Endorsements are out! The Stranger’s election endorsement issue is out on the streets which means it’s time to read and vote accordingly. You can be lazy and check out our cheat sheet but it’s more fun to read our 6,000-word election opus, because it includes the phrase “fecal frittata.”
Did you see our last print cover? It had the word “endorsements” in large letters right under our logo, and along the bottom of the outer wrap it had a big ad for Egan Orion, an Amazon-approved council candidate who we most definitely did not endorse. Our print editor and art director (who have nothing to do with ads) did not intend to imply we were endorsing Orion, but that’s how some people read it. As explained in the Editor’s Note, you can find the full cover right underneath the outer cover wrap. Meanwhile, Digital Editor Chase Burns filed a complaint with the PDC, claiming the ad violated disclosure laws. Crosscut has the exclusive about Chase’s complaint.
Trailer drama comes full circle: Failed council candidate Ari Hoffman and conservative shock-jockey Dori Monson set off a weird bit of political theater this week after Hoffman used Monson’s KIRO radio show to threaten to tow RVs to various council member’s homes. When a trailer showed up parked outside Council Member Lisa Herbold’s house the internet, including activist and writer @Spekulation assumed it must be Hoffman or one of his Safe Seattle goons pranking the progressive council member.
Wooooow. Ari Hoffman (or someone working with/for him) just dropped a camper in front of Lisa Herbold’s home. Yikes. That dude is so off the rails. 😬 pic.twitter.com/7GAVKpflik
— Spek (@spekulation) October 9, 2019
Well it turned out to just be a coincidence: But that didn’t stop a man from spray painting the RV with “Dori 4 Gov.” Nor did it stop KIRO from tweeting out a video of the vandalism with the caption “This is pretty great!! #RVgate #Fedup #WakeUpCouncil.” One of KIRO’s reporters even posted a video of them breaking into the trailer and filming the interior.
So who owned the trailer? The Times’ Scott Greenstone found out that the owner was a young pregnant couple who were temporarily parking the trailer (without realizing it was outside Herbold’s house) while they cleaned it up and moved it to a sanctioned campsite. Apparently, someone threatened the couple with a knife and a glass bottle for being homeless, according to the Times, but thankfully this story has a happier ending. @Spekulation has raised over $5,000 for the young couple and Herbold offered to have the couple park their trailer in her driveway until they are ready to move it. They apparently took her up on the offer.
Sawant vs. Orion is the most expensive council race: And Jim Brunner at the Times has a look at how the two campaigns are fighting it out in the last few weeks of the campaign.
Scott wants cars off The Ave: District 4 candidate Shaun Scott is rallying around the idea of turning University Way in the U District, a.k.a. The Ave, into a pedestrian-only street. It sounds like paradise. Scott’s opponent, Alex Pedersen, predictably wouldn’t commit to making it pedestrian only and still thinks bikes should be kept of sight and on back streets.
Suburban buy-in or urban bravado? The King County Council race for District 4, the only council district entirely inside the city of Seattle, is pitting Abigail Doerr against incumbent Jeanne Kohl-Welles. Doerr thinks she is the urbanist rabble-rouser the often-overlooked council needs. Kohl-Welles thinks urbanist ideas will only be successful if you get buy-in from the suburbs. The Times has more on this fight.
We’ve got issues: Nathalie and I spent the last two weeks boiling down every single council race into the biggest policy difference between each candidate. Here’s what we found: In District 1, we decided it was funding homeless service policies. In District 2, it was the candidates’ approach to police accountability. In District 3, it was progressive taxation. In District 4, it was zoning laws. District 5 was the criminalization of homelessness. District 6 was homeless sweeps. And in District 7 we decided it was housing density.
