Hacks & Wonks 2025 Post-Primary Roundtable

Hacks & Wonks 2025 Post-Primary Roundtable Livestream | August 12th, 2025

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: All right. Welcome, everyone. Well, Seattle's 2025 primary just flipped the script. Progressive challengers are leading, big incumbents are on the ropes, and the political map is shifting fast. Tonight, we're not guessing why - we're talking to the people who actually ran and are familiar with these campaigns. This is your inside look at the strategy, the stakes, and what's coming in November.

Welcome and good evening to our Hacks & Wonks post-primary election analysis. Tonight, we're digging into the 2025 primary results - what they mean, how they happened, and what's next - with the people who actually do the work of winning and sometimes losing campaigns in Seattle and King County. You'll hear from local political consultants who've been in the field, in the strategy rooms, and on the phones - not just pundits looking at numbers from a distance. These are the folks who understand our voters, our neighborhoods, and the mechanics of running a campaign here.

We'll break down the races that define this primary - from the Mayor's contest and the City Attorney's race, City Council race shakeups, and key County battles - and talk about the forces driving this clear shift in voter sentiment. We'll also pull back the curtain on the strategy, messaging, fieldwork, and decision-making that shape these outcomes.

We're excited to be able to livestream this roundtable on Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, we are recording this roundtable and it will be available with a full text transcript on officialhacksandwonks.com.

Tonight, we're joined by three impressive guests. Lexi Koren is a Communications Consultant with PowerHouse Strategic. She has been a campaign manager for federal, state, and local campaigns across four states and has more than 15 years of experience in campaigns, communications, and research. Before becoming a campaign manager, she was Vice President at Hickman Analytics, where she worked on polling for U.S. Senators and Representatives, and major independent expenditure programs, including the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC. Recently, she led communications strategy for the landslide defeat of a statewide initiative that would have repealed the state's capital gains tax. Huge, huge. Currently, she is working on advocacy and legislative communication strategy for progressive organizations, including Child Care Aware of Washington and Invest in Washington Now.

Stephen Paolini is a progressive political consultant that has helped candidates and issues when at the local, regional, and state, and federal level. Originally from Orlando, Florida, he was motivated by the horrific Pulse NightClub shooting to work in politics. Over the next decade, he has helped pass taxes on the rich, accountability for law enforcement, stronger gun laws, innovative responses to hate and extremism, and much more. Stephen is a Principal at Bottled Lightning Collective, working across the country to elect and re-elect Democrats, including frontline congressional members in some of the toughest turf in the country, like Congressman Chris Pappas and Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Outside of politics, Stephen serves as the Chair of the Board for Community Passageways, a community violence intervention organization serving youth and adults in Seattle, King County, and across Washington state. He lives in Greenwood with his partner, Tati, and their cat, Waddle Dee!

Riall Johnson is a Principal Partner at Prism West. Riall began working in political campaigns in 2012 after he retired from a nine-year career as a professional football player. Riall's focus in politics has always been on the field side of grassroots campaigns. He's knocked thousands of doors for campaigns in six different states, organized the collection of over one million signatures, and created grassroots volunteer programs that are still self-sustaining today. He knows field. For the past few years, Riall has been focusing his work in his home state of Washington and his current residence of California, where he has led impactful campaigns focused on gun violence prevention, police accountability, and criminal justice reform. After directing ballot initiative I-940, Riall founded Prism West, formerly Prism Washington, in 2018 to focus on getting progressive candidates of color in office to increase representation of government and bring real, transformative policy to fruition. Many of his clients have broken barriers by becoming the first of their demographic to be elected to their offices.

And I'm Crystal Fincher. I'm a political strategist who spent the last 15 years leading an award-winning political consulting firm that helped local, legislative, and statewide candidates and ballot measures win. And I successfully worked to make sure conservative candidates lost up and down the West Coast. My background in economic development and civic policy informed my political career. I served on the City of Kent Land Use and Planning Board, as a deputy on the Washington Roundtable, on the boards of the Kent Youth and Family Services, Northwest Association of Financial Professionals, Tabor 100, and the Washington Institute for a Democratic Future. I currently serve on the boards of The Urbanist, Progress Alliance of Washington, and Media for Informed Communities. Most of my time now is spent at KVRU 105.7 FM, an independent, non-profit community radio station in South Seattle that I recently acquired with my partner, Monisha Harrell. So stay tuned for some big KVRU announcements next month. I'm also the host of the show putting on this livestream - Hacks & Wonks - which is available on your favorite podcast app and officialhacksandwonks.com. Welcome, everyone. Glad to have you here.

[00:05:55] Lexi Koren: Thank you for having us.

[00:05:57] Riall Johnson: Thank you.

[00:05:58] Stephen Paolini: Oh, my goodness.

[00:05:59] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So, esteemed panel here - we're going to start off.

[00:06:06] Stephen Paolini: Okay. Okay.

[00:06:08] Crystal Fincher: The Seattle races that we saw here. We saw Katie Wilson take 50.71% of the vote as of today against Bruce Harrell's 41.24% of the vote. In the City Attorney race, Erika Evans has a commanding lead of 55.8% to Ann Davison's 33.4%. Seattle City Council Position 9 saw Dionne Foster almost at 60% - 58.4% - to Sara Nelson's 35.4%. In the City Council Position 8 race, incumbent Alexis Mercedes Rinck is up with 78.3% of the vote to Rachael Savage's 12.98%. In the District 2 race, Adonis Ducksworth got 29.36%. Eddie Lin is winning that race with 47.43%. And Seattle Prop 1 is passing - that's the Democracy Voucher renewal initiative - proposition - with almost 60% - 59.9% - to the No at 40.9%. So that's a recap of the Seattle races. We'll start off talking about the mayoral race. Just off of the top - starting with Stephen - what worked for Katie Wilson? What didn't work for Bruce Harrell?

[00:07:38] Stephen Paolini: Yeah. I mean, good goodness. Like, obviously across the board, an extremely progressive result. I think all of us would agree - we were all kind of caught off guard to a certain extent. I mean, I think if anyone, sort of before the election, told you they knew that this would be the result, I would tell you that they're a liar, right? Clearly, Katie ran a really strong campaign focused on showing voters a really positive, ambitious vision for how she would make their life better - really focused on affordability, which folks across the country are feeling really just like at the highest possible level. But I think also there's clearly headwinds, right? In every single race that you mentioned, except for the Proposition, because there isn't actually - no, that one as well - like The Stranger endorsement won in literally every race. And that is just a clearly an atmospheric signal that this electorate is really looking for progressive, positive, ambitious vision for the city of Seattle. And and we saw that pretty much every race. So I'm not downplaying Katie by any means - she's an incredible - this is the first time in a very long time we've seen somebody in the primary and non-incumbent especially, leading with over 50%. I mean, that is an unheard of - I think, for our audience listening - that is an absurd result, and and a huge credit to her team. They've clearly captured a grassroots and just populist energy.

[00:09:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, I think so. And for people who may not be familiar - that 50% mark is one that, you know, is kind of viewed as - Hey, if you get 50%, you're the overwhelming favorite to win in November. It's a huge benchmark. So rare. I can't remember, actually, a time in Seattle where a candidate won when they had an opponent who had over 50% of the primary vote. Maybe it happened - I can't recall it. Lexi, what do you think? According to your view, what went right for Katie? What went wrong for Mayor Harrell?

[00:10:03] Lexi Koren: I want to pick up on something that Stephen said a little bit. And I think Katie sometimes - I mean, has certainly been underestimated this entire race. And I'll be honest, when I talked with her on Election Night, she did not see this result, this result entirely coming either. And The Stranger in their - absolutely loves her - wrote a glowing endorsement. Said something about - I think it was her Instagram videos being a little awkward or something along those lines, right? And it's true - from observations - that she is not quite natural in the way that say, Zohran Mamdani, the progressive candidate who is dominating in New York is. However, I don't think that is inherently a negative. I think there's an authenticity to her, just being who she is. And she is running this campaign - I mean, truly has had very little institutional support so far. A handful of endorsers - the city employees union, PROTEC, is one of them - but most of labor has gone for Bruce, and business is certainly in his corner. I think that one of the things that made Bruce seem like a prohibitive favorite in this race is the fact that he has been really good at locking up this institutional support, making it hard for a lot of candidates to look at the mechanics of building a coalition and creating a viable challenge. The flip side - if you ask a lot of people about Bruce Harrell, they'll kind of say - Yeah, but for better or worse, he hasn't done a whole lot. And yeah, as a result, he hasn't pissed off a lot of people - he got all these institutional endorsements, but he hasn't done a lot. Doesn't have a lot to show for it. And I think in a year like this, that really creates an opening for somebody like Katie, who is running this outsider campaign and not beholden to anyone - and starts off as an underdog and has nothing to lose, frankly. People are loving that message and I am I am certainly thrilled.

[00:12:31] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Riall?

[00:12:35] Riall Johnson: I think - well, definitely, like, I think what Katie's success is a testament to the work that she's put in the years leading up to this race. Because when she announced, everyone who's been organized in Seattle was very excited - because Katie's been there, Katie's done the work. Katie's always like, you know - and I've seen her almost everywhere - in any kind of progressive action initiative, these things, Katie has always been active and working. So she is, regardless of how she - she ran a great campaign, but I think the real success is behind just the years and years of work that she's put in. And, of course, on the flip side, the years of work that Bruce has put in to do absolutely nothing. So I think - and I've said this, I've said this many times - I think, you know, Bruce Harrell is just a corporate tool and he's going to be remembered as that. Because he just, it's status quo, keep the corporations happy, keep DSA - the bad DSA - happy, you know, and and it's just what it is. And it's just like, you know. And then people - he is stagnant, and you can only do that for so long and people get tired of it. They're gonna check that other box because it's like, what is he doing for me? Let's, you know, do something new. And that's just how, like, like, what does he really have to stand on other than just being the guy showing up, saying some things, and then and never get anything done? But you know, he's - it's a weird predicament for - not just Bruce, but, like the institutions so-called "progressive" institutions that endorsed him. Like, now are they gonna do the back up to their endorsement? And that's what I'm - gonna get my popcorn and watch to see everyone that's sitting there with egg on their face, saying, like, thinking it was a safe choice. But now they're gonna have to do something to actually keep him in office because they're in for a fight. And, most likely, a losing fight.

[00:14:30] Crystal Fincher: That's interesting. I do think that's one good distinction for Seattle people that you mentioned, Riall. We have two DSAs here in Seattle. They're very, very different. One is the Democratic Socialists. The other is the Downtown Seattle Association. They usually are not aligned. So that distinction between which DSA you were talking about - depending on how you stand, depends on whether you call it good or bad - but they're very, very different. Go ahead, Lexi.

