Comments

2

@1 Do you even live in Seattle?

I have a hard time keeping all the Seattle haters straight. Some of them affect a general hostility to cities, but Seattle in particular. Is that you? I forget. Maybe its the one with the lion face picture I'm thinking of.

3

The mere fact Sawant feels the need to hold a rally over this and the Stranger begins to crank out the shady conspiracy stories about her opponents suggest they both feel there are merits to the complaint and it has a likelihood to move forward. Should be entertaining to watch her fight this off. Next up the legions of out of state foot soldiers to harass residents and “register” enough voters to make sure she stays in office.

7

@5 You have no idea if the people "chipping in" live in Seattle or not. That's the whole point of anonymous, isn't it? Talk about a brilliant money laundering scheme!

For all we know it could be just a few people contributing thousands and then calling it a bunch of little anonymous donations. I find it hard to believe there are that many people willing to contribute at all to such a waste of time and energy when Seattle has bigger fish to fry right now. Lifelong Seattle resident here, btw.

8

Recall campaigns are cynical manipulations of the simple-minded. The best way to "recall" a politician is to vote in the regular election.

11

The popcorn in Bellevue is delicious.

12

The Recall Sawant movement is undoubtedly supported by some wealthy business people, but it is essentially a populist movement. Many people--in District 3 and Seattle generally--are sick of Sawant's dogmatic blaming and stereotyping, pious condescension, hypocrisy, and self-importance. Most are not rich, trolls on blog threads, or surreptitious conservative operatives. Many are liberals and moderates fed up with Sawant's theatrics and bullying. Beneath Sawant's ostensible concern for the poor and oppressed is a Trump-level egomaniac who endlessly boasts of "historic victories," as the city confronts the (mixed or worse) results. Anti-Sawant sentiment emerges from authentic exasperation, not reactionary conspiracies. Sawant might indeed survive this challenge, but... she might not. A lot of people are sick of her act, and they have good reason to be. What's cynical is the attempt to attribute this exasperation to wealthy conservatives. Stranger staff--you haven't uncovered a devious plot. You've concealed your own inability to accept how loathed Sawant is by many voters across the spectrum. You're her propagandists, and everyone knows it. And your journalistic integrity is besmirched every time you hide behind this facade, too corrupted to even be aware that's what you're doing.

13

I don’t get the premise of this article. It suggests we should be surprised by who’s supporting this recall effort when in fact it’s exactly who you would expect.

The leaked socialist alternative docs have way more drama and intrigue than these simplistic emails.

14

@12

Why are anti-Sawant rants like yours so frequently lacking in specifics? Can you give us three examples each of her "dogmatic blaming" and her "stereotyping" (what she said and when she said it), and identify which people specifically were outraged by each of these instances? How about two each of her "pious condescension" and her "hypocrisy," plus evidence of specific persons or demographic groups being sick of these?

For example, I can tell you that Mayor Durkan was absolutely livid that there was a protest outside her mansion, and she blamed Sawant for it. Who else is completely steamed about that?

16

The Stranger/Sawant campaign will try to spin this as an attack by big business on workers, but in reality many regular old residents of District 3 are fed up by her Trumpian populism, zealotry, ineffectiveness, non-responsiveness, and corruption and want her out of there before she does more damage to the District and city.

17

@8 Yes, and they are also an attempt to shape who votes by making it a single issue election. Seattle should change the recall rules so that any election triggered by the petition is part of the next general election. Mostly because recall elections tend to be a waste of money.

19

@13 Yeah that headline was bad. You'll never guess who's trying to recall Sawant!

Answer: Exactly the people you thought!

20

This didn't end well the last time you guys tried to get rid of her.

Oh, and we're still going to replace the Mayor.

Yes, more liberal.

Get used to it, we are who we are.

23

To those that are supporting the Recall Sawant campaign: THANK YOU.

One giant step toward ending human suffering in Seattle would be to remove Sawant from office.

Donate Today: www.recallsawant2020.org

24

Hahaha! I love the comments here! Supposedly the Stranger is in Sawant’s pocket, but yet they hate Sawant and are trying to kill her reputation.

Which is it guys? If the Stranger a fan of Sawant or not?

If you can’t honestly answer that, then we know you are just trying to blame any media for your anger.

