Comments

1

You almost had it right, but it's really a sane republican vs. an unqualified abolitionist.

3

@2: Keep waving that bloody shirt, Prof. Tell us that guilt-by-association is all you've got.

Now, try not to wet your bed: the state which sends Bernie Sanders to Congress? It has a REPUBLICAN governor! (Obviously they're operating extermination camps there, right?)

4

@2:

Sounds like a plan most of our resident RWNJ's would totally get behind...

5

@3:

Phil Scott is about as moderate a Republican as they come. He's pro-choice, he supported the impeachment of 45, and he voted for Biden. If he were the GQP governor of just about any other state besides Vermont the MAGATs would be screaming for his recall and standing outside the governors mansion in floral shirts with pitchforks and tiki torches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Scott#Political_career

6

@5: Do you mean to imply that a really, really liberal place will elect only the most moderate of Republicans? I asked Prof_Hyzterics not to wet his bed -- you're going to make him do worse! ;-)

7

The city attorney race is the biggest surprise to me. I had the vague impression that Pete Holmes was a relatively popular incumbent, and figured he'd easily coast to a win. Maybe he figured the same thing, since he barely bothered to campaign. To see him bumped out entirely in the primary is wild.

8

How is it that far left candidates always make bank in late counting?

9

Looks like Pete is out. So we have a race between a normal person who thinks crime is criminal, and a weird zealot who would usher in (without exaggeration, see Francisco, San) an era of payment-free shopping and a staggering increase in urban blight. Almost the weirdo to win just to see how far the process will go.

10

@8, that has been a long-running pattern in this area. Older, somewhat more conservative voters, tend to mail in their ballots early and reliably. Younger, generally more liberal voters, tend to wait to the last minute, register at the last minute, and are more likely to shove their ballot in a drop-box on the last day. So on election night returns, the county is counting ballots that were mailed in well before the due date, which tend to break a bit more conservative (or as conservative as Seattle gets). In the days after election night, they are counting ballots that were mailed at the last minute, or dropped in the drop boxes on the last day, which tend to break more liberal.

11

Bellevue welcomes Nichole Thomas-Kennedy to the general election and wishes her the best of luck.

12

@8, @10: That pattern long predates mail-only voting. In 1991, pro-choice Initiative 120 codified Roe vs. Wade in Washington state. It was losing on election night, but more and more mail-in ballots kept arriving from Seattle (cast by persons who had requested mail-in ballots, knowing they would be traveling out of state on election day) and eventually tipped the election to enact I-120.

@9: "...an era of payment-free shopping and a staggering increase in urban blight."

That day arrived in Seattle years ago: https://www.q13fox.com/news/bartell-drugs-says-it-will-not-open-any-more-stores-in-downtown-seattle-after-violent-assaults-on-employees

13

@7: It's hard to judge an AG's popularity based on the media who show slavish deference to them in order to maintain access to crime reporting. The Seattle Times called the unchallenged Dan Satterberg unbeatable for a decade until a defense attorney no one had ever heard of showed up in 2016 to challenge him on youth incarceration. Dan Satterberg was running so scared he changed party affiliation in a pathetic attempt to save his ass before Darron Morris handed it to him. Morris was forced to pull out of the race early due to medical reasons and the Seattle Times went back to slavishly calling him Satterberg "unbeatable."

Lindsey in 2016 was a nut job who lost badly to AG Holmes, who himself always had a weird obsession with policing the sex lives of gown women. Holmes is what we once called a pervert until it became politically popular for a short time in Seattle. I can't imagine that helped his campaign much.

Davison will win the nut job Emunclaw vote in Seattle that represents about 20% of the Seattle electorate, but NTK's real challenge came from Pete Holmes. It will be fun to watch the "but police reform cost Democrats votes!" crowd lose their shit when Davison ends up in the trash bin of history with her soulmate Tim Eyman.

14

@9: Sure, San Francisco was a well oiled machine and garden paradise before Boudin showed up in 2020.

You need to get out more.

Stop blaming the manure on the guy they call to clean out the stables.

15

@1: NTK is a defense attorney who has real world experience with the criminal system. Davison is what, a resolution counselor?

