It's a funny thing, but when I was mayor the Seattle Times was sure that crime was the mayor's fault.

Violent crime is up 61% since 2013. Now the Seattle Times blames the city council, not the mayors they endorsed.
theurbanist.org/2022/04/16/sea… If Mayor Harrell follows the prescription of the Seattle Times (and the business lobby - same thing) they will praise him.

But here’s the problem. Their prescription - more cops, remove visible homeless, more punishment - won’t do the job.

It requires a whole community response

Message to America from WA state about vote by mail:

Election day is weeks long - it starts when ballots arrive.

Election night also lasts weeks - it ends when all the ballots are counted.

No bitching about having to wait for results.

Democracy > your impatience Dear national media - please get this right. We get it, you want to "call the election" and report the story's final chapter. But with vote by mail, the night voting ends is often just another chapter.

Your reporting will set the frame.

Democracy needs your diligence here.

Business powerbrokers will claim today in a press conference that a bailout for the Convention Center Expansion is essential to Seattle’s economy. But what if, hear me out, expansion is just digging a deeper financial hole? Here are questions reporters should consider asking: Q1. The Convention Center press release says the $1.8 billion convention center, “will bring in millions in revenue”. $1.8 billion is 1800 million. So how many millions? Enough to generate 1800 million plus interest?

A lot of reporters working on Seattle City Council election analysis are still stuck at "results are mixed", or putting too much emphasis on Sawant losing (when results aren't fully in). Results aren't mixed - last night was a bad night for Amazon. Follow along to see why. Imagine the Chamber and Amazon honchos this morning looking at City Council strategy for next year. The labor/social justice bloc starts with Gonzalez, Mosqueda and Herbold. That group just added Morales, Strauss and Lewis. 6 of 9 without Kshama (or an often sympathetic Jaurez)!

Based on first night results, and knowing that later votes break progressive, the Amazon takeover of the Seattle City Council failed badly.

They are going from 5 council members endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, to two or three endorsed by the Chamber.

Full history below

https://twitter.com/mayormcginn/status/1191761067761795072

Kshama is the tossup here. She is down 8 percentage points tonight. She was down 9 in 2013 on election night and won.

After tonights election people will ask “Did Amazon win?”

Orion v Sawant is the highest profile race and the media will be tempted to use this as a bellwether.

But there is a more important metric - how many Chamber of Commerce endorsed candidates are on the Council? That was the goal of business leaders since last summer when they saw an opening after the head tax. Their words:

“What do we want? A new city council,”

“it’s an opportunity to take back our city” 

theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

Seattle's city pension fund is invested in private prisons and fossil fuel companies. The pension fund chair from 2013-17 who resisted calls to divest? Tim Burgess. The same guy running a massive business PAC to buy this year's elections. seattleglobalist.com/2019/09/18/sea… Sharing these facts because there are real differences between city council candidates. The business PACs knows that - and will try to hide it. But it's no accident that Seattle remains invested in fossil fuels and private prisons - it's what they want.

https://twitter.com/mayormcginn/status/1172552781229510657

I imagine that people in the future will ask “why didn’t they act when they heard the climate change warnings? What were they thinking?” So I decided to visit the tunnel ribbon cutting to report what they were thinking. Seriously, given that transportation is about half of our global warming emissions, I wonder if anyone will mention climate change during their remarks.