Seattle Nice: Post-Primary Edition!
Featuring KUOW reporter and Sound Politics co-host Scott Greenstone.
By Erica C. Barnett
On this week's special post-primary edition of Seattle Nice, we welcomed KUOW politics reporter Scott Greenstone to help us break down the statewide and local election results. Scott, who co-hosts the new podcast Sound Politics, helped us keep our arguments civil and our cussing to a minimum (though don't worry, we still earned our content warning!)
Scott covered the Republican parties on election night, and he reported that despite coming in at under 10 percent, MAGA Republican Semi Bird's supporters seemed "optimistic," maybe because they "don't trust the polls." Dave Reichert, the more mainstream Republican, is far behind Democratic frontrunner Bob Ferguson, who Sandeep said has the governor's seat locked down.
At the time of our recording, Sandeep was predicting that Democratic state lands commissioner candidate Dave Upthegrove would eke out a second-place finish in the crowded race to oppose Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler in the general (when we recorded, he was running in third place behind another Republican, Sue Kuehl Pederson). Sandeep is working on Upthegrove's campaign, and he also some experience running against former District 3 Congresswoman Herrera Beutler, who lost her race for reelection in the 2022 primary; the candidate Sandeep worked for, Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, ultimately took the seat.
And, of course, we talked about Seattle's only local election—the race for City Council Position 8, where incumbent Tanya Woo was trailing challenger Alexis Mercedes Rinck by a wide margin on Election Night. (The gap has only widened since then; as of Friday, Woo was in the high 30s while Rinck was on her way to topping 50 percent.)
Woo, who was appointed to the citywide seat after losing last year's District 2 race to incumbent Tammy Morales, is on shaky ground going into the general election. In a previous episode focusing on this race, Sandeep and I got into a heated debate over what it will mean if Woo loses.
While Sandeep says voters shouldn't read too much into it, since Woo is new and hasn't had time to establish a strong identity or presence on the council, I think a Rinck victory could mean that voters aren't impressed with the new council's relentless focus on reversing policy decisions by previous mayors, city attorneys, and city councils. Instead of proposing new investments in low-barrier housing, addiction treatment, and diversion, for example, a majority of this council wants to focus on arresting sex workers, creating banishment zones for sex workers and drug users, and renting beds at a jail 15 miles away to hold misdemeanor offenders until they're charged.
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