Wilson Drops Out of Race He was On Track to Lose, We Heart Seattle Director Lashes Out Against Harm Reduction

Today's Afternoon Fizz.

1. King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, who was arrested last week outside his former partner Lee Keller's home for allegedly stalking and harassing her, ended his campaign for King County Executive yesterday, announcing the decision on Facebook.

Every single member of the King County Council, including the two frontrunners in the county executive race, Girmay Zahilay and Claudia Balducci, has called on Wilson to not just drop out of the race but to step down from his current elected position, which he will hold until next year unless there's a successful recall campaign.

In his Facebook post, Wilson said he was dropping out because "personal matters have drawn attention away from critical issues" in the campaign. "I'm grateful for the support I've received and look forward to continuing to serve the residents of King County in my role as Assessor."

Wilson, who was running as a law-and-order candidate, wasn't likely to beat either of his better-known and better-funded opponents in the primary, so dropping out of the race with just a few weeks left was a largely symbolic act.

Wilson has been prolific on Facebook both before and after his arrest, posting subtle digs at Keller and writing darkly about enemies who are purportedly trying to take him down. In June, Wilson posted a photo he took with Keller during a brief reconciliation in May. "Shown recently to a member of the news media, the reporter said Ms. Keller looked happy and not at all afraid" in the photo, Wilson wrote. "As you can see from the photograph, Ms. Keller took the picture at 3:15 PM that afternoon."

Keller has a protection order against Wilson barring him from contacting or coming within 1,000 feet of her. Earlier this week, the Snohomish County Prosecutor declined to immediately file criminal charges against him; a civil case, in which Wilson is seeking the termination of Keller's protection order, is still moving forward.

2. During a council committee meeting to discuss a proposal from Council President Sara Nelson that would dedicate up to 25 percent of a forthcoming public safety sales tax to addiction treatment, We Heart Seattle founder Andrea Suarez showed up for public comment armed with what she described as "methamphetamine pipes and foil that are handed out" to drug users in Belltown, along with a rubber strip she described as a tourniquet for drug injection. "We have to stop handing out tourniquets and pipes and foil and cookers," Suarez said.

Handing out safer smoking supplies is a form of harm reduction for drug users, who might otherwise use pipes contaminated with infectious fluids or unknown drugs or sustain burns from thin grocery store aluminum foil, among other risks. Opponents of these measures, like Suarez, say they enable people to keep using drugs.

Suarez, who stood behind Nelson at the press launch for her proposal last week, lashed out at two of the organizations that were about to discuss their work and take questions from the committee. We Heart Seattle is an anti-harm reduction advocacy group that "cleans up" occupied homeless encampments and directs people to abstinence-based treatment programs, including a high-barrier program in Oregon that kicks people out if they relapse.

Zeroing in on Purpose Dignity Action (co-directed by Lisa Daugaard) and the Downtown Emergency Service Center (headed up by Daniel Malone), Suarez said, "I ask my colleagues to stop [distributing smoking supplies] within your low-barrier housing. It's not working, and I don't hate the player. I hate the game. I hate that you have a fentanyl smoking shack in the back of your hotel, Lisa." (The PDA has what amounts to a safe smoking site outside one of its residential buildings). "I respect you, the person, the colleague, but I can't get behind that."

"I toured the Canady House at DESC—the carpets are pitch black, rats, rodents, bugs," Suarez claimed. The Canady House is a 15-year-old permanent supportive housing building that has been the target of regular outrage from right-wing personalities and activist groups like the Discovery Institute.

Daugaard won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2019 for creating the successful LEAD diversion program, which has been replicated all over the US. DESC provides housing, shelter, and health care to homeless Seattle residents with complex physical and behavioral health care needs that make them effectively ineligible for other types of housing; they've won numerous national awards over their many years in Seattle, including several for their low-barrier "wet" housing on Eastlake.

During the presentation, Daugaard brought up the fact that the legislation says "up to" 25 percent of the proposed 0.1-cent sales tax increase could go to treatment. If the legislation was tweaked to say "at least," Daugaard said, that would set a floor, rather than a ceiling. Nelson later said she heard a similar idea on a recent episode Seattle Nice, where both Sandeep and I agreed that it would be great to see 100 percent of the public safety sales tax go to behavioral health care.