Tanya Woo's controversial Seattle city council appointment

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome into another edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here with Seattle's only City Hall reporter, Erica C Barnett of Publicola, also the editor and publisher of Publicola. Erica, how are you doing? Good. I know I'm not the only City Hall reporter

[00:00:24] because you were at City Hall the other day. I'm no City Hall reporter. Also, with us, last remaining political consultant, Sandeep Kaushik. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. And it's so true. It's a dying profession. Politics is over. All right. This week we

[00:00:41] are talking about the big news in Seattle politics. Of course, I'm not talking about the New Hampshire primary results or the fact that Nikki Haley's staying in at least until South Carolina. We're talking about the position eight appointment to replace

[00:00:55] Theresa Mosqueda. The suspense has been killing us. It's finally over. We had no idea what was going to happen. Turns out Chinatown International District activist, Tanya Wu got the seat and Erica found out is running for that seat. Yeah. I mean, like the appointment

[00:01:13] itself, this is kind of a foregone conclusion and something that was already widely known. I mean, I think that there's some fatigue. We were discussing it off mic about even talking about this appointment because it has just felt like for months it was known

[00:01:28] that the city council was going to appoint Tanya Wu. Now, that raises a question about whether there should be foregone conclusions at city council in this way and why did they go through this whole process of encouraging people in the general public to apply for

[00:01:43] this position? 72 people submitted applications. It was narrowed down to eight. But even among those eight, I mean, they knew pretty much from the beginning that this was extremely unlikely. They were extremely unlikely to win this position and that Tanya Wu was kind

[00:01:58] of the anointed one. And so, you know, I mean, my big takeaway is that it really breeds cynicism in the political process in Seattle. And I'm talking about not among journalists and political consultants but in the general public when journalists can say in November,

[00:02:15] well, they're probably going to appoint Tanya Wu. And then in January, that is exactly what they do. And, you know, no amount of effort and work by people who sincerely wanted this position applied, you know, went through the process of campaigning and sort of whipping

[00:02:28] up support people to come out and speak on their behalf, et cetera. You know, it was all kind of, I mean, ultimately, you know, I guess I wouldn't go so far as to say

[00:02:36] a sham because they did go through the required process. But, you know, felt a little pointless if you were one of those 71 other candidates. You got pretty close to saying it was a sham. It was a sort of a sham.

[00:02:47] Well, I mean, they have a process and they followed it properly. And I think that, you know, the council didn't necessarily, I mean, I don't know their hearts and minds. I'm sure there are many on the council who did sincerely consider the other candidates

[00:03:01] but ended up with this, you know, sort of inevitable Tanya Wu result. But like I said, I mean, it breeds cynicism. And the cynicism comes from the fact that we knew all along what was going to happen. The thing that we knew was what was

[00:03:14] going to happen was going to happen. And now as a political class, you know, I'm sure Sandeep will have something to say about how we should all just move along and get over, you know, whatever we wanted because this council, you know, is an

[00:03:25] ideological lockstep and they have the right to appoint anyone they want, which of course they do. But yeah, it just feels like a real letdown from the point of view of, you know, anyone who has even watched other processes like

[00:03:39] this, you know, which typically will go into multiple ballots and, you know, there's a real debate. And that just did not happen at all this time. Almost a sham, Sandeep Kashi. Almost a sham. I don't think it was a sham. I will say this. I think it was

[00:03:51] the least suspenseful appointment process in recent memory. And I do think Tanya from the moment it began had the inside track to get it. That said, I don't think it was a done deal from day one. I do think there were

[00:04:08] various constituency groups, including the business community folks in the mayor's office, some of all these players that I see a lot of kind of incorrect sort of sort of spouting off on social media that these people were

[00:04:25] all, you know, 100% aligned from day one with Tanya Wu. And that's not true. Early in the process before, you know, the holidays, there was a lot of kind of casting about and who's out there and who might get in and people

