Week in Review: July 18, 2025 - with Robert Cruickshank

Seattle's Democracy Voucher Program Faces Critical Renewal Vote in August Primary from Hacks & Wonks

“Judge orders an end to nudity at Seattle’s Denny Blaine Park, for now” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times

2025 Primary Election Endorsements | The Urbanist

Primary 2025 - ATSS Recommendations | All Together for Seattle Schools

“When will Seattle Public Schools get its next superintendent? Not this fall” by Sami West from KUOW

“Council Passes New Laws Against Graffiti, Expanding Police Power to Shut Down Businesses for Off-Premises Violations” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Hot Rat Summer Gets Its Own Media Stunt” by Nathalie Graham from The Stranger

“Seattle police cameras, now up and running, draw constitutional concerns” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times

“Harrell Administration Cancels Planned Lake Washington Boulevard Safety Upgrades” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist

“Business groups are spending big to oust two Democrats in WA Senate” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard

“Business cash bets the WA GOP can finally beat its Trump curse” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work, with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.

If you missed our Tuesday show, I spoke with Estevan Muñoz-Howard and Professor Jennifer Heerwig about Seattle's groundbreaking Democracy Voucher program, the first and only system in the United States that gives residents public money to support local candidates of their choice. Seattle voters will decide in August whether to renew funding for the program. Keep an eye out for your ballots and get them returned by August 5th.

Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. Welcome back!

[00:01:13] Robert Cruickshank: Thanks for having me again, Crystal.

[00:01:15] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for returning. Well, this week, we started out pretty early on with a surprising court decision - and that was a judge ordering the end of nudity at Denny Blaine Park. How did we arrive here and what happened?

[00:01:32] Robert Cruickshank: Well, there's been a long-running effort by some of the fairly wealthy neighbors at Denny Blaine Park, which if you haven't been there, is on Lake Washington in a very rich part of Seattle with big homes on the water. And Denny Blaine Park is in the middle of these homes. It has been not only a park where a lot of people like to go just to relax near the water and cool off, it's also been an important center for Seattle's queer community coming down from Capitol Hill. And for many decades, it's been known as a nude beach. And some of the neighbors who are well-off and have political pull have been trying, under Harrell's administration, to try to stop the nudity. They went to Harrell and tried to get him to intervene with the Parks Department. He did briefly and then backed off after a huge public backlash. Then the neighbors went to court - they took the Parks Department and thus the City to court and say that there are all sorts of violations of law happening there. Masturbation and other indecent activities is what they are saying is going on. A lot of the people who visit this beach say this is not the case at all. And this week, a judge ruled that the plaintiffs, the neighbors were right and that the City had to act to stop nudity at Denny Blaine Park.

This raises, I think, a couple big questions. Mainly, how is the City defending its policies, and how is the City defending the users of this park? One of the things I saw in the judge's ruling is that the defendants - in this case the City - did not mount a strong defense of the status quo at Denny Blaine Park. This raises, I think, big questions. What is Harrell and his administration doing to protect the users of this park? What is Ann Davison, the City Attorney, doing to protect the users of this park? We saw the public backlash that Harrell received earlier this year over this issue. Now we are a couple weeks away from the primary election. And I think voters, as well as anyone in the city, has a right to know whether their elected officials in City Hall are going to speak up on behalf of law-abiding people using this park, including using it in the nude. There's nothing wrong with that. It's been done for years. It doesn't harm anyone. But it's unclear whether Harrell and Davison are going to mount a defense of this. Will they appeal it to the Court of Appeals? Will they appeal it to the state Supreme Court? If they do, are they going to actually put up a real defense this time or just sort of go through the motions, which is what appears to have happened in the Superior Court ruling this week?

