A rain-soaked Hannah Sabio-Howell and I were at Gemini Room in Capitol Hill, ordering coffee and talking about breakfast sandwiches in Seattle. The few, the expensive, and the far away. The small, cheesy signifier that the neighborhood could be a better place if only our zoning laws allowed for more storefronts.
Recently communications director for Working Washington, a workers rights nonprofit that backed the $15 minimum wage and fought to keep gig worker minimum pay in Seattle, 29-year-old Sabio-Howell believes if we tried, we could have breakfast sandwiches on every block, and more substantive things like a statewide version of Social Housing, denser housing, and expanded paid parental leave as a first step toward universal childcare. But who is keeping us from this utopian future? None other than Majority Leader Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle), sponsor of this year’s millionaires’ tax. For that, she wants his seat.
Sabio-Howell’s pitch is this: Sen. Pedersen is quick to concede to big business before the politicking has even begun, and a corporate-friendly incrementalist like him had no business representing a district of progressive renters like the 43rd. He’s progressive for a leader in the party, sure. But she argues that she’s a far better representative for the people who live in the 43rd District and a reliable vote for the major economic and taxation issues that are facing the state. She’s betting that makes him vulnerable enough to lose, even as a leader of the party. (She has insight there—in addition to her time in the state Senate, Sabio-Howell was chair of the Urbanist’s elections committee).
“He’s going to try to brand himself as effective because he is a deal maker,” Sabio-Howell says. “I think that approach to leadership is actually more of a deal broker, not someone who is actually driving the outcome. I think it’s giving things away before we need to give them away. Our district is too visionary and vibrant.”
Sabio-Howell was born in St. Louis, Missouri and spent most of her childhood in Wheaton, a an conservative, affluent suburb on the rim of Chicago, famous for a protestant college that lifted a Civil War-era ban on dancing in 2003.
Wheaton’s conservative vibes did not rub off on the daughter of two school teachers (and one Filipino immigrant, her mother), lifelong Democrats who preached that government existed to improve our lives.
She organized for immigration reform at Whitworth University, a Presbyterian university in Spokane. An internship at the State Legislature led to her first job out of college as the legislative aide with a surprising political mentor, the centrist Rep. Larry Springer, who represents some of the wealthiest towns of East King County, and later a communications job for the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Every year, Rep. Springer and his wife, former Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, host a Christmas dinner with his current and former legislative aides. This year, other aides “grilled” Sabio-Howell on her run. “I came away, I told Penny, she’s done her homework.” Politically, Sabio-Howell is far left of Springer. But he taught her the same lesson he teaches all of his legislative assistants, he said. The stuff that lasts the test of time is “not solely crafted by one end of the spectrum.”
“I think what she learned from me is, speak to both sides and craft something that works, not something that feels good,” he said. “The other part is, of course, your enemy today is your ally tomorrow.”
Over coffee, it was clear she’d taken that lesson to heart. I’d heard Sabio-Howell’s platform from first-time progressive candidates before. Affordable housing and childcare, investments in working families, and taxes on the rich to pay for it all. The floundering usually begins when you ask “how.” She didn’t give me specific solutions either, but instead of trying to make them up on the spot, she pitched an alternative viewpoint: Good policy only comes through consensus, and we can’t start our politicking with business-friendly concessions. We want to give both the working class and the puffer jacketed types with enough money to tax something to actually believe in.
“Standing 10 toes down on your values to be clear about what you are…and what would get you to a “yes” or get you to a “no,” these are essential to an approach that equals effective policy making,” she says. It helps that she’s convincing and “damn nice,” says Rep. Springer. (If you disagree on something, you’ll agree and “love her” by the time she’s done analyzing it for you, he says.) State senator turned Congresswoman Emily Randall (WA-6), who doesn’t endorse in King County races, says Pedersen has done a great job as majority leader, but also called Sabio-Howell her “forever communications and strategy partner,” who helped her hone her voice on difficult issues in a swing district.
A better way is possible, she says. Her platform points to plentiful housing in Austin, Texas, and Jersey City, New Jersey, and New Mexico’s new universal childcare program. None of her examples are perfect comparisons to Washington, of course. Austin sprawls in a state with a lower cost of living and fewer land-use regulations; Jersey City recently saw a surge in construction, and rent is falling after years of hikes, but the city still doesn’t have the housing it needs; New Mexico, a state with an income tax, is struggling to fund universal childcare without taking from the state’s general fund. (She also wasn’t sure what state or local policies in Jersey City and Austin made housing more attainable). The point is that it’s possible, she says. We’re not breaking new ground with these ideas.
