Three windsocks.

As I wrote before, the labels are silly: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/12/28/78789251/best-and-worst-moments-for-progressives-on-seattle-city-council-in-2022/comments/8

As far as these members go: I've really grown to like Herbold. I wasn't impressed early on, but she has grown as a member. Her positions have been sensible and not aimed at currying favor from one group or another. For example, she opposed the streetcar even though it would upset downtown business interests and transit zealots. To be clear, I think we should spend more money on transit -- but like a lot of people who spend a lot of time looking at transit issues, I think the streetcar is stupid. It is a shame she isn't running, especially since I think she can win. I understand her reasoning though. It is quite likely she would see opposition from NIMBYs in West Seattle, and most likely, some sort of rabble-rousing leftist that The Stranger staff falls in love with. That would be enough to split the vote, and she would come in third in the primary. Then the NIMBY candidate would take a seat, right next to Sara Nelson (who won the race in precisely this fashion). If we can't get a woman like Brianna Thomas on the council (but end up with Nelson) I can understand why Herbold doesn't want to keep playing the game.

As for the other two members, I think both have been doing a good job from the get go. Both are a big step up from the members they replaced.

@2: I finished out my 30+ years in Seattle living two blocks from the Junction. The idea CM Herbold could now win re-election is simply risible, and it has nothing to do with those phantom NIMBYs who are to blame for all left-wing failures. The only reason a politician bows out a year early is when her polling numbers are so bad, even standing for re-election would be a complete waste of time, money, and effort. She’s merely saving herself and her supporters the certain result of a multi-term incumbent losing the primary.

Why? Because she won re-election last time, just barely, by promising proper funding for SPD. Immediately after Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, she threw in with the Defunderpants Gnomes, much to the Stranger’s delight. (That the Stranger has consigned these very same of her actions to the Memory Hole tells us all we need to know about the Stranger’s loyalty.)

When the SPD abandoned the East Precinct to the murderous chaos of the CHAZ/CHOP, CM Herbold, in her capacity as head of the Public Safety, should have DONE HER JOB, by convening hearings and issuing a blizzard of subpoenas to everyone from the-Chief Best to the head of SPOG and on down within their organizations, with the object of finding out why the Pike-Pine Corridor now had no police presence. (In addition to determining what happened to cause this abject failure of civic responsibility, the very existence of such hearings could have helped to indemnify the city against the lawsuits which have since been filed.)

Did she do any of that? Did she even try? No. Whilst young black men died violently in the CHAZ/CHOP — under the rallying cry of “Black Lives Matter,” no less! — she wrote this miserable catalog of her own failures, which did not include the failures listed above: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/30/44008034/we-must-end-the-conditions-in-chop-that-are-leading-to-violence-and-death

After that performance, asking for her job back would have merited nothing beyond raucous laughter from the citizens of District 1.