In a special meeting on Friday afternoon, the brand-spanking-new Seattle City Council selected its finalists to fill the seat left vacant by former citywide Council Member Teresa Mosqueda.
Each council member picked one champion out of the 72 applicants. The finalists, which include failed council candidate Tanya Woo, Civic Hotel owner Neha Nariya, the Seattle Human Service Department’s Mari Sugiyama, Bloodwork Northwest’s Juan Cotto, soft cop Mark Solomon, School Board Director Vivian Song, former congressional staffer Linh Thai, and the Seattle Police Department’s Steven Strand, will all face questions at a community forum Thursday.
The community vetting appears to be little more than theater, though. At the Friday meeting, half of the council signaled support for Woo. And then on Sunday, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s right-hand man, consultant Tim Ceis, sent around an email to his corporate PAC buddies, instructing them to back Woo for fear of a last-minute, labor-backed campaign for Song.
These events present the council with a choice. Will the new members shake their early reputation as corporate stooges and pick someone who will better embody Mosqueda’s politics, such as Sugiyama or Song? Or will they bow to corporate overlords and let the city know who’s really in charge?
Democracy Schmemocracy
In the special meeting on Friday, Council President Sara Nelson allowed each of her colleagues to nominate one of the 72 people who applied to fill Mosqueda’s empty seat.
First up, Council Member Bob Kettle nominated Woo, a favorite among the public commenters who argued that Asian Americans needed more representation in City Hall. At least four other nominees—Nariya, Sugiyama, Song, and Thai—are also Asian American.
Kettle said he valued Woo’s past civic involvement. That civic involvement includes, most notably, fighting alongside the King County Republicans to block the expansion of a homeless shelter while thousands of people sleep on the streets every night. After that, Woo ran for City Council against Council Member Tammy Morales in 2023, despite having only voted in two local elections in her decades of voter eligibility in Seattle.
Some argue that it’s almost undemocratic for the council members to give their friend and slate-mate, Woo, a free push up the ladder after she lost her election, even if she only lost by about 400 votes. Plus, Woo’s appointment could set up an awkward work environment—Morales and Woo were not exactly making friendship bracelets together during the campaign. Kettle did not respond to my request for comment.
But Kettle’s in good company supporting Woo. Council Members Cathy Moore and Martiza Rivera both said they wanted to nominate Woo, but they nominated Nariya and Cotto, respectively, since Kettle had already picked her. Council Member Rob Saka also shouted Woo out before nominating Solomon, another former competitor of Morales’s. Council Member Joy Hollingsworth said someone already proposed her top choice before she deferred to Thai, which suggests she may support Woo, too. Nelson initially said she wouldn’t nominate anyone, as she was happy with the choices, but then in her rambling she convinced herself to nominate Strand.
Ceis, a consultant to the Mayor and the architect of the failed anti-homeless initiative Compassion Seattle, seems to have counted this as six votes for Woo, according to an email he sent to conservative donors last weekend asking them to rally around her.
Full email got out, so here it is pic.twitter.com/LDtoohHLxs
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) January 16, 2024
Ceis said big business had “earned the right” to tell the council who to pick because they paid for their seats with more than $1 million in outside spending.
Who Is Business Afraid Of?
While the email caused a stir online, at least one nominee should be flattered. Song, rumored to have had her eye on the position for several months, seems to have scared Ceis enough to inspire his bat signal to the business community.
Ceis warned that labor, specifically the building trades and the MLK Labor Council, want to elect Song, who got nominated by Council Member Dan Strauss. MLK Labor did not endorse Song until Wednesday, days after Ceis sounded the alarm on Song.
Ceis said Song can blend in with the moderates, but he’s not convinced her loyalties lie with big business, since she endorsed Mosqueda and District 4 candidate Ron Davis in 2023. Though she’s a force when it comes to raising progressive revenue, Mosqueda is not some fringe leftist. She won her seat in 2021 by almost 20 points while conservatives demolished progressives in the other races, and in 2023 Harrell endorsed her for the King County Council over the more conservative Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon. Does that make your buddy Bruce too lefty to lead, Ceis?
Song’s totally mild application makes Ceis’s red scare attempt look ridiculous. Song marketed herself as an economist who will responsibly steward public dollars and restore business to its former, pre-pandemic glory. She also kept cordial with the cops, writing that she believes Seattle needs a police force “scaled to the size and needs of a growing city.” Plus, she’s a big supporter of development. She should be a fucking hit with the big boys downtown!
What’s Left for the Left?
Progressives, who are not as aligned on Song as Ceis may believe, have also signaled support for Sugiyama.
Morales nominated Sugiyama because she has experience working at the City and, in her role at the Human Services Department, demonstrates expertise on homelessness, one of Seattle’s most pressing issues.
Not only that, but the fourth-generation Japanese American and daughter of activists would bring much-desired representation for Asian Americans in Seattle. Civil rights leader and former King County Council Member Larry Gossett, Velma Veloria (the first Asian American woman elected to the Washington Legislature), and labor activist Michael Woo sang Sugiyama’s praises in an op-ed published by the South Seattle Emerald.
Her application didn’t make her sound like a raging leftist by any stretch, but the public will understand more about each of the eight nominees after the community forum on Thursday.
