Robert Rosencrantz, who has run for city council twice before and
lost, believes he can do anything if he keeps trying. He has an
inspiring story to illustrate this. Rosencrantz grew up with a hip
disease called Perthes but triumphantly rose to athleticism, to
financial prosperity, and now—if his third campaign pans
out—to the dais of the city council. “I was the kid on crutches,
and the other kids were saying I was a cripple who could never walk,”
says Rosencrantz. “And all I could think is that some day I will be a
champion athlete.” On his fourth try, Rosencrantz won the national
junior championship and broke a record at the age of 19 for the most
shameless sport of all—racewalking. “I have learned in my
lifetime that a person committed to a cause who puts sweat and tears
into it can do amazing things,” says Rosencrantz, who now brokers
multimillion-dollar deals as a real-estate agent and owns four
apartment buildings.
But by Seattle’s liberal standards, a city council influenced by
Rosencrantz would make for a less-than-inspirational story. And
Rosencrantz has a good shot of actually winning this time. His
fundraising is already far outpacing his rival, Mike O’Brien—who
is more progressive than Rosencrantz on transportation, the
environment, homelessness, and virtually every other issue—and
Rosencrantz’s campaign has the potential to benefit from the
last-minute support of well-funded business interests.
Rosencrantz is campaigning on a conservative economic directive to
protect industrial and maritime jobs in the city, primarily by building
more roads. In interviews and campaign events, Rosencrantz has favored
paving projects at the expense of building new transit, stressed the
need for heavy-handed law enforcement over social programs for the
homeless, and prized NIMBY complaints about noise over a vibrant
nightlife (even in instances where new development has been built
around existing nightlife institutions). To say nothing of his position
on abortion.
“We typically don’t make any endorsements in Seattle races, because
the majority of candidates are pro-choice,” says Alissa Haslam, public
policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington. She says Rosencrantz
refused to return the group’s questionnaire. But on his questionnaire
for the King County Democrats, he didn’t check a yes or a no box to
answer a question about providing public funds for abortions for poor
women or another question on “freedom of choice in contraception,
abortion, and sterilization.” Instead, he included a quote from Barack
Obama, calling on people to “honor the conscience of those who disagree
with abortion.”
In a phone interview, Rosencrantz said he believes families should
be involved if a teenager seeks an abortion. Other than that, he would
only say that he stands by existing state laws on reproductive rights.
“They have been in place and I will fully respect them,” he says.
“That raised concerns for us,” says Haslam. “When we heard that
there was someone running for Seattle City Council who is not 100
percent pro-choice, we wanted to endorse Mike O’Brien and let voters
know that there is a very clear choice in positions.” If the county
budget continues to dwindle, she says, reproductive health and
medically accurate sex education could be in jeopardy unless the city
council continues to fund them. Haslam adds, “Especially now that we
have a system that has so many nonpartisan races, people really look to
core social issues to guide voting decisions.”
Rosencrantz’s strongest support comes from business interests. He
argues that Seattle is losing its economic edge to suburbs, a point
evident to anyone who has watched the cluster of skyscrapers rise in
Bellevue. Seattle can retain those businesses and prosper into the
future “by having traffic mobility that allows them to move efficiently
throughout the city,” he said in September on KUOW. In short, he
believes we need more roads, better roads, and a $4.2 billion deep-bore
tunnel under downtown.
In contrast, O’Brien, a former chair of the local Sierra Club, is a
fierce advocate for tolling roads to reduce traffic and building more
light rail—making the city more hospitable for people, and
therefore businesses. “The question for Seattle is, ‘Are we willing to
make the commitment to become a transit town?'” O’Brien says. “We don’t
have the money to make investments in the transit we need and continue
to make more auto capacity.”
Asked directly if we should extend light rail to West Seattle and
Ballard—as proposed by mayoral candidate Mike
McGinn—Rosencrantz says, “More bus hours.” And about his position
on streetcars: “Not a big fan of them.”