[00:14:59] Lexi Koren: Oh, Riall, I just wanted to piggyback off of something you said about Katie's years of work. And Katie, for those who don't know, is the head of the Transit Riders Union, and she is an organizer first and foremost. And I think that really shows up in her campaign and just in the mechanics of something - Paul Query was mentioning, he had an article about this - about how low her overhead costs were and how much money she was able to put into paid media. And that - I don't know, I have not talked to her about this specifically - but having been around campaigns, when you are an organizer and you have people really bought in, you can get a lot of folks to be doing a lot of things because they believe in your campaign that you otherwise might have to pay folks for and your overhead is going to be higher. So that really, I think, showed up - you look at her PDC reports. But it also shows up when you just see that energy and people get it.

[00:16:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I've seen some coverage where they characterize Katie as this candidate coming from out of left field. And, you know, to - I think all of your points - Katie has been around doing the work. And kind of what Katie does is win campaigns. Katie translates public sentiment into policy that can pass at the ballot box. The Seattle Chamber categorized many of the ballot initiatives - to raise the minimum wage across the region and several suburbs of Seattle, being involved in renter protection initiatives - saying that they're prolific now. She has been doing this for a while. And I also think something that has worked for her is - being such an organizer, talking to people at their doors in public every single day. It's not that, you know, polling can be useful. Polling can help you understand where people are at. But nothing replaces talking to real people - the context, the emotion that people have, understanding what is really on people's minds - is really important. And Katie has been talking to people, you know, in their homes, talking to them about this for years now. I think that was an advantage that a lot of people didn't necessarily see.

So, Stephen, there has been talk about wondering - Hey, we saw, in Bruce's race, to a greater degree than the City Council races, Bruce got a wide variety of endorsements. Not just from people in the business community, our largest corporations - but also MLK Labor, the county's central labor organizing body endorsed Bruce Harrell. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal endorsed Bruce Harrell. She certainly is popular among progressives. Working people's issues and supporting workers is critically important to people in Seattle. Why didn't that translate for him? And do you see them sticking with him in the general election? Or is there room for support of Katie also?

[00:18:29] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I think this is one of my favorite takes after the election - that just fundamentally, endorsements don't matter. I'll just say it. I think endorsements from elected officials, from many organizations do not carry the weight that a lot of political professionals - ourselves, I think included - think that they do. And I don't know a single voter - really - who sits there looking at the Voters' Pamphlet and makes a column of how many organizations and people have endorsed Candidate A and how many organizations and people have endorsed Candidate B. And compares them and uses that to sort of decide who to vote for. Instead, I think what matters is how you communicate the things you're going to do to materially improve the lives of residents here in Seattle. And top of mind, we've seen consistently in polling and also in elections, has been - My rent has doubled. My life is significantly more expensive than it was 5 or 10 years ago. What are you going to do to address that? I think Katie clearly articulated a very concrete plan, or at the very least, sort of passionately communicated that this was what she was - she cares about and is going to be focused on as Mayor. And Bruce instead sent - I counted at least two mailers that he sent - that literally were front and back, what I call endorsement soup. But it's just like literally listing out all of the organizations and people that have endorsed him. I think that's a huge mistake. And frankly, I don't think voters care about that at all.

There are some endorsements, obviously, that matter. I talked about at the start of the show - which is clearly The Stranger carries a huge weight in a significant portion of at least the primary electorate's voting behaviors. And, frankly, to a lesser extent, more and more each year, The Seattle Times carries weight. I mean, I'm actually sort of somewhat skeptical of how much of The Seattle Times influence nowadays is actually political influence, or simply the fact that they often choose the other of the most-likely-to-advance candidate. I'm actually not even sure how much The Seattle Times endorsement is that of much of a persuasive effect on the Seattle electorate. So that's kind of my overall take is - I just don't think endorsements matter. I think communication matters. And Lexi, you made an awesome point, which is - I think I just want to underscore this - like, how absurd it is for a challenger who is "newer to elected office" to out-communicate the moderate incumbent. Like, that is a pretty unusual outcome. Usually, incumbent campaigns have so many advantages and so much more momentum that they almost always out-communicate their challengers. I'll give the example of Sara Nelson on the hard side - significantly out-communicated Dionne. Obviously, she's not using the voucher program - it's a little bit different. But even Ann Davison out communicated Erika Evans, for example, on the incumbent side in the raw amounts that they communicated with. So the fact that Katie, just like, did a better job of spending her money is a testament to exactly the point you guys are making, Riall and Lexi. She is a kick-ass, amazing political operative and organizer - not quite actually an outsider, although I think voters are perceiving her as an outsider of sorts, when it comes to sort of seeing her as an agent of change. Yeah, but anyway, that's my perspective.

And the last point you asked Crystal, which I think is a really interesting one, is - Will those endorsements change? That's a million dollar question I wish I knew the answer to. I mean, my instinct is no. I think there's a bit of in for a penny and for a pound. Riall kind of said this at the top, like, it'll be really interesting to see. I don't think they're likely to change their endorsements. The question for me is actually more like - how much are they going to spend to try and protect Bruce? Will we see significant labor expenditures in Bruce's camp? That's a really, like, I don't have the answer for you. I would sort of hope not. But I, but it is sort of the normal intuition would be - you endorse the guy, you clearly said you believed in him, so you're going to back that up with paid communications to try to make sure he wins re-election. But that's the kind of thing I'm I'm sort of looking at more so than - they may keep their endorsement, maybe some folks will do a dual. I do think it's possible MLK Labor will consider a dual endorsement - I have heard that from various groups. Yeah, but that would be the one that might change its mind. I think everyone else is probably gonna stick to their guns for lack of a better word. And really, it's a question of how much they spend.

[00:23:22] Crystal Fincher: I think you raise a very - like as big of a question, maybe even the primary question is - Is it just going to be the endorsement, or is there going to be spending? Are there going to be boots on the ground behind the effort to protect Harrell? Where do they go from here? I think that's an interesting thing. How do you see it, Lexi?

[00:23:43] Lexi Koren: I had a little trouble unmuting there. That's how I see it - it's a little hard to unmute my microphone. I want to first - I want to disagree slightly with Stephen on the idea that endorsements don't matter. I have my own - just personal theory about this and my observations about this. I think endorsements matter less in executive races than legislative races - and I think this is a distinction that is often not made. I think when you have a Congressional primary and you kind of have two similar candidates, kind of trying to say, kind of saying the same sort of similar messages. And people are not looking at the, the good experiences necessarily, when you're looking at a legislative position versus an executive position. I think those endorsements really can matter. And some of these - and particularly, again, at the federal level - when you have a lot of these advocacy groups that work on reproductive rights and work on environmental justice. And things that, frankly, most of the candidates - certainly, these organizations pick sides in these local races, but the electorate kind of understands that, yeah, most of these candidates are pretty progressive on these general topics. And so I do think there is some, I do think there is - again, I think there, I think - but to Stephen, to your point, I think they are overrated in executive races. Because I don't think voters are looking at who is endorsing you when they're going to vote, they're asking - What's this person going to do for me? Because executive positions - mayors, county executives, governors - they have real power. They're not just part of a legislature, part of a coalition. They're asking - What is this person going to do for me?

Crystal, to your question - yeah, I think it is a very interesting question. Is there going to be spending? Is there going to be boots on the ground? I suspect there - my suspicion is business - business is probably going to try and save Bruce Harrell. I, I'm more curious if they're going to try and save Sara Nelson, to be honest, or Ann Davison, which are, you know, looking much less likely than Bruce Harrell to have a path to victory. I will be - but I suspect that they are going to try and save Bruce Harrell. Yeah. And what labor does - I know there are some unions that I don't think have quite endorsed yet. Stephen made a good point - it is possible that the Labor Council goes with a dual endorsement - that would certainly neutralize them spending in this race if they're endorsing both candidates, right? So it'll be interesting.

[00:27:02] Crystal Fincher: So that is a really interesting observation. And I have to think about that - the legislative versus executive. I have several legislative versus executive positions. Like, I am - start off suspicious for people coming from legislative roles going into executive roles because they're very different. And I think we have seen a number of pitfalls that come from having someone come from a legislative position land in an executive position. Some of the issues like not understanding that the buck actually does stop with them - it's not about just taking a vote and passing legislation - you actually have to deliver. A lot of management involved - executive management, management of all of the departments in the city. It's a big role, a lot different than that.

I would say - I think endorsements matter when the candidates are generally unknown by the public. When, you know, and I think that happens - as I'm thinking about what you said, Lexi - I think that happens more often in legislative positions than executives, because executives do have more of the spotlight on them and are generally more known than people on councils and other legislative positions. I think, you know, if someone has been paying attention to Bruce Harrell, they've decided whether they like what he's done or they don't like what he's done. And they don't need to hear someone else's opinion, or, you know, we're very rarely swayed by that. I think when we see a situation like in the City Attorney's race or in the District 2 race, when there are a number of candidates that all sound okay at first glance. And voters are trying to differentiate - they don't know, they don't know who to trust. Do they have a record behind them? I think endorsements matter a lot more in that situation. They're looking for some independent validation of, you know, who - for people who've looked into their backgrounds, who've looked at what they're doing. Just a piece to say - Okay, they see that that's it. I don't know anything about any of these people, so if The Stranger says it - okay. I think that people do that when they're unfamiliar with the people involved in the campaign. So question for - starting with Riall - Is there a path for Bruce to victory? Is he cooked? Or can he make it through and prevail?