“Is it possible in our vibrant, visionary, record-breakingly progressive district to present a new type of Democratic leadership, and to say we are aware that politics as usual, status quo-governing pro-corporation Democrats are not delivering on the things that we have reaffirmed over and over again,” she says. “I want to basically say to people in our community, choose your fighter.” (Some already have—according to her political consultant, Stephen Paolini, Sabio-Howell has raised about $30,000 from about 100 friends, family, activists, and colleagues.)
Reached by phone on a rainy drive home from Olympia Friday night, Sen. Pedersen says he found the critique that he’s not progressive enough “somewhat surprising.”
In 2006, the summer he ran for House, Pedersen was “single-minded” on equality. A gay lawyer on the board of Lambda Legal, Pedersen had taken depositions for Andersen v. Sims (later Andersen v. King County), the organization’s challenge to the state ban on gay marriage. Lambda won the case in King County Superior Court, but lost in 5-4 State Supreme Court ruling.
Determined, Pedersen worked with Ed Murray, the once State Senator and since-disgraced Mayor of Seattle, on securing the 425 rights and obligations that depended on marital status in Washington. They co-sponsored three domestic partnership bills. The first gave domestic partners basic rights like hospital visitation and inheritance. The second added them to laws about probate and trust, community property and guardianship. The third swept the rest into an “everything but marriage” law that survived Referendum 71, the conservative attempt to repeal it. After Gov. Christine Gregoire requested a marriage bill in the twilight of her second term, Pedersen whipped support in the House.
But it’s been 14 years since Gregoire signed marriage equality into law. The world, and the definition of progressive, has, well, progressed. Pedersen’s big social wins like gay rights, limited gun control, gun violence prevention, the decertification of bad cops and other police accountability measures, weren’t all safe when he backed them, but don’t seem so radical now.
Heading into his sixth election, Pedersen has the support of big corporations, the same corporations that the state needs to tax to have a functioning budget. A third of Pedersen’s $187,000 warchest comes from business, including BNSF, timber company Weyerhaeuser, Amazon, Kroger, (my enemies at) Regence Blue Shield, Eli Lilly, Microsoft, (piss bottlers) Anheuser Busch, AirBnB, Pfizer, burger merchants at McDonalds, and more.
Do they own him? “No,” said House Speaker Rep. Laurie Jinkins, followed by a somewhat tense silence, because of course money in politics matters.
As for Pedersen being Mr. Incremental, “Olympia is generally an incremental place with transformative moments,” she says. “It is fairly pointless to pass transformative legislation only to have voters repeal it.” Twenty-six US states allow for initiatives and referendums, most West of Missouri. It’s a blessing and a curse, particularly with anti-tax wraiths like Brian Heywood and Tim Eyman around.
For years, Washington couldn’t pass a tax or even fix a tax loophole without a two-thirds supermajority in both houses because of one of Eyman’s initiatives. (To sum up Jinkins’ history of that time, it sucked—we were at the tailend of the recession, broke, and cutting programs left and right) But in 2013, the State Supreme Court smacked it down as unconstitutional. Why? Sen. Pedersen and Rep. Jinkins crafted a legal weapon, a bill to fix a tax loophole, specifically designed to go to court, she says.
“I could not have done that without Jamie’s help,” Jinkins says. “He’s the one who understood the process … Had we not done that, we would not have gotten Cap Gains,” a nine-year slog of its own. Or the millionaire’s tax, which is almost certain to go before the voters and to court.
“I’m not going to argue it’s bigger than marriage equality,” says Jinkins, who is gay and could if she wanted. “But it’s been our tax structure for 100 years. This bill is so important.”
And so not enough, Sabio-Howell says. As she wrote in a Stranger op-ed with Fatema Boxwala and Oliver Miska last month, big business is being given a big break. From the jump, Pedersen presented the bill with these carveouts, pissing off half the party in the process.
Again, she thinks we can do more. Pedersen says he spends time on things he thinks will be efficient. Therein lies the tension. Does the 43rd want to hold onto an incumbent who is a proven leader in the party, but whose politics have not kept pace with this constituency? Or are they willing to switch up party leadership for someone who’s more aligned with what progressives want now?