I’m not a fan of hers, but I don’t live in her district, so none of this means much to me. And if I did live in her district, I would try very hard to look at her case with open eyes. But I’m sitting here eating popcorn because both sides of this argument are blaming each other and thinking the Stranger is trying to pull one over on us.

You guys keep going and spewing some god damn bullshit on both sides. I’m just laughing at you.

25

Interesting that so many comments claim that everyone in District 3 is sick and tired of Sawant and her x,y,z this, that, and the other, and yet she's now in her third term as a Councilmember, and her second representing District 3.

26

@18 "I want to thank Nathalie for putting forward Martin Selig or Jordan Selig's Names as candidates to replace her.... sound men..."

As is pointed out numerous times in this piece, Jordan Selig is not a man.

27

So just to be clear, this article's title refers to to one guy The Stranger hates who donated $25?

Did y'all really just comb through the list of donors to find the most objectionable person possible, and then write a guilt-by-association article?

28

Sawant got 52 percent in the final. So, about 48 percent of the residents of her district are backing the recall.

29

In a pique of irony impairment 18 proved 14's point.

Trumpists: nothing if not predictable.

30

@8: 'The best way to "recall" a politician is to vote in the regular election.'

Tell that to Ed Murray.

@21: "You fucking morons couldn’t buy Sawant out of office with all Jeff Bezos’ money and your prop gay candidate."

Sawant set a record for spending on a Council election effort. 15% of her money came from District 3, and less than 50% of her money from inside Seattle. So just who was buying her re-election, and why?

Or does money simply not matter if you like the outcome?

"So now you’re going for this phony petulant recall?"

The standard for mounting a recall is 'malfeasance'. If the petitioners can prove that to a judge, the recall effort can continue. But The Stranger can't go into that, because any evaluation of her actual behavior runs too high a risk of a doubleplus wrongthink outcome.

31

It's almost as if Natalie thinks people in other Seattle districts shouldn't be able to contribute to the recall effort. I wonder if she felt the same about people from across the country contributing to her reelection campaign?

32

@21 "The voters spoke, you crybabies. Find a candidate. Win an election, assholes."
The Professor must have no problem with the orange goon in the oval office.

33

So, Orion gave the recall campaign his email list? Is that legal? It would guess that anyone who signed up for his list did not agree to have that information shared. If doing so is legal, would that be considered a campaign contribution that would need to be reported?

I do hope this is another opportunity for rich folks to flush money down the toilet thinking that because the people they know in the ‘burbs don’t like Sawant, people in her district feel the same (they don’t- she has been elected 3x). It’s going to be hilarious when she wins both this potential recall election and then another term.

34

@33: "Is that legal?"

Yes.

"It [sic] would guess that anyone who signed up for his list did not agree to have that information shared."

That's not a reasonable expectation for a political campaign.

"... would that be considered a campaign contribution that would need to be reported?"

No, because the list itself has no inherent monetary value.

"I do hope this is another opportunity for rich folks to flush money down the toilet..."

The organizers of the recall have specifically asked for contributions of $25 or less.

"...she has been elected 3x"

Only twice by District 3, and she lost the most recent primary.

"It’s going to be hilarious when she wins both this potential recall election and then another term."

In the most recent general election, she spent more money than any City Council candidate ever had, to eke out a four percent margin of victory.

35

Well I chipped in symbolically, although I realize this campaign is almost certainly doomed. I grew up in a communist state and studied its history a bunch - marxism and fascism are morally equivalent...

In fact, if you look at the evolution of someone like Nicola Bombacci and his motives, they are just different flavors of the same thing. Victor Serge, a marxist himself: "I saw that it was this that tormented [Bombacci] the most: the attraction that fascism, exercised upon the extreme left. ... In the beginning fascism attracted a great many rebels and even revolutionists by its demonstrations of plebian strength and violence. Then it offered them participation in practical work, building schools, draining swamps, industrializing, creating an empire. Finally, the murmured promise of establishing a New Order which would be only a stage on the road to socialism completed the process."
It's like he's describing the modern grassroots movements (or any marxist movement from Castro to Pol Pot). Violence, glorification of collectivist work, dismantling the old order to make a "better" one.

Sawant is no better than Trump. I don't believe Trump is actually mentally developed enough to have views, so I'd say Sawant is worse than Trump - she's like Trump if Trump was actually a real committed fascist.


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