Sure, Davison is the one with the experience and NTK is "unqualified." No ideology in your moronic statement at all.

17

@16: So, voters across the entire state of Vermont -- you know, exactly the same electorate which sends Bernie Sanders to Congress? -- have, by electing a Republican governor, all become guilty of whatever the heck it is you're ranting about here. Got it.

"But every socialist is a member of a deadly dangerous ideology?! Right? You asshole."

I'm sorry basic reading comprehension continues to defeat you with such ludicrous ease. I had clearly referred to one organization, Socialist Alternative, not to all socialists everywhere. (You see, the capitalization indicates the proper name of a specific entity; the lack of capital implies it's a generic term for every entity of a broad type. For this example, there were utopian socialist communities operating in the United States before Karl Marx had published anything.)

"She became a RepubliQan in 2020! She literally joined a political movement BECAUSE of its policies."

Or because of, you know, wanting to get elected. That's sometimes a thing political parties help people do. Even for non-partisan offices, like, say, Seattle's City Attorney.

"The policies of voter suppression, pandemic conspiracies, and coups. That’s all that needs to be said. That’s what your voting for."

Keep on waving that bloody shirt. It's worked really well in stopping her thus far.

18

@17: You have not targeted socialist alternatives so much as you have targeted Khama Sawant. Now you are targeting Nicole Thomas-Kennedy.

Hmm, there seems to be a pattern here and it's not the pattern you will invent to avoid accountability.

Would you like to list the other women in leadership roles in Seattle that make you uncomfortable?

20

The misuse of the word aboltionist is an insult to the history of the word.

22

@18: "You have not targeted socialist alternatives so much as you have targeted Khama Sawant."

Quote and url, please. (And no, someone else's drunken rage-posting does not count.) Had I actually targeted CM Sawant, I would have spelled her name correctly.

"Now you are targeting Nicole Thomas-Kennedy."

It could be worse. I could have followed the examples given here, and repeatedly referred to another female candidate as a "nut job." Good thing I didn't stoop that far, eh?

"Would you like to list the other women in leadership roles in Seattle that make you uncomfortable?"

Are names required, or may I just complain generally about those horribly emotional white women who dare prosecute wife-beaters? Would the latter work for you?

26

@22: Davison was a life long Republican from Texas who recently rejoined the Tim Eyman party in Washington because. I quote from her conversation with soulmate Dori Monsom about leaving the democratic party on KIRO where you apparently get all your news:

“It really was not the party that I was a part of for most of my adult life, and certainly not the one [I was in] when I moved to Seattle,” she to KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

Dori: The Atlantic names King County among most politically intolerant in nation

“Those types of conversations became unwelcome within that belief system that is currently going on locally within the Democrat party … and the place that is welcoming for common-sense ideas that are fiscally responsible while we do it has become the Republican Party,” she said.

She joined the Republican Party in 2020 because she felt they were the "fiscally conservative" party Really? I assume she is referring to people like Donald Trump as the kind of "fiscal conservative" leader she hopes to follow?

Then on Jan. 6 when she watched her party storm the capital because they imagined the election was stolen from them, she had the opportunity to leave the party with a "that is not a party I can believe in." But no, she instead doubled down on being a Republican because apparently that's acceptable behavior for her along with the 8% of people in King County who share her high opinion of Donald Trump. If that is not a nut job, nothing is.

On the paraphrased quote made by a group of black women you continue to dishonestly attribute to me, If you ever paraphrasing a critiquing of white female prosecutors by a group of black women in the feminist movement who had their husbands locked up against their wishes as Aya Gruber's documented in her excellent book "The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation in Mass Incarceration" then feel free to paraphrase away. I promise that unlike you, I can tell the difference between paraphrasing the experience of the women in a book and your own personal opinion. Will just chalk this up to your lifetime of important distinctions you struggle to understand.

For some, sharing the perspective of these women who have lost their husbands to a system that has made things worse for them would stimulated empathy even if you don't share their perspective of the way they expressed it. For sociopath concern troll like you incapable of empathy, your more concerned about the way they expressed themselves. Actually, it's worse than that. You can't actually tell the difference between why sharing how the feel in their own words and how I would express the same situation from a different perspective.