[00:04:39] were kind of playing their cards closer to the vest. That said, Tanya always had some momentum, right? She had a petition from the, you know, signed by lots and lots of people more than, I don't know, kind of 1500 people in the

[00:04:52] Asian community backing her that she put together early on. And none of the other can't know really, really strong alternative emerged. And none of the candidates that did end up as finalists ever got a whole lot of

[00:05:06] momentum behind them. And so what was always kind of an advantage, Tanya, turned into victory, Tanya, right? Because I mean, I think when you're talking about people got together and they were discussing who it should be. I mean, I think that's exactly what I'm talking about. Like the

[00:05:23] fact that the parties that you're talking about, Harrell's camp, you know, was divided, business was maybe divided, but ordinary voters, like, you know, who go and cast their ballots, you know, think that they are casting a ballot for a person and their ballot matters. And when a candidate

[00:05:38] says I will represent the community, the ordinary voter does not think that community consists of Bruce Harrell and the business community. And what they decide is, you know, is going to happen. And so I mean, I think what you're describing is exactly the thing that breeds cynicism. It's,

[00:05:52] you know, wow, there was there was some debate between the real players. This came up last time, who got more votes than Tanya Wu, who was up there. That would be Tammy Morellis, who was among the eight finalists who had more votes than Tanya Wu.

[00:06:06] That's not how the appointment process works, David. I know it's not exactly. I don't quite get your point about the voters. And if we are going to break the voters, she I'm talking about got more votes than anybody else.

[00:06:17] When I talk about the voters, I'm saying the public in Seattle, not even voters in her district. I'm not speaking about the last election. I'm speaking specifically to the fact that Sandeep was saying the backroom players hadn't quite decided on who it would be

[00:06:30] yet. And I think that, you know, this is a reason people don't vote because they don't think their vote matters. And and and I think this breeds that that cynicism, you know, and sort of confirms that they're right.

[00:06:41] Well, first of all, it was a councilmanic process, right? It wasn't a vote of the people, right? It's appointment by the council. And every appointment we've had before has had exactly the same kind of jockeying some, though I think in previous

[00:06:53] appointments, who had the juice, right, was different, right? There was sort of left progressive groups and some of the previous appointments for labor in particular, I think what, you know, in the appointment that led to able Pacheco when he

[00:07:06] was filling in the remainder of Kim Burgess's term after Kim left, I think labor played a significant influence in, you know, kind of how that played out. But but again, it's a it's a councilmanic process. And I will say in

[00:07:18] Tonya's defense, nobody else among the finalists had a petition with 1500 signatories on it, saying a point or nobody else turned out as many people on her on her behalf. But this is the but this is the yeah, again, it's a

[00:07:31] councilmanic process, not a campaign and the people that I spoke to, including Lin Tai and Steve Strand, you know, immediately before the vote, you know, they're both like, well, obviously, this is going to go the way it's going

[00:07:41] to go. And you know what I heard from them was we didn't realize that we had to treat this like, you know, like an actual election campaign. And I think that, you know, in the past, I mean, you're saying labor elevated

[00:07:53] able Pacheco, I don't think that that's quite how it worked. And also, in the past, explicitly somebody who is going to run again. So there's a political element to this. And, you know, and frankly, Sadiq, I'm surprised to hear you speak up

[00:08:08] in favor of an online petition, considering how much you've derided sort of auto, you know, robo calling an auto petition efforts in the past that suddenly, you're incredibly impressed by a candidate's ability to get online petition form signed.