[00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really challenging. And as you said, people have been using this park as a nude park, nude beach for quite some time. Nudity is legal in the city of Seattle. I forget what the exact term - indecent exposure, lewd activity, whatever it is - is different than nudity. And also hearing - Hey, there are bad actors everywhere all over the time. If there did happen to be a couple of bad actors, why are we not just addressing that specific activity with those individuals instead of a blanket order affecting the entire park? And I think it gets back to exactly what you just talked about. Clearly, the advocacy that we've seen from those wealthy homeowners adjacent to that park - and what's come out in public disclosure requests - and seeing their appeals directly to power within the City to get this changed. So we'll continue to follow along with this, but I think this took a lot of people by surprise - particularly after, as you talked about, the backlash to the sudden policing that we saw and a seeming retrenchment. And I don't remember if he apologized, but the now police chief, then interim police chief of Seattle, said - Hey, this is legal. This is perfectly fine activity, and you shouldn't be expecting any more enforcement action. So this certainly feels like a U-turn from there.

[00:05:20] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and it would certainly make me wonder - and it should make the public wonder - when Harrell did that U-turn earlier this year, was it with the knowledge in mind that there was going to be a court case where he could sort of get what he wanted - keep his donors happy without taking the public heat for it?

[00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, good question. We will continue to follow that, see what happens. Also, big news today, I got my alert from King County Elections this morning that my ballot should be in the mail. Ballots were mailed out on Wednesday. They will start arriving on Thursday and Friday. Ballot dropboxes are open as of Thursday, July 17th, the day that we are recording this. So ballots are out, endorsements are out. We just saw The Urbanist release their endorsements. Was there anything notable or interesting that you saw in the set of endorsements from The Urbanist?

[00:06:17] Robert Cruickshank: It shouldn't surprise anyone that The Urbanist endorsed Katie Wilson for Mayor of Seattle, and it was a very strong endorsement. The Urbanist has worked very closely with Katie Wilson at the Transit Riders Union on a lot of issues facing Seattle, especially improving transit, getting low-income ORCA cards out to folks, putting together what we called the MASS Coalition - Move All Seattle Sustainably - back in 2018 to fight Jenny Durkan when she was mayor, because she was rolling back a lot of the transportation safety projects that she'd inherited. And Katie Wilson was a leader there. But it was a strong endorsement - folks should go read it to see exactly why The Urbanist sees Katie Wilson as the right choice.

They also weighed in on the King County Executive race, where I think a lot of us more progressive urbanist types are really struggling with this choice. Because we have two good options between Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay, who have proven themselves to be very good friends of housing, friends of transit, on the King County Council. The Urbanist did choose Claudia Balducci, mainly because they believe she has more detailed plans to help transit in Seattle, to help expand Metro services, and get Sound Transit 3 expansions moving. I would note, though, there's a notable dissent on that one from another urbanist, who folks may know - Ron Davis. Who wrote in his Rondezvous column earlier this week his reasons for backing Girmay, in which he raised concerns that Claudia Balducci could be looking at some budget cuts across the city and not as strongly embracing progressive revenue in his mind as Girmay had. I'll be honest, I'm personally on the fence on this one. I haven't decided what I'm going to do, but I'm taking this all in and looking at the different candidates and seeing all the arguments pro and con. And when I get my ballot, I'm going to have to decide - am I voting Claudia or Girmay? And The Urbanist makes a really strong and compelling case for Claudia, I will say. So I thought it is worth reading that as well.

[00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely worth reading. The one thing that I really appreciate about The Urbanist endorsements is that they put a lot of work into those. They're deeply informed, which I appreciate. And so even - agree or disagree - you know you're getting some real solid background information and homework was done there.

Also want to talk about school board races, which The Urbanist did not weigh in on, some other endorsing entities have. But I think a lot of people are trying to figure out what's happening here, particularly after the drama and consternation over the past year with the issues of closing schools and parents having to fight back to defeat that effort, at least for the time being, and the budget challenges that we're seeing that are partially due to the state failing to step up and provide funding but that the district still has to deal with. So what is the deal with the school board races?

[00:09:03] Robert Cruickshank: Well, it's a major inflection point for the future of Seattle Public Schools. Not only are we electing four new board members, which will be a majority of the seven, we're also hiring a new superintendent. And news came out this week that the superintendent - the new one was expected to have been hired, to be in place by the beginning of the school year in early September. Well, that's not going to happen. They need to take more time, and I think it's the right decision to take more time to listen to the public, to gather feedback. And ultimately, it may get kicked out - the decision - past the November election, which is not a bad thing. Ultimately, if you're going to have four potentially new people coming onto the board, why not let them make the decision? Ultimately, let the public weigh in on this through the elections, rather than have outgoing people who are retiring make a pretty important decision about who the superintendent will be.