Several maritime workers’ unions, development interests, and the
Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce have endorsed Rosencrantz. He has
raised $168,391, more than double O’Brien’s amount. But his biggest
boon may be waiting in the wings. Forward Seattle, an upstart political
action committee funded largely by development lobbies, has $110,844 in
cash on hand, according to a report from the Seattle Ethics and
Elections Commission.
Forward Seattle paid Tulchin Research, a campaign pollster in
California, over $26,000 this year. That may have been the unidentified
polling firm that in mid-September called voters in Seattle, providing
criticisms of Rosencrantz and O’Brien and asking the voters how those
messages changed their opinions about the candidates. “It seemed a
little harsh on Mike O’Brien,” says Beth Dennis, a Ballard resident who
got one of the calls. The pollster asked how her opinion of O’Brien
would change if she knew he lived in a home that costs nearly a million
dollars but opposes Seattle residents having extra rooms in their house
and doesn’t want them to have yards. The implication pulls on O’Brien’s
support for a high-density city (like apartments that don’t have extra
rooms or a lawn) concentrated around transit hubs, in contrast with
Rosencrantz’s auto-reliant city. “They were implying that he lives in a
mansion,” she says. “They just come up with the slimiest thing they can
think of and see what resonates with people.”
Was the poll sponsored by Forward Seattle? Calls to group spokesman
Joe Quintana were not returned by press time. But it would make sense.
The group’s leading contributors are the Building Owners and Managers
Association and the Washington Association of Realtors. And Rosencrantz
splits his career between high-end real-estate brokerage and owning
apartment buildings. If it was Forward Seattle, and the group did find
anti-O’Brien messages that resonate with voters, and it did want to
back Rosencrantz, it could spend a huge amount on mailers and ads to
push for Rosencrantz and smear O’Brien. Rosencrantz says he doesn’t
know if Forward Seattle plans to support him, but he did acknowledge
that he’s donated over $25,000 of his own money to his own
campaign.
On several other issues, Rosencrantz and O’Brien have some stark
differences.
Rosencrantz, who doesn’t drink, has espoused a philosophy that
neighborhood complaints should trump nightlife. In an endorsement
meeting with The Stranger, Rosencrantz said he supports a 2007
ordinance that subjects clubs and venues to fines if they amplify noise
plainly audible inside a residence, even if the new building is
constructed next door to a historic music venue (noise complaints have
been a recurring problem with new buildings constructed close to bars
and dance clubs). “I don’t go out,” he said. And he argued that “giving
the control of neighborhoods to neighbors is more important than [the
city’s] jurisdictional authority.” O’Brien, however, said he wouldn’t
let “people in a neighborhood shut down nightlife.”
On density, Rosencrantz is reluctant to embrace taller buildings,
even near the city’s center. In Yesler Terrace (across the freeway from
downtown on First Hill), the Seattle Housing Authority is considering
mixed-income housing up to 24 stories. Rosencrantz calls that
“pretty darn high,” while O’Brien says, “We have to do that.”
And while Rosencrantz has served on the board of the Interfaith Task
Force on Homelessness, his views on panhandling are severe. “The police
should more energetically enforce the prohibition on aggressive
panhandling and solicitation,” Rosencrantz wrote in a questionnaire for
the Downtown Seattle Association. “Cutting off their source of income
is a good way to get people to engage in more productive uses of their
time.” Asked to clarify, he says, “Trading off civil liberties with
having to maintain public order is a difficult balance, but we can do
that.” He added that his concern was specifically with aggressive
panhandling.
O’Brien, a former Sierra Club leader and the 10-year chief financial
officer of the law firm Stokes Lawrence, also opposes aggressive
panhandling. But he stresses that the ultimate solution lies in fixing
“structural problems,” such as housing and health care, and that
Metropolitan Improvement District security guards (the folks in the
yellow jackets), not police, are the best people to deal with
problematic beggars. “I worked hard to get where I am,” O’Brien says.
“But I have no illusions that there are people who have worked as hard
or harder than me and have not had the breaks that I have received.” He
adds, “I think we as a society have a responsibility to look out for
the people who have been left behind.”
