Nathan Rouse, a public defender in Seattle, is throwing his hat into the ring to unseat incumbent City Attorney Ann Davison.
As we shift back into defense-against-the-constant-onslaught-of-attacks-on-human-rights mode, otherwise known as a Donald Trump presidency, Rouse believes Seattle needs a city attorney who will not kowtow to President Donald Trump, but will stand up to him one lawsuit at a time. He argues that Davison's tough-on-crime approach has failed. If elected, Rouse, who identifies as a "progressive prosecutor," pledges to lead the City Attorney’s Office with an evidence-based approach.
Since the role of the CAO is limited to civil cases and prosecuting misdemeanors, Rouse will need to advocate for the policies he supports to a City Council that, as it stands currently, does not align with his beliefs. He thinks he has what it takes.
Rouse, 41, is a Philadelphia native. He moved to Seattle 20 years ago where he worked at REI and then at a sailing magazine. After attending law school at Seattle University, Rouse worked for "Big Law" firms, he held clerkships for federal judges, and, for the last four years, has been a public defender. It was that work in the Department of Public Defense that he says motivated him to run for city attorney.
"What I've really seen the last four years as a public defender is how ineffective the misdemeanor system is," Rouse said. "We have a revolving door without meaningful results. We have a very large volume of cases that are filed without successfully interrupting the cycles of crime."
Under Davison, who, in case you forgot switched her voter registration from Democrat to Republican in 2020, the CAO completely disbanded Seattle Municipal Court's Community Court, a pioneering therapeutic court that offered low-level offenders services instead of prosecution. Davison also implemented the "High Utilizers Initiative," which allowed the CAO to target people who had more than 12 misdemeanors. She also supported the City Council's Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) and Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) zones that restricted the movements of those arrested for drug or prostitution charges. Additionally, she has made prosecuting more misdemeanors a priority.
Rouse believes that none of these policies have been effective or beneficial.
"I really see an emphasis on filing cases and an emphasis on performative public safety policies to score political points instead of actually trying to solve these issues with the resources that we have," Rouse said.
He may have a point. The High Utilizers Initiative targeted those top offenders, half of whom were ordered by judges to undergo competency tests. Of those, 55% of offenders were found incompetent to stand trial. Rouse believes that continuing to prosecute these individuals does not solve the underlying problems. Additionally, the Seattle Times just reported the CAO is not even enforcing SODA.
"I see that policy as a waste of time," Rouse said. "It's a distraction."
If elected, Rouse said he would not prosecute SOAP/SODA violations similar to how former city attorney Pete Holmes stopped prosecuting misdemeanor cannabis crimes when he took over the office.
These policies, as well as Davison's focus on prosecuting more and more misdemeanors, mean fewer important crimes get prosecuted, according to Rouse. Driving under the influence and domestic violence cases—the serious things the CAO can prosecute and what Rouse wants to focus on—are falling by the wayside.
"A lot of those cases are getting dismissed because the line prosecutors, the deputies that actually deal with them, have so much else on their plate because of the number of cases that are filed," Rouse said. "So those serious areas aren't even getting the results that they should get."
He wants to solve this by reimplementing community court and advocating for more evidence-based interventions such as the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program.
Rouse wants to bring community court back to the Seattle Municipal Court and also beef up the services the court can provide to low-level offenders. By doing so, the CAO could reduce recidivism and the positive-feedback loop of the criminal justice system. It would also lessen the caseloads of CAO attorneys.
"Seattle Municipal Court should be a connection point for accessing treatment and other services," Rouse said. "Community court can provide accountability for behaviors that are unacceptable, but also provide the types of resources that will work toward disrupting the behaviors that we're concerned about."
To get more "robust" treatment options and to boost funding for LEAD, Rouse would need to liaise with King County and state lawmakers. For many of his goals, he'd have to convince the Seattle City Council to sponsor the requisite legislation.
"The city council is full of members who all ran on a public safety platform," Rouse said. "They all have that in common, and I would hope that they would be interested in evidence-based responses to these persistent issues that we see."
One other way Rouse would like to reduce the cycle of crime would be to expand the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team, which connects people in certain crises with behavioral health professionals rather than police. Contract negotiations with the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) limited the expansion of those teams to prevent the roles from being taken over by police.
"SPOG has interfered with efforts to reform the police by trying to hold on to those areas of work and not allow those reforms to be implemented," Rouse said. "We don't want police officers responding to overdoses. We want them investigating and solving serious crimes."
However, as city attorney, Rouse would not have direct power to make that happen. Instead, he would need to influence the process through advocacy. If he were the city attorney negotiating SPOG's contract, Rouse said he would advocate for a more reform-heavy contract by advising city leaders during negotiations.
Rouse also flexes his "progressive prosecutor" status in how he believes the city should deal with landlords price fixing rents in Seattle. He believes the civil division of the CAO should be "more proactive and less reactive" in that arena, though he did not state how this would be done in action other than that "affirmatively enforcing rental protections for city residents is key."
While it's outside the CAO's purview, Rouse is also opposed to the Supreme Court's recent overturning of Martin v. Boise, which previously made it illegal for cities to arrest people for living outdoors. He bristled over how, before the Court's ruling, Davison filed an amicus brief in support of repealing the law.
Davison's actions on the federal level have been disappointing across the board, according to Rouse. As we enter a second Trump presidency, one where sanctuary cities offering safe harbor for migrants and refugees as well as those seeking reproductive health procedures such as abortion are once again under attack, Rouse thinks it is important to have a city attorney that will defend its citizens.
Davison has yet to sue or stand up to Trump in any capacity. Holmes sued Trump over sanctuary city protections. Rouse is not confident Davison, who switched parties after four years of living under a Trump presidency, will do anything other than capitulate.
He believes his experience in federal courts and working criminal cases will allow him to be effective in a way other CAO candidates, including Davison, will not be.
"It's not the time to be silent or complicit," Rouse said. "It's really the time to dig in and defend our city."