Comments

1

If someone is working within journalistic standards wouldn't they post this after rather than before communicating with the guy?

The default in this post isn't to be skeptical but to take him at his word. Hmm.

3

This is what happens when you aren’t “woke” enough for the Uber left.

4

I hope he reconsiders. Mike O’brien is a disaster. He is so blinded by ideology that he can’t govern. The homeless industrial complex is fueling the zombie apocalypse shitshow and ruining Seattle. We need a statewide plan to address the opioid, mental health and affordability crisis and a reassessment of the city’s failed go-it-alone policies that have made Seattle a magnet for lost souls and addicts.

5

" Socially liberal and fiscally conservative, Rufo calls himself a centrist, and if elected to city council, he hopes to counter what he called the "activist class."

Lol.

6

lol I'm just gonna make a bunch of sock accounts to decry "I am as liberal as the next Seattlite but something about the activist class must be done!" just to see what kind of bullshit I can get Katie to "report" on.

8

@2,

"As for who has been targeting Rufo and his family, I've reached out the the [sic] one-time candidate and will update this post when I hear back."

As the post hasn't been updated, I would think it safe to assume she hasn't heard back.

10

Kind of funny that the Slog peanut gallery only demands journalistic standards and hard evidence for certain things, isn't it?

12

Jesus fucking Christ. Great stenography, Stranger. No pointing out that he's one of the people suing the city over its plan to tax the wealthy. No mention about how he's on the board of the Washington Policy Center or how he's a fellow at the Discovery Institute. Just, "Oh, no! He says he got all this support, and now he says he's been harassed, so he's quitting!"

I always thought the first rule of journalism was, "If someone says your mom called, check it out." He says he was harassed, have him produce some evidence. Shit, Rufo's story about someone in Ballard being chased with an axe should have gotten someone at the Stranger's office to say "Hey, maybe we should check out if that actually happened?" before giving this schmoe free advertising.

13

From the zero name recognition to the fundraising flop, his seems to think that ”harrassment” means people aren’t sufficiently supporting his candidacy. That makes him the Real Victim.

“Socially liberal and fiscally conservative” is a tired, fake canard that just means “Republican but doesn’t want the good homos he personally knows to end up in the mass graves with the rest of us.”

I’d suggest he try Orange County, but they’ve shitkicked their conservatives back to the 1950s as well.

@ 4, “homeless industrial complex” gave me a much needed guffaw, thank you.

14

This article lacks context.

16

@3 "This is what happens when you aren’t “woke” enough for the Uber left."

Shows you don't know shit - every good leftist has shifted to Lyft long ago.

17

herzog SUCKS

18

To all you naysayers out there. If you do a little research you can see that this did happen. Apparently, some guy was posting violent comments on their sons school facebook page. These comments have been deleted you can only see his wife's response.

@10 Concur... just stay consistent with your viewpoints Slog commentators.

19

I’m not on one side or the other, but there was a big blowup on Twitter and Facebook for anyone to see. At one point, Rufo’s wife pointed out that one of the people harassing her had kids going to the same school as hers (and said he’d been blocked from the schools Facebook group for being abusive). She said something like ‘our kids go to school together so how about we grab a coffee and discuss this’ and then he accused her of doxxing him.

20

I dealt with this as a liberal candidate in a conservative area. You deal or you fold. He opted to fold. That's a pity, but I'm not feeling sorry for people who fold.

21

I do wish he would reconsider.

22

13

Reading comprehension fail.

Try again, and this time actually read the story.

Froth!

23

16

Lol....nicely done!

24

Ah yes, that’s the tolerant, progressive seattle left at full stride. Better get woke bitches, or else!

Clack-clack!

25

@18 -- I don't think most people are denying this happened. I think they're arguing that, as a matter of journalistic temperament, Katie should have examined and presented the evidence instead of merely channeling her subject and asking us to stand by. Frankly, I like Katie's contrarian streak and get a little bored with people who answer it with textbook woke bromides and sneers. But a rushed job like this makes the author look like she's pushing a favored narrative.

Oh, and no one who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is going to do fuck-all to effectively address homelessness in Seattle.