[00:29:29] Riall Johnson: It's going to be fun to watch, I think, because I think business will - they're going to have to double down to save him. They can't stay out of this fight if they want him in office. So they're gonna put - you know, we're gonna probably see another 2019 money bomb. You know, I mean, the same - they got the same lobbyist directing them, Guy Palumbo, I think - is still like telling what Chamber what to do, as far as I know. But it's just, it's going to be funny to watch because, like - yeah, I mean, it's going to be a predicament. All these other so-called progressive institutions that endorse them, too - they're going to probably sit out. And that's what goes back - yeah, do the endorsers mean anything? They do when you do something - when the endorsements come with something. Are you sending people or money? Yes, no. No, they didn't send anything in the primary. Like, labor didn't go out and knock for Bruce. There's no money in any of the PDCs from any of the people that endorsed him. You know, only one was like - his Harrell for Seattle put up 100 grand, I think - that's, which is pennies towards what they're going to put up - we're going to see probably at least $2 million put up towards Bruce and/or against Katie from business institutions. They're going to have to. What issue they're gonna try and do on, who knows? Like, you know, they're gonna do the whole fearmongering - the, you know, like, we go too woke. We're gonna have protests in front lawn and of course, whatever crap they're gonna do - pull and stuff. You're gonna see just a bunch of, like, just anti-woke type of campaigning and Seattle's Dying-type stuff coming out. It's just it's, it's gonna be like, ironic and entertaining for me, I guess, but like, also - it's scary to see this because that stuff kind of works. Like, I saw this around the country - I live in L.A. - and you see where you see this around the country. They take the same three shoplifting videos, or someone does a smash and grab from any city and say - This is coming, this is in your town. This is happening all the time. And they used it to get laws passed or get progressive prosecutors out of office. That's how they got, you know, like in L.A. - Gascón, another story. But like, and they, you know, they did that fear-mongering with Nicole Thomas Kennedy four years ago - that's how we got Anne Davison in. It was just like, that's where they're going to have to go. And/or, you know, Bruce gets really desperate - you're going to see him fast track the Sonics coming back. So it's like, that's probably, I think that's, you know, he's going to give, you know, Westfield, whatever the company from that has a stadium deal, or Oakfield, whatever they're called, you know, a sweet deal just to get the Sonics back in time. So I don't know, you know, and I don't know. He thought being pro-sweeps and pro-cop and pro-business, and praising Trump and praising Elon Musk. Never being able to say Black Lives Matter without saying but afterwards was going to be good for him. You know, I think, like for the - I guess it didn't work out, so we'll see what he does.

[00:32:12] Crystal Fincher: So, Lexi, what is the path forward for Bruce? Does he have a shot? And what's the path forward for Katie?

[00:32:20] Lexi Koren: You know, Crystal, I'm sorry - there was just something Riall said about the Sonics that I just was - really funny to me because folks might know I ran Lorena González's race in 2021 against Bruce Harrell. And he - my recollection is he promised to bring the Sonics back in 2021. So if he starts going down that path - Katie, if you're listening - you might add that to the broken promises list.

[00:32:55] Crystal Fincher: Oh my goodness.

[00:32:57] Lexi Koren: But look, more seriously - I think that this race is going to get pretty negative pretty quickly - is the way we're going. We've seen some of it already. And it's going to - I think with business, you're going to see a lot of negative ads, a lot of attacks on Katie Wilson. I don't know exactly what those attacks are going to be. It seems like some of the ones that they've tried so far just haven't really stuck. And I think there will be questions about experience and all that. And so I think for her debates - there will be debates - I think those are going to be really important. And for Katie, I'm going to want to knock those out of the park. And I think she can knock those out of the park. I think she knows these issues that are facing the city backwards and forwards. And I think that coming in as a candidate with less experience and having a great debate performance against the incumbent mayor - I mean, that could really seal the deal with a lot of folks. So I think that's pretty important for Katie.

For Bruce, I mean - again, I think that it is, I think it's going to be these folks coming in, doing a trying to drag her positives down and make it a real race. And then I think there is a question to answer of what are you going to do with - Okay, what are you going to do with the next four years? And Katie is already answering that question. Especially when you are a candidate that doesn't have, hasn't done much - as we have said - what are you going to do with the next four years? And so I think Bruce is probably thinking about that - of giving voters a choice of what is this? What do the next four years actually look like with me versus not with her?

[00:35:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. What do you see as the path forward for both Katie and Bruce, Stephen?

[00:35:19] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I mean, so first, on the top of that, I would say Bruce is actually completely in this race. In 2021 - sorry, Lexi - there was a 15-point swing from the primary to the general election. Bruce Harrell ended up with 58% of the vote in the general. If that kind of swing happened here, Katie Wilson would lose this race. I don't want to pour so much cold water on the, like, Bruce's cooked party. I sort of, like - Election Night, a reporter texted me and my immediate response was - this was, like, when the first ballots dropped - I texted back, "Bruce Harrell is f***ing cooked." I maybe had a few drinks before, so shouldn't be texting at 11 o'clock on Election Night. But anyway, I still think that's true. But part of why I think that's true is because of the nature of both campaigns. I think Katie is, again, a really good campaigner. On Election Day, before even all the momentum now of people realizing - Holy shit, she can actually win this thing - she had almost 22,000 vouchers collected. That's several thousand more vouchers than you can actually collect if you got $0 from traditional fundraising or donors. So she's going to be maxed out on the program extremely quickly. At this point, I'd be shocked if she wasn't maxed out by the end of August - which is absurd to say out loud. And it's something that we've really never - I mean, Lexi, maybe you could kind of give us the perspective of what it was like on Lorena's campaign. Like, from my perspective working on mayoral races, this is really impressive. And it shows just a huge ground game and a grassroots momentum that's, you know, that's really shocking.

But with that, I think there are some real challenges. You know, she's having this sort of electric moment where in the campaign world, like, we want to be blasting off to outer space with excitement. And she's a bit limited in how she's able to capitalize on that momentum, because there is a hard cap on how much money she can raise. And as soon as she hits that cap, she's going to have to wait around twiddling her thumbs for Bruce Harrell to catch back up. And I think that's somewhat of a flaw in our Democracy Voucher program, frankly - because at the same time this is happening, in some conference room somewhere on the 45th floor, there's a group of business executives meeting, you know, smoking cigars, talking about how many zeros they're going to add to the check to help make sure Bruce Harrell gets elected. And they can wait all the way up until October 16th - when ballots drop - before they report any of that money and release Katie from the contribution limits. So this is just like a challenge of our system, I think, that is exploitable, ironically, by the very kinds of wealthy special interest groups that the program was designed to diminish.

I think one of the things that Katie needs to do, frankly, to win is something actually out of her control - which is us as a progressive collective need to get our shit together and create a vehicle to spend in support of her. And that's a selfish thing to say because I filed a PAC on Election Day to support Katie Wilson. But I do actually, in all honesty, believe that is a critical component to how do we actually build off of the momentum of Katie Wilson's victory to actually take the fight to the business community and be able to go - not dollar for dollar with them, because that'll never happen, but at least make sure that she's not walking into a meat grinder of outside spending from wealthy corporations. And so it really is about all of us doing that. I'm great. You know, you mentioned earlier, Crystal, are some of the endorsements going to shift? I? I said, No. Part of my question is some of the folks that are currently on the sidelines - where are they going to come in? You know, we have folks like UFCW - one of the largest unions in the state - that have not made an endorsement in this race yet. They tend to be extremely progressive and they tend to have resources to participate in campaigns like this. Unite Here Local 8, the hotel workers' union, that kind of sort of famously spent half a million dollars supporting Andrew Lewis in his primary campaign - which I still like, would love to understand why, but which I love, like, great. You guys should crush it. Don't get me wrong. I just like - that one always never made sense to me. But anyway, that's kind of my thought is - I do think there's a clear path for Bruce in this race. I don't think he's - I think he's cooked, in part because he's incapable of running the kind of campaign he'd need to do to win. And I think Katie is a really effective campaigner and is going to seize on this momentum to do the things she needs to do to win.

[00:40:24] Crystal Fincher: I don't think there's no chance for Bruce. I think Bruce has a chance. I think if he were to win, he would definitely have to take down Katie's positives. I think there's a big difference between now and 2021, in that Lorena came into the race with some baggage. Lorena had a record that not everybody was thrilled with on the Seattle City Council. And not everybody was thrilled with incumbents, regardless of what their records were at that time on the Seattle City Council. So I think just the dimensions of this race are different. And I think the national landscape - what we're seeing from the federal administration - makes this a bit different. And, and gives Katie another advantage over Bruce there. So I, you know, in my view, as I'm looking at this, I see Katie as the frontrunner in this general election, but it's not over - certainly not. There may be some other races that we'll talk about in just a minute that I would say are probably over - this is not one of them. There's still work both can do, there's still a lot to come. November is both around the corner and a long time from now, so we'll see what comes from that.

I do want to talk now about the City Council campaigns, where we saw Dionne Foster just - I mean, she's almost at 60% now, which you talk about first-time candidate, challenger to an incumbent President of the Council. My goodness - that is beyond most people's expectations. There are a number of people - I was one of the people who, you know, could see that Seattle was probably in the mood to vote for more progressive candidates and could see very close races, probably the progressive candidates in slight leads. I did not see 50%, 55%, 58% - didn't see that at all. That is just - those are wild numbers. So why do you think these races for the citywide Council seats - for Dionne Foster and for Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who, you know, I heard some punditry that it was a bad night for incumbents. It was a bad night for moderates - progressive incumbents were thriving. So what do you think was behind that, starting with Stephen, in the City Council races?

[00:43:03] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I mean, look, I think there is - this council in 2023, from my perspective, maybe this is a bit of a hot take, I think it campaigned on being progressive. And even to a certain extent, Sara Nelson campaigned on being a progressive. There was a sort of disagreement on policing. Certainly, they highlighted this sort of - their perception of Seattle's flirtation with "defunding the police" - obviously something that never actually happened. And we can all debate why. But in the reality, you know, that was sort of the wedge issue they used in 2021 and then in 2023. But outside of that, if you actually look at how the campaigns talked about issues - including progressive taxation, or climate change, or gun violence prevention, or housing - everyone campaigned broadly on the same stuff. Now, there's a big difference between how they campaigned and how they governed. And Sara Nelson, in particular, has governed as - at best, a visionless, moderate, and at worst, an outright sort of like hostile, anti-worker, anti-progressive values - you know, Republican lite. I mean, we're talking about attacking the minimum wage and trying to repeal progress on that that was negotiated over 10 years ago. You know, slashing protections for tenants, for gig workers, for making it easier for councilmembers to vote in their own financial interests. Like none of this stuff, I would argue - like, who elected you to do any of this? Like, none of you guys campaigned on - I want to cut the minimum wage. And I mean, obviously, if you did that, you'd lose, right? And so now I think, in those races, for the most part, it's like pretty hard to win when you've just spent the last four years doing a bunch of shit that no one asked you to do. And I just don't know that was ever recoverable.

And there is a bit of a difference, you know - not to go back to the Mayor's race too much, but like Harrell has been, I would say, at least marginally better on all of the things I just mentioned. You know, he actually opposed rolling back the minimum wage. He opposed cutting OLS funding - Office of Labor Standards funding. He supported this business tax. I guess everyone did ultimately, but he helped sponsor it. You know, like, he's done some things that I think got him some benefit with more progressive voters, probably at the behest of the people that stuck their neck outs and necks out and endorsed him. But yeah, that - that, to me, is the biggest problem for the incumbents - is they just ran up against their own record, which no one supported ever. And I don't understand why they thought that was their mandate. So-

[00:45:56] Crystal Fincher: I know lots of people who feel the same way, Stephen. Riall, what worked for Dionne, what worked for Alexis Mercedes Rinck, and how did they get to that level of support in a primary? And is it sustainable?