But you're right to mention the larger context. Last year, this effort to close 20 public schools caused a massive public outcry against this austerity plan. That plan has not gone away. It's merely been put on pause. And some board members, such as former board president Liza Rankin, who faced a recall attempt last year of this, very much want to bring that plan back. Would like to hire a superintendent who will proceed with closing schools, want to support candidates for the school board who will work with her to do that. That plan got stopped not just by apparent uprising, it also got stopped by board members stepping up and agreeing with the public - saying this is wrong. And when it comes to those school board elections, it seems to me that the real litmus test, or the real way to define and decide how to vote, is to look at what people did on that closure plan last year. Where were you? Where did you stand? And the usual endorsements are all over the map on this. I think there are good endorsements from The Times for some school board candidates, and some from The Stranger. But if you look just at - Well, what The Times do, what did The Stranger do, you might not see that key nuance. Board incumbent Sarah Clark, who got appointed last year, Joe Mizrahi, who got appointed last year - those two are up for re-election. The Times endorsed Sarah Clark. The Stranger endorsed her opponent. The Stranger endorsed Joe Mizrahi. The Times may well endorse his opponent. But the parent group that came together to fight these schools - called All Together for Seattle Schools - came out with their endorsements this week as well. And they backed Sarah Clark because she fought the closure plan on the board. They backed Joe Mizrahi because he fought the closure plan on the board. They're backing Vivian Song, who was on the board, resigned, and is now seeking to return to the board - because when she was on the board, she fought a lot of this stuff and provided crucial help behind the scenes to parent advocates who are fighting the closure plan. So if you're looking, again, at the newspaper endorsements, you may not get the whole picture. But if you look at the people who are actually involved in the fight to fix Seattle Public Schools, to stop the closures, to stop ending alternative programs, option school closures - Sarah Clark, Joe Mizrahi, Vivian Song - they're the ones that parents see as having the proven track record of having fought for those values. All these candidates say that they're progressive, and I think that's true. But you want to find the ones who proved themselves to stand against austerity - and Clark, Mizrahi, Song are the ones that parents are seeing as having done that.

[00:12:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really interesting races there. I think absolutely right that this cycle - and it's not the only cycle - but it does feel like a lot of the nuance got lost in some of those individual endorsements. And so people I've heard from have been reading those and feeling like - Well, I remember something different and now I'm seeing this. Did they account for that? Or did they not account for that? What do I do with these? So I think that's solid advice that you give there. We'll continue to follow these. Were there any other interesting endorsements or races in the region that you've been seeing and paying attention to that were of any particular interest?

[00:13:03] Robert Cruickshank: We often talk a lot about Seattle-centric things, but The Urbanist endorsements include endorsements for city councils throughout the region, including in Pierce County. They have good endorsements for Tacoma City Council and Tacoma Mayor. There are some really important races happening in Burien, in Renton, in Kent. And The Urbanist has really well-informed endorsement suggestions on those races, too. So if you are listening to us and live somewhere else in the Puget Sound region - I know many listeners do - The Urbanist has you covered in many cases, not all cases. And one of the things I really appreciate about The Urbanist - and you mentioned this, that they didn't endorse in school board, I think that's a good thing. They don't cover that stuff and they understand their limitations. If they don't really feel they understand something well enough to make an informed recommendation, they're not going to make one. But where they do understand it, where they were able to sit down and talk to candidates and read questionnaires - yeah, they did sit down and go through this very closely and extensively. And looking at some of these city council races, I think The Urbanist has some really good suggestions and insights for folks to read.

[00:14:08] Crystal Fincher: And as a board member of The Urbanist, I definitely appreciate that as well.

Also want to talk, this week, about the thing that everybody's talking about - that you cannot be in Seattle this week and not hear anything about. It's the Hot Rat Summer and the City has had a hard time accepting that. What is going on with Hot Rat Summer? What has been the controversy and battle here?