27

Rufo was always primarily a stand-in for the city's anti-homeless zealots to rally around - sanitized platitudes that would be a nice face for the Durkan agenda of playing whack-a-mole with encampments and causing more human misery so that wealthy Seattleites don't have to bear the indignity of having to see poverty in their community.

I suspect his decision to withdraw has much more to do with another better-credentialed and poll-tested candidate stepping forward to carry that agenda than a nasty Facebook comment.

28

26

Pot, meet kettle.

29

"Socially liberal and fiscally conservative, Rufo calls himself a centrist." You can practically hear the hiss of his vape rig in the background. I bet he has a whole room in his house just to store his fedoras.

30

How much you wanna bet Sausage boy was one of the people tossing out threats to this guy and his family?

It kinda fits his character. I give it better than 50/50 odds.

31

People still use that bullshit line "socially liberal and fiscally conservative"?

32

Rufo is a right-winger whose wife publicly outed the location of kid's school and refused to apologize or delete it after numerous folks pointed out that this was totally unacceptable behavior. I cannot understand why the Stranger is flacking for him or simply repeating his lies uncritically. This is a serious problem and a breach in journalistic ethics, as well as civically irresponsible.

33

Alleged rape was enough to defeat Joe Fain so I'm fine with assuming the harassment completely happened without question.

35

RIP The Stranger

36

I suppose we will have to wait for one of the Slog trolls to step forward and face the slings and arrows.

37

I like how everyone is fine with the threats of violence and harassment, but the real crime is that someone reported the existence of the threats of violence and harassment.

40

37

Exactly.

Has this guy been a far left candidate, You know damn well the response from these same posters would be different.

41

This seems like a request for a gofundme

42

@40, I'm just asking for simple consistency and yes, I'm sure GermanSausage was one of the posters who threatened the guys kid. That's right up his alley

43

@38 the point of this story is that the candidate dropped out. The writer is following up on claims of harassment which is the stated reason for the drop out. This is not new in journalism.

45

"Centrist" is code for "Republican in a city full of Democrats."

46

1 Rule for Liberal Reporters: Trust every f-cking word a right winger says and promise to fact-check later.

46

It's news that he made this announcement. We posted his claims, ID'd them as claims, and we're following up. The days when something like this could be held back for a day or two because no one would know about it until the paper printed it... are over. He publicly withdrew, these are the reasons he gave for withdrawing, we didn't take them at face value. Sheesh.

47

Dan Savage and his fellow liberal turds at the Stranger: Making Seattle SAFER for right wingers since as long as I've lived here.

48

A real news story is the the f-cking Democrats on the City Council just gave a raise to Seattle Police for killing people of color.

49

Why is Dan Savage such a smug bitch?

50

Dan Savage is the Donald Trump of shitty Seattle newspapers.

52

"as a matter of journalistic temperament, Katie should have examined and presented the evidence instead of merely channeling her subject and asking us to stand by"

Well that would be a first for The Stranger Crowd dealing with an accusation of racism

53

"“Socially liberal and fiscally conservative” is a tired, fake canard"

Hmmm, let's see.

I voted for gay marriage and against a state income tax.

I voted for stricter gun laws but against taxes on food and carbon.

55

@53 simple labels are easier for the average reader and writer at The Stranger to get their minds around. I mean Charles has come out and called Cliff Mass a white nationalist for fuck's sake. Nuance, wit and understanding of shades of gray are lost on such simpletons.

56

“ZOMG this guy has political positions that are incongruous with Mao Zedong Thought!

KILL HIM AND HIS FAMILY BURN DOWN HIS HOUSE AND SALT THE EARTH! DEATH TO THE CAPITALIST ROADERS! THE REVOLUTION DEMANDS BLOOD!”

Now THAT’S what I call progressive!

58

Whether or not Mr. Rufo is telling the truth, politically motivated harassment does happen in Seattle, and it is wrong. Right, left, or center, it is wrong. But... it often successfully intimidates, and thus many people resort to it. Here's to a campaign about ideas and qualifications, not ad hominem attacks and harassment.