[00:46:15] Riall Johnson: Well, for one, I think - from the outside looking in, Dionne and Alexis are just really two really good candidates. Like, they're really, like, cloned out of the Teresa Mosqueda factory or something, where they just know how to - they just know how to campaign very well. And like, if you were to have, like, a video game create a character and say - This is my perfect progressive thread-the-needle candidate - like this is, like you'd have Dionne or Alexis, someone like that, because they did everything right from from what I saw. Dionne was also like - she wasn't really an outsider. She's been in the political game for years. She's very well connected, very - like she knows the game, and she played it, and she did it well. So I think it's just plain to see, like what she did right was just, you know, everything. So, and not to downplay her, but like Sara Nelson was just a horrible councilmember. She didn't really have a mandate when she won. It was just like the whole 2021 campaign was just like, just vote anti-woke, you know, like vote against anarchy. You know, you had all these, you know, concern trolling NIMBYs coming into, you know, and putting up money for Sara and Bruce to say, like - Just don't vote. You know, like there was, you saw the blowback of all the marches and the DEI - you saw that in 2020 nationwide. That's how you got all these like moderates and conservative people elected in cities like you saw, you know, so you saw Eric Adams coming into play and all these other, you know, cases, you know. Like, and it's weird, like you see this trend where it's like - Oh, you get a moderate POC shield candidate to get up there to defend business and it really hinders your white allies to give them valid criticism because they get labeled as being racist. And so, that was, you know, that's Bruce - like Eric Adams, Bruce Harrell, the Dallas mayor, other people - like, you see that. But so when you have candidates like, you know, like Dionne - Dionne kind of had that advantage where she could really go after Sara if she wanted to. But like, Dionne's a great fundraiser, she's a great speaker. Like she knows how to hold the room, like when she's in the room, like she takes, she has a great presence. And so like, I think she was - I saw that coming. I don't know if it was 60%, but I thought she - like, soon as she announced, I was like, she's gonna beat Sara. No problem.

Because I don't think Sara is that great a candidate. And like, and you look at her voting record - I think people took notice of that, like the self-dealing bill that she tried to push through with Cathy Moore, with the conflict of interest thing they tried to do and eventually gave up and blamed - Oh, it was too hostile. No, like people called you out for being trying to be corrupt, trying to leave it, so, that, you know, that all added up. So Sara has an event, so if anyone's cooked in this, in this race - yes, it's Sara Nelson. Bruce does have a chance because Bruce is actually a good campaigner. I will give him that. He does know how to campaign, he does have the charisma to do it, I think he does still have a chance. The question is what he's going to do. But like, how they attack? Like I think that's up to, it's up to the campaigns to do. I'm not here to give advice, I just say, I think, do not underestimate Bruce - he is a good campaigner, he's been there - because he somehow pulled off a miracle as the fresh new outsider somehow in 2021, when he's been on Council since the last century. And so - or something like - you know, he retired for two years and came back as, I'm the new guy. And it just, I mean, that's not exactly how it was said, but that's how people felt. And it's just like, you know, like, and they're like - We don't need people like Lorena was the incumbent on the Council. Like, we don't need someone from the City Council. Like, he's been there longer than her. And it was just weird how like she was labeled as like the person who was already there and they're tired of, when like, he created that whole atmosphere. He was President of the Council years before she was. It was just like, so he has pulled off - that was kind of a political miracle, in my opinion, how he did that. 'Cause, like when we challenged Bruce in 2019, like he, he was cooked then - he retired the next day after we announced with Tammy. And then, he came back and dominated the race. So, like I said, don't underestimate Bruce Harrell. But like I said, I think it's just going to be interesting to watch. And hopefully Katie has a good game - in my biased opinion - hopefully they do that. But Dionne is too smart to mess this up.

[00:50:26] Crystal Fincher: Dionne is certainly a great candidate. Bruce Harrell is a charismatic guy. He is great on the campaign trail - very personable in one-on-one small groups. It's hard to not like Bruce if you're just meeting him. I think that is a great point, Riall. I also think - interesting from what you were just saying - like, Hey, he was, he'd been on the Council for forever, but somehow ran as an outsider. I think that sometimes people underestimate how short people's memories are - for a couple reasons. One, there're just way too many things, especially these days, to pay attention to, to track, you know, specific politicians, where they've been, all that kind of stuff. Regular people do not follow that stuff closely. Most people can't name councilmembers. Most people can't name the Mayor. They may recognize him or, you know, hey, see them - that's the Mayor. But, like, who's the Mayor? Can you come up with a name? Most people can't do that. And there were so many people who moved here over the past 10, 15 years - a lot of people just weren't here for the majority of time Bruce was in office. Seattle's population has exploded, and so a lot of those people just don't have any context for, you know - before the mid 2010s, late 2010s, if people are just moving in 2020, there's been some redistricting - you know, that matters in those Council races. So it can be both an opportunity to rewrite your history if you know people are not familiar with it - and that's one of the things that Trump does amazingly well - recognizes that if people don't know something, he can actually define it for them. Doesn't matter how wrong or misleading it is, it's an opportunity. But it's also an opportunity for some things that maybe he doesn't want to highlight that people weren't familiar with. And more of an opportunity for Katie that they may not be familiar with some parts of Bruce's record. I'm interested to see where people go with this in the general election. And I'm interested in - what do Sara Nelson, what does Sara Nelson do now, Lexi? Like, what do you even do? Is Sara Nelson cooked? And what does she do for the next three months?

[00:52:55] Lexi Koren: Oh, you are giving me the real hard question, Crystal - because I agree with Riall and Stephen, having lived through this, that do not underestimate Bruce Harrell. Look, as you all have said, he is a good retail politician. It's an anecdote - when we walked out of the second debate with Lorena, he was like, Nice to see you. We should grab a beer sometime. So he's a, you know, I've never taken him up on it, but he's a good retail politician. I will give him that.

I do want to say for Dionne - look, Dionne, I worked, she's a friend. I worked with her on the No on 2109 campaign to successfully uphold the capital gains tax. She's a great friend. I'm a huge fan of hers. She called me a little before she was going to announce and we talked about this. And she said - Yeah. And I said - Why do you want to do this, Dionne? And she was like - Yeah, you know, it is, I don't know if I'm going to win. Like, No, no, no. I was like - Dionne, why do you want to be on the frickin Seattle City Council? Like, I think you got a great shot at winning. I don't think we realized quite how much of a shot. But I was like - I think you got a great shot at winning. And one of the reasons that I think this is where it is - is Crystal, you were talking about Lorena's record in '21 coming into the '21 election, which I think is a really great point. I think that that progressive Council, from - folks know from 2019 to 2021 - when the vast majority of the seats were held by candidates that were seen as the part of the Seattle more progressive left, endorsed by The Stranger, endorsed by labor, and not so much by Seattle Times and big business. And Lorena was the Council President during this progressive council. I think that in the 2021 elections - look, 2020 was a... a lot of things happened in 2020. If you don't remember, there was COVID, there was the protests, there was "defund." There was a lot of stuff going on that I think really overshadowed some of the things that the progressive council did in terms of - look, my landlord has to give me six months notice to raise my rent, which is a really great common sense law. And a lot of things for renters, a lot of things for workers - that the takeaway from 2021 was, Oh, this progressive council is so unpopular because of this "defund" stuff and all that. But they did a lot of stuff that was really, really popular. And I think with Sara Nelson, she has been the avatar of not just rolling back the stuff on public safety - which we had a big panic about, particularly in 2021 when she was running - but also on the really popular stuff. And that has not served her well. So I think Dionne is certainly in the driver's seat. And I'm going to take Riall's line on this - and it is certainly not my job to offer Sara Nelson advice - and frankly, if it were, I can't think of much.

[00:56:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think it's a - I don't know, like, that's one of them I'm not even sure what you really do as Sara Nelson. This might be one of those where, you know, I've had conversations with candidates before. It's not always roses and sunshine. Sometimes you need to look at what else is a win besides winning in a campaign. I think those maybe some of the conversations that are being had. And you've been on the Council, what's the legacy that you, that you want to leave? Obviously, you've seen that voters do not love your record, have not been there with you. Is there an opportunity in this time that you have left, maybe, to listen more, and act more in alignment with where the voters are? I think people would welcome that. Is that gonna change the dimensions of this race? I don't think so, ultimately. But it could impact maybe how she's seen down the line in the future. Now, one question.

[00:57:53] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, can I add one more-

[00:57:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, go ahead.

[00:57:56] Stephen Paolini: I don't think they're thinking about it that way at all - which I wish they did, to your point, Crystal. But I actually think they still believe they can win. And obviously, I don't agree. But from what I've heard - folks like in the business community right now, they're not thinking about this as a done deal at all, even the D9 race. Like they, they're sort of thinking about - Okay, can we get to $300,000 to support Nelson? And one of the things I've heard from them is - they haven't done the negative, you know, Dionne Foster is Kshama Sawant-lite attacks that they love to do. I don't think those are persuasive, but my point is just like, they're actually still gonna end up spending some money here. And I think Nelson is looking at it like it was a bad night for progressives. There's some reason to believe that, like the primary, generally speaking, nowadays in Seattle leans more progressive than the general election. There's sort of a five to nine point sort of baseline swing that occurs. We see that does not make up for Nelson's gap here. But just like, I just figured I would share that side of things - like I've heard from their side since the election that they sort of are not - they don't see, we're living in a different reality. We're living in the Bruce Harrell and Sara Nelson is cooked reality - which I think is the correct one. But I don't think they see it that way at all. I think in both races, they're figuring out how much money they need to spend to support both of those candidates.

I just wanna point out the last bit, which is totally self-serving, but this was a race for Dionne where we did have almost $200,000 in outside expenditure supporting Dionne. We were able to out-communicate the business community, both on the hard side for Nelson and also on the outside, which is again-

[01:00:01] Crystal Fincher: When you say "we," who are you referring to?