[00:08:23] I think you seem to be saying that you think Tanya like was savvier politically than the than the rest of them. And I don't you know, maybe that's true. Look, I'm just saying none of the other candidates demonstrated any real momentum

[00:08:35] like or put together any kind of, you know, I think the only the only one, the only one I should I should take that back is labor and progressive groups did make a big fairly noisy push at the end for Vivian Song. But Vivian, you

[00:08:51] know, was never going to get the appointment because Vivian had, you know, endorsed against many of the new council members, right? And whatever you think of Vivian's merits as a as a candidate or a potential council member, she had

[00:09:03] aligned herself with the side that lost and some of the candidates who lost against, you know, and so it was just seemed laughably unlikely that that she was going to get that appointment. If it was so laughably unlikely, I don't

[00:09:17] think she would have been among the handpicked eight. But I mean, in terms of her politics, but it was laughably unlikely that anyone was going to get the appointment other than Tanya Wu from the beginning. And so I think

[00:09:27] you're sort of doing like a, you know, a cart before the horse thing here, Sunday. One reason people might not have mounted, you know, petition campaigns and all the things that you're saying they should have done is that this did feel like a foregone conclusion from

[00:09:40] from, you know, if not the very beginning, from well before the actual appointment process even started. Well, Tanya worked to work for it and she should get some credit for that is what I'm saying. But but I think one

[00:09:51] place where we might agree is I think it's pretty silly how polarized this fight got like Vivian who's not exact. I don't think Vivian some kind of like, you know, raving ideologue lefty, right? I mean, Vivian somebody worked at Goldman Sachs for God's sakes,

[00:10:10] right? And and and is married to a to a developer and and is somebody I think on the school board where, you know, she was she's been was seen as sort of in a very soft way. But but somebody who posed some of the more

[00:10:26] out there positions on the left. And yet over the course of this process, it became this big like, you know, the the evil right wing business interests all are for Tanya. I will say also Tanya, you want listener on the

[00:10:40] campaign trail. She wasn't also some kind of like law and order whip cracking jackbooted fascist right? Like, and well, I just think it got silly like nobody's saying any of these city council. You guys are back. You guys both sat through the public forums and stuff and you

[00:10:58] saw the lightning rounds and do you support 1400 cops the mayor's plan to have 14 or you know Vivian and Tanya were in the same place on that. Yes, do you support the mayor's policy on sweeps? They were in the same

[00:11:10] place and I you know, I think where there was a big divide a signal of a reasonably significant divide was over the urbanism stuff, right? And I know Erica, you've written about this that and I know you're frustrated about this, the tree stuff and you know,

[00:11:25] are we going to like loomify the entire city or not? Or what's going to happen on that stuff? And I do think Vivian broke ranks with the other finalists in staking out a much stronger urbanist position than certainly than Tanya did. She did. I mean, the things

[00:11:39] just to digress for one second, the things that people were agreeing to in these lightning rounds, I think probably without fully understanding what they were agreeing to because some of these questions from Kathy Moore were quite complex. Council Member Kathy Moore, who did a great job,

[00:11:54] by the way, I thought with that lightning round, but some of the some of the tree questions that were really complex. But you know, they were saying basically... I was just thinking there's that housing questions that were really like

[00:12:05] I tried using them in a radius spot and my editor was like, no, no, no, we can't we can't use this. This is like, what does she even talk about? But those tree questions essentially came down to will you designate every tree that is more

[00:12:20] than 24 inches that meets future criteria to be determined, but it's going to be around 8000 trees as essentially heritage trees that can never be removed, kind of no matter where they are. And the way it was described was very like political, you know, oh, they're just

[00:12:36] on the edges of lots. Bullshit. You know, I mean, so Vivian, I think, you know, of course, I'm much more sympathetic to the urbanist perspective on this. I think we can have trees and housing. But that was essentially those two questions were, do you support

[00:12:51] housing or do you support using trees as a reason not to build housing? And I thought it was kind of stunning that everybody but Vivian Song said that they did. Well, some of these questions were asked to and maybe not exactly the tree stuff that Kathy asked,

[00:13:07] but you know, in the context of in a racial context about displacement, right? And they all kind of kind of went to, I think, what you would call the kind of progressive safe space and oh, of course we'll stop building housing if it displaces anybody ever, you know,

[00:13:24] like, of course. It was single family housing. She asked about single family housing in the CID and whether that should ever be changed and allowed allowed to build apartments or anything. And Vivian, Vivian's Vivian broke ranks. Vivian broke with everybody else. And we should do that.

