We Are In Implodes

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. This is a special MLK emergency version of the podcast based on the fact that Erica has some breaking news. We wanted to get this episode out to our members especially, so if you're hearing this, it's just a preview.

[00:00:28] You'll get to hear a bit of the episode, but if you want to hear the whole thing, go to Patreon and donate to Seattle Nice to help keep this going. For those of you who have been donating, thank you so much.

[00:00:39] For those of you who haven't, this might be an opportunity to consider doing that if it's within your budget, but we like to offer a little something extra for our members and that's going to be this episode.

[00:00:49] Two topics, the implosion of a public-private partnership to help on the issue of homelessness called We Are In, but we're starting with this news that Erica has broken about. Consummit Insider, Tim Seese, deciding to write a letter to support Tanya Wu for the

[00:01:09] replacement for Theresa Mosqueda on position eight. That's a topic we've been following the last couple episodes of Seattle Nice, so if you've been listening in, you're familiar with that, but Erica bring us up to speed. Who is Tim Seese and why is he supporting Tanya Wu?

[00:01:23] Yeah, Tim Seese is a political consultant. As you said, he's been around forever. I mean, if forever is how long I've been in Seattle then and before. So he was a deputy mayor for Greg Nichols and has since gone on to be an insider

[00:01:39] in all kinds of political discussions representing mostly the business side of various debates. And Tanya Wu, of course, is the District Two candidate who lost two incumbent Tammy Morales. Tim Seese has allied with Wu on a number of issues, I should say Seese and the

[00:01:55] Bruce Harrell administration, including some issues around the location of the Sound Transit station near Chinatown. And Seese received more than $300,000 to lobby on behalf of the Harrell administration to get rid of the Chinatown station, which is something that Wu also worked on.

[00:02:15] And there's more details on that that you can read in my story on Publicola, but for purposes of this story, he sent an email out to the people and businesses who supported independent expenditure campaigns during the last election spending more than a million dollars to elect five members

[00:02:33] to the city council. They didn't get them all. And the one they didn't get was Tanya Wu. And they are urging these big spenders to try to convince the council to support Wu and install her, you know, I would say against the

[00:02:48] voters will in that open seat and actually give her a promotion because she ran for a district seat. This would be a city wide seat. So they're urging council members very strongly to support her and specifically

[00:02:59] not to support another candidate named Vivian Song who is on the Seattle school board who they describe as a left-lane candidate. Sandeep, cease and desist. I'm sorry to say that to you, but that is the implication here of Erica's story. What's your take?

[00:03:15] Well, I think a few things. I mean, first of all, look, as we've said on the previous two episodes of this podcast, it seems pretty clear that Tanya Wu is the front runner and perhaps the prohibitive front runner to get the appointment long before, you know,

[00:03:33] Tim C sent out an email to the business IE folks. We saw in the meeting the other day when they picked the eight finalists, three of the eight council members specifically said that Tanya Wu was their first choice and a fourth cited her.

[00:03:47] In my conversations, I think there's, you know, five plus votes for Tanya that were already kind of kind of in place despite the fact that some council members picked sort of second choices as their finalists. So I think this is, this is if not a done deal.

[00:04:05] I think Tanya has been the strong front runner on this. I also think, look, it's not super surprising. Like the business IE's supported Tanya Wu in the campaign, certainly against Tammy Morales for obvious reasons, she's been incredibly hostile to them in her time on the council.

[00:04:24] So I don't think it's super surprising that they're like, hey, we should continue to support Tanya and hopefully, you know, try to make sure she gets the appointment. I think that people are, you know, people in the general public

[00:04:36] and not sort of political cynics, which I would count myself as, you know, probably one of those, you know, are upset by the influence of money and politics and particularly the influence of these unlimited IE campaigns in our local politics.

[00:04:48] This did not used to be a factor in local races. And now business, I mean, in some cases it's sometimes backfired, but generally can buy a city council. And that's what they did this time. And I think, you know, whether you think that's a good thing or

[00:05:00] not, you know, it is troubling to see that businesses can just spend a bunch of money, get the city council they want. And then when they don't get their way, they can just, you know, do a little more lobbying, maybe spend a little more money and

[00:05:14] reverse the will of the voters. And I think that people have, you know, a right to be upset about that, you know, no matter who the victor is, you know, even if we were talking about a lefty council, you know,

[00:05:24] installing somebody that had just lost, I would have problems with that as well, because I do think it is not just anti-democratic, but instill cynicism in the voters. And we talk about why people, you know, don't participate in local elections.

[00:05:36] Well, there definitely is a general sense out there that local elections are bought and paid for and generally bought and paid for by business interests. And, you know, I mean, that does discourage people from voting because why would you bother?

[00:05:46] I mean, the voters just rejected Tanya Wu and she's about to get a promotion. All right, that concludes our free preview of this special members only edition of Seattle Nice. If you want to hear the whole thing, it's easy. Just go to patreon.com slash Seattle Nice.

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