[01:00:03] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, the sort of labor community through Progressive People Power PAC, which I helped create last year for Alexis and we ran again this year for Dionne. And it's a big deal that I think we often - I often forget to take, you know, do the victory lap on of, like - Yeah, we actually were able to out-communicate an incumbent who raised half a million dollars and had an independent expenditure from the National Realtors Association. We were still able to raise more money and actually say the argument I said earlier about why Nelson's record is so bad. Voters, to your point earlier, Crystal, like - they don't get to know that unless we tell them. Often, people aren't sort of paying that close of attention to Erica Barnett's excellent reporting on the happenings at City Hall, especially when a lot of those policies ended up not passing. And so you don't actually get the negative impact from them that voters may feel. You actually had to be plugged in enough to think - This got sponsored and then dropped, right? So I just think there's, you know, I think this point is something we sometimes forget, particularly because we - I think we've misinterpreted the 2023 results as if it was a big mandate for moderates, when in reality it was just a mandate for the effectiveness of outside spending. Every single one of those races had $250,000 or more from business community super PACs and nothing from the progressive community. That's going to result in the business community winning more races than they lose, you know? So I think we just all kind of, like, allowed the narrative to take hold that, you know, these moderates had this mandate and there was this big political sort of pendulum shift that happened in 2023 that we're now recovering from. I think this is, I think we're just more in-line with communication parity across the campaigns - letting progressive messages win.

[01:02:07] Crystal Fincher: I think that's a very astute point. I do think that the progressive PAC was absolutely an element in the huge victory for Dionne Foster. It starts with having a credible, excellent candidate. You can't do this with someone who's not pulling their own weight out there - you know, talking to people on the doors, doing all the things that great candidates do. But it does take a team, essentially, to get people elected - it's not only the candidate. It needs an excellent candidate, but it also takes all of those other elements. And I think both for Alexis Mercedes Rinck last year, we see Dionne Foster and the support that she had to compete with the spending on the soft side for Sara Nelson made a huge difference.

One thing that I do want to ask about, that someone, one of our viewers asked about, was about endorsements. And particularly endorsements from people who were viewed as progressive of some of these moderate candidates. We talked about Bruce Harrell, but there are a number of people who endorsed Bruce. From Governor Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nick Brown, we talked about Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Leesa Manion, Jamie Pedersen in the 43rd district there in Seattle. A number of people - Hamdi Mohamed, Port Commissioner, Toshiko Hasegawa. A lot of people showed up for Bruce Harrell - Councilmember Dan Strauss. For Ann Davison, we see Adam Smith, Representative Adam Smith. You know, I'm looking, I'm scrolling through the list here. Okay, maybe not a ton of progressive endorsements for Ann Davison. But for Sara Nelson, I'm looking at Adam Smith again, Jamie Pedersen again, I'm - goodness. Mark Mullet, who's definitely not a progressive. These are interesting.

[01:04:31] Riall Johnson: That's a lot of people that you listed that - they don't fall into progressive camp, I'm sorry. That word has been warped to-

[01:04:40] Crystal Fincher: It has. Reverend Harriet Walden, who - whether or not she's progressive, she is viewed by many people, by the general public as progressive. And so there are these people who have been allied with progressive campaigns before. Whether they still are now - different people can agree or disagree. But what do they see in these moderate candidates? Why are they standing behind them? What are other people missing that they may see? Go ahead.

[01:05:16] Riall Johnson: I really want to answer this question. I have a lot to say on this because, like I said, the term progressive has just been abused, mutated. It's just kind of ridiculous on who gets to call themselves progressive or not. You know, the fact that like Sara Nelson can sit there and say, I'm a pragmatic progressive - whatever they want to call themselves. And the bar is so low - like I'm anti-Trump, therefore I'm progressive. And it's just like, it's ridiculous to watch. But also, like, you know, I see why they do it. So it's just a very broad term, and it just feels like it's just - it means nothing now. The question is like, you know, hopefully they're going to come down to just like, who's going to talk about specific issues. And what specific issues did Ann and Sara Nelson - and even Bruce - really like, championed themselves on nothing. They just like - I'm not, you know, I'm not a woke candidate, but I'm still progressive somehow, but I'm not an anarchist. It's just like that was what they kind of campaigned on, and they just never really - there's nothing like what's a policy Bruce can sit there and put a notch and say, like, I did this and this helped people, and this is what it did. Because you can't, because, like, the, you know, the CARE team was like, started before he got in, you know, and that's like the thing that he's backed up that's good because, like, it would have been a disaster to not back it up.

So, and also when you see these people like viewed as progressives, as you say, endorsing them - that's just self-interest, that's just relationships. People protecting their own interests, that's what - you know, like I've been to Olympia many times. And Jamie Pedersen has blocked tons of progressive stuff, so I don't think - like for him, to call him progressive is a very - it is insulting to actual progressives and the actual progressive work they do. So, I think it goes back to the kind of - do endorsements really matter? They do when they come with something. And the fact that, like they put money behind Dionne - that was effective. Will they put money behind Katie? I don't know, because like the same people writing checks for Dionne's PAC, have also - a lot of them endorsed Bruce Harrell. So this is, it's a real conundrum we're going to see. I'm very interested to see how it turns out, because, like, I don't know, it just seems like it is even going back to when I first started doing elections in Seattle in this capacity, back in 2019 - it's the same people making these, all these decisions. And if they make the same kind of decisions they did in 2019, they'll probably win. But it's just like, I mean, I don't know, I just don't know - it's the same people who've been doing the same stuff - like the the power that direct the money. It's scary to kind of know that when it's like, will it go along with the people, what the people really want, and what the people doing the actual work, actual progressives working to pass actual policies are going to help people. And when you see that these organizations do that - do they really want change? Are they really gonna support Katie Wilson for change? Or they just want the power and control and keep people, you know, put people in office that they have influence over.

[01:08:39] Crystal Fincher: Lexi and Stephen, any thoughts on why we see some people who are progressive, or viewed as progressive, standing behind candidates who are more moderate?

[01:08:51] Lexi Koren: I would just do a slightly less cynical view of some of this and say that the vibe I have gotten from some folks is that Bruce Harrell is actually - regardless of what you think of his politics - is a decent person to work with. And I think for a lot of folks, that was quite a contrast from our previous mayor Jenny Durkan, who was notoriously not great to work with. And I think people felt that sort of relief that - Look, whatever you think of this guy, he does listen. He is a decent person to work with. And again, I would add that there was a period of time where he seemed pretty inevitable. And as I was saying, too, he's done a lot of things to not piss anybody off, right? To not go out of his way to piss anybody off and to really draw some folks into his coalition. I think in particular labor - he's done a lot of things to really shore up that labor, much of the labor community. Stephen, as you mentioned, some of them are still very much out there. UFCW is still out there, has not endorsed in this race. But there are, I think - I think he's done a good job of that. And I think that's a lot of this, is that is - one of his skills is being able to get along with folks and that has served him well. It just, in this case, for a lot of reasons that we talked about, those endorsements aren't necessarily translating into votes.

[01:10:40] Riall Johnson: Their money will.

[01:10:43] Stephen Paolini: I kind of agree. Like, I kind of, I think there's two different groups of sort of progressives that have endorsed Bruce. One is, to Lexi's point, the sort of labor community. I think I have to take a more like, less pessimistic view. I think I sort of agree with what you're saying, Lexi. He clearly did some work there to earn the support of labor unions. And I don't think it's great for us to sort of imply, or sort of come from the standpoint of assuming that's all complete self-interest or negative. I think it's a reflection of real work that he's done with them. From what I heard, he threatened to veto cuts to the Office of Labor Standards, which investigates wage theft and protects labor rules. You know, I heard he threatened again to veto rollbacks to the minimum wage. Like, maybe these are the bare minimum. But at a time when the labor community felt like they were at risk of potentially seeing progress get rolled back - like he did, he did do what they asked and helped fight that back. And I think they gave him credit for it. I mean, that's sort of the simplistic view, and I happen to think it's the right one.

On the flip side, I think we should be interrogating, like, why the hell did Pramila Jayapal endorse Bruce Harrell? Or someone like Girmay, which I believe also endorsed Bruce? Like, why did these folks who are - you know, maybe less so Girmay, but definitely Pramila - like, at no risk of losing their seats, like, clearly very progressive in their values. Like, maybe she doesn't go far enough on certain things that we all would want her to, but like she has - she does not need to endorse Bruce Harrell. She could have A] stayed out of it, or B] she could have taken a risk and endorsed Katie, and nothing negative would have happened. She stands to lose absolutely nothing, and I really don't get why she felt like she had to do this. Even with, you know, even with the sort of air of inevitability that we all felt four months ago. Or at least I thought four months ago. Yeah, so I just - I actually don't have an answer to that question. And I actually think like, we should interrogate it. You know, folks asked Pramila at a recent town hall, and she totally copped out. She was like - I can't talk about the campaign because this is an official side town hall. And I was like - Nope, that was complete bulls**t. You absolutely could have answered that question. And I think like she could stand to get a little bit more pressure about why she made that endorsement and what thinking was behind it. And maybe it's all pessimistic and it's just political horse trading? But I think she - I think her and others should have to answer for that choice, because I genuinely don't get it. Like they do not have good enough incentives to have to endorse Bruce.

[01:13:46] Crystal Fincher: Well, a couple of things. One, I do not see Girmay Zahilay on Bruce's - I do see Claudia Balducci on there. I don't see Girmay on there. So maybe what you said could be applicable to Claudia, but it is not looking like Girmay - no idea whether he was on there before and wasn't, but he does not appear on Bruce Harrell's endorsement list right now.

As for how Bruce is to work with - I think that there are some very well-documented mixed opinions on that. Wouldn't be surprised to hear, you know, from men that they enjoy working with him. Very well-documented mixed opinions and throughout the City lawsuits that - people who had a different opinion there.

I think part of it is transactional when it comes to those endorsements. A regular voter, many people are looking at a whole suite of issues that we have there, right? And so how they've dealt with homelessness, how they've dealt with housing, how they've dealt with economic development, and the environment, and transportation, and labor. Where labor is looking at labor - how have they been for working people? And particularly with a Council that had signaled more hostility, Bruce was standing in between there. And so for labor, there is a case for them to be made that - but for Bruce, they would have been worse off. Now, I know that there were some unions who made the opposite evaluation. Or looking forward, thought - Okay, Bruce hasn't been the worst, but Katie we feel would be better. I think it's going to be really interesting to see where all the unions, especially UFCW, lands on this. But I do understand - in various issues where you have an organization that has a narrow focus and a specific legislative agenda - and how they endorse, how they support is directly related to how someone is in a particular negotiation, on a particular vote or set of votes, and not the broad base overall.

