On Monday morning, 28 year-old Central District renter and homelessness policy wonk Alexis Mercedes Rinck announced her campaign for the Position 8 citywide city council seat, making her the first (and long-awaited) challenger to appointee Council Member Tanya Woo, who announced her run to retain the seat earlier this month.
Rinck was born in Pacifica, California (home to the world’s most beautiful Taco Bell and actual taquerias, she assured me) to two teenage parents who met in a gang. “That sounds like the start of a gritty, Oscar-award-winning movie, but it was a really hard start to life,” she told The Stranger. Her father spent her whole childhood incarcerated and went on to face chronic homelessness and substance abuse disorder. Her mother ended up losing custody in the throes of the juvenile detention system, so Rinck went to live with her grandparents.
Her grandparents lived in a “better-resourced” community where she said she could better heal from the trauma of her early childhood. She went on to become a community organizer protesting the Trump administration, a Planned Parenthood canvasser, a proud food service worker, a college graduate for both bachelors and masters degrees, and the director of subregional planning and equitable engagement at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), where she developed the authority’s multi-jurisdictional five-year plan.
“I am a living testament that when we invest in young people, regardless of what kind of adverse childhood experiences they’ve had, we can feel and we can actually change generations,” Rinck said.
Last November, corporate donors bought a fleet of conservative council members to do their bidding at City Hall. In just the first three months of the new council’s term, Rinck sees “the early signs” of regression with talk of rolling back the minimum wage for gig workers and reversals to oversight bills. Perhaps most frighteningly of all, Rinck does not see a clear plan to address the City’s looming quarter-billion-dollar budget shortfall. She fears without more strong, progressive voices on the council, life-saving services that helped her–and that could have helped her parents–could be on the chopping block.
In Wonks We Trust
Rinck promises to bring unique expertise to homelessness policy. She knows the ins and outs of the region’s complex human services apparatus and how it interacts with foster care, courts, jails, and all that. She knows where all the holes are, and she’s gonna fill ‘em.
She also knows what disrupts the system—criminalization and sweeps. Rinck, whose mom passed away while dealing with addiction, does not support the council’s recent law to criminalize public drug use because she doesn’t think criminalization helps people recover.
Rinck also said that random sweeps do not help bring people inside because they separate unhoused people from their case workers, which can set them back on the road to housing. She would support a ban on sweeps in extreme weather because she knows from working at KCRHA that the only focus in those cases should be survival, not hauling stuff from one block to another. Rinck would support expanding KCRHA’s slower approach of encampment resolutions, where caseworkers establish a relationship with people at the encampment, make a list of names, and over weeks–sometimes months–work to place them in shelter or housing.
Rinck apologized several times in her interview for going “too in the weeds” on homelessness policy, but it was refreshing—The Stranger is not convinced all the council members even know what the acronym “KCRHA” stands for.
Rinck emphasized her belief that homelessness is a housing problem–a belief that just so happens to be founded in actual evidence. During our interview, she even pulled out a printed copy of the Mayor’s recently released draft Comprehensive Plan (she’s usually more eco-friendly, but the housing crisis makes it worth the paper). She’s admittedly still working through the document, but so far she wants a plan that allows for more housing, and not just housing concentrated in “urban villages.”
Still, Rinck wants to upzone “thoughtfully” because she’s worried about displacement. To combat displacement, she would support community land trusts and programs to help turn renters into homeowners. So don’t say she’s never agreed with the current council!
🚨Wee-Ooh 🚨Wee-Ooh🚨
I know we are in the middle of a housing crisis and nothing could possibly be more important, but right now the city council is laser-focused on hiring hundreds more cops despite cities across the country failing to fill their forces to satisfy their fancy. The council has been unable to lure enough officers with hefty hiring bonuses, so they’re talking about creative ways to bring in more boys in blue, including subsidizing their housing.
