded of today, I was like, who does Kathy Moore remind me of of like of your and I and I thought of Margaret. I thought you put that in your piece, right? Yeah, I called her the Margaret Pageler of our day.

[00:06:45] And I went back and I looked at some of the coverage that The Stranger did of the teen dance ordinance, which is this, you know, heinous ordinance designed to prevent teenagers from having fun, basically. And Margaret Pageler, I mean, she in one of the stories that our colleague, Sandeep and my colleague at The Stranger Amy Jenigas wrote, I mean, she was chasing a guy around the room trying to get him to stop playing guitar because people had a lot of teenagers, but other people had a dance in protest.

[00:07:15] And, you know, I mean, so this stuff has been going on forever. And I'm sure people said that that was uncivil and it was disruptive and it was undeniably disruptive. Shit like that has happened since time immemorial. This is the latest version of it. And I'm not saying that it's pleasant. I don't want to deal with that on my job. And I don't. But I didn't run for city council knowing that that is what it is like. And if you don't know that's what it's like, you probably shouldn't run for city council because you don't know what the job is. Erica, go back to because we were both around for that era. Like, you know, those are our stranger days, right?

[00:07:45] Which are now kind of in the dim recesses of ancient history, unfortunately, because we've gotten fucking old. But, yeah. Speak for yourself, old man. You know, the teen dance ordinance era was like the vibe was not this, right? The vibe was better. It was like, yeah, it was like kids kind of having a good time in the council chambers and sort of do it. You were also younger, Sandy. I was younger, but. And maybe that's why you thought the vibe was okay. Margaret Pageler certainly didn't.

[00:08:12] But the way that the Sawanties do it, I don't think has that level of like kind of frivolity and fun to it. Like, like that it's much more. It's much more like. That's for sure. Fuck you. Shut the fuck up. You're like, you know, it's that kind of shit. That's that's fine. But again, that has been going at that part. That version of it has been going on for a while.

[00:08:35] I just I just think that, you know, when you run for office and I remember you were I believe you were quite critical of Tammy Morales for running for office and then immediately more or less immediately saying hanging up her hat and saying I'm done. And I and a lot of people on the left were quite critical of her, too, saying that, you know, we trusted you and we voted for you and now you're bowing out. And Kathy Moore is doing the exact same thing for slightly different reasons. But she's just got elected. She's part of this new cadre of council members.

[00:09:05] And as you said, she's the second council member to bow out. Well, look, I think that's a fair point to make. Like the vibe at the council was the vibe at the council before Kathy Moore got elected. So, you know, if that kind of heat was not what you wanted to bear, this is the point that you were making earlier. I don't quite want to agree with it, but I'm going to. I agree with it. That's she maybe Kathy was a little naive about what she was getting into, but not because there wasn't clear example of like,

[00:09:34] you know, that's the world you're going into, man. If you're running for city council, the Swanties have been doing that shit since dating back to 2015. Right. So like like. Yeah, it's a it's a small number. You're saying the Swanties on this ethics stuff. I mean, we've talked about this before. They were a small percentage of the people that were showing up. And a lot of the people were just showing up and saying, you know, quite civilly this this legislation is ridiculous. No one's asking for it. We don't want it. You don't represent your constituents.

[00:10:03] And I think she was quite sensitive to that, too. I don't think it was just, you know, and I understand that sort of wearing someone down. But again, I mean, know the job before you sign up for it. It is hard to get people to run for city council. Absolutely. But, you know, it is it is in the job description that this is part of it. What one quick point on this, because I just want to quickly point out, you know, Kathy Moore is a former judge. Right. And that's a whole different world. You're the judge.

[00:10:30] You're presiding over a courtroom like people are expected to give you deference. If they don't, you have the authority to boot them out. Right. That's a much different environment and, you know, kind of public setting than the chambers of a raucous sort of city council meeting over a hot button issue. So to your point, like, I'm not sure, you know, Judge Kathy Moore was like, oh, my God, what what the fuck is this that I've gotten myself into?

[00:11:00] I think there was some of that going on now. We should we should emphasize, though, she's not she hasn't been citing that publicly as what is correct. Yeah, we're speculating. About about what. But but but let's move on. She didn't. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. And I did reach out to her. She did not respond. And but I want to talk a little bit about, you know, to the extent that we can say she has a legacy on the council, what she has gotten done.