You know, and I think kind of going to the issues of kind of some of the interpersonal relationships - particularly early on, where lots of people felt that Bruce was going to be a shoo-in. But they also felt that they would pay a bigger price for not endorsing Bruce than they would for not endorsing Katie. That's absolutely a factor here. And so that's part of people's evaluations also when we see this. Now, is that gonna benefit people in the long term? And are they, you know, is that - if you're an endorsing organization, aligned with the best interest of your members? I think in some instances I've seen - yes, some no. And not just this, but in historical things I've seen, but I think those are two other elements in this equation that are absolutely in play.

Now, I do want to talk about the District 2 race, particularly because we have two consultants here who worked in two of the District 2 campaigns - Riall with Jeanie Chunn, Stephen with Eddie Lin. Eddie Lin finished in first place. He and Adonis Ducksworth are moving on to the general election. This was a really interesting race. It was for an open seat. There was no incumbent at play here in the one districted City Council race that was on the ballot in the primary. And, you know, I think even post-Stranger and Times endorsements - on the progressive side, three candidates that felt fairly similar to a lot of people. So, I guess, starting with Stephen - what worked for Eddie, and how was he able to consolidate the progressive vote?

[01:18:16] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I mean, first of all, The Stranger helps a ton. And I think it's just like okay to admit that they carry a ton of water in a primary, and are huge - especially now. This election really reiterated that and showed that they're the single current endorsement in Seattle politics, bar none, and that carries a lot of weight. I will embellish further though, selfishly, that for folks outside of the district, I don't think they got to see what was on our side - you know again, obviously extremely biased - but a lot of really effective principal communication about Eddie's personal story. And really focused on affordability - housing, in particular. That we spent almost a hundred thousand dollars on paid communication, when we're limited to $112,000 in a primary. We ran an extremely efficient campaign. And we spent it with really good messages to really reinforce a narrative about Eddie - about his personal background, about his experience working multiple jobs to make ends meet, about raising his family with his wife, who's a labor leader in SEA and a public school teacher. And we really spent way more money communicating with voters than any of the other campaigns. And that helps a ton. As a political practitioner, I think, again, sometimes we overemphasize endorsements and see them as more impactful in the minds of voters. But you got way more communication from us than basically anyone else. And maybe even combined, legitimately. And that was just a function of - I know it's biased, obviously - but like, I think we ran a really great campaign by the numbers.

You know, that being said, like - part of the reality is, you know, Riall - I think Jeanie would have won if she got in earlier. Like, she had a ton of momentum going into the end. And if you push the primary out a month and you give a little bit more time before The Stranger interview, I am willing to admit that I think she comes out on top of that. And I really like her as a person. I got the chance to work with her years ago, during the pandemic, on restaurant and small business advocacy. She's an incredible person. And you know, we had some - we announced a lot earlier, we were able to set up a campaign and just run a really efficient, effective race. I think Eddie is a phenomenal candidate, you know? And a lot of the stuff of like that sort of negatives that people put out are a lot of like, really Twitter insider stuff that like no voter in D2 either A] cares about or B] heard about. So, you know, I think Eddie's just - I'm really proud of him, like he's an incredible candidate - that maybe outside of D2, less people are paying attention to it because they didn't get to see the campaign as much. But inside of D2, folks really got to know him and they liked what they saw. And I think particularly his focus on housing really resonates with people. They want an answer to how you're going to lower their rent. And we gave it to them over and over again.

[01:21:34] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes a lot of sense. I share your assessment of Jeanie Chunn. You know, early is such an interesting term, a very relative term in politics. We hear about the deadline to file for office in May. And a normal person - not the abnormal people in politics - would be like, that's the deadline. So as long as I'm in before the deadline, it's fine. Let's make the decision in May. But these campaigns start in like December, January, February, March. People are looking around like - Okay, this is the field, right? And for political insiders, they're on an earlier calendar, but that sometimes excludes regular people who may not be super in, you know, politics, super active in the legislative district where they live. But they have a lot to offer. I feel like that was the case with Jeanie. And, you know, certainly in this race, also in the City Attorney race - the challengers who didn't make it through, the candidates who didn't make it through, I really hope to continue to see from them. Because sometimes there are a number of great candidates and only two can make it through to the general election. Only one can win. But that doesn't mean that there weren't other great candidates who would also be great in office or in some capacity. And this definitely seems to be the case in the D2 race. From your perspective, how do you see it, Riall?

[01:23:15] Riall Johnson: So I stopped doing candidate campaigns after 2021 for a number of reasons - I moved back to California to, you know, to start my, you know, to focus more on the ballot initiative business there, you know. And to, you know, also like, you know, my daughter's there, so just it was easier to spend time instead of flying back and forth to Seattle every other week. Or, you know, it was - the travel bill added up. And so I figured like my travel bill was the equivalent of an apartment down there. So why not just get an apartment and move there. And there's way more initiatives in California - and so that's where my business is focused now. So I haven't done a candidate since 2021, since Nicole Thomas Kennedy. And, you know, but the thing is also it's doing Seattle politics with these - when you get great candidates like Nicole, great people like Nicole, that really want to change society for the better - whether the people believe them or not. They, you know, they don't get the support. Like, it's depressing, it's so depressing. It's just like it's, it's heartbreaking like that. Like Nicole Thomas Kennedy's race broke me because she, like, I really - like, I'm an abolitionist. So like, you know, as a real leftist, it's just disappointing to see, like what progressive is. And like, as every, every progressive candidate that got through - all their platforms are just meh. Like I said, I'm sorry, like, not an insult, and I get it like - it doesn't mean they are, that's their values. I think they're playing the game. And to thread the needle because they're scared of being labeled, you know, as a woke candidate. Because I think that's - and that's, and that's understandable, I think, you know, so I don't. But so it just means that they're not really putting their authentic selves out. Nicole put herself out there like as who she really was, and so did Jeanie. And that's why I came kind of out of retirement to help Jeanie, because she was a truly authentic candidate that really wanted to help people. Her, and also a race we hope we talk about - and Kim-Khanh Van, down in District 5, the King County Council race - are just two really genuine people that really want to do the work, have been doing the work for people, but haven't really been in the political scene. I mean, Kim has.

But Jeanie has done tons of activism - and I think that's a real issue at some point, where mutual aid activists, protesters, the left, activists of the left and the political establishment doesn't really work together that well until, like, it comes to elections. So they kind of like, when, when you come, when someone like Nikkita or Nicole or Jeanie comes in and like they've been doing this work, and some of the people have in these political circles, have been with them or working. They're really coming as an unknown. And it's like, it's a little shocking to them because it's like - I've done all this work. I'm doing these things and all these people espouse these issues, but like, they're not hearing what I'm saying. They want, they're supporting the people who they know. And they don't know me. So Jeanie getting in the race was just a, you know - late was a real disadvantage. Because, like, we just didn't have time to establish those relationships, like, so it's hard to say endorsements don't matter because it was hard for us to get any endorsements. But like, she did finish ahead of the person who got probably most of the progressive endorsements, you know, outside The Stranger. So it's just like - so, it's a real mixed bag. But like, I'm so proud of, like, I'm proud of what we did with Jeanie, like proud of getting her out there. I think if she runs again, she's going to have a very successful campaign because I think it was also a learning experience for her as well. Because, like, it was a first time candidate and we got - everything had to be done so quick and so late. Like to put it in perspective - like Tammy was a, I worked with Tammy Morales, previous, you know, member of that district - and I met with her in November. I met with Jeanie in literally the two weeks before the deadline. But also, I literally met Nicole two hours before the deadline. And we still got through, but like, it was a whole different situation because it was just - we were challenging Pete Holmes, it wasn't an open four-person race with three solid candidates outside of her.

You know, Eddie ran a great race. I don't think we can do - we didn't do a traditional, you know, conventional race because we thought like everyone else was, we had to do something different to actually break, break through. But, like, Eddie's race was too competent. It's actually like - I've had the pleasure of hiring Stephen twice in my life. And I'm very proud to know that, like a former staffer of mine has beaten me in a race. It's bittersweet, but it's very, very proud to, you know, for a student to become the teacher, I guess, in a situation. So congratulations on that. But, like, you know, it was a solid race. Objectively, I disagree with tons of things that, like, Eddie's done - his voting record and, you know, supporting SOAP and SODA, you know, supporting Prop 1B over Prop 1A. I disagree with that. But like, objectively, you look as a campaigner, like how they run a race like it was, a, you know, a perfect race ran. So, but like, so, I think Eddie's a good person. The question is, I think people need to put pressure on him as the ordained progressive candidate. How is he going to vote? What is he going to support? Is he going to keep supporting SOAP and SODA laws? Is he going to support, you know, corporate housing initiatives? Is he going to go along with the with, with the Chamber type of stuff? What? Where is he going to stand when the rubber meets the road, when these kind of votes come up as a City Councilman.

[01:28:35] Crystal Fincher: So, interesting point there. You know, and I think one thing that did break beyond the District 2 boundaries was the social housing vote that Eddie took. The 1A vote won, with two-thirds of the city saying we want 1A. The 1B vote, that had Bruce Harrell's face on it, went down pretty hard. And Eddie voted for 1B. One thing that I think was unique in the primary that I don't recall seeing many other candidates say, is Eddie said he made a mistake there. Eddie said he made a mistake, he was wrong, he voted for the wrong thing. And he would work hard to make sure that social housing is funded and successful in Seattle. And I feel like, you know, I have heard from a lot of different entities that, even for people who disagree with a number of his votes - and a lot of people do disagree with a stance or two that he has - that they feel like he's really genuine. And kind of, as Lexi and others talked about earlier, that authenticity matters, I think, as much now as it ever has in politics. And I feel like, maybe that tapped into that. Like, we aren't used to hearing politicians admit to mistakes. He did that. And that was unique. And I feel like that helped him, actually - ultimately, for people who did say, Whoa, whoa, what are you talking about, 1B? What do you think about that, Stephen? And did you talk about that?

[01:30:24] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things like, you know - when we first started working together, and we were sort of like prepping for one of his first interviews - I think it was with The Urbanist. And I was working on Prop 1A at the time. I was their mail consultant and was designing the piece for it. And he was like - Hey, I have to be honest. I am voting for, I voted for Prop 1B. I think it was like, you know, right after the election, essentially. You know, I was like - Don't say that. Just lie. Don't answer the question. Like, I know it's horrible. I was like, you should just not say how you voted. Like, I, you know, put my consultant hat on for a second. I was like, I don't think this is the right, you know, thing. So that's where we started. And he was like - No, I want to tell the truth. I want to be honest. I think voters deserve to know where I stood on that. And as we kept going throughout the campaign, there was a moment, I think it was before The Burner forum, which is where he said what you mentioned, Crystal. And he called me up and he was like - Can I just be honest? Like, I f***ed up. I really regret voting for Prop 1B. I got in my head about, like, a lot of affordable housing providers. I got in my head and in the weeds about wanting the money to go to traditional affordable housing and not to try something new, which actually, in fairness - not to get to the substance of this, but, like a lot of housing advocates felt similarly to how he did. And it is sort of understandable in the context of he spent the last seven years working at the Seattle Office of Housing, really steeped in the development work around housing providers. Not justifying his vote, I disagree with him on it, but I do get where he came from on that. And I think a lot of housing advocates felt the same way as him. So anyway, I was just super proud of him from beginning to end there. That he both really was adamant that he should tell the truth, and then was also adamant that he got it wrong and should have voted for Prop 1A.

