Did Bruce Harrell buy his 37th Legislative District Democrats endorsement? Harrell calls the accusation hurtful and offensive.
Did Bruce Harrell buy his 37th Legislative District Democrats endorsement? Harrell calls the accusation "hurtful and offensive." Kelly O

In covering the drawn out parade of egos that is local election season in Seattle, there is one thing I have had an especially hard time giving a fuck about: legislative district Democratic groups. These are basically the super-local affiliates of the party. They work to elect Democrats, which is, y'know, generally a good thing.

But have you ever been to one of the endorsement meetings at which they decide who to get behind?

Candidates round up their friends and supporters, and then those people get last-minute memberships (if they're not already members, which, let's be real, many people are not) and they show up on the appointed night to vote for the person who told them to be there. All of which feels a lot more like a high school student body election than some great exercise in grassroots democracy.

For candidates, the benefit of all the pre-vote hustling comes after getting an LD endorsement: The precinct committee officers in each legislative district usually take stacks of candidate literature or sample ballots (marked with the chosen candidates) out to voters in the district. So if you're a candidate, it's like adding another arm onto the multi-armed monster that is your voter outreach machine. Sorry for that metaphor.

Anyway, these things tend to be high on drama. And, in typical fashion, a very weird scandal, complete with comparisons to Bush v. Gore, is now playing out in the 37th Legislative District Democrats group. Yesterday, the candidate at the center of this very weird scandal, Council Member Bruce Harrell, finally responded to the accusation that he effectively bought votes to help secure an endorsement from the group. Or, at least, his campaign did.

We'll get to that response in a moment, but first you need some backstory. Yes, you do. I promise. Here it is:

A couple weeks ago, on September 21, southeast Seattle's 37th Legislative District Democrats held an endorsement meeting at which they decided to endorse Bruce Harrell for council District 2, Pamela Banks for council District 3, and Tim Burgess and Lorena González for the two citywide seats.

Banks, Burgess, and Harrell had all failed to secure endorsements from the 37th ahead of the primary election. So the vote to endorse them for the general election appeared to be a shot of good fortune for the so-called establishment—as well as the latest chapter in the 37th's ongoing identity crisis about whether they're establishment-type Democrats or Kshama-Sawant-supporting Democrats. (This is the same group that wouldn't allow Sawant in a debate earlier this year.)

But since that fateful September 21 meeting, controversy has been swirling about just how Banks, Burgess, and Harrell won those endorsements. As Seattlish reported Tuesday, a member of the 37th's board, Pam Keeley, filed a complaint with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission claiming that she had reason to believe that at the last minute Harrell's campaign may have paid for memberships for 15 new members to join the organization, only 10 of whom actually lived in the district and were allowed to vote on the endorsement.

Keeley says someone from the Harrell campaign called the treasurer of the 37th LD group, Jeanne Legault, on the last possible day to become a member of the 37th before the vote and asked if the campaign could buy memberships for other people. The Harrell rep was told that wasn't allowed.

A couple hours later, someone refusing to identify himself called Legault asking if he could bring her money orders to pay membership dues for a group of new members. At 10:30 that night, a man arrived at Legault's Beacon Hill home with 15 membership applications and 15 money orders to pay the joining fees. All of the new members' applications said they worked for the for-hire car service East Side for Hire, according to Keeley's complaint. The money orders were numbered sequentially, as if they'd all been purchased at once, and had come from a Fred Meyer in Renton.

Keeley's complaint takes the weirdness one step further, alleging that once the endorsement meeting rolled around, the East Side for Hire employees were wearing Bruce Harrell t-shirts. The complaint also says both Harrell and Burgess stood near these new members during the endorsement process, instructing them on how to vote.

When the person collecting ballots approached the group, to take their paper ballots, on two occasions (Banks-Sawant contest, and Burgess-[Jon] Grant contest) some of them did not hand over their ballots; Harrell then spoke with them directly, whereupon they wrote on the ballots, and gave them to the ballot collector. This was while Harrell was close to them and Burgess was close to him. These interchanges took less than one minute and it appeared that he directed them in voting. He also spoke closely with them during the voting on the Harrell-[Tammy] Morales contest. After the voting was concluded for the endorsement in these three council contests, the East Side for Hire group left together with Bruce Harrell.

Keeley's conclusion from all this is that "the coordinated purchase of memberships by a third party allowed the East Side for Hire group to become members, swinging the endorsement vote outcome, in favor of Banks and Burgess and against Sawant and Jon Grant."

After the membership applications came in, the chair of the 37th legislative district Democrats called some of the people who'd applied. Keeley writes in her complaint:

...one person he called told him that his “boss” said to him, “you live in the 37th district, I want you to join as a member.” For a “boss” to direct or compel political activity or contributions by employees — is a serious matter.

That's still not all.

On top of that, three people voted on the endorsements whom the 37th later determined weren't eligible, either because they didn't live in the district or weren't registered members of the group. That's raising concerns about whether the voting outcomes were really fair.