[00:11:25] And I think the main the main item that occurred to me and I haven't gone back and looked exhaustively at my coverage. But the main accomplishment is legislation that I really didn't support at all. But she did manage to pass a prostitution loitering law, which had been on the books and was no longer on the book. She got it back on the book. So now there is a law where men can be arrested. Now applies to sex buyers where men can be arrested for soliciting sex.

[00:11:52] And there's also what's called a soap area, which is the stay out of prostitution areas. No. Stay out of areas of prostitution zone. And that spans the length of Aurora. 80, 85th, 145th on Aurora. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if someone is caught under suspicion of trying to purchase sex, they can be banned from that area, even if they aren't convicted.

[00:12:21] And that used to be on the books and was no longer a law until Kathy Moore passed it into law or supported legislation that passed it into law. So that was kind of her big accomplishment. I don't know, Cindy, if you want to say anything about that. I do, yeah.

[00:12:36] Because I think the thing that's new about the law and potentially different and important, and by the way, this is something she cites in her statement that she put out, right, this afternoon to announce her decision to depart. And by the way, we should say she's not leaving immediately. She's not leaving till July 7th. So that's, you know, she's going to be here for a little over a month.

[00:12:59] But when she cited that law, you know, she described it as, you know, new loitering legislation, I'm quoting her here, that specifically targets pimps and johns, right?

[00:13:16] And so there was a pimp provision in this legislation about specifically going after the men that are increasingly on that strip of Aurora trafficking women, abusing them. Well, and we should also be clear that when it has been used so far, which is infrequently, it has been used against men and primarily men of color who are trying to buy sex.

[00:13:43] Because being a pimp, sex trafficking is a felony, and it's not impacted by this law. They could go after sex traffickers under felony laws all day long as much as they wanted. And that is a question of resources and priorities for the police. Well, it's hard to make. It's also a much higher legal standard to make a felony case against a pimp.

[00:14:02] If you can use if there are people, you know, are engaging in these behaviors, but you don't have the the reason it's so hard to make a felony case against a pimp is because typically you have to get the women to testify against the pimps. And that's really, really difficult for obvious reasons that often women are intimidated and scared about testify. And so it's hard to make those cases. And so this this loitering law gave them another tool to go after some of those people that were engaging in those behaviors.

[00:14:32] Arguably, arguably, allegedly, allegedly. I mean, I don't want to get too much into the policy. We've argued about it before. We're talking about Kathy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Like, so, yeah. What else? So what else did Kathy? Because, Erica, I know you wanted to talk about, you know, what you see as the the the nimby side of Kathy. So let's let's talk about that a little bit. What did she do? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:52] I mean, what what was so interesting and, you know, as an urbanist disappointing about Kathy Moore to me and to a lot of people have cited this in the kind of urbanist world is that when she ran, she said that she was for the densest comprehensive plan proposal that's on the that was on the table at the time. Alternative five. And, you know, she kind of ran as this pro density, pro housing candidate. And then the second she got in office, she was missed tree protections.

[00:15:19] You know, we have to protect trees on private lawns by requiring people to preserve them instead of allowing development. We have to. She proposed getting rid of a neighborhood center, which is a comprehensive plan element that, you know, would allow some very small apartment buildings in a very small area around arterial streets. She wanted to get rid of one in Maple Leafs. She said that it would be tantamount to sacrificing the neighborhood to allow this tiny little area with apartments.

[00:15:47] She proposed watering down the middle housing legislation to comply with state law that is forcing us to allow four units per lot instead of just one or two. She wanted to require, you know, basically giant lawns in the front of four plexes, which I don't think anybody was clamoring for. So it's just like one thing after another. And there are tons of other little examples. You know, she really did have a NIMBY priority list.

[00:16:14] And, you know, I don't like to throw around that term because people get very, very touching and sensitive about it. But I don't know what else you could call it. She was just consistently very anti-housing, very anti-density. You want a more neutral term? Yeah. Well, I mean, the kind of housing that is being built, we're not talking about McMansions. We're not talking about single family houses. So anything above a single family house in a single family area is density and it is housing. So I don't know.

[00:16:43] I use the term housing and I use the term apartments because those terms are important. That is the stuff that NIMBYs don't want in single family neighborhoods. They don't want renters and they don't want the quote unquote character of their neighborhood to change. And man, this is just a real throwback. I mean, that used to be all the council pretty much. And she really brought it back. I thought. Do you agree? I do agree.

[00:17:07] You know, I do think Kathy probably emerged as the strongest kind of anti, whatever term we want to use, anti-density kind of champion. You know, I mean, I've made this point before on the podcast, but if you look at the chamber polls every six months, this index poll, and if you're going back to 2021 when they started, if you look, so five years, basically four or five years.

