PubliCola Questions: Seattle City Council Candidate Dionne Foster

"I'm with the party of getting shit done," says Foster, who's taking on citywide Councilmember Sara Nelson.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Councilmember Sara Nelson was first elected, after an unsuccessful run for council, in the backlash election of 2021, the same year voters elected business moderate Bruce Harrell as mayor and put Republican Ann Davison in charge of the city attorney's office.

When Nelson joined the council as one of two citywide representatives, she was part of a small centrist minority on a mostly progressive council. Two years later, her fortunes improved, when voters elected a supermajority that has largely reversed the previous council's social-justice orientation in favor of law and order, deference to the executive branch, and a highly selective form of fiscal austerity.

Despite the new centrist supermajority (and the resignation of the council's former lone progressive, Tammy Morales, last year) the council has often been fractious under Nelson's leadership. High turnover on the council's Central Staff, a legislative division that's supposed to provide impartial analysis to the council regardless of who's in charge, has created significant gaps in institutional knowledge at a time when the council itself has virtually none.

Since 2024, council members have openly sniped at each other in public and lashed out at public commenters and even city departments in ways that have few, if any, recent precedents. Transparency, too, has suffered. During last year's budget deliberations, the council deleted a tool that gave the public clear information about budget amendments, contributing to one of the most chaotic, least transparent budget processes in recent memory.

Nelson is up for reelection this year. Dionne Foster, director of the Washington Progress Alliance, a nonprofit that fought for the recent statewide capital gains tax, hopes to unseat her. In her campaign announcement Tuesday, Foster touted 20 early endorsements from progressive state legislators and local climate and education advocates, along with more than $20,000 in early donations from more than 200 donors—about half the number she'll need to qualify for public funding through the city's democracy voucher program.

Previously, Foster was a climate policy analyst for Puget Sound Sage, a senior advisor in the city's Office of Policy and Innovation, and a senior program officer at the Seattle Foundation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PubliCola (ECB): I know you've been thinking about jumping into this race for a while. What were some of the factors you weighed before deciding to run?

Dionne Foster (DF): I spent some time just doing a lot of self-reflection on my personal experiences and my work experiences, and feeling like I am excited to bring those to the city right now. I got to think back to when I was a young person who got in trouble and had some tough experiences—what were the things that I needed, that could help me, and even times when I was an adult and had government support or assistance to help me get to where I am.

ECB: Tell me a little more about that—what kind of trouble did you get in, and how did that assistance help you get where you are today?

DF: I was raised by my mom, who was a single mom. We had a lot of struggle economically, and a lot of personal loss in our family. That sent me down a tough path. I got in a lot of trouble when I was 17 — a lot of suspensions. At some point, I had a misdemeanor for underage drinking. We were not in a court, but in some kind of family systems meeting, and I sat down in front of somebody who said to me, “You’re so angry. And I think if it were up to me, what I would do is send you to spend a couple of days in juvenile [detention] to learn a lesson. But you’re here with your mom, and I can see your mom really loves you, and I’m not going to do that to you.”

It was eye-opening, and a little scary. I think back about it now, and I think about how my life could have been really different. There’s data about how, once you’ve had a certain number of touch points with the justice system, it can send you down a different path. I did community service and I was able to go on and have this great life and this great career.

There were times when we were pretty good economically and times we didn’t have money. I worked two jobs when I was in high school. I literally went to a fast food restaurant and applied for a job on my 16th birthday. That was not the youth experience that a lot of people have. I was making $6 an hour and when I got a raise, I was making $6.25. I was helping to support my family, but I worked with people who were paying for their lives that way. It affected the way I think about fairness and the role of government in making sure people have access to good jobs.

ECB: Depending on the outcome of this year’s elections, the council could shift to the left, creating more opportunities for progressive legislation. Is your goal to be part of a progressive bloc? Where do you see yourself on the political spectrum of this current council?

DF: I’m in the party of getting shit done. I identify as a progressive, but that word is starting to mean different things to different people—I see myself that way, but I recognize that there are some flaws in how people perceive that word. For me, it’s about things like, how do we deliver on affordable housing? I’m a homeowner, but I got downpayment assistance. I bought my house on a very modest salary. I had, like, $2,000 in the bank. I was only able to do it because I got that investment from the government. So we need to figure out how we’re providing for, not just people who can afford to buy million-dollar homes, but people like me.

ECB: Talk a little bit about how you’re going to position yourself as an alternative to your opponent. What are some of the key decisions she’s made or policies she’s pushed for that you disagree with?

DF: One of the big ways we’re different is, I would love to see a return to really strong stakeholder engagement on the city council. That’s something I bring to the table that I don’t think I’ve seen from Councilmember Nelson. I worked at City Hall at a time when we used to have these big tables, where we’d bring people together who didn’t have the same perspective and use that as an opportunity to make a policy better. That’s how good governance happened. I think real leadership is being able to engage with people you disagree with. That means being able to hear that perspective and consider it.

