Who will fill the vacant Seattle City Council seat?

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[00:01:30] Hello and welcome to the latest Super Brief edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here with Erica C. Barnett of Publicola, Sandeep Kaushik, political consultant. And we're talking about the 20 folks who have applied for this Seattle City Council vacant seat after Tammy Morales gave the shock announcement late last year that she would be departing.

[00:01:54] And because we've got Erica and Sandeep, we can dig in a little bit to this list of 20 people and see what leaps out at the two of you. Sandeep, it's early, but are there any frontrunners that stand out to you among the 20 folks who have applied?

[00:02:12] Not yet. It is early, but this is a quick process. Remember, it's only 21 days from the time on January 6th when Morales' resignation took effect to when they have to have a decision.

[00:02:26] So by the 27th of January. But I would say right now, you've got any number of pretty strong contenders for this appointment. And the situation right now seems to be quite fluid and open-ended. It's not clear to me who could eventually emerge as the appointee in a couple of weeks. Erica, what are you seeing?

[00:02:48] Well, you know, I wrote about some of the potential candidates on January 8th, about a week before we're recording. And, you know, all those names that I mentioned are on the list. And I do think there are some frontrunners. So I'll just go through some of the names really quick.

[00:03:04] There is Nimco Balale, who is a former One America staffer who ran for 37th District State House. There's Adonis Duckworth, who is an SDOT employee, who's been there for a long time and is working in the mayor's office. Those would probably be some of my top contenders.

[00:03:22] There's also the son of a Seattle Municipal Court judge, Thaddeus Gregory, Brandy Engstrom, who was the former head of the city's Office of Arts and Culture, and Shikunji Salisbury, who I didn't mention my story, but who has run for office before and is, you know, pretty recognizable name.

[00:03:43] And, you know, has been in the Central District for a long time and is the son of Harriet Walden, who is one of the founding members of the Community Police Commission. According to the Seattle Times, Rob Saka, Councilmember Rob Saka, previously said he would prefer a caretaker. But Sarah Nelson had said that she's open to considering all applicants, meaning folks who might ultimately put their names on the ballot, as Tanya Wu did last year and then ran unsuccessfully.

[00:04:09] So, where do you think the council might be leaning when it comes to that question, Sandeep, caretaker versus, you know, an appointee who's going to build a track record and then potentially run and that sort of thing?

[00:04:22] Yeah, my original sense of this was that while there were a couple of members, not just Saka, but Dan Strauss as well, who were leaning in the caretaker direction from the get-go, most of the other council members, I think, were hoping to consolidate behind a frontrunner or a kind of emerging candidate. That has not happened yet. And the longer this goes on, I think the more the caretaker idea becomes viable.

[00:04:47] And so there have been two of the candidates on that list of 20 that have explicitly put their names forward as potential caretakers. And by caretaker, we mean that they would not run this November. Whoever gets this appointment, there's going to be – this seat is going to be on the ballot in this coming November. So they would fill out the term and let everybody else run for the seat.

[00:05:09] Those two names are – Erica mentioned one of them, Shakundi Salisbury, who's a longtime city employee who's been a very visible community activist in the African-American community here in Seattle. And the other name that has put himself forward as a caretaker is Mark Solomon. Mark is the person who ran against Tammy Morales back in 2021 and lost that race. Mark works as a civilian employee of the Seattle Police Department.

[00:05:36] And Mark has said that he'd be interested in this position in a caretaker role. So we'll see whether it's happened. I mean, I think that's a threshold question. Do they go the caretaker route or do they appoint someone who the expectation is that they're running in November and they're going to have to kind of do the job as well as mount the campaign? Yeah, Mark Solomon also ran – has run for city council before. I was not aware he was proposing himself as a caretaker.

[00:06:00] But I do think that, you know, that idea might be somewhat appealing to this council given how badly their effort to get Tanya Wu elected to the council last time worked out. Tanya Wu is not on this list, obviously. We would have mentioned her. But I think that she is considering running again after, you know, losing in four successive elections, most recently to Alexis Mercedes Rink, who is now on the council.

[00:06:27] She would not say at a press conference recently. She held a press conference recently, which is interesting in itself, to talk about public safety and issues in the Little Saigon neighborhood. And she was asked if she's running next year – sorry, if she's running this year, later in the year for this District 2 council seat. And she said she didn't know yet. So that leaves open that possibility.

[00:06:51] Yeah, I think that possibility is open, though it is interesting Tanya did not put her name in for the appointment. I do think – Well, come on. I mean, I don't think she would have – I think this council, you know, sent her off with flowers and, you know, praised her to the skies and basically said, you know, don't let the door hit you. There may be some element of true to that, yeah.

[00:07:15] You know, I mean, certainly after the resounding, you know, defeat that she suffered in this last November would have been, you know, it would have been quite something to turn around and do an appointment process with Tanya. Anyway, but that's not on the table. She's not applying. It'll be interesting to see whether she runs. I think there are a number of these candidates who I have connected with who have told me that they're interested, regardless of what happens with the appointment, about running for the seat.

[00:07:43] So I think there's going to be a fierce competition this November, probably irrespective of what happens in terms of who gets the appointment. And some other – a couple of other names on the list that I would throw out along with the names that you cited, Erica. There's a – Okay, that's it for this special preview of this week's episode. If you want to hear the whole thing, you just go over to patreon.com slash Seattle Nice. And thanks, everybody, so much for listening.