Rinck said the City should lower its hiring goals and put that money toward other things to promote public safety. Rinck would rather put more funding toward the recently launched dual dispatch program, mobile treatment programs, and gun violence prevention programs—not ShotSpotter, to be clear.
Show Me the Money
To fulfill any campaign promise—whether it be ensuring a healthy Office of Labor Standards or shoring up eviction prevention assistance—Rinck needs to find money in the City budget. The City currently faces a deficit of $230 million, which amounts to about 14% of the funds the Mayor and council actually steward.
The new council seems keen to cut in order to balance the budget, but Rinck said that could cost critical programs. Instead, she said she supports progressive revenue “with my full heart and everything I am.” She doesn’t have a favorite tax right now, but she likes the ideas from the recent report from Progressive Revenue Stabilization Taskforce and the supplemental analysis from Transit Riders Union.
When it comes to cuts, Rinck hesitated to name departments that could use a trim, but she promises she spends her free time “bopping around the budget” in hopes of finding a clear answer. At least she’s showing some initiative there—the recently elected members liked to tell reporters they had to wait to be elected before they could see the budget.
No Time for Opps
Rinck told The Stranger she didn’t want to waste too much precious campaign time comparing herself to the current council. She wants to focus on the issues, which should in itself make clear the differences between her, Woo, and the council as a whole.
Besides, despite her differences, Rinck said she’s confident she can win over her potential future colleagues and pass policy. In her role at KCRHA, she convinced five towns in North King County to fund the authority and join the regional approach, towns she said some people had “written off” as unwilling to cooperate with something related to Seattle.
“Often people kind of write people off and assume they won’t support something because they’re ‘that way,’” Rinck said. “And sometimes that’s true, but you gotta ask the question, you gotta have the tough conversation, you gotta try.”
After big wins for conservatives in 2023 empowered the Mayor’s borderline cultish #OneSeattle regime, Rinck’s willingness to stray from the popular opinion on council stands out, particularly in comparison to the recent appointment process over the seat she’s running for. More than 70 council hopefuls applied for the citywide seat when progressive powerhouse Teresa Mosqueda left it vacant in January. With the stamp of approval from the council’s corporate donors, recently failed District 2 candidate Woo won the seat despite the top contenders’ willingness to grovel before the dais.
Rinck’s candidacy marks a shift from pathetic ass-kissing to progressive ass-kicking.
“I’m of the belief that big business shouldn’t be deciding who represents this City,” Rinck said. “You know, Woo was appointed by five people. I’m looking to be elected by 100,000 people.”
After a decade of “progressive” rule which left city with skyrocketing homelessness, crime, car thefts, shooting, murders, human trafficking, rapes, rents, and overdoses, Seattle has moved on from this failure.
And, Hannah, a nose-ring is not a qualification for public office.
@1
“ And, Hannah, a nose-ring is not a qualification for public office.”
For progressives it is.
“…making her the first (and long-awaited) challenger to appointee Council Member Tanya Woo…”
Woo was appointed in late January. Hannah’s “long-awaited” link (to Twitter/X, natch’; Elon Musk being so wonderfully progressive) was posted on 12 March.
For the modern Stranger, less than two weeks ago has become “long-awaited.”
Glad to see a challenge to Woo, who should have been disqualified from appointment to the council for at least a year after losing the previous election. There’s too much potential for bribery and other unethical dealmaking if losing candidates can be immediately appointed to vacancies by the winners. (To be clear, I’m not saying anything of the sort happened in Woo’s case. But it illustrates a moral hazard inherent in current law that the council should fix.)
@5, huh? This isn’t uncommon. A losing candidate (Abel Pacheco) was appointed to Dist 4 after the incumbent left early. Where’s the conflict of interest?
Photo has no nose-ring. Just announced and she’s already embroiled in a scandal.
@6: Pacheco was appointed 3.5 years after losing the 2015 D4 seat and then didn’t file to run in 2019. Not exactly the same with Woo, who was appointed just a couple months after losing and then filed to fill the seat she was appointed for. She was essentially anointed to the City Council. Pretty sketchy move.
