On Monday, Dionne Foster announced her candidacy for Seattle’s citywide District 9 seat, challenging City Council President Sara Nelson. Foster is currently the executive director of the Washington Progress Alliance, an advocacy organization that helped push through the state’s new capital gains tax to fund education. While that’s a big, progressive win, it’s not her only policymaking experience. At one point in her long and varied career, she was a Senior Policy Advisor for the City of Seattle.

Before making it to city hall, she worked her way through school in the restaurant industry, earned a Master’s of Social Work at the University of Washington, and did a bunch of nuts and bolts policy analysis for places like King County and Puget Sound Sage. She’s got a teenage son who does roller derby. In an interview, she listed her hobbies as doing standard PNW outdoorsy stuff (including Trailhead Direct) and taking him to roller derby. Cute!

Given recent polling, plus decisive wins in recent elections for lefty progressive Alexis Mercedes Rinck and a proposal to fund social housing from the coffers of rich corporations, Foster stands a good chance of unseating Nelson. Besides the fact that the political pendulum is swinging back to the left (which is, depending on how hard you squint, where Foster sits), Nelson has not exactly made friends during her time in office.

“I would vote for a rock if it ran against right-wing, drunkard millionaire Sara Nelson,” one Redditt user put it in response to Foster’s announcement. “Because even a rock would drag us down less than her.”

Foster is not a rock, thankfully. She is a person with a pulse and has ideas about what to do with this beautiful, backward city of ours. So what are they and how do they differ from her opponent’s? Will they bring about the big, transformative changes needed to dig ourselves out of the housing and homelessness crisis we’re in?

We used the word “specific” or some variation of it twelve times in our interview, but Foster artfully dodged any tangible policy commitments. When pressed for more details, she said, “I feel like as we continue through the campaign, I’d love to continue to share more specifics and say this exact thing or more details.”

Similarly, in response to a list of yes/no lightning round questions sent post-interview (which included a bonus round asking for favorite local spots), she responded, “Really excited to get into these over the course of the campaign! Current food obsessions — Tailwind Cafe salted chocolate chip cookie & Ba Bar imperial rolls.”

Sadly, we do not get any certainty on whether she agrees with the Mayor’s sweeps blitz or supports social housing. She’s right about the imperial rolls, at least, but we get the point: it’s just vibes for now.

That said, her vibes on the issues of the moment — housing and homelessness — are generally good.

On housing, she wants to “make sure that we have both abundant housing and affordable housing.” Again, no specifics, but she did say she thinks we can do more than is mandated by HB 1110, the state law that legalized fourplexes everywhere and six plexes on transit lines.

“We should be doing more, and we should be making sure that Seattle is a place that leads on this,” she said.

Foster has called out displacement as a major issue. She currently lives in South Seattle, which gives you something of a front row seat to it. What would she do to combat it?

She cited down payment assistance and subsidized artist housing as keeping her and her co-parent, respectively, here in the city. Regarding housing, she said we need to “execute our plan well” when it comes to growth, and “think about ways to protect our neighborhood centers.” Sounds good!

Foster is excited to roll out a comprehensive policy as she moves further into her campaign. “I think right now, really wanting to make sure that I'm introducing people to me, my values, and how I think about the issues that we're facing.”

Okay, okay, we get it! But what about transportation?

She lives a short walk away from a light rail station, and uses it when she doesn’t have to drive her kid to roller derby practice over in White Center. Thanks to that lateral commute, plus her co-parent’s old route to work, which involved the #50, Foster is acutely aware of the lack of east-west transit in the South End. And, again thanks to the #50, just how long it can take to get places on Seattle transit. 

Breaking with her no-specifics theme, she did call out some action items for pedestrian and bike safety: better lighting, more crosswalks, and traffic calming. She’s also got lived experience on this one, having been the victim of a very low-speed hit and run on Rainier Ave S. We don’t love that she had to live that experience, but we do love that she knows what it’s like for walkers out here.

On cops, we have nothing extraordinary to report. We didn’t chat about it much, but like every politician in this city, she’s in favor of hiring more cops. She also has written the infamous “hire more women guards” meme into her platform. Oof. But she’s in favor of building out the CARE team, our alternative response program, and addressing “root causes” of crime. That’s about the best we’re gonna get from anyone these days.

We also briefly touched on climate. She said she was, “really proud to get to be a part of the entire Defend Washington team last year, which included making sure that we could protect the state Climate Commitment Act and the resources that flow from the Climate Commitment Act.”

Besides that, she shouted out transit-oriented development as a good strategy to reduce car trips and by extension lower emissions, but didn’t offer anything else in terms of specific policy proposals.

Overall, Foster emphasized that she’s a person who focuses on results. As she told both Publicola and us, she wants to “get shit done.” In a city plagued by endless, intractable processes, that’s music to our ears. We also love that she’s someone who takes the train and has worked for an hourly wage sometime in the last ten years. Can’t say that about most of the current council.

However, she also already displays a politician’s natural affinity for polite vagaries and plausible deniability. While people are very bummed about most of the shit the current council has done, doing nothing also sucks.