Sandy Brown drove me around District 5 in his Mini Cooper.
Sandy Brown drove me around District 5 in his Mini Cooper. Kelly O

When all of this insanity is over and you have a city council elected under the new districted system, things might not feel all that different if you live in a highly visible part of the city like downtown or Capitol Hill. But if you live in a far-flung burg like North Seattle, now city council District 5, the stakes are higher.

Just like in West Seattle, a common refrain in North Seattle is that it's not well represented by the current council. Yet, for better or definitely worse, at least West Seattle is home to retiring council member Tom Rasmussen. No incumbent even lives in the new District 5. (Although Faye Garneau, bankroller of the 2013 districts campaign, does.)

District 5 is more conservative and tax-averse than some other parts of the city and home to fewer political contributors. Sidewalks are missing, and rents are lower. Amid car dealerships and drive-throughs, transit feels like an afterthought. After the first candidate forum I attended in North Seattle, I stood near the Northgate Transit Center staring at my phone. It was around 9 p.m. and the next bus from anywhere nearby, my apps told me, was at 5:30 a.m. the next day.

The chance to represent this newly defined area—and to run in a race without an incumbent—has attracted a whole bunch of candidates and outside interests.

Eight people are running, two of whom have already raised over $60,000. The National Realtors Association is funding ad buys in support of long-shot candidate Kris Lethin. Multiple tribes are funding mailers advocating for frontrunner Debora Juarez. Planned Parenthood is distributing direct mail and canvassing materials for Halei Watkins, who is a Planned Parenthood organizer. All in all, it's a crowded, interesting, increasingly expensive fight for often-forgotten territory that needs someone to fight for it.

***

There are a bunch of interesting candidates in District 5, and I wish I’d had the time to kick it with (almost) all of them. But I do have eight other races to write about—not to mention whatever the tools we've already put in office are doing—so that wasn't going to happen. I did tour the district with the two frontrunners. More on them in a second.

First, Mercedes Elizalde and Halei Watkins, who are lagging in fundraising but still come off as two of the most energetic and progressive candidates in the 5th.

They are both calling for inclusionary zoning policies and fees on developers, and they both support homeless encampments in residential areas. As a direct service provider at the Low Income Housing Institute, Elizalde has focused more on improving homelessness services and on the nitty-gritty of housing policy, including mandatory one-for-one replacement when affordable housing is torn down and replaced with new development.

Along with housing, Watkins has made gender pay equity a central plank of her campaign, saying she’ll work to expand the city’s paid parental leave policy from four weeks to 12 and create a requirement that city contracts go to companies that pay men and women equitably.

Both Watkins and Elizalde say they’ll spend the days left before the August 4 primary election—oh my god it's happening so soon—focused on doorbelling, where they hear most often about transportation and housing affordability issues.

Doorbelling isn’t just a way to secure votes, Watkins says in an e-mail. It "helps me remember how I can win amidst all of speculation and bet placing that happens in the fishbowl of local politics," she says. "I am not a traditional candidate. I’m not 60, I don't have thousands of dollars of my own money to invest in my candidacy, and I don't have friends who can easily write me a $700 check. But at the end of the day, elections are won one vote at a time. We've seen it before and doorbelling helps me remember that, in District 5, we will see it again."

Debadutta Dash cofounded the nonprofit Washington State and India Trade Relations Action Committee to encourage trade between Washington State and India. He’s campaigning on promises to advocate for light rail from Northgate to Bothell, push for a homeless shelter in North Seattle, and better engage youth in the political process. Former mayor Mike McGinn and state senator Pramila Jayapal have endorsed his campaign.

Kris Lethin, a realtor who’s also worked as a real-estate appraiser, analyst, and FDIC employee, is one of the most openly developer-friendly candidates in any of the races this year. He’s opposed to rent control and linkage fees. Otherwise, he's promising to focus on getting funding for a new police precinct on North 130th Street and trying to "reignite neighborhood planning." Without a very sophisticated campaign of his own, Lethin didn’t look like he had much of a chance. But combine the North End’s conservative tendencies with all that realtor money and he could wind up a dark horse.

The two longest long shots in the race are David Toledo, who has royally pissed off the SECB, and rambly grandpa Hugh Russell.

***

Now, back to the main contenders. Since he announced he was running way back last fall, Sandy Brown has appeared to be the chosen one for District 5. He jumped into the race early, has raised $82,000, and has progressive cred for working on homelessness, openly supporting Washington’s gay marriage referendum in 2012 as a faith leader, and helping to organize last year’s successful gun background check initiative. He says he’s known for a while he wanted to run for city council.

But Brown only moved into this district a year and a half ago—a potential liability in the 5th, where the question of how long people have lived in the district comes up at forums like a litmus test. So now he’s attempting to prove his connection to the voters he’ll need on election day.