59

@46: They don't want actual reporting, they want a cheerleader to coddle their fragile world views, and curate reality itself to protect their ideological bubble.

But deep down, I think you already knew this.

60

I probably had as much a chance at winning a Seattle City Council seat as this guy and I live in Portland.

61

@58 i learned that if you don't want someone to be elected in Seattle (or really anywhere) is to harass them or their families (even the kids) make unsubstantiated claims about horrible things that happened years ago (though never got reported to the police at the time) and the list goes on and on.

It's no wonder we have such shitty choices for public service: anyone with even a slight bit of self worth would never run for political office. Bess Truman's mother was horrid that her husband wanted to run for the County Commisioner's (?) so many years ago because politics cheapens a man. Now it cheapens not just the candidate who runs but the entire society.

This will only end one way and it won't be pretty. The point of reasonable discourse to pull us out of the spiral was over in December 2000 or even back in 1992 when the GOP decided Clinton was "illegitimate".

62

@51 The only posts I found proved that something had happened but the initial posts were deleted, so there wasn't much to go off of. Reporting half of the story would be bad journalism. The reason why I brought it up was because commentators were already saying it didnt happen. Something happened, we just don't have all the details yet.

63

Well, now I’ve seen it all: Sloggers demanding actual evidence for an accusation of racism.

64

@54 & 61: Good comments. And I believe, deep-down, most Seattle voters reject the politics of intimidation. Don't sanction, enable, or emulate harassment, negative stereotyping, and character assassination. Focus on the issues, and respect others' right to disagree. Indeed, disagreement often yields the liveliest conversations, provided participants are willing to listen, not simply preach.

67

Minimum age for an account on Facebook is 13 years old.

What's the youngest Facebook account holder you've ever heard of? 8 yo is about, what, 4th or 5th grade? Is that the norm now? I think it may have been 7th or 8th grade for mine.

How is his kids FB not set to private and monitored by the parents?

Did know a dog with an account though.

Whole thing has all that weird ass crazy vibe we live in now.

68

@1 I vaguely agree. Katie's not a social media maroon, I'm sure she knows who's doing it - she likely wants Rufo to say the words first. Katie's my favorite SLOG writer, but it's not like she'd be an unbiased investigator in this case, so it seems prudent. It'd be helpful if she left a few more breadcrumbs for us, however.

69

That sounds awful. I had my fair share of harassment from the Confederate flag supporters in my legislative race. Yes, even threatening to come after all the women in my family, including kids, and being called a "white honky bitch..." for a story in the Yakima Herald about my support of I-940. (In which they sugar-coated my opponent's lack of support for the compromise bill before it went to the Supreme Court.) I had zillions of Facebook posts about how a "Confederate" was going to win the seat in Yakima/Klickitat County. Just have to keep moving on and let your supporters support you. At the end of the day, my opponent is in an armed, untrained volunteer posse and thinks all undocumented immigrants are lazy welfare queens...you know, the folks who pick our food and don't really get overtime. Not fun for this candidate, but he should have stuck it out. Liz Hallock, Yakima, WA

70

12

The first rule of Journalism is “If Your Mother Says She Loves You, Check It Out”.....

71

I hope everyone heard KUOW's report this morning.

72

@65 "like the time she read a review of a 5 year-old book about Matthew Shephard" I liked that article, it was interesting. What I dont get is why people didn't like it, its the best of both worlds. Major hate crime legislation was passed and it turns out it probably wasn't a hate crime so there's one less hate crime.

@67 It was the Elementary School Facebook page that was targeted. I missed that the first read through too.

73

@71 Missed it. Is there a link?

74

According to the report, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/

75

Has there been any update on who or how this guy was being harassed?

77

Lets all pretend the Stranger doesnt approve of harassment. I'm remember back when a staff member threatened to burn a cross in my yard for criticizing his acerbic insults of Seattles' former black female councilwoman of color. Lets also pretend the coverage of Progressive Mayoral candidate Nikita Oliver was honest and not insulting.

Lets all dance in the not-people-of-color hipster bubble of faux progressive acceptability!


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