[00:17:32] If you look over those polls for the last four or five years, there's been an enormous move, kind of very steady, but significant. Six month by six month, you know, biannually. In favor of greater density, you know, voters saying they're willing to accept more density in their neighborhood, more housing in their neighborhood.

[00:17:53] Like there's been a it's the it's probably the biggest, you know, movement in terms of a kind of political shift in the city over the last five years that that I've been able to track is this kind of emergence of pro density sentiment. And that said, there's still a shitload, as we've seen in the comp plan conversation, a shitload of people who are very noisy and vocal about not wanting additional density in their neighborhoods and seeing it as a blight.

[00:18:22] And they turn out and they. I mean, this happens in every city. It's I mean, it's so it's it's one of the things that has gotten boring to me about local discourse. And there's very little I find local politics really interesting and important. But I mean, it is predictable as the fucking sun coming up in the morning that the crowd of people that's going to show up on these issues are homeowners who have the time, who have the resources to take time off in the middle of the day.

[00:18:46] And there are not there's not like an equal crowd of motivated renters or future Seattle residents who will otherwise not be able to live here is going to show up. So I think she was really responsive to that. But I think that her heart was also with that crowd. So, you know, that was it'll be interesting to see who they appoint to replace her and whether, you know, that person has similar values. Well, so let's talk about values, though, because I think there's an interesting broader point to make about Kathy. Right. Which is emblematic of this counselor.

[00:19:16] When they all came in, there was a sort of narrative that this was a moderate supermajority. Right. These were all like, you know, Sandy Pekashic kind of Democrats. Right. Who were going to like stand up to the excesses of the progressive left. And what's turned out is a lot more complicated and fragmented and, you know, variegated. I don't know quite what the term is, but Kathy in particular, like, look, let's look at Kathy's politics.

[00:19:43] We both agree that she had all these kind of strong NIMBY tendencies. But there was a bunch of there was other stuff. And she was also very strong on public safety person. Right. I got a moderate on public safety. But I'd say law and order, but that's fine. Yeah. Law and order. I think we agree on that. Like like. Yeah. But she was also like on some of the economic stuff, like lean pretty far left. Right. Like I think she wasn't she the one that proposed the municipal capital gains tax and the budget process last year.

[00:20:13] Along with the Lexus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But that's kind of not not not consistent. Right. With a she was a weird mix of like she's she you know, there were definitely times when I had conversations with Kathy in the past where she's not just like a she's she's heterodox in her in her in what political in her political lanes.

[00:20:35] Right. And I and I and I guarantee that if you go into, you know, Boomer North Seattle, people who bought their houses in 1962 when they cost four dollars. And you ask them if they want density, if they want to have an apartment building next to their house, they'll say absolutely not. Tell you all the reasons that's horrible. And then if you say, do you think the rich should pay more taxes? They'll say, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, look at Jerry Paulette. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's just that that is not heterodox. That's all right. Standard issue. It's old school. It's old school. Boomer. Boomer Seattle.

[00:21:04] Boomer left. Right. Yes. Which is different. But the left kind of a 180 on stuff like that, like old school. Boomer left was lesser Seattle, provincial Seattle, Mossback Seattle. Right. It was a it was an even Mossback. It was anti growth. It's not Mossback anymore. The old left was anti growth. Right. The old like Jim Street. Right. The cap initiative in the 80s to cap out the size of downtown buildings that passed. Well, this is why I call her a throwback. Right. Peter Steinbrook. She's a throwback to that old council.

[00:21:33] You and I used to talk about how Peter Steinbrook was this, you know, firebrand, you know, thorn in the Nichols administration side, you know, lefty thorn when he was on the council. And then when he ran for mayor in 2013, poor Peter didn't know what had hit him. Like suddenly he was being accused of being some kind of like, you know, knuckle dragging conservative because he wasn't an urbanist. Right. He was. Yeah. Yeah. Times have changed and the city has changed. I, you know, and even North Seattle has changed, which, you know,

[00:22:00] North Seattle is one of the more conservative leaning districts in the city. It is. And and that I think gets us to our last question, because I want to make this short and sweet. Who or what kind of candidate profile do you think is going to step in, you know, both for the appointment? So somebody is going to get appointed to this position and then for the election, which won't be until 2026. Yeah. So the appointments we're talking about a significantly long period of time. Right. We're talking about a kind of 18 month appointment.