[00:13:41] And to her credit, I think she's right on that. Like, I think some of this stuff, but the way it was asked was, you know, the standards. Do you support Black Legacy home ownership? It was the question, essentially, that got asked several times.

[00:13:55] And it's like, who's going to say no? I mean, it's hard to say no to that. But it's a complicated question. Yeah. And it doesn't really lend itself well to yes, no. And it is also like sort of the buzzword of the moment

[00:14:08] is to say, I support Black Legacy home ownership, but there's so much embedded in that. Yeah. Am I telling something out of school? I'm pretty sure Kathy Moore was the only person who did not want to fill out our yes, no questionnaire.

[00:14:21] She was one of the last holdouts because she thought that it would, you know, yes, no was didn't allow for complexity. But so that's very funny. If so, good for her. Yeah. But her questions were good. Like they were good.

[00:14:35] They stand up to the enemies of the people. Stand up to the enemies. Yeah, I thought there were great questions with the exception of the tree questions and probably that housing question because they were too complex. And the tree questions just felt like, you know,

[00:14:47] and I don't know this, but it just felt like they were reading, you know, from something written by Tree Pack or one of these, you know, special interest groups that lobbies against development. But I don't know that it's just that's just kind of what it felt like.

[00:14:59] Like, why are we talking about trees? We've got this massive budget hold that they've got to deal with and they're barely talking about that. We were talking about Abel Pacheco a minute ago as one person who filled in. I'd forgotten Kirsten Harris Talley was a temporary replacement.

[00:15:13] It was it was a matter of, I think, months and not months and months. That appointment was pretty short. But Erica, you were covering the council back then. There wasn't a lot of outrage about that appointment. I mean, there wasn't much discussion of it at all,

[00:15:28] although she was replacing Tim Burgess, you know, which was a pretty different type of office holder. Is that partly because, you know, it was it was a matter of days as opposed to months and months? Well, and I believe, yes, it was a matter of

[00:15:41] I can't remember how many days. It was months and months. Tim, it wasn't months and months. Wait, wait, Kirsten Harris Talley was on there for for a fair amount of time. Like it wasn't a days. It looks like almost two months.

[00:15:54] Yeah, it may have felt longer to you, so I think she's progressive, but. That may be. But. I was not a fan. But to answer your question, David, you know, yeah, I think that that was part of it. I believe I don't remember for sure,

[00:16:07] but I believe she said that she would not run for this position and, you know, indeed did not. And, you know, that has been the case with most of these appointees. So it's been, you know, maybe a little less, you know, maybe a little more contested

[00:16:20] in terms of the number of people who are seeking it and who are viable candidates, but a little less contentious because it's not about, you know, the next election in just what I can't do math nine months. But I mean, ultimately, like these things

[00:16:34] are political appointments and the majority got their way. And it was a foregone conclusion. I mean, we spent a lot of time in this podcast and in reporting kind of covering that. But I mean, is that kind of on us? It's sort of like, to some extent,

[00:16:50] is what Sandeep seems to be saying. But it seems like what Eric is saying, Sandeep, is then why have this whole elaborate process? And I'm not quite sure just to take this a little bit full circle, like what your answer was to that. Because if you're saying, well,

[00:17:04] it wasn't as much of a foregone conclusion as we think it was. You seem pretty convinced that it was close to a foregone conclusion two episodes ago or something. No, no, I think it was very clear again to repeat what I think the reality of what happened was,

[00:17:19] I think it was very clear from the outset that Tanya had the inside track. Like she had relationships, pre-existing relationships with a number of the new council members. They had all been on the ballot together and were running their campaigns together and did to a significant extent,

[00:17:36] like kind of hang out together, right? And became kind of bonded and became friends. So she had so on that personal level, I think she had an advantage. She also had really, really, really strong backing in the Chinatown International District and elements of the Asian community.

