Aaron Ostrom, who directs the states largest progressive organization, wants you to ignore Faye Garneaus efforts to kill the Move Seattle levy. (Aka City of Seattle Proposition No. 1)
Aaron Ostrom, who directs the state's largest progressive organization, wants you to ignore Faye Garneau's efforts to kill the "Move Seattle" levy. The levy would lead to a lot of transportation improvements in this city—improvements like the redesign and repaving of 23rd Avenue, shown above—and will show up on your ballot as City of Seattle Proposition No. 1. SEATTLE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

As a Slog reader, you may have seen the online ads on the Stranger web site opposing Proposition 1, the progressive "Let’s Move Seattle" transportation levy. Or perhaps you seen or heard one of their false cable and radio ads threatening homeowners and renters with a 155% tax increase (FALSE).

All of those scare-mongering, deceptive attack ads are almost entirely funded by one person: Seattle’s own Eyman-loving, anti-tax, anti-transit, right wing Republican Aurora Avenue property owner and landlord, Faye Garneau. Garneau has single-handedly contributed $325,755.02 to the “Keep Seattle Affordable” anti-Proposition 1 campaign, more than 95 percent of the entire funding.

What motivates Garneau?

Aside from her opposition to public transit—the Let’s Move Seattle levy funds seven new Metro RapidRide+ bus corridors across the city—Garneau is an anti-tax extremist who doesn’t want to pay her fair share on the massive property holdings that have made her rich. Garneau has a long history of opposing transit funding—giving a total of $23,000 to anti-transit campaigns in 2011 and 2014 to stop progress on transportation—but the amount of money she’s pouring into the anti-Prop 1 campaign is unprecedented.

She’s also one of Tim Eyman’s biggest funders. She’s given Eyman $55,000 to fund I-1366, his nightmare initiative to impose a devastating cut in funding for schools and other services, unless the legislature passes a constitutional amendment to require a two-thirds vote in the legislature to close tax loopholes or raise any tax. Last year, she gave another $50,000 to Eyman’s failed effort to run a statewide ballot measure against the $15 minimum wage, and contributed $15,000 more to other anti-$15 minimum wage efforts.

And when the PDC issued a damning 224-page investigative report in September detailing how Eyman has been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret kickbacks from a signature-gathering firm, Garneau surely regretted her association with him, right? Wrong. She actually doubled-down to defend Eyman, telling the Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat, “It’s no big deal! Everybody else is making money off politics. Why not him too?”

If you believe in our shared progressive values in Seattle, and you realize that we need to modernize our transit and transportation systems to keep pace with Seattle’s rapid growth, then I hope you’ll stand with Fuse, Transportation Choices Coalition, Washington Conservation Voters, Democratic grassroots organizations around the city, the King County Labor Council, Sierra Club, the Washington Bus, One America Votes, the Stranger, and dozens of other respected progressive organizations in supporting the Let’s Move Seattle levy.

Faye Garneau shouldn’t be able to stop a progressive transportation measure like this just because she’s wealthy and opposed to public transit. This election could be close, and every vote matters. Don’t let her buy the election. Remember to fill out your mail in ballot, vote YES on Prop 1, and make sure it is postmarked by Nov. 3.

Aaron Ostrom is the Executive Director of Fuse, the state's largest progressive organization.