Nelson expects the council to vote on the appointment next Tuesday. The appointee will sit in the citywide seat until the voters choose for themselves in the next general election. However, Nelson said that she wants to appoint someone who will run to retain the seat for sake of continuity. So, if the council picks one of two literal cops or Woo, then progressives will have to mount a challenge against that person later this year.
Well now things are in a complete mess for Song because of her residency issues.
https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2024/01/things-heating-up-for-new-seattle-city.html
There had been rumors when Song ran that she didn’t really live in her then-district (school board director districts have been redrawn since that election). But she had a Ballard address so that issue seemed solved. But now it appears that Song moved to Capitol Hill early on after her election. She may have told SPS and the Board but she certainly never told SPS parents, especially those in her district.
She seems to say that she (or her lawyer) asked SPS Legal about her issue and they seemed to say it was okay. (Legally she doesn’t have to notify the public but ethically? C’mon.)
But the RCW seems to say that she SHOULD have stated that she wasn’t living in her district so as to open up that seat for the November 2023 election. But she didn’t and may be sitting in her seat illegally.
So tonight’s Board meeting should be quite interesting. Of course, this Board did nothing when two previous directors – Chandra Hampson and Zachary DeWolf – were found to have harassed, intimidated and bullied to senior Black staffers. So if they attack Song tonight, it might be worth asking why they said nothing when an independent investigation found Hampson and DeWolf guilty of HIB. And, some members of this Board have sought to marginalize Song’s work (and she’s the most active overseer of staff work) so they may indeed go after her.
Also of interest at tonight’s Board meeting, one of the SPS teachers at a recent Gaza protest -she appeared to write on the Starbucks Roastery building – is on the speakers list. Her topic? “Staff safety: addressing recent wave of doxxing and intimidation of SPS employees 2. Student safety: growing need for adequate response from SPS to address how ongoing genocide in Gaza is impacting safety of not just staff but students and the need to break the silence in classrooms about what’s happening in Gaza while offering educational resources and space to learn about what’s happening (and has been happening for 75 years) in a meaningful and truthful way”
Grab your popcorn, kids! (SPS board meetings are streamed live on their YouTube channel.)
Song is a liar that got her seat by deceiving (renting an apartment in Ballard because she didnt want to run for school board against Sarju) and playing the system. This is an extreme way to get a school board seat, a seat that does not pay. Maybe she had her eye for city council all along so she could have influence over construction. Her husband is a developer after all…
I love the smell of corporate h8 astroturf in the morning
Does anyone else find this characterization of elections insulting? I don’t care who the “business choice” is, and I take great care to research candidates and issues. When elections are framed as voters being sheep that get tricked into voting for this or that, well that tells me there isn’t basic respect for the common citizen:
The Stranger is all about herding the sheep with false narratives. That seems to be their only purpose these days.
Also I think it’s funny that an endorsement for Ron Davis means Song is a secret hippie or something. Davis does tech consulting and graduated from Harvard, not your standard hippie profile!
It’s a damn shame that Linh Thai is getting such short shrift – from the Council members, it seems, and certainly in this report. He is an outstanding candidate, IMO tops in this field. In his 6+ years as Adam Smith’s SE Seattle liaison, Linh worked on educational issues, gang member rehabilitation, small business support, and other economic issues. He gained experience in budgeting. He has a military background, and lobbying and advocacy experience on behalf of Vietnamese and East African communities. He was Adam Smith’s eyes and ears in the Seattle precincts of the 9th Congressional District. It’s hard to imagine any other candidate in this field matching his “street cred.” He has ties to both labor and business. I am confident he would “hit the ground running,” with very little “learning curve,” and would work harmoniously with this Council, or any other.
@7 — there’s an easy explanation. The Stranger hates Adam Smith, therefore anyone who works for him is to be automatically disregarded.
Given the shitshow in a death spiral, SPS is, no one from the Board should be considered qualified to do anything other than run Blockbuster Video, CDNow, Half.com, or the KCRHA.
Gawd, this is hilarious:
“Mosqueda is not some fringe leftist. She won her seat in 2021 by almost 20 points while conservatives demolished progressives in the other races, and in 2023 Harrell endorsed her for the King County Council over the more conservative Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon.”
On election night 2021, Mosqueda, an incumbent with a huge war chest, was leading a complete nobody who had spent almost nothing by an anemic three percentage points. Right then, she may well have made her decision to quit the City Council rather than lose her next election there. Mayor Bruce Harrell then eagerly played politics to help her get out of his way.
Does anyone at the Stranger even know how politics actually works?
“So, if the council picks one of two literal cops or Woo, then progressives will have to mount a challenge against that person later this year.”
Because waiting for the incumbent to establish a voting record and behavior pattern in office, then determining based upon that record whether support had been earned or not — that is all what citizens of a democracy might do. The Stranger prefers to behave like the apparatchiks of a one-party state.
“Plus, Woo’s appointment could set up an awkward work environment—Morales and Woo were not exactly making friendship bracelets together during the campaign.”
Yeah, if it got really bad, a situation could develop where one Council Member constantly acted in divisive opposition to the rest of the Council, constantly calling them corporate sellouts and whores, contributing nothing but performative nonsense until her term expired.
I do believe the current Council has some experience in weathering that.