[00:22:33] Support for Seattle Nice comes from Hearth Protection, offering commercial protective services with trauma informed, community oriented and evidence based physical security practices, including on site security, event support and workforce training for businesses and nonprofits in the Salish Sea region. Mission driven leaders trust Hearth to proactively handle security challenges across the full range of complexity and acuity.

[00:23:00] Armed or unarmed agents trained in de-escalation and advanced first aid are available 24 seven. More information at hearthprotection.org. Hearth Protection. Don't let fear make your world smaller. Almost the same amount of time that Kathy Moore will have been in office, actually. So so, you know, it's going to and it's going to be an appointment by the city council. They have not been, I would say, especially Democratic in their process in the past.

[00:23:31] But now they are appointing somebody to replace someone that they supported as opposed to Tammy Morales. Well, boy, I will say this. As soon as the news started to spread, right? I mean, which was a few hours before Kathy made her announcement. People, you know, my text thread started blowing up with like people are like, did you hear this rumor? But along with the is Kathy resigning? And then the very next question was, who's going to get appointed? Like, you know, who's out there?

[00:24:00] Like, who's a good who's a good potential appointment? And, you know, D5 is tough. Recruitment. I've tried to recruit candidates in D5. I, you know, I talked to Kathy when she was thinking about running. I was thinking about running back a couple of years ago. And I don't know. Right. Like, who's going to emerge? There's there's certainly going to be a lot of beating of the bushes to find good candidates. There are certainly some names out there. I've heard some talk already of maybe Deborah Juarez, who held that seat.

[00:24:29] Right. Could come back, you know, on an interim. Even for the appointment. Yeah, for the appointment. I'm talking about, yeah, the speculation about who's going to get appointed. We're a year plus away from the actual election now. So we could talk about that, too. But right now, the speculation I'm hearing is who gets that? Who do you think is going to be a merge as a candidate for the seat? So I've heard Deborah Juarez's name thrown about. I've heard Colleen Echo Hawk, a former, you know, mayoral candidate. Her name get thrown about.

[00:24:58] I've heard Gabe Galanda, who's a Native American, you know, attorney. An ally of Deborah Juarez. I don't even think Gabe lives in the district. I think he lives maybe just outside of it. I think he's in D4, but I've but I definitely heard his name thrown about in initial conversation. I have heard that he is not seeking the seat, but, you know, we'll see. Also, Patience Malabo, the head of the Housing Development Consortium.

[00:25:26] I talked to her and got a no comment. Oh, OK. A little more polite than that, but basically a no comment on whether she's going to seek this position. It is not a no. As I noted in my piece, it is not a no. But, yeah, I mean, it's a tough district. What about, have you heard anything about Neelu Jenks, who ran for the position and lost in the primary? Yeah, that's another name I've heard. This is yeah, it's been a couple of years now. But I mean, we'll see. Yeah.

[00:25:55] Often the group that emerges is often a bunch of people that you may not have been previously aware of. I think that happened in the effort to that ultimately resulted in Mark Solomon, who was a known quantity getting getting the position that Tammy Morales was in. But a lot of times it's like, who? And sometimes some really good candidates emerge from that.

[00:26:18] And sometimes they run for the position, like we're seeing with Eddie Lynn and Adonis Duxworth in D2 this election. Yeah. So we shall see. Yeah. Neelu, I mean, like Neelu, she ran. I mean, I think she got kind of screwed by the stranger like in that race because she was running very much in the left lane. And but as the sort of kind of presentable electable left and they went with a less electable candidate who were destroyed in the general election.

[00:26:47] But I my guess is Neelu is probably two left for for, you know, this council and some of the positions Neelu was advocating in that race. I don't know. I don't know. We'd have to see. But yeah, I think there's going to be a lot. So just for our listeners to know, once the resignation happens, which isn't going to be till July 7th, there is a 20 day process. Right.

[00:27:12] They have 20 days to to make the actual appointment for the for the interim. And they're getting really, really good at that. Yeah. This is going to be the this is they've had to do this before. I think there's going to be a mad scramble to find candidates who live in D5 that might be interesting or good, you know, candidates. And then there's going to be the question of do they want to appoint a caretaker, which is what they did with Mark Solomon, somebody who committed not to run for the seat. Right. You know, the race is up now and Mark's not in it.