[00:14:35] Robert Cruickshank: Well, if you've ever been to Volunteer Park in Seattle, Capitol Hill, there's a reservoir structure that has these arches designed into it. And a group of artists a few weeks ago went and put a mosaic in one of those arches, featuring someone they call St. Rat. St. Rat has become seen as kind of a patron saint of the trans community in Seattle and around the country. And these artists put a mosaic in this archway, which had just been a sort of a blank concrete archway - there was nothing there. And with the - featuring St. Rat and the label Hot Rat Summer. Pretty cool, right? It's local art. It's a mosaic. It looks great. But this gets caught up in Bruce Harrell's war against graffiti. And the City Council earlier this week passed legislation to fine anyone defacing public property a minimum of $1,500. Well, this raises the obvious question. What's the difference between graffiti - someone just tagging their name or their tag on a freeway sign - and putting up art? This is a hard thing to define. And the City Council didn't really seem to be terribly interested in that nuance. And in fact, the Parks Department went up to Volunteer Park earlier this week and whitewashed this Hot Rat Summer mosaic. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who were on different sides of that graffiti fine vote - Rinck was the only one who voted against it, Hollingsworth voted for it. But they both went up there on Wednesday this week and removed the whitewash and restored the mosaic, which I thought was a really wonderful thing to do. It's good to see City leaders stepping up and literally going out there to fix something that should not have happened.

Now, there's still a discussion about - the City's trying to cut a deal with the artist group that put this Hot Rat Summer mosaic there - but it raises the larger questions of how do you enforce graffiti law? What is a tag that the public doesn't really want to see and what is actual art? And the way the City Council is approaching this is the way they are approaching everything else, which is just come down hard with the hammer of the police department, the hammer of government on this stuff - without really trying to sit down and work with the community to figure out solutions. And that's how I think, really, ultimately, how Hot Rat Summer got caught up in this, which is a City Hall that is looking at everything from a criminal justice criminalization lens - it should not be a surprise that they went out there with a bunch of whitewash as their solution.

[00:17:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this has been a little back and forth now. The mosaic - which is a nice, beautiful-looking mosaic, really - was there. As you talk about, certainly not any kind of blight. If anything, it is making the facade of that structure more vibrant, more beautiful - just a piece of art in the park. And the City painted over it with this gray, drab paint. Even the color is just so depressing - it's just this depression slab of gray there. And community members power washed it off. And are like - You know, this is our community, this is community art, this is what we want here. And then the City covered it up again. And then community members power washed it off. And it's been this back and forth. But a couple of things that a lot of people noticed were - there's so many times in the city where people are calling to have actual obstructions, emergency situations, unsafe situations with street markings and call the city for action. And it can feel like it takes forever - there's so much process around it, you need so many approvals, and to have the right prioritization and they'll get to it. But my goodness, can they act super swiftly when they need to cover up some graffiti. And people questioning what that says about priorities, given all of the challenges being faced. I think, as you said, there was a really interesting debate this week about that graffiti legislation - where you talked about Joy Hollingsworth and Alexis Mercedes Rinck wound up on different sides of it. And the argument for cracking down on graffiti, as I've heard it articulated by the proponents, has been - Hey, this is part of what Bob Kettle is kind of famous for saying, a culture of permissiveness when it comes to crime in the city and a demonstration of lawlessness. And we need to cover it up and prove that we're not allowing this and stuff like this. And that will somehow impact other crime and everything else that's happening. Despite evidence for quite some time from cities across the U.S. that that tactic - not quite panning out, kind of related to the whole broken windows theory of if you crack down on these tiny little things and criminalize all of that, it'll deter people from other crimes, more serious crimes. That did not pan out. That has not come to pass. That is not consistent with data - important to say.

But also, we aren't finding that there's a differentiation. People love murals in this city. In many cities, people love art. People love just seeing vibrant artwork, different artwork, art by community members. And as you said, there is no differentiation. And so it really is very subjective - how this is enforced, when this is enforced, against whom it is enforced. And this is where we get into a lot of trouble. And I think we're seeing at the federal level what happens when people just trust that well-meaning people will do the right thing when it comes to the tools they have to enforce the law. And only bad people will get caught up in this, who are doing bad things. But it becomes a lot more complicated when the person defining "bad people" just happens to think you're a bad person because they don't agree with you, because they don't like your lifestyle, because they don't like the class that you're in, all that kind of stuff. And so I think this is a really slippery slope that we're seeing a lot of privacy advocates, a lot of criminalization justice advocates saying - This is the exact kind of infrastructure that we're building, when it comes to public safety, that is being wielded against the most vulnerable members of the community and we need to be careful with this kind of stuff.