Thinking about how we protect strong labor standards is really important—and making sure that thinking about workers also extends to staff at City Hall. I was baffled last year when one of the first things she did as council president was to fire the Central Staff director, which is a nonpartisan, nonpolitical position.

What I said about stakeholdering also extends to what we’ve seen recently in the SoDo district—bringing a bill that would usually be a land use bill to a different committee, bringing people to the table in a one-sided way. Good government means bringing people together who have disparate opinions and being able to have a thoughtful conversation.

ECB: If you were on the council now, how would you vote on the proposal to allow housing in the stadium district?

DF: One of the ways I started working in Seattle was in environmental justice—talking to people who are in some of the neighborhoods close to industrial zoning about their experiences with air quality, truck noise, traffic, people speeding through their neighborhoods and not feeling safe with their kids walking around. I am incredibly sensitive to that perspective and the impact that housing so close to industrial use could have on residents. I am also sensitive to the fact that the Port is not just the port of the city but the state and region. So when I see a letter signed by 30 elected officials, Democrats and Republicans, from cities and rural areas, who are talking about impacts to their farms and rural areas—given those concerns, it is not something I would support.

ECB: The budget outlook for the next few years continues to be grim, not only in terms of local deficits but potential cuts to federal grants. What solutions will you support to narrow these gaps?

DF: One of the things I worked on over the last several years is defending the state’s capital gains tax. We were, for a long time, the 50th worst tax code in the country, and we are now the 49th worst, thanks to the capital gain tax and working families tax credit.

When I’m thinking about the potential budget challenges, which are serious, there are a couple of values I bring into that. One is taking regressivity into account, and whether we are further burdening the lowest income-earners.

ECB: Would you support the local capital gains tax proposal if it came up for a vote again?

DF: I was a huge, huge supporter of the state capital gains tax. With a state capital gains tax, you know that there’s 40-something other states that already have a capital gains tax, so we were frankly kind of catching up to existing tax codes. My perspective on a local capital gains tax is nuanced. I think it’s definitely a potential solution, but we need to be realistic about a tax like the capital gains tax at the local level, because you do start to see challenges around implementation. I want to make sure we’re being realistic. If we think about the size of the capital gains tax at the state level, it’s not going to be the same size at the local level, and it’s also a tax that is inconsistent.

We need to think about how we can keep spurring development and how we can continue to have a positive environment to accept the growth that we are expected to have as a city. Revenue from construction is also a significant part of the budget.

ECB: It sounds like you want to see more housing in the comprehensive plan. What do you think of the proposal that the council is currently considering?

DF: With the comprehensive plan, it’s really important we are clear that this is a tool that’s going to guide our growth for the next decade and more. And if you think of it from a climate perspective, we’re one of the cities that, over time, is expected to be the most resilient and one of the places that more and more people are going to come to because of our relative climate stability. So I think it’s really important that when the city passes a comp plan, that we are really setting a high standard for what’s possible. I think it’s really important that we’re protecting the neighborhood centers and making sure that we have enough space to build, because that’s one of the ways we’re going to be able to address challenges with housing demand.

ECB: This council has had a proactive and punitive approach to crimes that often intersect with homelessness and poverty, including drug use and sex work. What do you think of decisions like placing CCTV cameras along Aurora and prosecuting and jailing people for misdemeanor drug possession, and other punitive approaches to these issues?

DF: I’m thinking about how we as a city can respond to what people are feeling around public safety. When I worked at a previous organization, we had an office that was at 12th and Jackson, and then when I was working on Third, we had a break-in at our office. It was scary for me and it was scary for the team. I’m also thinking about this from the perspective of somebody who has seen somebody in crisis, somebody who needs support. I’m concerned about making sure the right responders are called, that we address the [police] hiring shortage that’s happening across the country, that we’re meeting those 30 by 30 [gender equity] goals for applicants.

I think that it’s important that we are able to find ways to solve the problems that we have as a city, but they have to be real solutions. When our office was on 12th and Jackson, that was more than 10 years ago, and I think people were struggling with addiction and homelessness then. And then with the explosion of the fentanyl crisis, I think it’s gotten a lot worse for people who are in active addiction, who are in some cases being preyed upon, and also more challenging for some businesses in that area. We have to acknowledge that those are real struggles that people are having—both the people who are living unsheltered and those business owners.

ECB: What do you think the Nelson campaign will view as your vulnerabilities? What will the attack ads say, and how will you respond?

DF: My best bet is that they're going to claim I’m going to take the city backwards on public safety. It’s disappointing every time that comes up as an issue, because it distracts from the fact that there’s a real [police] hiring challenge—or, with the International District and other communities, real people who’ve been asking the city to solve their problems. It isn’t true that anybody who’s interested in prevention is not also committed to making sure we have adequate staffing. I think we need all of the above.