To win the 37th's endorsement, a candidate needs 60 percent of the vote. Harrell won the endorsement 72-30 over his challenger, Tammy Morales. (Two people voted for no endorsement.) Take away the three ineligible votes—assuming they voted for Harrell—and he still wins, 69-30. Take away the 10 drivers, too, again assuming they voted for him, and Harrell still wins, 59-30. So mathematically, the drama here shouldn't be about whether some sort of alleged chicanery swung the 37th's endorsement to Harrell. He would have won it even if none of those now-contested votes were cast.

But...

The other races were even closer. According to the 37th, Banks, Burgess, and the Move Seattle levy were each endorsed with a margin of three or fewer votes. That makes those three ineligible votes a bigger deal in those contests.

In light of all that, some members of the 37th executive board wanted the organization to take back those endorsements or re-do the process, but the executive board voted against that. Instead, 37th chair Rory O'Sullivan posted a statement online about what happened.

After that meeting, 37th member Cleve Stockmeyer told me, "I guarantee every person in that room was outraged at Bush v. Gore. Is this Seattle's Bush v. Gore? ... It's outrageous."

Legault, the treasurer, wouldn't speak with The Stranger, saying O'Sullivan instructed her not to. When I followed up with her a second time, Legault said by e-mail that "due to the unbelievable amount of lies, slander and libel regarding my actions, I have had to hire legal counsel. He has advised me to take no further action in this matter." (Yikes.)

Legault and Keeley, the board member who filed the ethics complaint, are both Sawant supporters. So is Jonathan Rosenblum. He's actually a paid Sawant consultant, and according to a note at the end of the ethics complaint he "wishes to join the complaint."

And while the pro-Sawant and Sawant-skeptical wings of the 37th are sometimes at odds—"I’ve never seen it so vitriolic," Keeley told me of the internal split—O'Sullivan, the group's chair, is no Burgess lackey if his campaign donations are any indication. He's given to Burgess's opponent, Grant; lefties Lisa Herbold and Mike O'Brien; and González.

The Harrell campaign wouldn't comment to The Stranger at first, either, but it told Seattlish it denied the claims in the complaint.

Meanwhile, O'Sullivan's statement took responsibility for not recording who had delivered the membership applications to Legault late at night—the kind of thing the LDs are supposed to keep track of. But that didn't really clear anything up.

Then, both O'Sullivan and the Harrell campaign expanded on what they say happened during this shit show of a process.

O'Sullivan now says he's talked to the person who made that 10:30 p.m. visit to the treasurer's house.

I have spoken with Abdul Yusuf, who delivered the 15 membership applications and payment for them on that day. Based on my conversation with Mr. Yusuf I believe that to the extent that any campaign violations occurred, the violations were made by the 37th LD Democrats, not by Mr. Yusuf or by any campaign. As the chair of the organization, the blame for those errors lies with me. All political parties and campaigns must follow strict laws and procedures regarding elections and their finance and we are working hard to ensure that we remain in compliance with those rules.

(Yusuf is the owner of CNG For Hire, according to information posted by the mayor's office last year.)

In the statement, O'Sullivan also touches on a sentiment that's been floating out there since this meeting happened: That it's wrong to assume that a group of for-hire drivers, many of them immigrants, couldn't decide to join and vote on their own volition.

These questions have made the new members feel unwelcome, which is the opposite of our goal as a district. We want all residents of the 37th district who share the values of the Democratic Party to feel comfortable and welcome at our meetings and as part of our community.

Harrell's campaign representative Jeremy Racca also posted this statement on Facebook yesterday saying the allegations are "untrue."

"The facts alleged the complaint below are untrue. We have submitted declarations under penalty of perjury [ed. note: what?] that the 15 members who joined the 37th were not part of our campaign and our campaign did not pay for any members' dues. The Chair of the 37th District has apologized to the newly joined members for the accusations and accepted responsibility for their errors. (http://37dems.org/) The money orders that were submitted showed their own signatures and the new members have stated that they paid their own dues and never received payment for dues from any campaign. There were also dozens of members from the same community who paid their dues online during the lawful period of time for endorsements with their own credit card. The campaign never even knew who these members were during the endorsement process and they were never introduced to members of the campaign.

Because of these baseless accusations and the manner in which they were made, without even the courtesy of contacting the East African members or the campaigns to see what had occurred, the 37th Legislative district has set itself back in terms of morale, trust and effectiveness. We will do everything we can to help them get through it. Councilmember Harrell has been endorsed by the 37th in 2007, 2011, 2013 and 2015 and the accusation that we would ever compromise or members of the East African community would compromise that process is hurtful and offensive."

And with that, we have reached the end of current knowledge on what the fuck happened.

The SEEC's investigation of the complaint is ongoing, but the next chapter may unfold Monday, when the 37th LD Democrats have their next meeting.