[00:21:00] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And especially in this moment where you watch the federal government trampling all over basic rights, it becomes more important than ever that our local government be doing everything it can to ensure that the power of the state is used responsibly and effectively. And graffiti may seem like a small thing to worry about here, but it matters. People being criminalized - have to do that responsibly and carefully. And I don't think this City Council or this Mayor are interested in being responsible or careful with the power of the state.

[00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that leads to another article that was written this week by Mike Carter - that a lot of advocates have talked about, been speaking about, warning about for quite some time. Amy Sundberg, with The Urbanist, has covered quite a lot of this over the last months and years. But that Seattle police cameras are now up and running, and they're just one element in a pretty vast surveillance network in the city - that is now drawing a lot of concerns, given the federal enforcement actions that we were just talking about. What's happening here and what did this article talk about?

[00:22:12] Robert Cruickshank: Well, Seattle is installing surveillance cameras in Pioneer Square, Downtown, along Aurora. And these are just 24-7 monitoring of the street, the sidewalk, the area. But it's not just surveillance cameras they're putting in. It's part of a Real-Time Crime Center - this ongoing effort over the last 20, 25 years to put, sometimes they're called fusion centers or this case now, it's Real-Time Crime Centers, where police departments get a bunch of money. And they start trying to just aggregate all this data that they can to try to figure out what crime is happening. And they put up cameras to try to track what's going on. And defenders argue that - Oh, well, this is a great way we're going to crack down on crime. And someone's suspected in crime, we can find where they are and we can get them. And in Mike Carter's article, one thing that stood out to me was an example that was used was - these cameras in Pioneer Square finding someone who had committed a hit-and-run accident. Well, that's going to rile up a lot of people who are concerned about street safety because there was a notorious incident on Father's Day along Lake Washington Boulevard this year, where a driver hit a 16-year-old boy on a bicycle. The boy was able to get off the bike in time and was not hurt. And the hit-and-run driver drags the bike at high speeds near Mount Baker Park and throughout the neighborhood. And I was at the park with my family and in-laws watching this - Like, what is going on? And when we saw that bike causing sparks underneath the car, just we became horrified because we knew someone had been on that bike. And we didn't know at the time that the person who had been on the bike was okay. Well, it turned out that SPD had the license plate. SPD had all the correct information they needed to track this person down and just refused. And said - It's not worth it, not worth the time, we're not going to go after it. So what that tells me is that they want to put up surveillance cameras for its own sake. They want to create these Real-Time Crime Centers for their own sake. And they're grabbing justifications where they think they can, even though in practice they're not really following through when they don't have a camera. When someone's got a phone out and snaps a photo of an SUV dragging a bicycle through a park, and the cops like - Eh, I'm not really going to do anything about that. It raises real questions about what the real purpose is here. And it's especially concerning to see a lot of surveillance cameras go up at a time when, again, as we mentioned earlier, the federal government under Donald Trump is not interested in respecting our basic constitutional rights. So when you're going to create this invasion of privacy, constant 24-hour surveillance - when Trump is in power, when he's got ICE goons running around terrorizing communities, I think the City needs to be much more careful and cautious, and that's not what we're seeing with Harrell right now handling this.

[00:25:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a real challenge. And we've also seen just this data - everything that they're collecting - the records of license plates, the ability to do this. We don't know what kind of ID, AI integration may become a part of this, whether facial recognition, other recognition items could be a part of this. One of the things that we've seen is a continuing push to try and weaken elements of oversight and weaken elements of the guardrails around this system by the Seattle City Council. And that has a lot of people worried - that we're on this slippery slope, that - hey, we set up this vast surveillance network that can identify and track people all over the city, people in vulnerable communities, people who others may want to target. And we're not being diligent about making sure that we have done our homework before allowing this to happen. And that the agreements that essentially the City, the residents, the community and council decided on before that were crucially important guardrails to protect people in this community are not seen as valuable or worthy by this Council. And seeing efforts to try and sidestep or get around those has been very concerning in this environment. We will continue to follow this, the rest there. But yeah, very concerning.