[00:27:42] Or do they want, you know, more likely, given that this race is until next year, they'll appoint somebody who's probably going to want to keep the seat. Right. And so so that's all TBD. Can I introduce just a crackpot theory slash question? Of course. We like crackpot. I mean, I mean, I don't know if it's crackpot, but it does seem like this council, the new cohort that got elected in 2023 and has been there for a year and a half, they seem pretty vulnerable to me.

[00:28:12] And partly that's because some of them got elected by super narrow margins. But I mean, I don't know that the public who voted for these folks is necessarily buying what they're selling now. And am I am I reading this wrong, Sandeep? What do you think? No, no. I mean, look, I think it's a very uncertain political time in part because of public frustration with the state of the city, which continues.

[00:28:42] Right. Which is what collected these folks in the first place and which threw out the previous council. And so that that I think to a significant extent that still exists, though, there are signs we have turned the corner on stuff like I know you don't love this, but on stuff like police recruitment, crime numbers are down. You know, some of the some of the kind of macro stats are showing some signs of progress on issues. Sentinel deaths, overdose deaths are down significantly double digits over the last year, stuff like that.

[00:29:12] Fewer visible encampments downtown and other places. That said. The election of Trump had an the first time it happened in 2016, had an enormous impact on local politics by a lot of progressively inclined Seattle voters who really, really unhappy or what are what's happening in the other Washington when Trump first got elected, displaced a lot of that anxiety onto the onto local politics.

[00:29:41] And we saw that in polling and kind of anti incumbent moods developing. Some of that similarly seems to be happening now where people are pretty freaked out about D.C. for good reason, as we've talked about on previous episodes. And some of that's translating into a kind of anti incumbent mood. I've seen some polling out of Tacoma recently that showed really negative numbers across the board for every elected official in Tacoma. We just saw some public polling in Seattle that showed similar stuff. So I think there's a vibe there.

[00:30:10] Yeah, I you know, and I don't even really think it's displaced anxiety. I think that people in Seattle are unusually engaged in local politics, you know, for for a city that, you know, is pretty progressive, fairly lockstep on the macro issues. I think that, you know, people really get into the micro issues in a way that people in other cities don't. And I think that's great. And I'm including people who show up and stomp around and yell. Well, of course, you know, you are you are miss micro issues.

[00:30:40] I am because I think local politics is the only fucking place you can make a difference in the world. And that's why I think it's so goddamn important. But I think that a lot of people in Seattle feel that way. And so whether it's a general anti incumbent mood or whether they're paying attention, it does seem like to me that the vibe has shifted from the vibe of post 2020 that got, you know, this crew of all new council members elected in 2023. And I think that, you know, when they I mean, they aren't up until 2027.

[00:31:09] I think we've talked about this year. Sarah Nelson is up for reelection. And I think that that election could be, you know, telling for what 2027 looks like and even 2026 in this race for Kathy Moore seat. But we'll see. We'll see if it's just a crackpot theory on my part or if once again, I am an absolute genius of prediction. I will just I will just maybe we can end this here by with me agreeing with you.

[00:31:38] Like, I will say that I can construct, I think, a plausible argument that in some ways, in some ways, not always, but in some ways, the mayor of Seattle is a more powerful executive position than the governor of Washington state. Right. Because you have more authority to actually do stuff at the local level, as you were just saying, you know. So and city council is a really weak position. I think a lot of times they come in here not knowing that.

[00:32:07] Right. And I think that's another that's another problem with this current council that they came in thinking they could really do a lot. And I would argue maybe we can we can leave this for another another Seattle Nice episode. But I would argue that they kind of are the do nothing council. I know we've gone back and forth on this, but I think there was a period. How many how many housing meetings of Kathy Moore's housing committee did she have and what did she accomplish? How many things have been proposed and then rolled back when it became clear that they weren't popular? Just I think there is an argument to be made.

[00:32:38] This council is floundering pretty hard. You know, you you you were the sort of queen of the do nothing council in the early days of it. And I think there was some merit to it. I don't think that that argument they whether you like it or not, they passed. Ask Bob Kettle. We had him on the podcast. He's like, here's my 14 pieces of public safety legislation that we passed. And here's what we did on this and that. Like, yeah, we should dig into those. Anyway, I should dig into how how much how much most of those actually relate to public safety.

[00:33:06] Well, you know, the council does legislation and then there's a question about the executive side and how they implement legislation. And we can. But that's let's leave that for another day. Right. All right. All right. Well, let's end it there. This has been a special emergency episode of Seattle Nice. I'm Erica C. Barnett. He's Sandeep Kausik. Our editor is Quinn Waller. And we will see you back here next week.