"if D1 is sick of progressives after Herbold allegedly defunded the police (she did not)"

Of course she did. She couldn't cut their funding directly since that would violate the agreement with the union and the city charter but most SPD took her words on faith and left of their own. The fact is the SPD is woefully understaffed and having issues hiring. Herbold and the SCC are the main culprits in creating that environment.

Well the barrier in front of him isn't to high... all he has to do is show up, not get to many penalty points and step over the lame duck Herbold.

I'm on board for Preston!

Im not sure why this reads with a sneer. Social worker seeks to help marginalized populations…? Guess I’m not tracking the ideological dog whistles any more, this guy sounds like a solid progressive. Maybe if a social worker says we need more cops, we need more cops?

I guess he hasn’t lived in Seattle long enough to know that one of our largest parks - Volunteer Park - is named for veterans who fought in the Spanish-American War.

No, we don’t need more memorials for veterans - we need to honor them with better veterans’ benefits including housing and medical care.

Besides, tourists are not going to take a water-taxi day-trip to West Seattle to see a memorial - or anything else. They’re going to go see Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, the Fremont Troll… and yes, the Lenin Statue while they’re there.

@1: Not only did she try to defund SPD, she did so mere months after being re-elected on a promise to ensure reasonable funding of SPD. In response, thousands of her constituents (of whom I was one at the time) signed a Change.org petition to recall her. (Yes, we all knew breaking a campaign promise is not valid legal grounds for recall; it was our frustrated thoughts that counted.)

As you noted, she’s effectively defunded SPD anyway, with the number of officers on the force now down to early ‘90s levels. Back then, Seattle did not have hundreds of homeless encampments, whose residents constantly steal from surrounding neighborhoods and businesses, so the reduced staffing of SPD hurts Seattle more now.

And for all of that recent history, the Stranger remains utterly gobsmacked and enraged by voters now daring to consider replacing CM Herbold with someone who wants more cops. Truly astounding.

What is wrong with Hannah Kreig? Her sneering sophomoric tone reads like the yearbook staff who nobody invited to parties. Grow up!

@4 Tourists will absolutely take the water taxi to West Seattle. Try catching one of the late afternoon boats Thurs/Fri during cruise ship season. You'll find 100+ tourists in front of you in the boarding line. Source: regular water taxi commuter.

spoiler alert: more money for more police means more police doing shitty things, not a safer community. but it makes the cable news watchers feel safe, that's the important thing.

@11: 2019 called. It wants its rhetoric back.

Also, more police means more encampments swept. Like voters want.

@4 -- There is also Memorial Stadium, as well as the Fort Lawton Cemetery. Seems like an odd thing to push for. By the way, the Lenin statue is simply a bizarre form of art. It is not like there are a significant number of Leninists in Fremont -- or anywhere else for that matter. Folks have called it offensive for years -- others called it art. If you aren't from around here, you might get the wrong impression (and think it is like a Robert E. Lee statue).

Otherwise, the guy seems fairly reasonable. He wants to spend money fixing the problems of the city, but of course, can't figure out how to do that. Join the club. There are limits to how much we can spend. Even if there wasn't, you run the risk (in a city) of pushing out those who would otherwise help fund things. Basically we aren't going to make any major changes in how things operate. We aren't going to defund the police, nor are we going to see a huge increase in their numbers.

The biggest issue by far is zoning and development. This is where things could change dramatically. If we allow and actually encourage the production of a lot more homes, then prices on housing will drop. This, in turn, will lead to a lot less homeless. It will also lead to a lot more taxpayers in the city. Costs go up, but operating things become a lot more efficient. The more dense a city is, the easier it is to operate. All of that could happen with changes to zoning and development. If it doesn't, everything else is just tweaking around the edges (like we have been doing for a while now).

He sounds EXACTLY like the kind of candidate Seattle's "progressives" keep voting for.

@13: “If we allow and actually encourage the production of a lot more homes, then prices on housing will drop. This, in turn, will lead to a lot less homeless.”

The numbers of homeless persons in Seattle exploded at the very same time the housing market was adding new residences at an unprecedented pace, so the recent evidence does not support this speculation.

Thanks for sharing this. I don't think this is what you intended, but this candidate sounds great and is exactly the type of person I wanted to vote for. If you hadn't written this snarky piece, I might not have found out about this candidate. So happy he's in my district and I can vote for him! Have a great day!

@5, @8, @9: CM Herbold was one of the Stranger’s favorites on the Council, along with their Dear Great Leader Sawant and Tammy Morales rounding out the trio of “progressives” there. Voters in Seattle thoroughly despise the Stranger’s agenda, and so both Herbold and Sawant are each quitting ahead of the career-ending landslide loss CM Gonzalez suffered. (Only spoiled rich girl Morales still believes she can repurchase her seat; we don’t call her a “champagne socialist” for nothing.) The writers here don’t need to wait for the next election to get insufferably cranky about the results.

@16 -- "The numbers of homeless persons in Seattle exploded at the very same time the housing market was adding new residences at an unprecedented pace, so the recent evidence does not support this speculation."

What an idiotic statement. You are like the asshole you says it is cold outside so global warming isn't real. Good God, do I have to explain basic economic theory to you? Shit, OK. Imagine you have a lemonade stand. You charge 50 cents a cup. It is raining outside. Not that many people buy your lemonade. Then it is sunny. Now lots of people want lemonade. Someone down the street sells lemonade. She charges a dollar. She sells all her lemonade. So do you.

This, you dumb ass motherfucker, is called supply and demand. Supply went up. Demand went up a lot more. Holy shit, just read the fucking studies: https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/, https://dupagehomeless.org/research-demonstrates-connection-between-housing-affordability-homelessness/.

@21: I merely described what actually happened. That you respond with name-calling doesn’t exactly lend credence to your arguments.

Yes, demand outpaced supply. You have no way of preventing a repeat. Should Seattle build more housing, of all kinds, some of it publicly subsidized, below-market-rate? Of course; I voted for most of Seattle’s housing levies for the decades I lived there. (I voted against the one which would have provided subsidies to persons at my income level; everyone at my level can bloody well pay for all of our own housing.) None of that prevented the current housing crisis, and none of it has any bearing on Seattle’s homelessness crisis, which was caused by persons who never could afford to live in Seattle moving to Seattle, arriving already homeless.

And, as you’ve again dragged out that book by Real Estate Guy and Amateur Statistician, please explain their first finding: the higher a community’s poverty rate, the lower that community’s homelessness rate. If homelessness results from economic conditions, then why are persons in poorer communities less likely to become homeless?