Attorney and case manager Nikkita Oliver came in third in the mayoral primary, narrowly missing a spot in the general election. Still, Oliver's campaign (and activism, for that matter) has made a big mark on the race and the city. The Peoples Party, the newly formed group that put Oliver up as a candidate, looks poised to be a force in Seattle politics for the foreseeable future. But what will that look like?

I caught up with Oliver at Washington Hall Thursday morning. We talked about the general election, future elections, and what it was like running as a queer, black renter in Seattle. (The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length):

On election night, you encouraged your supporters not to fall into "political apathy." How do you and the Peoples Party plan to keep people engaged in local politics?

We will continue to do community listening posts. We're going to host a debate for both [City Council] Positions 8 and 9 and the mayoral race.

We have lots of initiatives that will be rolling out, so a lot of organizing work. And as we said before, the Peoples Party is about a whole lot more than this mayoral race. It's about a long-term vision for political power and empowerment for the most vulnerable in our city. We're also having the General Assembly on September 23rd. 

Can you talk a little bit more about that? What will the General Assembly entail?

I'm not actually on the planning team for that. The goal is to build our membership and infrastructure of the Peoples Party in Seattle, though.

Now that the primary election is over, does the Peoples Party plan to fundraise during its off-campaign season?

We plan to build our membership and part of having an infrastructure for a party will require having funding. What that entails or what it will look like is still being determined.

Whether or not members will have to pay dues, that's still being determined?

Part of the goal of the General Assembly is to make sure that that's not determined by a small group of people, but it is determined by a larger organizing body. So it may be the case that people pay dues. It may not be.

And what are your numbers right now? How many people do you have in the party?

We'll have more information after the General Assembly.

So the day after King County certified the primary results, you told KUOW that Cary Moon had not spoken with you for about a week. Has she reached out to you since then?

I have since received a text message and responded and received a voicemail and responded. It's important for people to remember that, unlike other candidates, my campaign and myself are accountable to a large organizing body, so any discussion with Cary Moon at this point is actually not just with me. It's with the campaign committee as a whole, which is what I was accountable to the whole time. So we're in the process of determining what we want our relationship to look like.

When we reach our agreement as an organizing body, there will be a formal sit-down, but we're wanting to be accountable to our values, who we say we are, who say we represent. That requires not just rushing into conversation because, for Cary Moon, it's politically expedient based on her gathering votes. For us, this is about looking much farther beyond electoral politics and beyond this particular race. What actually benefits the most vulnerable and most disenfranchised in our city? That requires discussion. 

That being said, it's pretty clear that Moon is going to have to win many of your voters if she wants to win the mayorship. You said you will vote for her, but neither you nor the Peoples Party have any plans to endorse her. What policy positions would the Peoples Party be looking for Moon to adopt in order earn an endorsement?
 
It's about a lot more than policy positions. An endorsement is saying that, "I see what you do, and I see your body of work, and it represents my interests. Neither Moon nor Durkan have a track record or body of work that represents the interests of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised in our city.

For us, it's about show-and-tell. Show us that you're in those communities, that you represent those communities' interests, that you're working with those communities, that you have not just the words and the language to talk about equity and the most vulnerable, but you actually have an analysis that helps you understand what that work looks like.

We maybe won't endorse at all in this election. That said, I think those who voted for us are incredibly intelligent, and we're about voter education. How do you help voters who look beyond endorsements as a way of determining which candidate is the best candidate? And if we're really honest with ourselves, the system of endorsements is incredibly flawed. You submit a written questionnaire. In some instances, you write what you might do and then people give you an endorsement based on what they think you might do without a mechanism of accountability. There is nothing in place to hold any elected official accountable after they get in office. It's really just based upon their integrity. We want to push beyond this system of endorsements that has, in some ways, made it so voters don't have to do some of that digging, and we want to help our communities who have already faced many systemic barriers to voting. We want to help them figure out, given our barriers, how do we find candidates to represent our interest? What's the accountability mechanism? That's really the next step for us. 

In whatever conversations we have with Cary, that'll be a part of the dialogue with her. How do we know what you say, you'll do? And these requests that we're bringing to you, that you'll actually do them? What's our system for accountability? At some point, we'll have a sit-down with her where we will actually have a written plan, a written request. That will be public. We'll share it with everyone because we're about transparency. We really want to push the question, what does an endorsement really mean? And given the way they've happened, and in some ways what it's done to voters' ability to think critically about a candidate, we want to push beyond that. 