[00:17:52] And there was a strong argument the Asian community was making that they felt like their voices weren't being heard and they weren't being represented. And she became the kind of avatar or representative of that community. And so I guess you're kind of not answering the question.

[00:18:05] I don't think it was a done deal from the... My question is this, my question is this. We were just talking about these serious questions that got asked. We watched these forums that were essentially debates and the council members got up sort of one by one

[00:18:19] and said, you know, I took this really seriously and I picked who I thought was the best person for the job based on how they performed. And I think what Erica might be saying is, no, they didn't. Well, maybe... It's not actually necessarily what happened

[00:18:34] or there's some skepticism. There's some skepticism about that. I think you're touching on something, David, that's worth noting here more directly and clearly, which is that unlike previous processes, the council members who were making the decision, pretty much I think across the board

[00:18:52] agreed early on or mostly across the board that they didn't want a caretaker. They didn't want to appoint someone who wasn't going to run for the seat. And remember this person's got to run for the seat not only this coming November,

[00:19:03] but then again November of next year, right? Because it's filling out a Theresa Mosqueda's term after she left for the County Council. So they agreed early on, they wanted somebody that they felt would not only be good on the council as some kind of interim,

[00:19:19] but would be interested in and determined and hopefully successful at running and getting elected in November. And I do think that changed the dynamics of their decision-making process. Once they made that decision, I know you can argue that maybe they're reading

[00:19:40] the tea leaves wrong or understanding the politics wrong, but they felt like Tanya had experience running for office. She came really close to winning in D2, which is arguably the most progressive district in the city and therefore running in a city-wide race and in a progressive,

[00:19:57] but kind of more moderately inflected kind of seat city-wide that she would be a really strong candidate. I think all of those factors kind of came into play that sort of helped boost Tanya over, again, these other finalists, none of them, Vivian was the only one who had

[00:20:12] any kind of electoral campaign experience, right? Running for the school board, you know, and everybody else was sort of immediately. Wait, so your example, you're saying that Tanya is now not a newbie because she ran an unsuccessful campaign for district election in one district?

[00:20:23] I think that was the perception and the feeling among a lot of the council members was that she was less green and more, it's all relative. But again, when you're talking about other candidates, whether it's, I think a lot of folks liked Juan Cotto

[00:20:38] or they liked Neha Narayah, you know, who were finalists or some of them like Steve Strand, right? Who we talked about the police captain, West Precinct captain. And like I said, you can argue with this, but I think that the perception evolved that Tanya was the strongest candidate

[00:21:00] to go before the voters. That will be tested this November. I think it's gonna be a hotly contested race and we will see. We will see whether that theory turns out right, but I think that did have significant influence on kind of winning the day for John.

[00:21:13] Once they decided it wasn't gonna be a caretaker. Yeah, and so therefore, therefore all the people saying that they sat up there and they just, they truly considered every single aspect of every candidate and which one was most qualified to hit the ground

[00:21:26] running as someone who is going to have to govern and you know, and help craft the budget and make all these difficult decisions. You're saying, Sandeep, that that was all bullshit that actually I was trying to figure out who would win.

[00:21:39] And I think, and that is the kind of shit that makes people cynical. I just feel like you're doing the kind of, the police chief in Casablanca walking into Rick's and being like, oh no, there's gambling going on here. What's going, you know, I'm horrified.

[00:21:55] Why is there politics? And why are people talking, you know. I'm not saying that, but I mean, we did go through this long process. There were people who are very passionate on, you know, who wanted these candidates that, you know, the candidates that were not Tanya Wu

[00:22:09] and it does feel like if I was, if I was someone who had run for this position or if I was someone who had supported someone for this position, I would kind of feel like, well, I guess I never had a fair chance in the first place.