If elected, Rosencrantz would apparently be among the most
conservative of all elected officials in Seattle. He would be a steady
advocate for heavy-handed police action, limited density growth, a
lackadaisical approach to building more transit, and resistance to
funding women’s reproductive-health programs. He would clearly push
against the tide of the city council and Seattle voters at
large—a city that adopts transit, that’s ready to reduce carbon
exhaust, that believes strongly in women’s rights, that likes its
nightlife institutions, and that treats its citizens (not just its
businesspeople) humanely. 
McGinn needs to take O’Brien everywhere with him. Get his name out there so he can garner support.
Ironically, O’Brien did get the King County Labor Council endorsement, because he wasn’t a dope like McGinn – he actually made an effort to talk to labor unions. Maybe he should be taking McGinn around…
There too hard on Robert. Some of Mike O’Brien’s views are just absurd.
Well, he’s right about that, as far as it goes. He’s wrong about methodology — more roads will only solve the problem temporarily, until traffic grows to fill the new capacity. But he’s right that we need to make Seattle more manufacturing- and shipping-friendly. Otherwise we’re building an economic monoculture that will be more susceptible to market fluctuations.
Assuming he actually opposes this plan (the quote is ambiguous) Rosencrantz’s views may ultimately be more progressive than O’Brien’s. Jane Jacobs used Chicago’s Cabrini Green as a case study in bad urban development for a number of specific reasons relating to the height and capacity of the buildings. Her basic contention was that the buildings created too many places that were publicly accessible (hallways, elevators, etc) that did not have windows facing them or support enough incidental foot traffic for neighbors to police them. Consequently, the infrastructure of the buildings was prone to misuse by various criminals and people who simply wanted to exploit the space for their own purposes (dumping garbage, for example). High density development is the best kind of development, but it has to be densely integrated rather than giant blocks or it tends to break down in a number of ways.
As far as all that goes, the fact that O’Brien doesn’t qualify his “We have to do that,” is worrisome.
Yeah, you know, as someone who’s lived on Capitol Hill for about 30 years, I can’t get too worked up about this. It’s not that I don’t think people should be allowed to panhandle at all, but panhandlers can — and have — had a meaningful negative impact on the economic stability of commercial districts on Capitol Hill. I’ve worked in social services for homeless youth for five years, and Rosencrantz’s view on the role panhandling plays in keeping people on the streets is more or less correct. If you knew more about the research in this area, you’d probably agree.
None of this is to say that Rosencrantz’s is gong to get my vote, but this article is poorly reasoned and researched.
Always a good idea to work a typo into a sentence like that.
I got a lot of flack for reminding people of his prior KCDCC questionnaires (since I reviewed them at the 43rd for a few times he ran before), but it is true.
People have a funny way of assuming I work for specific candidates and seem to forget I’ve been doing this for a long time and remember all these things, even without wikipedia to lie to me about what happened.
Wow, if it wasn’t for the Stranger I wouldn’t know who the moderates are to vote for. Count one more for Rosencrantz .
Even by Stranger standards this is a cheap shot.
Title’s unfair- O’Brien’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.
I have a hip condition very similar to Leg Perthes Disease (I was mistakenly diagnosed with Perthes for the first 13 years of my life).
As of yet, it has not granted me any special political or managerial powers. Fingers (painfully) crossed!
We’re all hoping you’ll win a Gold Medal, Karla.
i typically tend to vote in line with the stranger endorsements; however, i’ve personally met rosencrantz and believe that he would be a good fit for seattle city council. his opponent believes that instead of putting money into alternative energy and once again putting seattle on the map as a leader in this country, we should all just pay more taxes on our(already high) current services. building more bike lanes is not going to solve seattle’s traffic problems. building light rails will help, yes, but will not solve the problem. i’m all for public transportation, but like many people have to have a car for my job as i travel a lot.
is rosencrantz big business oriented? sure. but he is also someone who will listen to his constituents and do what he is elected to do.
he’s got my vote.
got your paragraphs too, I see.