27

Watch their vids:

Miss Nichole:
https://youtu.be/OwOTZYbz6jo

Miss Ann
https://youtu.be/rhLQCWdTowo

(Ann - Don't ever make another appearance with your hair like that again.)

29

@21: "Well, the Abolitionists were the nut job radicals of the 1850s"

The Republicans. The Quakers (R. M. Nixon for example). I'm having a difficult time with the "nut job radical" bit.

@28: "I can't really imagine Seattle electing a candidate w/ an R after their name"

And yet here we are, in effect.

30

@25: Let's go ahead and file this entire post under "bad hot takes."

To wit:

"NTK has basically said she does not want to do the job if elected. Her being elected would be like a public defender who refused to defend criminals. The job of the City Attorney is to prosecute criminals (and defend the city on the civil side of things)."

I suspect she defines her job differently rather than "does not want to do the job" after actively running for office. You think her job is prosecution and conviction. I think her job is public safety. There are endless laws on the books and enforcing some of them makes us safer. Others have no impact and others actually cause harm. "Enforcing all of them" would mean you, I, and everyone else around us would end up in jail since we have been writing new laws in Washington for about 150 years and very few of them are ever removed.

"There are checks and balances in our system. So we have a person who alleged commits a crime who is caught by the police. The city attorney should review the facts at a fairly low threshold, and when indicated, charge. Then the accused gets an attorney paid or free and there are either negotiations to an agreed outcome, or a trial, where a judge or jury decides on guilt or innocence, and a in the former, punishment meted out via fines, jail, community service probation, treatment or whatever. "

That's a cute take and how Dick Wolf made his fortune, but the real legal system looks nothing like that. The reality is if you are a part of the criminal complex, rich or a politician you will be offered every legal right due process and the Constitution have to offer along with some extras if you are a cop, judge or prosecutor. If you are not a member of these groups you will either get only some, or none of those rights entirely at their discretion with no oversight, or accountability involved. The same people who charged you set and decide all the rules. They then decide how much they will follow the Constitution and due process, once again with no real oversight or accountability. Not surprisingly, for everyone but you and Dick Wolf, everyone in the criminal system generally follows the lead of the AG on all these items in every case, meaning there is no "checks and balances" as you imagined it beyond Hollywood dramas.
The prosecutor decide if the Constitution and due process will be followed and informs everyone else what they will do and how they will handle things. There is no entity to ensure the Constitution is followed. There is only the internal consistency set and decided by the prosecutor.

If you are not part of the 3 protected classes, than the prosecutor decides what the charges will be, how many there will be along with what your bail will be. The judge almost always signs off on what the prosecutor instructs them to do and prosecutor will throw an absolute tantrum if some judge is impudent enough to think for themselves:

https://mynorthwest.com/3063557/rantz-seattle-judge-goes-easy-on-murder-suspect-prompting-rare-second-opinion-that-mostly-failed/

"If elected, it is NTK's fucking job to prosecute."

I think an AGs job and the job of all law enforcement is actually to reduce harm and promote public safety, which requires an entire tool box of options that includes prosecution, but also other options you mentioned earlier, such as "fines, jail, community service probation, treatment or whatever" that you now magically want to forget to prioritize your true feelings, which is conviction and incarceration as long as it's never you or anyone you care about. I suppose you share that last view with everyone who works within the criminal system that makes sure family and friends face a very different "law and order" than the rest of us.

"As she questions this job description, she is not qualified to serve."

She actually doesn't "question the job," but instead sees it as a series of options to improve outcomes that you yourself supported until you went all law and order on us at the end.

"Ann Davison is willing to do the job and cares enough to do it well."

If by "job," you mean the same incarceration first policies that ignore what actually keeps us safe and reduces harm to society, sure. Davison promises to go after jay walkers with the same red hot intensity Kennedy has said she will go after people who commit a DUI. If you think the answer to every scenario no matter how complex and whether or not in leads to a better or worse outcome is always and forever incarceration from a lady with 0 actual experience with criminal law, sure, Davison makes sense.