[00:22:20] So why did I bother? Yeah. Can we also, before we end, return to Eric's big scoop that we did talk about last week, Mike McGinn tweeting before the vote, first test of the new city council and appointing to the city wide seat vacated by Mosqueda,

[00:22:35] do they jump when told to by their corporate contributors or do they look for someone to represent the whole city? Says Mike McGinn or asks Mike McGinn. And then he retweeted himself after the vote saying something like, oh, I guess we got our answer to that. No.

[00:22:50] Retweeted himself. Good for Mike. I think, you know, so I broke the story about Tim C's, you know, Uber lobbyist has been around forever known as the shark who wrote a letter, you know, sort of encouraging the big business interests that spent over a million dollars,

[00:23:09] you know, getting their candidates elected. And I think that, you know, independent expenditure campaigns are what, you know, can make or break a campaign now. And so that's what happened. So C said, you know, you guys need to encourage the council to, you know,

[00:23:24] be steadfast vote for Chania Wu and you deserve it because you spent all this money getting these other candidates into office. I'm paraphrasing. Now, that is what happened. But I don't think that it was determinative in any way as I've made pretty clear this whole conversation.

[00:23:39] You know, I think this was a foregone conclusion. I think it was a dumb mistake for Tim to put that in writing. I do, I did think it was very, you know, something between funny and disheartening that, you know, a couple of council members stood up

[00:23:52] and sort of essentially blamed the media for making people believe that corporate interests had any power in the city because, because we reported on this letter. And, you know, Sarah Nelson referred to it as a leaked letter, which I don't even know

[00:24:05] what that means in the context of a letter that did not involve anyone in government. So how could it be leaked? It's not a government secret. It's private individuals and, you know, somebody on the chain forwards it. There are a lot of people on that chain.

[00:24:18] So I just, you know, I was kind of sitting there going, wow, like, she's seriously saying that the media were the ones that weaponized this. Clearly it wasn't intended for your eyes. Somebody leaked it to you. I think it was. It's not a leak. It's not a leak.

[00:24:32] I guess, well, somebody forwarded to you. That's an email forward. That's not, I mean, come on. Like it's, there are like five city hall reporters anymore. And, you know, and we've got the city council president up here denouncing us for reporting and reporting things that politicians don't want.

[00:24:49] That seemed very silly to me. It was a good scoop on your part. I think it got way overblown. It's sort of become the V narrative of the left and Mike begins tweet is hardly like, you need there's hundreds of these Mike might,

[00:25:02] I thought of for a while, all the lefties had decamped from Twitter or X or whatever we want to call it. But like this Tanya Wu thing is like my Twitter feed is just like a tweet after tweet of, oh my God. The, the, the power.

[00:25:14] I didn't know what you were talking about Twitter. Anyway, anyway, but, but the point being, I don't think that was nearly as determinative as some people look. And, and I will say the other kind of false, there's a lot of things. Oh, the mayor got their candidate, right?

[00:25:27] But it's kind of worth noting here, the mayor didn't endorse Tanya Wu either when Tanya was running, you know, last fall or for this appointment, right? And team Harold was actually divided. There are people on team Harold that wanted Vivian song and there are people on team Harold

[00:25:44] that wanted Tanya Wu, right? So I think there's just a lot of polarizing bullshit out there about this race. A lot of it, which is only dimly or, or tenuously rooted in reality. Here's why I am not willing to dismiss it as bullshit.

[00:26:02] I don't think, I don't think the Tim C. S. Letter was determinative. I don't think businesses all were like, oh yes sir. We didn't know we were supposed to support this candidate. I mean, come on. But I do think that the reason it took off

[00:26:13] and the reason where people were so angry about it is because it confirmed something that they already suspected, which is that, you know the fix was in, I believe to use your word, Sunday for Tanya Wu from the very beginning. And that part of the reason why is

[00:26:26] because big businesses spent a tremendous amount of money this last campaign on independent expenditure campaigns to elect the council that we have. So I think that, you know, the grain of truth and all that is that, you know it is very hard to run a campaign