No thanks. You should have stayed in Pacifica.
You too Hannah. Please take your groupie with you when you move to Denver. Minneapolis is great too I hear.
@5/8 the notion that Woo is somehow tainted because she lost a district election is so absurd. The only reason the both of you feel that way is because she has a different political viewpoint. I have no doubt if this was a progressive council and they had appointed Ron Davis you would be cheering the addition of another progressive voice. If you want to complain about Woo that’s fine but right now you and TS just sound like sour grapes.
@6 I don’t know of any unethical conduct in Pacheco’s appointment either. But what I’m saying is the current system creates an opportunity that sooner or later someone will try to capitalize on. (“If you stop running those damaging ads against me and I win, my allies and I will support you for the vacancy.”) In any case it arguably disrespects the voters who just rendered a verdict on that candidate.
@11 Banning the appointment of newly defeated candidates for a year or so is an ideologically neutral, good-government proposal that the entire council should endorse. Sure, personally I’d rather have seen Davis appointed than Woo, but I would still support changing the law.
@11: Ha! “Tainted” is your word. If you don’t find the Woo appointment and subsequent filing sketchy (which it inarguably is…hence the apples-to-oranges Pacheco spin) that says a thing or two about YOUR political viewpoint, don’t you think?
“Tanya Woo 2024: Embrace the Sketchiness!”
@13 feel free to point out the sketchiness. I don’t think losing an election qualifies. There are numerous examples of people who lose elections yet get appointed to administrative gov positions like the cabinet or other offices. Our current VP lost an election. Is that sketchy too? We should want the best people representing us. You can argue Woo isn’t the best but like I stated losing the election isn’t one of the criteria.
Obviously homeless hardcore advocate swant2 written all over it. How about em mercedes, is she some how aspired to own one?
Quelle surprise: persons who bitterly opposed Woo replacing Morales on the Council now bitterly oppose Woo joining Morales on the Council. Talk about sore ‘winners’…
@12: “In any case it arguably disrespects the voters who just rendered a verdict on that candidate.”
The electorate in District 2 was almost perfectly evenly divided on the question of whether Morales OR Woo should be on the Council. No one has yet asked them if BOTH should be on the Council. The voters of the entire city will now decide that latter question. Voters making such decisions is now bad for democracy?
(Also, if we can’t have something simply because it could somehow someday be used to bribe an elected official, then we can’t have anything.)
@16 Well, that’s why I included the “arguably” hedge. It’s tangential to my moral-hazard case for changing the law but I think it does explain some of the ill will toward Woo. Many people are likely thinking, “We just voted against her, and she’s on the council anyway? Something isn’t right about that.” Some jurisdictions have what are inelegantly called “sore loser” laws that have a similar aim of respecting the voters’ will.
@17: Washington state already forbids the loser of a primary election from becoming a write-in challenger in the general election.
In this case, though, you’re proposing forbidding the Council from appointing a replacement to a city-wide seat because a very small majority in one single district voted for someone else. Why should barely half the voters in a single district have the power to bind the entire Council on the matter of the entire city?
(Also, you revealed a lot about your real motivations when you described voters in District 2 voting “against” Woo, instead of voting “for” Morales — or just for the best candidate overall. As I’d already written, who says a majority would not have picked both, if given that choice?)
I always laugh when I read the comments section on articles like this… I am convinced that a small group of right-wing “concern trolls” monitor the stranger for new articles so that they can jump in early to try to convince anyone reading that Seattle is/was a “Liberal Hell Hole” until finally being saved by a newly conservative city council.
I’m just surprised that y’all don’t go post “me too” comments on seattle times op-eds complaining about street use permits for groups that don’t explicitly do the bidding of billionaires.
@19: So, do the results of Seattle’s general elections over the past couple of cycles more closely resemble the positions advocated by the Stranger, or do they more closely resemble the the positions advocated by the Stranger’s commenters? Discuss.