On that question of accountability, to what extent is that bringing in traditionally marginalized communities into the decision making process or an administration?

That has to go beyond numbers. That has to go beyond quota. It has to go beyond saying I'm going to have this number of POCs, this number of queer folks, this number of women. We see this happen a lot in government, business, and universities, where people reach a number of POCs and they're like, "Look like the state is only four percent black folks, but we have five percent black folks in our school." When I think about politics, to use a numbers game to determine whether or not you gathered enough of the quote-unquote marginalized people, is actually not the right question to ask. I think numbers matter, but I think who you get in there matters, so are you reaching out? Are you looking at it intersectionally? Do you have POC, formerly incarcerated queer people who represent those kinds of interest, who really are the most vulnerable, and are you trusting their knowledge?

The other thing is, we often see folks and government bring in people from marginalized groups, and then they have no power. They have no say. They don't actually get to do their work. They leave. They get burnt out, and the change that needs to happen, the work that needs to happen, never happens because it was micromanaged or the resources weren't there or the trust was not there. I think having a diverse administration and a diverse cabinet is going to be incredibly important. I think having those most vulnerable in our city represented, and trusting them to do the work that they've been brought there to do.

In your speech on the day the primary results were certified, you mentioned a candidate—you didn't name Cary Moon—but you mentioned a candidate spending $90,000 of her own wealth without talking about income inequality. Specifically, you said, "If I regret anything, it's not calling that out sooner." What do you think it was that kept you from raising Moon's self-funding more explicitly during your campaign?

Knowing that, as a queer black woman of color, I already face so many obstacles running for office. That anything I say, whether it's by media or voters or other people running for office, can be incredibly twisted. I think a good example of this is, even us just saying we're not willing to endorse right now or we have a bigger vision, I've seen people call me petty by trying to think beyond the traditional system of endorsements. Understanding that in the body and the identity that I walk, had I called that out, I could have very significantly risked the bigger picture of the campaign.

At the end of the day, we didn't make it into the general election by .66 percent to a candidate who didn't have a ground game and spent $90,000 of her own money. Would my calling that out change anything? To be honest, I don't think so. 

I do think it could have had a negative impact on the stories people tell about candidates like myself, who have identities like I have, who represent interests I represent. Throughout the entire campaign, I did have to be very thoughtful about how and when I said things in order to make sure I wasn't stereotyped. 

Early in the campaign, you came out against what you called a "systematic erasure" of your qualifications among Seattle local media. Do you think that changed at all throughout the campaign?

I do think that changed. I think it improved, on the one hand, because of us calling it out. But on the other hand, our campaign worked very hard to show that we were viable, to show that our candidate is viable. We studied hard. We met with a lot of people.

When you ended your campaign, you mentioned the two candidates that are going through to the general election, who you noted are "wealthy white women," would regularly answer questions with, "What Nikkita said." And I saw this too. Candidates would sometimes defer to you instead of answering questions themselves. What did you make of this throughout the campaign?

Being the younger candidate of color who was constantly having to push to get people to acknowledge my credentials, my intelligence, my capability, my viability—always being asked why didn't you just run for City Council instead—while sitting in forums and hearing other candidates say, "What Nikkita said," was sometimes frustrating.

I know how hard myself and our team worked to really develop a thoughtful platform and to generate innovative ideas—but also how hard we had to push to be seen for those ideas, I think exposed how whiteness works, how ageism works, and how class works.

I don't know if you watched the King 5 debate where my idea was actually credited to Jenny Durkan. So not only does no one call out the what "Nikita said moment," but they also let it slide when an innovative idea that was created by our community...

Was that your transport idea?

Yeah, about making sure all people under the age of 18 have Orca cards. It's credited to another candidate, and so it's frustrating, but also, I don't get to react to it. It's important that I stay grounded and I stay focused, otherwise that gets used against me. The question I would ask myself is, "Does calling that out benefit the most vulnerable in our city or does letting it just go and the idea hopefully come to fruition better benefit the most vulnerable in our city? While it's frustrating, I always go back to the question: We say we're serving the most vulnerable. What's the better means to an end right now?.