I do want to clarify one other piece, too. He actually has called for the repeal of both SOAP and SODA - not to just spend some time correcting, getting into these things. But I think he should be put in pressure with. My girlfriend, who's so much smarter than me, constantly says supporting campaigns and voting is about choosing who you're organizing against. And I think that's true here, too. Like, Eddie is not a perfect progressive. He's going to need to be pushed and challenged. The good news is, I think he's really authentically trying to represent and help his community. And he's somebody all of us can just give a call and talk to and tell him why he's wrong. And I think he'll come around to it. And that, to me, is what, like I think is what I sort of look for in a candidate. Because I just have not - I don't believe in - I've worked for people I really love as a person. They run as a candidate and there's always something I disagree with them vehemently on. And so I'm sort of choosing who I want to fight with. And I think Eddie is that person. I'd love to prove it to you through the course of the general election. And if there's an opportunity to do that, like, that's what we're going to try to do - is prove that we're a good person to fight with.

[01:34:01] Crystal Fincher: So we have a little bit of time left. We haven't talked much about the City Attorney's race. I'm wondering, from your perspectives, what - I don't think it's a shock, we saw previous polling, we saw the results that Republican Ann Davison was kind of an anomaly in the first place. And, and, you know, I think most people, many - maybe not most - many people, especially political people, were not necessarily expecting her to be ahead on Election Night. Now, who would have been - who would emerge out of the other three challengers - I think more people were wondering about that. Erika Evans had a ton of momentum, ton of endorsements and support going in. What do you think was behind her ability to consolidate support among those who opposed Ann Davison? And is Ann Davison cooked? Stephen?

[01:35:04] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I do think she's cooked. Erika is really f***ing good. I mean, she's really qualified, really smart, has a lot of support in community as well. She worked really hard. And I think, I honestly think for a lot of voters, right - we're a super educated, super informed city. And our progressive voters do look at somebody as just unequivocally qualified as Erika, who also, by the way, is really good at not mincing words and pushing progressive criminal justice reform policies as well. She has a really strong, you know, way of communicating about this stuff. Like, every time I've seen her in person, I've been shocked at how good she is at talking about those issues. Yeah, I mean, so for a lot of normal people who aren't super in the weeds on the flow chart or spreadsheet of policy positions, she comes across as really progressive. I know we probably hate this word now, but really principled, really qualified, and just at a level above the rest of the field in the City Attorney's race. That's my perspective on it. Like a former U.S. - Assistant U.S. Attorney - running to be the city's top attorney is just a great advantage going in. It's sort of like - not to just compare to folks who are very different, but when Nick Brown was running for AG, a lot of people thought that race would be a lot closer between him and Manka than I did from the beginning. So I'm just like, for most normal voters - this is the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington. He's a phenomenally effective communicator, and he just is seems way more qualified objectively. It's like it's a level of qualification that feels above politics in some ways. And I think that just helps with a ton of normal voters who aren't maybe as in the weeds on and aware of all the awesome things that Manka has done. That's just sort of my, my overall take on that, because I don't think they, she out-communicated her opponents per se.

[01:37:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think that makes a lot of sense. And just a quick interjection, because, I mean, we've all used the term "progressive" like 72 times each. And it does get old. And just from my perspective - I don't know where you guys are all on this - in political conversations with the insider insiders, it's a useful shorthand. I actually don't think it's very useful when communicating with voters. I am not one of those people who thinks, you know, it can be thrown in, but like - "stand up for progressive values," right? I actually think it's much more effective to talk about what that is, to make sure that if you're working, you can afford to pay your rent. You can afford healthcare. We want to make sure that our public schools are excellent. Like talking about the substance of what we're using with that shorthand of "progressive" is so much more effective - I have found - with regular voters, particularly, you know, the overwhelming majority of work that I've done is outside of the city of Seattle, most of it in suburbs - particularly there. Talking about the actual issue - and I actually think, especially in today's world, conservatives get away with a lot by just saying - Oh, they're progressive, they're liberals, and all that kind of stuff. Because they can't actually say - We think you deserve less money. We think that your school should suck. We think that you do not deserve to have bodily autonomy. They can't say that. That is just flatly unpopular. We see these policies passing in red states and red districts. Talking about the actual thing - when having conversations with voters - I find to be very, very effective. I just feel like that's useful to say, particularly in this conversation. And, you know, even on on the show regularly, we talk about that a lot. But, you know, I think it's really important to just make sure just for - I mean, people listening are probably not, probably somewhat abnormal if they're listening to a wonky show like this. But it's a useful thing to not rely on that shorthand all the time. I think it hurts us more than it helps us but. In conversations like this, it's a very useful shorthand.

Lexi, how did you see that City Attorney's race? And is Ann Davison cooked?

[01:40:05] Lexi Koren: I certainly hope so. I think the, I think the odds are good and I am, I am cheering it on. Well, look, I think, I think Stephen said a lot of things. And, you know, to Riall's point, Riall and I are both a little traumatized from 2021, I feel like, in certain ways - both veterans of the 2021 "progressive" campaigns. But, you know, but you saw this huge backlash to this - to the reforms of 2020, the protests of 2020. And to Riall - to your credit, I mean, Nicole Thomas Kennedy came pretty dang close for somebody who was openly running as an abolitionist. She did better than Nikkita Oliver. She did better than Lorena. And I will just, I will say that. You know, one of the things that Erika Evans and talking about Eddie Lin too, and this authenticity thing that I think is really important is - I think authenticity really matters to The Stranger when they have a tough choice. And that is an audience where that really, really does matter. And I used to talk to Rich Smith about this a lot, where The Stranger made a call that kind of really pissed people off. And at the end of the day, I think sometimes people - there are some Stranger endorsements where, yes, it is about the strength, it is just about the strength of your campaign and where you stand on things, because there's only one viable progressive. But when they're kind of trying to choose - what happens in those interviews really makes a difference. And we don't see what happens in those interviews, although it'd be really neat if they just stuck a livestream in the, in The Stranger endorsement room. I think all the people watching the show would really enjoy it.

And I want to just - Crystal, to your, I do need to just go back to this for a second. I know we're, like, we've talked about Bruce Harrell so much. Crystal, to your point, and to Psydookie's [YouTube commenter] comment and the points, that is an excellent point. Ask his niece about how great he is to work with. And I would just say, I think that is all very true. I think there is a difference often with politicians in how you treat people that work for you versus people that you need someone, something from. I think there is often quite a difference. And when I was saying - Well, Bruce is good to work with. Yeah, if he needs something from you, if you can do something for him. I think it's a very different dynamic than if you are on his staff. So just wanted to clarify that point.

[01:43:09] Crystal Fincher: I think that is a very good point. Now, as conversations between political consultants always do - we're long. We haven't talked about a number of the races on our list. We'll talk about one more race that's really important and call it after that. We have not talked about the King County Executive race yet. And so this is really an interesting race. Number of people in the primary, but Girmay Zahilay is currently at 44%. Claudia Balducci is at 29.8%. The next closest challenger was Derek Chartrand at 11.5%, John Wilson at 8% - they aren't getting through. John Wilson made headlines for being arrested for allegedly stalking his former partner and continued relentless activity in that vein - which was just creepy. And a number of elected officials have called for him to not only step down - he suspended his political campaign - but also to resign as King County Assessor because he is still currently the King County Assessor. But Claudia and Girmay got through - Girmay with a pretty sizable lead over Claudia. But interesting to see the vote distribution in this race. This general election is going to be interesting because it looks like the vote consolidation could make this a competitive race, depending on how this shakes out. How do you see this, Stephen?

[01:44:59] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, this is, I think, the most intriguing race going into the general election. Maybe outside of the mayor's race, that one's going to be pretty fun for all of us. But this one I actually feel like it's, it's actually kind of hard to tell from my perspective, who's actually ahead right now. I mean - hot take, like, I think it's pretty clear Balducci gets the 19% of people that voted for Republicans or very moderate folks. So headed into the general election, I actually think you look at that race with her ahead. Might be a hot take. That's actually my perspective. I really like Girmay. I think he's an extremely talented politician. He's a rare effective communicator and is really authentic. And he's managed to put together a coalition, too, that hasn't actually quite activated yet, really. Like, one of the things I've been kind of shocked by - I'll share in this group - is the business community and the labor community are both putting together an independent expenditure for him in the general election. I assumed that would be more like sort of split going into the general, and that's not here. He sort of consolidated a lot of the core Seattle business community behind him, which if anyone knows anything about it, that's actually kind of odd. He's one of the more left-leaning councilmembers in King County. Yeah, that race is just a huge question mark for me. I happen to think Claudia has a lead today, but it's going to be a real battle and they haven't even begun to start communicating at all. And they're raising significant money, but the county's massive. It's one of the largest counties in the country. And it's not like, you know, council districts that are divvied up by population. Like, you just have to communicate to a sh*t ton of people. And a million dollars is not enough to communicate to the King County and get your message heard in a broad way. So the campaigns have a real challenge to break through that noise. There's a ton of horse-race stuff happening right now, where everyone's counting up their endorsements, trying to feel inevitable. I don't think either of them have any argument that they're inevitable, and they're really going to have to communicate effectively with voters. And it's just going to be interesting to see how they do that, because I don't think any of them really started yet. Their communication - both sides have been pretty sparse so far, particularly county-wide. So yeah, that one will heat up.