Oh well.
Many people are personally uncomfortable with abortion, and have every right to say so. If he had answered the questions with candor I would have respected him, even if I didn’t vote for him.
Abortion shouldn’t be an issue for a city council member. Access and/or funding may become an issue for city governments, but probably won’t. My concern is that many city council people aspire to higher office. I will only vote for someone who loudly, clearly states that she or he supports access and funding for safe, legal abortions.
Seattle is not an island in Canada. Threats and violence against abortion doctors are on the rise nationwide. Seattle has several abortion providers. Any city council candidate who understands the relationship between the city government and the police department should get why abortion IS an issue in a council race.
how can anyone bankrolled by the real-estate lobby be a nice guy?
Sorry number 18 for not being clear. Ignored by conservative city councils and police departments nationwide, anti-abortion goons have driven doctors out of business and conservative city councils have successfully prevented family planning clinics from opening. Basically, with out support from local governments family planning clinics tend to close or not open where they are needed, which is any place where people with functioning reproductive organs live. Seattle has many people with fully functional reproductive organs.
For more on the importance of the issue in local politics please go to:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-c…
And for anyone with free speech concerns on the issue please go to:
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_col…
Seattle is a little liberal island and I like it that way. When any candidate for public office is exposed as a pro-lifer, I vote them off the island. Bye-Bye Robert.
Robert Rosencrantz would be a good addition to the Seattle City Council. He’s pragmatic, highly intelligent, and measured.
Somehow Seattle politics have turned pro-business candidates into evil corporate conservatives. We need to support businesses so we can pay for services necessary for our community. Get a grip Stranger.
What do Robert’s views on abortion have anything to do with the job description of Councilmember? He’s not running for Congress for chrisakes. Btw, he’s pro-choice. As if it matters anyway.
K
I don’t know if I understand about racewalking. Why “shameless” about racewalking and someone being athletic while dealing with a disability?
Agree with bigyaz@9… this is a bizarre cheap shot and needs revision.
75% crap article. The 25% that’s good to your readers: putting a light on Rosencrantz’s crazy, irresponsible moderate-leaning-hard-right take on abortion / the right to choose. Why in the world would he be taking Susan Hutch’s meds like this??
Prochoicers, the real, deep-down-in-their-souls believers aren’t *pro-abortion* per se.
They know the basic abortion argument comes down to bigger themes than a damn medical procedure. It has to do with much longer-reaching precedents: Like faith in democracy.
Do you believe in democracy? Democracy is choice. The liberty to make your own Choices is what the nation was founded on, what the revolutionary army bled for. Patrick Henry: look him up. Even if you somehow think life begins with sex (and not infant viability), Liberty still trumps, because Liberty is more important than life.
It is, at it’s root, unamerican to be anti-choice. Regardless of the procedure, or even the subject (gays in military? a personal choice; health care? Should come down to reform so everyone can have a choice; Progressive vs fundie/repressive candidate? Who’s platform provides me and fellow citizens with more choice? Whoever does gets my vote.)
To have a person running for elected office who has a toxic attitude about liberty, would be anti-productive to the city’s heart and soul, and hypocritical to the democratic process.
He could work for sierra club, recycle his block’s food, leave his property to the Parks Dept in his will, ride the bus everyday, and lobby for solar chimneys in eastern washington, and I STILL WOULDNT VOTE FOR HIM IF HE CANT REMOVE HIS HEAD FROM THE ASS-FLAVORED SAND OF HIS HINDQUARTERS AND SEE THAT PRO-CHOICE IS THE ONLY REASONABLE STANCE.
So, yeah, thanks for that 25% of goodness.
What Dom missed out entirely was a chance to report more thoroughly on Obrien’s redeeming qualities. Instead, we’re left to read between the lines that Obrien is a ‘hold your nose and vote’ lesser-evil candidate. If that’s the case, just come out and say it. If not the case, do the hard work like you did on Robert, dig up the facts, and report them for us to take a look at. Neglecting to report just looks like unfinished writing.
