After upwards of 20 people yelled at him online, Christopher Rufo suspended his campaign for city council against Mike O'Brien in the 6th District. Though it seemed like we'd be spared the chore of entertaining his
He's still, for instance, accepting money for his Crowdpac, a crowdfunding website that helps candidates test the waters before jumping in. So far he's raised $12,877 of his $15,000 goal from 112 donors. He also announced his upcoming lecture on "How to Solve the Homelessness Crisis" using his city council campaign's Facebook page.
Wayne Barnett, executive director at the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, says all of this post-campaign campaign activity presents no problem under the elections code.
In an e-mail, Rufo says he's "simply following through" with his December lecture on homelessness at the Ballard Landmark, which he says he had scheduled during his campaign.
Though he plans to wait until December to make his final decision, Rufo says "hundreds of people all over Seattle" have encouraged him to continue his run. Last week he told Brandi Kruse at Q13 that "thousands of people from all over Seattle, all over Puget Sound, all over the country" were encouraging himâor someone like himâto "step up for the fight." So he's either confused about his number of supporters, exaggerating for the TV cameras, losing support, or unwittingly indicating that most of his support comes from people who can't vote for him. Or he's just... saying shit.
In the interview with Kruse, he also claimed that a number of "retired military, retired law enforcement officers" have vowed to protect his family from........*checks notes*......people who get loud in the comments. You hear that, members of the activist class in the housing and bicycle communities? You better not yell at him online anymore or try to "shut down" the conversation he's trying to "begin" about how to be less helpful and humane to homeless people, or else retired cops are going to flood your feed withâgoing out on a limb hereâactual threats! I don't know if Rufo understands that he's using the rhetoric of civility to cover up for the incivility he's inserting into this race, but it's pretty obvious and dumb, and he should stop.
Anyhow, given this alleged upwelling of support, Rufo says he's still "exploring all of [his] options."
He shouldn't have to explore for long. As Hanna Brooks Olsen pointed out on Twitter, Rufo is the largest contributor to his own campaign. His $10,000 check to himself amounts to nearly half of the money he's "raised." The second largest number of contributors to his campaignâa little over 20 percentâcomes from outside the city of Seattle. Only 14 percent of Rufo's campaign contributions come from within his district. (So far he's spent the largest amount of moneyâ$1,251âon a photographer.) If people in the 6th really are pumped about the idea of relying on corporate philanthropy to fund emergency shelters and involuntarily committing homeless people in psych wards we don't have, then they're not exactly putting their money where their mouth is.