Seattle Nice: Is the Progressive Left Back?
We discuss the upcoming elections at a raucous live taping!
By Erica C. Barnett
We had a great time recording the latest episode of Seattle Nice live at the 43rd District Democrats' meeting on Tuesday, where we discussed the primary election, offered some unsolicited advice to a local candidate who happened to be in the audience, and said "fuck" a lot (Sandeep) and made ill-considered predictions (me.)
The big question on the table: Will the backlash to Trump's tax cuts for millionaires and service cuts for the rest of us translate to a local anti-establishment election? In 2021 (when business-oriented, pro-sweeps Mayor Bruce Harrell and Republican City Attorney Ann Davison were elected) and again in 2023, when voters replaced most of the city council with a crop of candidates who promised to "audit the budget" and attributed the decline in police hiring to low morale brought on by pro-"defund" incumbents, Seattle rejected a progressive agenda.
Could this year bring around a course correction? Katie Wilson seems to have Harrell running scared, Davison has several very viable opponents, and progressive Dionne Foster is running a strong, if low-key, campaign against centrist Council President Sara Nelson. Even Joe Mallahan, defeated by Mike McGinn in 2009, is trashing the mayor over his enthusiasm for encampment sweeps, which have indisputably pushed people living unsheltered in downtown Seattle to Belltown, the International District, and other parts of Seattle.
We also discussed the baffling recent decision about nudity at the longtime nude beach at Denny-Blaine Park: A King County Superior Court judge (Samuel Chung, not up for reelection until 2028) ordered the city to come up with a plan to stop public masturbation and lewd behavior—which a wealthy adjacent property owner insists are rampant—and "nudity as constituted at the park." I am obviously not a lawyer, but I'm not sure how an injunction that gives police the power to determine whether nudity is "constituted" properly—or if it's inherently lewd—can withstand legal scrutiny.
Nudity is legal in Seattle. As I noted on the podcast, I was walking on the downtown just last weekend when a bunch of naked people—by appearance, almost all cisgender men—rode their bikes along the new bike path, in full view of God and everybody. There's a transparent double standard at work here, I argued—while LGBTQ+ sunbathers are presumptively indecent, a parade of naked men on bikes is just another fun part of life in quirky Seattle.
The new Council was not able to audit the budget because the defund progressives who controlled the budget share seat and the other coached behind the scenes Central staff including Ben egg Noble who helped pull the wall over the eyes as a favor to the mayor the city council who approved of the same bad spending priorities that originated from defunding the police that have exacerbated the public safety crisis and the homeless crisis with a lens to look through that's based on skin color misjudgments at the expense of Public Safety and innocence unnecessarily suffering will they virtue signal percentage is help based on skin color the budget is unconstitutional because they are literally exempting evil from criminals from jail and prioritizing them with housing and services first without having qualified nonprofits and using homeless crisis money while they purposely discriminate and subhuman mistreat and hate innocent White House list citizens forsaken taken victimized well racist policies help run interference for repeat offenders who get to ruin the so-called permanent supportive Housing where parasites skim off of them who are not even qualified to solve their problem but are qualified to protest and take over City Council meetings and browbeat and bully and lobby behind the scenes Council and staff IE King County Equity now another George Floyd protest and black lives matter non-profit association and affiliation with the partners in crime playing the race car line in their pockets at an expert on public safety and Community safety always acting like the cops are the biggest threat will they run interference for evil low-level drug pushers escalating and rivaling most gun violence lied about by the mayor who's been running interference for his criminal underworld neighbors of his childhood when they since they gave him a pass he's giving them a pass by undermining the integrity of government his whole career yet the media won't pull out that Bruce Harrell and Tim Burgess are the original and first votes on a city council anywhere in America that voted to approve exempting low-level drug pushers from jail continuingly undermining the economy of Public Safety