Seattle Nice: City Council Shakeup in South Seattle

And on Are You Mad At Me?: Why You Should Watch Shattered Glass

And on “Are You Mad At Me?”: Why You Should Watch Shattered Glass!

By Erica C. Barnett

After last week's grim assessment of how local leaders are (and mostly aren't) preparing for the dual impact of city funding shortfalls and federal funding cuts, we turned this week to a more hopeful subject: Who will represent Southeast Seattle's District 2 on the City Council next year?

Tammy Morales stepped down at the beginning of 2025, saying her colleagues had bullied her and made it impossible to get anything done, and the council appointed Mark Solomon, whom Morales defeated in 2019, to the seat. (Solomon was the second candidate to be vanquished by Morales and subsequently appointed to the council; the first was Tanya Woo, who went on to lose to Alexis Mercedes Rinck.) Four candidates have filed for the position so far: Assistant City Attorney Eddie Lin, SDOT staffer (and, until recently, Mayor Bruce Harrell's transportation advisor) Adonis Ducksworth; business owner Takayo Ederer; and city building inspector and union leader Jamie Fackler.

I think the candidates for District 2 have more diverse viewpoints than the pigeonholes pundits are slotting them into—the usual "left," "center-left," and "moderate" (conservative by Seattle standards) "lanes."

Lin, for example, floated the idea of a new levy to fund gun violence prevention programs—but also told me he supports beefing up the police department to crack down on "disorder" and "open-air drug markets" while the city figures out a way to address the addiction and poverty that lead to drug sales and petty thefts. Ducksworth, who is strongly associated with Harrell, said that while he may not have supported Proposition 1A, the measure that funded social housing, he's "extremely happy it did pass" and will do everything in his power to make it a success. (Harrell campaigned against 1A, favoring an alternative that would have raised no new funds and would not have built social housing).

And Fackler, a union shop steward who said he was motivated to run by Prop. 1A's success, went deep on the need to eliminate the red tape that's currently hindering development in Seattle, including utility hookup requirements that can quickly make housing projects infeasible.

It's too soon to say how many more candidates will get into these races before the May 9 filing deadline—there's often a rush—but we will note that the biggest vote-winner in local election history, Position 8 (citywide) rep Rinck, is not facing any serious opposition so far. The same can't be said for Position 9 (also citywide) Councilmember Sara Nelson, who faces a formidable challenger in Dionne Foster, the former director of the lefty Washington Progress Alliance, who we interviewed earlier this year.

In addition to the upcoming elections, we discussed the (potential) closure of the Virginia Inn, a Pike Place Market institution that is in an apparently intractable dispute with its landlord, the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority. Sandeep and I hope they can work it out; David says that as anti-NIMBYs, we're hypocrites for opposing the closure of a business we happen to like.

Also this week, it's time for another episode of "Are You Mad At Me?," our limited-run podcast about the great, underappreciated journalism movie Shattered Glass. The film, released on 2003, is about the downfall of serial fabulist Stephen Glass, a journalist for The New Republic who was caught fabricating stories after reporters for a digital startup started digging into his blockbuster piece about teenage hackers working as security consultants.

This month, Josh and I will tell you why you—yes, YOU—should watch this excellent film, even if you don't think you care about the subject matter.

To quote the New York Times' A.O. Scott, who reviewed Shattered Glass when it came out in 2003, it's "an astute and surprisingly gripping drama not only about the ethics of magazine writing, but also, more generally, about the subtle political and psychological dynamics of modern office culture."