We're in a string of concerning things here because the next thing we talk about is related to that incident that you just referenced. And one that just, I think, both bewildered and infuriated a lot of people. The Harrell administration canceling planned Lake Washington Boulevard safety upgrades. Why did they do this? And what exactly was canceled?

[00:26:58] Robert Cruickshank: Well, I mean, it's exactly why we're concerned - when many of us saw the aftermath of a hit-and-run crash on Lake Washington Boulevard on Father's Day weekend, a nice, sunny weekend when people are out there, it raises again the question of safety on this important street. And this goes back obviously to 2020, when during lockdowns the City closed Lake Washington Boulevard to cars. And it was a wonderful experience for people. I was down there. Many others were, too, with kids and families walking, biking, pushing strollers on this wonderful lakefront road. And there was a desire to maintain this, and it became a huge fight between safety advocates and some of the wealthy neighbors. And over the last five years, the plans to close Lake Washington Boulevard or make it safer have just been constantly whittled down by a group of neighbors who just - they want to drive, they want to drive on the road, they want to drive as fast as they want to drive, and they don't really care about anyone else nearby. That's what it boils down to. And the City under Bruce Harrell, who owns property along Lake Washington Boulevard near Seward Park, has been giving in to these folks. And once again, we saw this week that even something as simple as speed cushions, which last year, when these driver advocates and safety advocates were arguing with each other, they all seemed to agree - Well, yeah, we can put in speed cushions to slow people down on the road there, that makes sense. But then some of them complained, some of the driver advocates complained - and now we learn that the City took those off the table too. So there's not going to be any meaningful design changes to the street itself to slow people down. And what you see is that when people are at high speeds, people get hurt. There are crashes, whether it's two drivers hitting each other, or, as we saw on the one on Father's Day, a driver hitting a teenager on a bike.

And it's just emblematic of how the Harrell administration responds to issues. A wealthy donor or a wealthy person shows up and has a complaint, Harrell will be immediately responsive to it. Even if it comes at the expense of, for example, the queer community using Denny Blaine Park. Or even if it comes at the expense of his own neighbors trying to safely use Lake Washington Boulevard on a bike or on foot. Harrell, of course, notoriously said during the 2021 campaign, he will not "lead with bikes." Well, no one wants him to lead with bikes, but people want him to lead with safety, want him to lead with ensuring that someone who's not wrapped in several tons of steel can cross a sidewalk and get to the beachfront path safely. That's all this is about. Even that's now being taken away by a Harrell administration that is just eager to please the loudest, wealthiest voices in the room, even at the expense of public safety.

[00:29:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. There are so many - one, we've seen so many incidences across the city, in every district, but man, a lot in this district - in District 2 in the city of Seattle - of traffic violence, of pedestrians being hit, people on bikes being hit, people in wheelchairs being forced to share the street with cars because of unsafe or missing or obstructed sidewalks, and have seen traffic violence injuries skyrocket. This is a major problem. And there's been a lot of advocacy - it takes quite a bit of effort and time to get a project defined, funded, on the docket, ready to go. And that was the situation here. A lot of people feel like - Ah, finally on the list for the city, this is finally a planned thing, we're safe. But to see it canceled after it had been funded, prioritized, that this is going to be done, I think was really the kick in the gut to a lot of people - that this was actually a move backwards and a big choice. So many times we hear - Ah, you know, there's just not enough money to go around. Resources are tight. We want to get to it, but we can't. We wish we could do it, but we can't. Here, they could do it. They were going to do it. And just decided not to - in an area, district that has historically lacked investment, where a lot of people rely on walking and biking, where that very street is adjacent to parks, to so many places where people congregate. And would rather not have to fight traffic, be in a car, do that whole thing and just enjoy their community, enjoy the parks, enjoy the beaches. And to have to risk your safety in order to get there. And to have to know that the City is now opting into that is just really a challenging choice. It'll be interesting to see how people react and respond to this.