I think this is a question kind of related to that. There was a moment during our Candidate Survivor forum when Jenny Durkan dressed up as Melissa McCarthy playing Sean Spicer and she was roasting all the different candidates, and when she got to you, she said, "too cool, to cool" and then made a rather unfortunate remark about black dolls. (Editors note: She also used the term, "colored people.") What was going on through your head when that happened?

I was actually dealing with two things in that moment. The first is, how come no one is talking about the fact that an attorney who's done police reform work, who is a former federal prosecutor, threw tequila into an all-ages audience at it venue where you cannot take your own alcohol, but no one questioned whether that poor decision reflects upon her ability to be mayor? That's one thing. She broke a lot of laws right there, and no one really questioned it. Let's say I had done that. I guarantee you, I would have had some very serious repercussions.

The second thing I was thinking about was how what she said was called a "faux pas." It was almost brushed off. Say that myself or Senator Hasegawa had said something in the reverse direction using similarly demeaning language towards white folks. There would have been an uproar in the city. It would not have been called a faux pas. In the moment, I was caught off-guard. Upon reflection, it was one of those times where I was like, "This is how whiteness plays out. This is how wealth plays out."

I know that you're talking about moving beyond the endorsement system, but I do have to ask, does the Peoples Party plan to endorse in any other races besides mayor, say the competitive race for City Council Position 8 or the city attorney's race, for that matter?

Where we're at at the moment is, we don't intend to endorse. We intend to provide opportunities for the community to engage candidates, ask them hard questions. Similar to how we have live-streamed everything, we'll also live-stream that. Make sure accessibility is there, work with the communities we did community listening posts with. If they want to meet with certain candidates, help facilitate that. But really voter education is so important and, as someone who grew up in a home where we didn't really talk about voting or politics much at all, I see a lot of young people who are newly engaged in politics because of the campaign.

There are lot of young voters, and I feel very invested in helping them figure out to access information about candidates, especially the information that you want and not rely upon sources that may not actually have your community's interest in mind. We're going to keep developing that over the long-term and maybe one day we will endorse or maybe we'll set standards for expectations that have to happen before we even consider endorsements. That's also part of why we're having the General Assembly. It's got to be a much broader community base that makes those decisions.

In the next two years, there will be multiple seats up for reelection on the County and City Councils. Will the Peoples Party run candidates in those elections?

Yes.

I know you're in the process of moving to Bruce Harrell's district. Would you consider challenging him in 2019?

To be frank, right now I just really want to focus on building the infrastructure of the Party. The past five and a half months were grueling. I worked full-time. I had a student commit suicide, a student who was murdered. I sat with some family friends as they lost a family member. I got bit by a dog. You know the list of things has been really long and then on top of it, I started getting pretty aggressive hate letters from people. The most notable was an "our condolences" card where somebody told me they were mourning the death of my integrity. We started getting lots of really hateful phone calls towards the end.

That list of things makes it hard to think about running again right now. So my real focus is how we build the infrastructure of the party so that when we do you run people again, we can better support them in the campaign. Personally and socially, now having been through it, I just have a much better understanding of what it takes for folks who live the lives that we live to get engaged at that level in the political process. It was a challenge. I know for sure that the party will be running more candidates in the future and those are races that that were definitely paying attention to. I'm interested in really helping folks who would never have this opportunity, but could be very brilliant leaders, getting out of the way and helping them get there. I'm incredibly privileged, having multiple degrees

And while I'm not wealthy, I have access to enough to survive and so I'm looking for those folks who are in an even worse position than me, but are probably more brilliant than I am. How do we get them into those leadership roles, and having had this experience, I think I have some knowledge about how to do that.

Looking back now. Is there anything else you would have done differently?

I wish more of our campaign committee was here. The beauty and the curse of working full-time while you're running for office is that you actually cannot be involved in everything. No candidate can, but I'm involved even less in some ways because we had such a strong organizing body, and I just knew I had to be at work sometimes.

I think they might have more thoughts about that, but honestly I'm very proud of what we achieved and the work that we did. More importantly, the knowledge that we gained.

From where I'm sitting, I'm really humbled and honored impressed by the team that helped make 17 percent of the vote even possible when I think there are a lot of people who probably thought that we weren't a viable campaign. I feel really proud about the work we've done.

With all that we've learned, I'm pretty sure we'll run some very successful campaigns in the future.