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- Hold your nose and vote for Sally Bagshaw!
We have to apologize: We endorsed Sally Bagshaw in 2009, and she’s been mostly terrible. Four months after being elected, she voted for a bill underwritten by the Downtown Seattle Association to fine aggressive panhandlers, even though the city’s human rights commission found it violated the city’s human rights standards. Bagshaw recanted her vote in our endorsement meeting this year (a little late?), saying, “That was wrong.” She said she voted for it because it funded community court. But we went back and looked it up—and guess what? The bill had zero money for community court. Did Bagshaw have a brain fart? Has she been huffing embalming fluid? Who knows? More Bagshaw bullshit: She refused to support a resolution opposing the surge of anti-LGBT violence in Russia, even though the Russian consul asked the city for its position. On urban planning, she’s been the council’s leader for a waterfront design that—instead of a thoroughfare for pedestrians with lots of businesses—will create an empty, windswept plaza with a new eight-lane highway. Bagshaw was also the only council member to oppose public campaign financing. Wealthy herself, she calls public financing “too rich” and says it will help unqualified candidates—missing the point that public financing of campaigns is proven to recruit candidates who are more diverse and more qualified.
Bagshaw has gotten some stuff right: She supported so-called greenway cycle paths in neighborhoods, she was on the right side of a vote to make homeless encampments safer by regulating them, and, as chair of the council’s parks committee, she backed more funding for parks and community centers. Most relevant to this endorsement, though, is that Bagshaw isn’t her dumbshit opponent.
Sam Bellomio (pronounced “bella-me-o,” not “blow me, oh”) is best known for delivering pointless tirades during public testimony at council meetings. But the council should ignore him. Last winter, Bellomio called the council “terrorists,” and last week he told the city council that their meeting was “worse than Nazi Germany.”
We’re regretfully endorsing Bagshaw, even though she’s sucked (here’s hoping she gets better), and we’re enthusiastically endorsing public campaign financing—again—because Bagshaw deserves a real challenger next time.
Read every single last one of our endorsements RIGHT HERE!
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