[00:32:06] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, I agree. And The Urbanist, speaking of, had a great article by Ryan Packer on this topic. And Ryan went out and asked the District 2 candidates about this. And Eddie Lin gave a great response. Jamie Fackler gave a great response. Adonis Duckworth hedged. And, of course, Adonis works for the City on a lot of these issues. So that's something that - I don't live in District 2, I don't have a vote - but for those who do, something to consider.

[00:32:32] Crystal Fincher: So we will continue to follow that story and see what happens. Also this week, news of business groups that are spending big to oust Democrats in some legislative special elections that are happening this year. This was a story covered by Jerry Cornfield in the Washington State Standard. What are business groups up to now?

[00:32:56] Robert Cruickshank: There are two big special elections happening for the state Senate this year. One in the 26th district, which is in the Gig Harbor area - Emily Randall got elected to Congress last year and Deb Krishnadasan got appointed the Democrat to fill that seat. And then over in the 5th district - Issaquah, Black Diamond area - Bill Ramos died near the end of the legislative session and Victoria Hunt, who had just gotten elected to the state House in that district, was elevated to the state Senate. And now business groups and their Republican allies are all working together to try to win these special elections and pouring a ton of cash into this. And Jerry Cornfield covered this at the Washington State Standard. Danny Westneat wrote a column about it this week in The Seattle Times, which I thought really misread the situation. Danny Westneat tried to frame this as - Oh, maybe the Republican Party is shaking off its MAGA base in Washington. Come on, this is not what is happening here. These business groups are cranky because the Legislature and Governor Ferguson did raise their taxes slightly this year. It was not the wealth tax that many of us had hoped and argued for, but they did do some things to raise capital gains taxes and a few other taxes on businesses, which, of course, businesses are flipping out about, even though they just got a massive tax cut from Donald Trump earlier this month. Republicans are hoping that voters will be angry about these tax increases and throw out these Democrats in these special elections. To assume that you have to overlook the last 10 years of political history in the state and in this country. Democrats are overperforming in special elections around the country in 2025. They have rejected the Republican Party in these seats - the 26th District and the 5th - over the last 10 years here in Washington state. Washington has consistently trended more and more Democratic over the last 10 years. And voters of all kinds, including around western Washington where these races are happening, have shown they very strongly want to tax the rich and these big corporations. So for these big corporations to pour money into Republican campaigns, complaining about new taxes on wealthy individuals and big corporations - to expect that to work, you have to expect 10 years of political history to be suddenly reversed. Now that sometimes happens, let's be clear. But I don't see any evidence that's happening here. It's just notable to me that these big business groups really, really want to keep their taxes low above all other considerations. They're willing to put Republicans back into these seats in the state Senate and whittle away the Democratic majority. I don't think voters are going to go for it, especially once they see the big money coming in and the reasons why. But it is, I think, a big story at the state legislative level in the two most hotly contested races in 2025.

[00:35:47] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree with it. We will also continue to follow that. There's a lot of money flying around in a lot of these elections. We're just getting to the point where direct voter communication is starting to run hot and heavy, mail hitting people's mailboxes - largely starting this week - digital ads that you're seeing on a lot of sites online, TV ads that you're seeing online and on cable. So there's a lot of spending that is happening, a lot of funding coming in from - like these business-affiliated, Republican-affiliated groups - and a lot of it has yet to be reported. They'll report kind of at the same time or right after this happens. So we'll see how much money continues to flow into these races, what entities are supporting which candidates. But I think it's really telling - these organizations do not spend us money with no expectation. They don't spend this money when there's no alignment. And so it's a pretty reliable indicator of where a candidate stands and what they plan to do, when you see tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on their behalf or to oppose their opponents. And as you said, usually when it comes from the business lobby, bottom line issue is a fight against taxation and doing all they can to resist it.

[00:37:21] Robert Cruickshank: That's exactly right - that is their number one priority. And it is appalling in the Trump era, when so much of our public services are being gutted - that even these businesses rely on - doesn't matter to them. Keep the taxes low at any cost.

[00:37:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 18th, 2025. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Bluesky at @robertcruickshank.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. You can find me on Bluesky at @finchfrii, F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com.

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