[00:26:42] if big business is against you. And by big business, I mean, you know this is mostly real estate businesses, you know banking interests, people that, you know have been funding these IE campaigns that are getting bigger and bigger in every single election. It does kind of feel like

[00:26:57] that is what determines elections now. So that's where it was more of a confirmation than some big emerging scandal that nobody knew about. I would sort of flip the coin on that and say the story here was not that like big business spent some crazy inordinate amount

[00:27:14] in the way that, you know the million dollar Amazon contribution in 2019 right at the last day three weeks before the election that you're allowed to make unlimited contribution sort of blew up in their faces. What was really striking about this last election cycle is that progressives and labor

[00:27:32] who tended to fund in rough parity in these rates in the IEs and these races stood down to a really large extent in this last cycle. So I agree with you there was a asymmetry of spending. I was on the losing side of this

[00:27:48] with the race in district three where I was working with Alex Hudson and we got outspent two or three to one right at the end and lost. So I do think there was an asymmetry of spending and but I don't think the business spending

[00:28:03] was that aligned, but it's just that there was a noticeable and kind of still somewhat inexplicable disappearance of all the typical left progressive money that flows into these the IEs and these races this summer. Well, typically I mean if you were to add up

[00:28:19] the sides over, you know the last, you know let's say since honest elections passed and path democracy vouchers became a thing and campaign finance limits became more of a thing. I am willing to bet that business has spent significantly more than labor on local district city council elections

[00:28:35] to say nothing of the mayor's races, but it is true they didn't spend big in these you know sort of hyper local races this time around. I would say the measuring point should be started in January of 2020 when Lurk roll around on Gonzalez

[00:28:47] passed the quote unquote foreign influence corporations law which actually sideline businesses themselves from contributing directly to any races including IEs I think. Oh come on. I'm confused. Campaign contributions have been. In the year 2021 mayor's race there was a total parity of spending right

[00:29:04] you know on the IE side or very not not entirely I think the business side did spend a little bit more but close it was it wasn't like there was some kind of way. Well to be clear that the people that were putting hundreds of thousands

[00:29:17] the interest that we're putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into this election were not Amazon. I mean when you talk about that piece of legislation which I know I know you were really you know upset by or offended by I have a second bite.

[00:29:31] And so when you talk about that it doesn't impact the people or the companies that are putting money into these IEs because they are by and large local or state companies. So I don't think that that's companies aren't contributing to the IEs at all

[00:29:45] they are all banned from the IEs according to that law it is individuals it is what you're talking about is people are making personal. So every representative of Goodman real estate. So okay we're getting a bit down a rabbit hole but when every individual sort of owner

[00:30:00] or representative of Goodman real estate gives you know a few hundred thousand dollars that adds up pretty quickly. And we are looking at again like the whole plan with the four million dollars Rob Sokka for example got $600,000 from a business backed pack.

[00:30:14] So big big money going into these races this time. Like I said there used to be in recent memory there was similar levels of money going in on the other side it just didn't materialize this year for reasons that I think are kind of interesting

[00:30:27] but probably not what we're talking about here I think it has to do with the fact that the emergence of democratic supermajorities in Olympia has focused the focus of a lot of progressive groups and labor to trying to enact stuff at the state level now

[00:30:41] where before they didn't feel like they could do that there and so Seattle became the crucible or testing ground for that stuff. So I do think that's had a significant and unexpected impact in this last cycle for sure. All right another edition of Seattle nice

[00:30:58] talking about process we're gonna move beyond process next week we've got exciting exciting things happening for the rest of the year. Thanks to everybody for listening thanks to Sandeep Kashik, Erica C. Barnett I'm David Hyde and our editor Quinn Waller you know who you can help support

[00:31:14] by helping support this podcast by going to patreon.com slash Seattle nice right? Yeah and by the way thank you too to all the new donors we got a bunch of new donors we should give them a shout out.

[00:31:28] We did yeah yeah thanks to everybody so much for donating and thanks everybody for listening.