See, we got through that entire thing without mentioning party affiliation and Davison is still the wrong choice. Of course, the fact that as a Texas Republican she refused to distance herself from Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riot shows bad judgement in my opinion, but you do you. As long as she locks up everyone who fishes without a license and uses drugs you will be happy.

Some of us want a AG with actual experience who knows the difference between a simple and gross misdemeanor, but as I said earlier, you do you and Davison.

32

I have to say I’m not a fan of any of the candidates for anything.

Seattle is in a funk, politically. We’re a one-party system, which is failing the citizens, but there’s no intellectual firepower on the right side of the aisle. They’re all morons, sociopaths, and/or Bible-addled nitwits.

33

Is misdemeanor_A going to be abolition-ed as much as misdemeanor_B? ...

"Stranger-endorsed abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy pulled ahead of Republican Ann Davison in the Seattle City Attorney's race.."

For instance sexual harassment is typically a misdemeanor; we aren't going to give that a abolition-skip like say... jay-walking now, are we?

34

@31: But most of the Abolitionists in the USA were Republicans.

35

@16 Very well stated.

36

When Pete Holmes ran on a platform of not prosecuting anybody for pot, every last one of you fuckers clutching your pearls about NTK was clutching your pearls over the total anarchy and law of the jungle that would follow. Remember? I remember. You all thought a city attorney that ignored "dangerous druggies" was tantamount to not doing the job at all. You all lost your shit. People would OPENLY do a marijuana right in front of THE CHILDREN. The children!

Remember when you lost your shit over $15 per hour? Or lost your shit over gay marriage? Got your finger right on the pulse of history, doncha?

Now here we are again. The smart lawyer says she won't send people to jail for stealing a sandwich or a second hand sleeping bag from Goodwill, and here you are, confidently predicting our streets will look like Grand Theft Auto IV. The streets will fill with blood! “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!"

The reasons your predictions are always wrong is that you fail to recognize which institutions in our society are vital to the existence of order and civility. Guess what? It's not police, prisons, courts, laws, churches, corporations, or even the holy of holies, the living saints that are our sacred beloved small business owners. It's none of them. Never was.

37

@36: I don't recall such pearl clutching, certainly not on Slog.

38

Don't get me wrong, no fan of Pete Holmes whatsoever but I sure hope our 'progressives' know what they are doing here or we could very well end up with Sidran redux as city attorney. It does not seem like Thomas-Kennedy even wanted the job. Instead it was a ploy to 'start a conversation' or something. It will certainly be interesting if she wins.

40

Technically the Republican doesn't even know that the Seattle Prosecuting Attorney has zilch to do with felonies, so can't be the sane one.

41

@26: The quote of yours I keep mocking was itself either your paraphrase or entirely your own invention, and it could still be the latter, because you didn't actually attribute it to any original source: "Simply locking primarily black men in cages may satisfy the emotional needs of primarily white female prosecutors who run domestic violence divisions, but it has drawn ire from the black women who suffer the consequences of the incarceration first strategy." (https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/05/24/57632886/defense-attorney-challenging-pete-holmes-vows-not-to-prosecute-almost-all-misdemeanors/comments/11) Immediately after your statement, you give information on two books, without quoting anything from either of them, and with no other indication you were paraphrasing anything from either of them. Your failure to communicate here is not anyone else's fault.

Travis Berge beat Lisa Vach. He then publicly bragged about having beaten Lisa Vach. If we'd locked him in a cage immediately after either of those two events, she might still be alive. Should 'incarceration first' be part of our strategy for ending domestic violence? Perhaps, perhaps not. But sometimes incarceration is required for protection of the victim, and any policy we make should recognize this. Waiting until someday, when we might have built a better system, will cost some victims their lives.

42

@36:
"total anarchy and law of the jungle"
"People would OPENLY do a marijuana right in front of THE CHILDREN"
"Remember when you lost your shit over $15 per hour?"
Landlords would just raise rents to mop up the increased funds, driving people living
on the margins into homelessness.

Well, here we are.


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