And .. Even us longtime lefty progressive seattlites know that “business” is a good thing, a necessary thing – even bad smelling maritime and icky industrial. Even ambitious whoring IPO-driven corporations have their place in any truly urban environment; they just need a new kind of ‘social services’, …not unlike our transient friends. [Insert comparison between bank bailouts and hobo handouts here ]
” ‘That raised concerns for us,’ says Haslam. ‘When we heard that there was someone running for Seattle City Council who is not 100 percent pro-choice, we wanted to endorse Mike O’Brien and let voters know that there is a very clear choice in positions.’ “
That’s disgustingly black and white. I’m disgusted as a liberal and a pro-choice advocate that this is how my groups are portrayed- as whiny, “poor us,” persecution-card-playing narcissists with nothing better to do than bitch and agree with shit like this article. I’ve had diseases with more common sense than the writer.
As a pro-choice, long-time Democratic activist, i encourage The Stranger to keep your powder dry on Rosencrantz and focus on a real problem: Susan Hutchison.
I’ve encountered Rosencrantz throughout all of his campaigns, and know renters in his buildings who sing his praises. He has always struck me as a thoughtful, smart and principled guy. My take on his refusal to answer questions on choice is an assertion of his right to privacy. I think it’s a dicey strategy when you’re seeking Democratic endorsements, but there is no question in my mind that he’s a progressive Democrat.
The Stranger also does itself no favors when it puts down the very sensible issue of preserving the industrial base of the city. Where exactly do you think the revenues of the city come from? Any candidate who thinks that “better transit” is the solution to preserving and strengthening the city’s industrial base is painfully ignorant about how the city works (I’m looking at you, O’Brien and McGinn).
This liberal pro-choice Democrat is going with Rosencrantz.
Wait, this was in the news section? I’m all for the freedom of the press, but when a newspaper’s campaign position ends up in the news section and not the editorial section (Blogs, in the Stranger’s case), something’s wrong.
You haven’t read much Stranger, have you, Pidgey? It isn’t a newspaper, it’s a free magazine full of editorials, since there is no actual news about which it reports. It is a paper written by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Yet again the stranger is way off base… go figure. Seattle is going down the shitter, and the Stranger’s leading the way: both from a journalistic, but also from a political viewpoint.
What about liberal values such as protecting working families. I read that O’Brien wants to toll all of our streets. On my just-above minimum wage job, my entire paycheck will go to getting to and from work.
I’m not voting for an idiot who would do something like that… Screw O’Brien, no way.
Dominic’s piece makes a travesty of thoughtful research and reporting. Robert Rosencrantz is a person of enormous compassion and civic commitment. He has an abiding dedication to those who have been left out of the high-tech growth that has fueled our City for the past 20 years.
Robert has worked as hard as anyone to bring affordable housing to our region, doing it in creative ways that reflect a whole lot more dedication and effort than simply jumping on a bandwagon to support housing levies. While Robert is an effective businessman, he is far from the myopic business booster Dominic portrays in his article. He, in fact, was the first candidate to propose taxing businesses that will benefit from the deep-bore tunnel, so that we have a source of funds for the inevitable cost overruns we will experience. (The state legislation enabling the deep-bore tunnel calls for the City of Seattle to fund cost overruns.)
Regarding the charge that Robert is anti-choice and would work to resist funding reproductive health programs, this is just absurd. Many of us who know Robert well and support him are long time progressives and have even worked in the trenches of the pro-choice movement. We support Robert because we know he will be the hardest working, most-effective member of our City Council, looking out for the things that really matter to the everyday lives of Seattleites.
Walter Sive and Cheryl Ellsworth
I met Rosenkrantz at more than one recent function.
Regardless of his nice guy demeanor, he is a despicable liar regarding O’Brien’s positions. His deliberately misleading mailer that warps beyond recognition O’Brien’s comments on tolling shows a deep disrespect for Seattle voters. Next time I see him he will get a fucking earful.