“I don’t think it’s about how long you’ve lived here,” he says. “It’s about whether you care and what you plan to do.”

Brown takes me on a driving tour from one side of District 5 to the other, pointing out efforts to improve storm-water drainage, traffic, and social services.

We drive along 145th Street—the city’s northernmost border—and slow to a crawl through the intersection at Aurora. To the north, Shoreline has spruced up Aurora with street trees, nice lights, and utility lines buried underground instead of strung between telephone poles. To the south, Seattle's side of Aurora looks ugly, outdated, and ignored. With districts, Brown says, this is the kind of stuff that could change.

This is definitely the kind of street-level issue that, more than big ideas, has consistently dominated some of these district races. But getting street-level issues more attention is the whole reason some people supported districts in the first place. It’s also why some worry it will turn Seattle politics into a war of factions.

“This area has never been organized in a political way and asked what it wants or needs,” Brown says about District 5.

In Lake City, one of the district's main hubs, Brown sees potential for improved homeless services, especially daytime services. He says some people complain about homeless people hanging out at a tiny park near a Bartell Drugs. He wants to see it “activated” to attract more people, like the city is doing with Westlake Park downtown.

At the neighborhood's German bakery and coffee shop Kaffeeklatsch, owner Annette Heide-Jessen says she opened this place in 2008 because “I wanted to drink coffee in my neighborhood and there was no coffee.” Since then, other businesses have opened up nearby, and there’s more excitement about what the future holds.

“Lake City has great momentum ahead of it,” Brown says.

We end at a tiny beach tucked between two houses near Lake City—another of the district's micro-issues. The beach used to have public access but thanks to a legal technicality and an ugly neighborhood dispute has now been made private, fenced off with “Private Property” and “No Trespassing” signs.

The neighbors here are worked up about it. (On the day we were there, someone had written in chalk on the nearby steps “Beach Lives Matter,” which I point out to say, neighbors, reel it in. That’s gross. For the record, Brown says he doesn’t approve of that.)

Brown says he heard about the issue on the campaign trail and put together a petition asking the city to use its powers of eminent domain to take back the beach. The mayor and city council have both expressed support for looking into that.

A woman in a white SUV stops as Brown and I look at the tiny beach. She used to bring her grandkids here, she says.

“There are several other people running against you, I gather,” she says to Brown, “but no one is quite as engaged as you are.”

That’s some Sawant-level planting, Sandy. Nice work.

***

Debora Juarez is the other frontrunner in this race. Juarez, a member of the Blackfeet Nation who grew up on the Puyallup Reservation, has had a long legal career working as a public defender and a judge. She’s represented multiple Washington State tribes in a number of cases about treaty rights and environmental issues. Among them: the case that led to the landmark Boldt II decision. Years of Native American “fish-in” protests culminated in a drawn-out case over fishing rights and a court ruling reaffirming tribes’ rights to fish in areas where the state had tried to keep them out.

The Seattle Times editorial board thinks she’ll bring “intellectual rigor and ideological independence to the council.” The SECB thinks she has “2015-Rihanna ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ vibes.”

After I walk a sidewalk-less road to meet Juarez at her house, she tells me she didn’t even know who Rihanna was. The recently released HALA report is stacked under a blue highlighter on her kitchen counter—a point of pride for the lawyer who says she meticulously reads city reports, plans, and grant applications.

Juarez describes her experience as a public defender, when she was regularly mistaken for a defendant or an interpreter. She says the campaigning process isn't immune from that either.

“A lot of white males walk into the room and there’s an assumption that they belong there, they deserve to be there, they know what they’re doing,” she says. “A lot of times I walk in the room and I’ve got to prove that I belong in the room and that I’m smart enough.”

Juarez says her priorities on the council will be advocating for federal money for a pedestrian bridge between a new light-rail station in Northgate and North Seattle College, encouraging development in the district’s urban centers, and stiffening penalties for employers who violate the city’s laws against wage theft.

In the new district system, she says, “People will hold you accountable and they need to see you.”

We tour the North Helpline, a food bank and service provider where need has increased by 60 to 70 percent in recent years. Meanwhile, funding from the city, says the food bank’s executive director, has only increased according to a cost-of-living adjustment of about 2 percent.

Some 1,600 people get food from the food bank each week, and the organization also offers help with rent and utility bills. With more money, executive director Kelly Brown says, the organization would grow its home delivery program to serve more seniors and people with disabilities who can’t come to the food bank to pick up food. Maybe they’d hire another staffer.

The group hasn’t had anyone on city council to help them fight for more funding, Brown says. Most of the elected officials “just seemed really far away."