[01:47:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is interesting. And I, you know, we've, we've gotten first night results and maps from the first night results. I, you know, and I've seen some other people express this sentiment online - I agree. I don't like looking at first night results or maps. Only about half the vote is in at that point in time. A lot of the really interesting stuff happens later. So I'm, I'm really eager to see - once we have more data - to see the final result maps, final data with all of the votes counted. Just to see - just, you know, as campaigns do, looking kind of precinct by precinct, different areas. I mean, certainly just broad brush, very obvious things that we can see. Girmay showed considerable strength in Seattle, Claudia showed considerable strength in Bellevue and the surrounding areas. So you kind of have the Eastside, Westside thing going on, which makes complete sense. Girmay is from the Westside. Claudia is from the Eastside. But I think, to your point, Stephen, looking at that vote distribution, there's one thing to just see the overall vote total. But you can look at the other candidates and where they are to say - Okay, if someone's voting for a Republican, odds are they probably aren't going to choose the person perceived as the most progressive in the race, and vice versa. And so you can see if someone is already voting for something that is in opposition to the platform of another candidate, you can guess that a lot of that vote will consolidate behind someone they're more aligned with. So I think that makes it a really close vote. But I also think the general electorate is not going to look identical to the primary electorate. Too early, but it kind of looks mixed how they did in North County and South County, particularly Southeast County, Southwest County. So it'll, there's just a lot to learn. And, and I think a lot has yet to be written because of all the spending and communication that's yet to come. I don't think these candidates are - we've seen their final forms yet. Lexi, what do you think?

[01:50:06] Lexi Koren: So, first of all, I'm legally required to disclose to the viewers that I am working for Claudia. She is my one candidate that I am working for this cycle. Like Riall, I thought I'd - man, I wasn't going to do candidates again, but here I am. And I'm going to say - look, Claudia Balducci is a force of nature and she is someone that just has a lot of broad appeal. And when I started working on this race and started talking with her team about this race, there was this concern that she kind of gets iced out on both sides, with Girmay being - even though they're very similar ideologically - with Girmay being, just having probably deeper roots in the progressive lane, being just more favorable to get The Stranger endorsement. And then on the right, that you get someone that is really, really more moderate - even a Republican, a well-funded Republican, perhaps, grabbing The Seattle Times endorsement - and she winds up like Pete Holmes in 2021 in the City Attorney's race, kind of getting iced out in the middle. A couple of things happened for us that were positive in that regard - in John Arthur Wilson imploded for very obvious reasons. I very much would like to see him resign from his current office. It is just one of the, it's quite shocking to see him - to see how he hung on for so long and all that. And so that certainly put her in a good position to win The Seattle Times. And again, the Republican candidate, who got 12% of the vote - not being a particularly well-funded Republican candidate. But you look at those two, and you look at some of these other little candidates who are, again, all in Bellevue - on the Eastside - that vote is not inherently a progressive vote. And you're talking about 23, 24%, plus we don't know at all what this general election vote is going to look like. And so looking at this from the way that I came into this, it's like - yeah, we got her into the primary. And what we said is if we get her through the primary, we got a heck of a race on our hands.

And this is a unique race that I have really - for me, and I think for a lot of people - because so many, we definitely knew that, look, again, Girmay's probably going to get The Stranger, the progressive vote and Seattle is probably going to break his way. But so many folks that you talk to are like - Ah, I like them both, honestly, right? Like, I really like them both then. And more of those conversations certainly were - But I'm going with Girmay in terms of Seattle progressives - that I've had. But quite a few of them say - Yeah, I'm going for Claudia. And so now you've got all these moderate, more right-leaning voters out there that I think are going to have to make a similar decision of - well, actually, neither of these people are a mirror decision, if you will. Neither of these people are my perfect candidate, but I've got to make a decision here. And Claudia is, you know, the candidate with the right lane validators - The Seattle Times and a lot of the business community and a lot of strength there and just being from the Eastside. And also has a lot of endorsements, I would add, from mayors, particularly in South King County, where I think a lot of this is going to be - we're going to be duking this out down in South King County because, Crystal, to your point, yes, Girmay was really strong in Seattle, and she was really strong on the Eastside. And, you know, that South King County vote, there's a lot of vote up for grabs. And she's got a lot of support from those mayors down there.

[01:54:32] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, Riall?

[01:54:33] Riall Johnson: Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, honestly. I can talk about county politics - I think county politics gets overlooked so much in general. The more this race gets talked about, the better. Because there's so many important issues that happen on county level that are getting voted on, passed bills that people just don't, aren't aware about. So I think the more exposure that this race gets, I am all for. I mean, I am a fellow alum of, you know, Stanford alum of Girmay - I've known him for years. He's, you know, like, obviously I'm biased, but like, I don't think Balducci gets enough credit for the things she's done in her terms. So I think in a lot of other places - like against other opponents - she'd be an easy vote for. I think so, but like, obviously, like, my bias goes towards Girmay easily. But like I said, I want this race to - they're both good fundraisers, they're both great candidates. And it's gonna - I hope they just raise, bring a lot of attention to this race, to these issues. Because I think that's what I want, that's the goal that I want - is that the county gets more of a magnifying glass. Because there's so many things that affect us on a daily basis on the county level. And this is not just King County, this is every county in the country - that just gets overlooked. And you know - in terms of your jailing, your sheriffs, your policing, your roads, your transportation, your potholes. And it's your housing. You know, like unincorporated places. It's such a - this is such an important race. And not just that, but some support. It's important jurisdiction. Which is why I think that people should still pay attention to Kim-Khanh Van's race, who still has sight of a chance - she is down by, looks like 240 votes, and we're still ballot chasing, there's still 900 ballots to be counted. So please go look at that race - if you want a Democrat, actual Democrat, to win that race, go support that race. One thing is like, so I think they gotta penetrate both of their demographics. And Girmay's got to really work hard to penetrate Balducci's regions - the Eastside. Balducci's got to work extra hard to penetrate Seattle. King - South King County's an anomaly. Crystal, you, you know this as well. It's just like - I never figured that region out. It baffles me, like, just because-

[01:57:06] Crystal Fincher: It's everything at the same time.

[01:57:07] Riall Johnson: It's everything at the same time. But also like, it doesn't baffle me. It's just like, you can't go on the false assumption because it is the Blackest region in the state now, but does not mean - like people think, Oh, it's going to vote progressive. No, it's a conservative area still. And people keep forgetting like the Black community overall is still capitalist. And that's where, like, you know - and the more you understand that, the more you're going to know. Like, it will come down to say, basic politicking and relationships that they're both going to have to establish, and neither of them are from there. So whoever wins South King County is going to - that's going to be a huge thing. And of course, in the north side of the county too. So it's a huge race, one of the biggest counties. Like running a county-wide race is hard. I've done that - my very first client, you know? Daron Morris - Rest in Peace - ran for County Prosecutor. And running county-wide on a low-key issue like that - with people don't pay attention, it's very hard to do. I was fortunate to win a county-wide race with Carolina Mejia, who became the first woman of color on the [Thurston] County Council. This is how overlooked they are - like it was 85% white males are in county positions statewide. And 14% of that 15% were white women. It's just like, you know, the only person of color on the council at the time was Larry Gossett - and in the whole state.

And so this is like, these need to be magnified, they need to have a magnifying glass in this race. And I really hope that they - that the issues around the county get - and that's why I'm gonna plug that King County has polled better than any other county in the country for pro reparations. And I'd like to be - I'm curious on where both of these candidates lie. Girmay has actually been to the reparations council meetings, community meetings. I don't know where Balducci stands, but I'd like to - I am curious. And if you want to find out more, there is an event - we have Garrison Hayes from Mother Jones coming in to talk about, an event - I'm putting in the chat. If you want to find out more about how King County actually has a possibility to provide - pass and provide - reparations on the county level. And we just passed a proviso on the state level for a study. It is more positive reception than you think. So I think - that's my, that's my one issue. I'm a one-issue voter on this. But I don't vote in King County, so I can't say. But I think like these are things that the county can do when it comes to, like jailing, policing, transportation, roads, parks, so many things. And so, I hope everyone just pays attention to this race, regardless of who you're voting for. And show up to - like, pay more attention than you do with Seattle races, because sometimes they affect us even more.

[01:59:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I think that is spot on - just the importance of county races - how impactful they are. I also think, again, we haven't seen these candidates' final forms. I think - you know, Claudia's from New York, and sometimes there's a little bit of a different sensibility politicking out there and a little bit more timidity politicking over here. I think maybe we might break out of that. I think we're going to see some, probably some sharp contrasts - at least attempt to be drawn - because voters do have a challenging time distinguishing between where these candidates actually do stand. So it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out. Again, County is huge, but please stay tuned to this race.

And you heard Riall mention the race with Kim-Khanh Van. That is the King County Council District 5 race, which was the seat that was left open - eventually, someone was appointed to take that - when Dave Upthegrove was elected to be the Public Lands Commissioner. And so this - duking it out. But as it stands today, Peter Kwon, who is a centrist SeaTac City Councilmember. And Steffanie Fain, who people are trying to figure out where she is - seems like a centrist. She's also married to Republican former state senator Joe Fain, who lost a reelection campaign amid allegations of sexual assault. And is the current head of the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce - and the other day was just extolling some of the benefits of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill. So it'll be interesting to see, in the general election, which way that goes. Kim-Khanh Van and Ryan McIrvin split the progressive vote there. And so you add up the progressive vote - gets into second place - if that was unified, it would have gotten through. As it stands today, it looks like progressives are locked out of that. And I don't know that there are the votes to come back. I hope that there are. I know Riall is certainly hoping that they are and Kim-Khanh Van - but it's looking like a real outside shot. We will stay tuned. But in these super close races - because I believe it's about 200, 245 votes - ballot chasing becomes important. So if there's a ballot chasing operation going on that you wanted to get involved with, certainly that campaign would have the information about that. This is a race to stay tuned into - a really important one there. With that, we will leave it there. More to discuss as time goes on, and of course, we will have a Post-Election Roundtable also.

But I just want to thank our panelists, Riall Johnson, Stephen Paolini, and Lexi Koren for their insight and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online, thank you for tuning in. If you missed any of the discussion, you can catch up on the Hawks, Hack - Hawks - on The Hacks & Wonks Facebook - I can't even talk - Hacks & Wonks Facebook page or on the YouTube channel. Special thanks to the absolute essential member of the Hacks & Wonks team and coordinator for this evening - Shannon Cheng, who we all love. And who also, following her recent breast cancer diagnosis, wants to remind you to get your preventative screenings for everything. It makes such a difference - may have saved her life, may save yours. So do that. If you missed voting in the election or know someone who did, make sure to register to vote, update your registration, or find the information for the next election at myvote.wa.gov. And as a reminder, even if you've been previously incarcerated, your right to vote is restored and you can re-register to vote immediately upon your release, even if you are still under community supervision. Be sure to tune into Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our Tuesday topical interviews and our Friday week-in-review shows, or at officialhacksandwonks.com. I've been your host, Crystal Fincher, and we'll see you next time.